63 | Nick Germano | Entrepreneur Of The Year 2021

The reason I could admit to myself to do this program was because I want to see how far I could push myself I've always done like small jobs that we talked about earlier like cleaning weights and taking your trash and bagging orders and I always thought I was a bad worker because I hated working these jobs I'm like working sucks like why does anyone want to do this? Like what's the fun in working everyone talks about all this? Entrepreneurial side and I'm like I don't really I never got to see it on my own. I guess my dad had a little bit of it so basically proving to myself The fear of me not being able to prove it to myself was enough for me to push myself To get right needed to go. I didn't want to let myself down at all And so I made it my goal no matter what I was gonna make sure that I gave myself the best chance for us to succeed in this program and I think I did just that Welcome to leaders across America podcast. My name is Steve Acorn And I'm the host this show in the CEO of the Management and Leadership Program young entrepreneurs across America This show is dedicated to young driven individuals Truly when I 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 Help 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 Well, we have a great show today Listeners, we have Nick Germano on the show today. He's a junior at UMass Amherst What makes it so special is Nick as just completed the year one of the YA and internship program And you're in the top honor in the country you're an entrepreneur the year award And that award goes to the top entrepreneur throughout the United States You want to buy completing a $190 plus business and earning 40,000 of profits That this past summer 2021. Nick is going to talk about his real life experiences with the young entrepreneurs across America's A sophomore in college and the benefits that he got out of the program Yeah, he's gonna discuss that how 18 to 22 year olds Can achieve success in this program and what it takes to win and what's really special about this podcast He's going to go into the microse on exactly what he did from the time He was hired until September 1st area when he was completed the program What he did to achieve such a great success You're going to hear and talk about though the highs and lows about being entrepreneur Well going through the internship and the incredible experience and the fulfillment he felt at the end of the day To reflect back on many stories throughout the summer that helped change his life This is an awesome show as we have a student, as I said with Nick on for the year for for young entrepreneurs producing over $190,000 business in four months and earning profits of excess of $40,000 So a very very powerful podcast ahead and please enjoy And big story and how each use his great success Well, welcome everybody to leave across America podcast and I'm super excited today Nick Germano is on the show. So Nick welcome to the user across America podcast Thanks for having me see really is a pleasure. Super excited to talk You know, I mean, we have a super excited. I'm so awesome that the show ahead we have You know, it's such a it's so different because usually we do interviews with people that have moved on from college and have started something else in their life Nick in this podcast case You just finished your rookie branch in the entry year Um, you're one of the program and I guess let me ask you first. How has your experience been so far? Oh Steve nothing sort of Truly amazing. Um, yeah, I just went up my first summer with the company Just finished out my branch. Um, I really couldn't be more happy spoke a lot about it with you guys recently. It's just been truly life changing Um, super blessed You know and and and being you know as finishing your first program one thing we should mention uh, that you did win the number one branch manager In the United States The entrepreneur of the year, which is which is really awesome Um, you know in your results You know to run a hundred and ninety one thousand dollar plus business and make over a thousand this summer is a big deal I want to get to a lot of that detail, surely But but let's go let's go back. Where do you go to school right now? I'm talking about where you go to school and what you study Yeah, so currently EMS am a junior uh first semester junior studying finance Um, I was originally management, but I just switched I was taking manage because I thought it'd be good for something like this Turns out that stuff you learn in the classroom does not really apply as much to the real world as you think so You're right to be a new route maybe for me. Well, I'm enjoying it so far. Okay. All right, and talk a little bit about who who is Nick Dermano tell him to be your backstory Just to go. Yeah, who you are So grew up in Saga's mass right on route one. I'm not sure if I'm familiar you are, but um right next to Boston basically grew up there up to about fourth grade Moves into the smaller town called and over mass near New Hampshire border hockey player all my life. I was a hockey goalie. So I was always either the hero of the villain. That's what my dad used to always tell me hockey I was a little weird don't it throw his little love center I know it is hockey goalies are a little weird. You ain't gonna test them sure But yeah, I was a big hockey kid um Did our writing school wasn't the biggest school kid um really just wanted to focus on playing hockey. I really enjoyed it and then I ended up going to high school and played high school hockey there played. I was a tennis captain in high school Wasn't the best player on that team either, but more sort of a spirit guy I think and um Yeah, I ended up making out with okay grades was only two motivated um So going to UMass then again to the business school originally And then I reapplied as an incoming sophomore at UMass And I got in with a four point, which is pretty cool busted my tail for that and that um awesome ended up Reach out here soon after So and then the past as you as you went through high school sounds like you have pretty you're pretty athletic You're playing a lot of high school sports What was sort of the jogs you may have had in the past before you ran into us? Yeah, I was a big um, I worked at my local gym for about two to three years. I would clean weights um after school and Take out the trash and stuff like that um just basically doing the dirty work. I did that Rebunkel over here. I was bagging online orders a target That was one of the big job. That was 15 bucks an hour. It was pretty cool time Just basically anything to do to get some extra money um my dad used on a car wash Um, so when I was really young probably eighth grade freshman year I used to hold down cars there Just would take my money out of the cashards at the end of the day. I didn't know that wasn't a great thing to do When I was that young, but um So anything I could do to make some extra money. I was always kind of all in force. So whatever jobs opened up A few jobs, but nothing like what you took on this summer Mm-hmm definitely not. No, you know, and that's uh, so talk a little bit about your first year here Um, so so I want to hear you say it. How well did you do and how much power you make so let's just get here you stay and instead of me Yeah, so it's so pretty crazy even say, but yeah, my crew and I managed to do about 191 Just under $192,000 in revenue from made a mid-September Ended up profiting about $42,000 Which is nuts um, I talked about it When we can't cure them, but I actually almost turned down This job offer to go back to um, one of my other summer jobs or just summer camp would have made about $1,500 this summer. So Definitely think I made the right decision Maybe the reality is Nick that you're right. I remember that story you told that you almost turned down this opportunity to go back to summer camp for 1500 You know, you made over four eight two thousand. That's not even Really what's important here? It's how much you grew right and then the leadership and then which I really I want to get into that you're you're takeaways, but I think if I'm listening right now Either as a new interim coming in or Maybe someone's to decide to reach out to us or someone That's in the in what we call the pipes going through the process and they may have been assigned as podcast to listen to I know the how how did you achieve that kind of success? Tuckles out as well So the big thing for me were looking back on it was I had to decide very early on if this internship was going to be something I could completely commit myself to Or if it's something I wouldn't be able to commit myself to um, if I was gonna just you know kind of like Tag along and just do it for the Resume or if I'm really gonna try and push myself see out what I can actually do And I made that decision maybe in about February after our first training. I was like, you know, this is something I think I can really excel and it's all up to me what I want to do with this Internship, um, you get what you take out of it, um, or you take what you get out of I should say So I decided in February after my first company is with Ian. I'm like, I got a lot of trust in this guy Um my executive Ian McCarthy And I took that and just kind of blind faith Put my front foot forward and give my best effort all the way through September and Um, everything fell into place after that. Yeah, you mentioned, uh, you went to the train. The young here's a seminar we have in February. Yeah. And so you left there understanding a lot more of what this is, right? In the left. Yeah, definitely. Is that anything when you realize, okay, this is, this is got my mill name all over it. I can, I can grasp onto this and, and you met so many people there too. So you, yeah, I, did you trust the process or you didn't trust the process? Either one, right? Yeah. In the beginning, up until February, I would say it was like once a week meetings with Ian just doing like paperwork, like no degree stuff like, all right. Once it's going to start picking up and then February comes, obviously, I made all the other branch managers, all amazing people who I still talk to every day. I'm even after this internship. So over, you don't realize how important they're going to be in your life at that moment. You just think they're much for their kids. Also don't know what they're doing, but you build that bond right away. It carries through, hopefully for a very long time. I'm looking forward to doing great things with those guys and girls. And yeah, it was really, that was the curve for me. I was like, all right, this is when you get to start having fun and see what you're going to do. Yep. Well, I like to even still dive a little bit deeper into the, I understand from the mental side, what you just said, hey, I, I knew I was going to go all in and this is going to be my summer internship, but I'm going to give the best I have. Best I can. But let's go down. I still want to dive a little bit deeper. Nick. So if I'm listening and I understand you did $190,000 of business and earned incredible amount of profit, what's some of the exact things I could, if I could, I'm one of those guys that don't need to reinvent the wheel, I can just copy and paste it. Supply understand that is. And so before training, did you do any actual task, the size of the point hour meetings? Yeah, marketers. Did you ask the whole crowd flyers at a time, what would you do exactly before training? Yeah. So before training, I think I may have done a couple estimates. I'll just dip my toes in. I think Ian did a couple with me on my first days with for training. And how did you get those estimates over like, how did you get them? Door knocking door knocking was a big thing for me. So I would door knock in the winter when it was snowing out whenever whatever the weather was. You just got yourself out there. I would just go anywhere in my hometown, that made sense. Okay. I had a territory map planned out of Ian with great spots to hit. And we set that all up in the preseason. And before training, I did a couple and then the weekends following training, I actually have been making the executive decision for myself to stay home. I was living up in Amherst where I go to school, about an hour and a half from my territory. I decided to just keep paying rent for Amherst, but live at home and end over and devote my full time to working on my territory and getting leads. So I would do about at its peak in about April, about 20 estimates a weekend. So I do about seven a day, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So about seven a.m. to seven p.m. I would do estimates and then stop by the maturing. So any jobs that I couldn't get on the spot the first time if I'm driving by their house, I go back home and knock on their door or I go drive by their house and knock on their door. I should say just checking again, make sure they're still thinking about it, keep myself on their mind. Big and short word of mouth is maintained through social media. That was always big. Our family was a good name in the town, which is nice. So everyone kind of knows the Jamano name, which helped me out a lot. I think too people already have that trust with me. And I tried to uphold those as much as I can throughout the summer. Obviously, it worked wonders. But I would say definitely door knocking was big for me. A lot of people dropped off fliers. I know Enan's results came with fliers last year's entrepreneur of the year. I couldn't get myself to sit for that long. And not do anything. It was ever really, I'm too short-wired for that. So I enjoy actually being out there knocking on doors and looking at people's faces and actually getting to talk to them. Everyone's different. But that's definitely how I got a majority of my leads and seemed to work well. Did you get trained in knock on doors? Did you, did you, did you, did you get trained what to say? Yeah, a little bit, we, when I was on my first day when I was door knocking, we did about, he did about five doors for me. It was like, all right, your turn. And it just kind of threw me out there. He, yeah, one of the things I appreciate is that he kind of let me fall. But once I fell, he would teach me where I had to fix. Like he let me see the door slamming your face and the people yelling at you before you have to really realize what that actually means and how you can make better of that and how to avoid stuff like that. Yeah, and, you know, and you were knocking on doors, as you said, even in last year did, did flyers who was under the year last year and you were on earlier broadcast. You know, the thing that I'm taking away from what you're saying is, is that you're in an entrepreneurship environment with a lot of processes in place. But you can decide what the best process is for you. Right? You can do that, right? So in your case, your process was, listen, I'm not on my comfort zone, but I'm going to knock on some doors. And after you knock on doors for an hour or two, it becomes your comfort zone, doesn't it? Like there's no longer because I remember when it was the preseason or, yeah, one is the preseason when I was knocking on like the wintertime. I was doing it about three or four times a week. That's every other day, at least. And I was getting very comfortable with it. And the leads were coming in much larger quantities than previously. And then once the summer picked up, I didn't have much time to door knock anymore, because I was busy producing and also trying to like maintain sales and things like that. And so when I had to get back into door knocking towards the end of the summer, which I'm sure we'll get into later, it definitely became out of my comfort zone again to build that trust again, door knocking, because it's not easy thing to do. But once you figure it out, it does great things. And it's one of those things that you have a strong enough mentality, isn't it, that you're not bothering people. You're just simply trying to see if they want a free no obligation, as to it to paint the past, that's the biggest thing. You always feel like a bother. And that was, that was a big thing for me at the end of the summer again. I was like, I don't want to bother these people anymore. I'm sure I've knocked on their door already before. Let me just leave this house, go to the next one. Then I do the same thing for that house and buy that point. I'm not going on any doors. I'm just wasting my time. Your time's too valuable. That's what you have to understand as well. I think it's very important is that if you think you're wasting their time, you're only wasting your own time at that point. There's no reason for you not to go knock on that door. You're offering these homeowners your time, which is very valuable. You're trying to run a very large business from nothing. So giving yourself the time to go out there and really get to engage with these homeowners is very important. And you should really take advantage of it. Now, and you got through that aspect of it. So so knocking on doors, as you said earlier in this podcast already, was your number one way. How many estimates would you say you obtained from the end of training, which is February 20th, let's say, until May 1st? How many estimates did you obtain and do that time period? I think I did over 100 estimates at that point. I would, yeah, I'm pretty sure about over 100 estimates. And what were your preseason sales going into May 1st then? I was at about $120,000, I believe $130,000 of preseason sales. And you know, wasn't one of your, I haven't asked you what your fears were yet, but was one of your fears when you first decided to join, is anyone ever going to hire me to paint their house? Yeah, that's big time. I, I still kind of questioned it even throughout the whole process itself. I'm like, it was tough for me to learn that, but as I actually started, like see the numbers go up with my revenue and people leave me great reviews. I mean, we realized that this is really an attainable goal. You'd be very surprised. People love to buy into this student painter's theme of sort of, we got this great group of young hungry kids that looking to make some summer money and pay for school. It's the most valuable asset. It's a homeowner's most valuable asset is their home. It's worth, it range is obviously, but ridiculous amount of money. So you're taking their most valuable asset, they're trusting you with that. So you take a lot of part in the work that you do. And I think once you start to do that, you try to realize how people trust you with their business, because people can see that stuff. Homeowners can see if you really trust your business or not. And that's part sales, but part also just believing in yourself. And once I started to do that, things started to really pick up. Yeah, you know, it's so amazing is I've done so many trains last 35 years. And even as we were creating new students right now, you know, if someone is interested, you know, they should go to YA internship.com to apply. And but as we meet new students and we, we deal with situations that they're, they're not familiar with the program. The biggest fear is always who's going to hire an 18 or 22 year old to paint their house? And you learn very quickly early on in your first couple of weekends, well, people are at least saying, yes, come give me estimate, right? They're at least saying, yes, you're doing 17 estimates a week. Yeah, 20, 21, 2021 estimates a weekend. And that's in March and April, right? When it's snow on the ground, it's still cold outside, you know, it's rainy. And then not only do the estimates, all of a sudden, they give you deposit check that equal the whole that you just, that you just mentioned on May 1st, about $120, $130,000 for sales. All right, not knowing you having a clue yet how to paint house. It's scary. It definitely, yeah, it's not. You accomplish that part of the internship by selling and that's phase one, right? And then phase two is now we got it. Now we got to learn how to, how to produce that paint properly. But obviously you, you excel in phase one. It's a, you know, a lot of students obviously go home on weekends and they stay at school. you decide to go back home and do that, but there's one - No, no surprise that you weren't one of the top managers. You know, our average manager across the country does about 65 to 70,000. - Exactly. - Maybe New England's a little bit higher. No, 80 or 90. - No. - A little bit higher, but on average in the country, and you were able to get there in the preseason, let's take it one step further. Now you're about to start your business, Nick. - Yep. It is now May 1st, May 10th, or after exams. How was that, how many people did you hire, how many painters, how did you find your painters? - Yeah. - Then how did you prepare yourself for the first week of the summer, when now you have to learn how to paint? - Mm-hmm. - It's probably the top. And somebody's gonna give you a $5,000 check for completing that job. - Yeah, so at this point in the summer, or in the late spring early summer, I should say, I was already working with about three marketers at that point. So I was already handing out page checks, so I was very invested. I completely bought into this process by that point, and I was, I know if these marketers give me the leads, and I can find painters like this work is gonna get done. And so when I had to find painters, I went through a lot of my personal network, which some people recommend a lot of people don't. I ended up just doing it. I'm not really sure why. I went against the end judgment, I believe, but I had a lot of trust in my friends. They all ended up coming out their first day. I had three guys with me on the first day, leaving the last day, which was great, they were through the whole way through. Got nothing to expect for those three guys, which is, I think somewhat of an anomaly. I don't think that usually happens too much, but I was very lucky. My team made it very easy for me, but I ended up going through about 15 to 17 painters, I think, throughout the entire course of the summer. I'm gonna get on my work done. So anything from, I would drop off flyers and the stop and shop parking lots, and Facebook posts and like now hiring Facebook groups, I would always post up in there, having my mom ask her friends, if they have any kids looking for work. Anyway, I can sort of find some type of employees oftentimes if there was like a senior year sign in someone's front yard for like a high school graduate. I would, if I was dropping off flyers or door knocking, I would maybe leave a now hiring fire with them too, to let them know they were also looking for work. - Interesting. - Any customers that I worked with, if they have kids, I always ask them if their kids wanted to paint after the job was done. And yeah, I had a solid pipeline of painters throughout the summer. And I think that definitely is one of the key factors to my success because there was never really any time this summer where I wasn't gonna have anyone showing up to work. I always had someone ready to paint. And if you wanna do numbers like 190,000, you don't have time to waste. You already have enough rain days. As it would be the rainiest July on record, I believe in Massachusetts this year, which was tough. But whatever we could do to make sure we had guys looking for work, I made sure I had those guys ready. - And what would you say your peak was, how many people would you have painting in a single given day or week? - I had about seven guys going at one point. So we had two crews going. I would have one crew of five paint houses and my other two guys do small jobs. So I think in one cycle, we did about 35 grain, which was pretty nuts. A two week cycle of work. That was probably our biggest. That was where my peak. And then that was like end of July, mid August. And so a lot of kids, two or three of my parents went to school in Colorado State to leave in early August. And that's hard to start trying to scramble for more guys at the end of the summer to make sure we keep up those numbers and ended up finding it away. So. - I mean, how was it then? Okay, so you get your workers. You've gone out and done all that hard work. I'm knocking on doors or dropping flyers or whatever you did for the preseason. You got your painters. How did you actually learn how to paint a house? But I'm like, if I listen to this, I never painted my life. How does this guy named Nick go into all this business and never painted this life? It was whatever you, it can't counselor, right? - I was asking the same question. Yeah, I was a can, I was a tennis counselor. (laughs) Kind of the same wrist stroke, I guess. But other than that, there's really not much to do. There are wells with, yeah, it's all basically Todd and the first day you're out there which is kind of nuts even think about still. You're up until the first day you produce, you really don't know how to paint. And you go out there with your executive, he'll help you and he'll train all your guys and he'll teach you ladders, save to everything like that. And he'll get you on your feet. It really is a quick learning curve. It's not necessarily a tough skill to acquire, which I think is why this program does so well too is because the learning curve is really short and the actual production of the revenue. But we ended up learning through the first day, first couple of days, once I got comfortable on my own and let me be free, I worked with my guys, made a lot of mistakes in the beginning, but that comes with a process like this. You're not gonna be right on the time. You'll be right maybe 40% of the time, but you have to give yourself that attitude that you're right always, you have to fall through with that attitude no matter what 'cause you guys pick up on that stuff and they smell it. So you have to make sure you're always giving them your best look and after that, it's just all muscle memory. And my guys ended up being amazing painters, the guys who started the main finish in August could probably go paint for some legit crews now and some professional painting companies and end up if they wanna keep doing this after this summer. But we'll see. - So you had some pretty good support for the organization and some of the past managers came out and helped train you properly and do things right. - Yeah, yeah. - Let me see, we all, we found it says all that kind of stuff. And then would you say you felt pretty comfortable after the first week? - Yeah, I would say so. I've always enjoyed the leadership role. I wasn't really painting much. I was more sort of making sure we were on our feet 'cause I was kind of, I was reading off like a chicken with this head cut off really. That's what you always told me in my first week. - Everyone does, everyone does. - Everyone does. Yeah, I'm sure I wasn't the only one, but I was definitely scrambling. And so I wasn't really focusing much on painting, but my guys made it honestly. They were like, I'm very lucky I had them 'cause they made it super easy for me to sort of take that time for myself to realize. I was writing off like a chicken with this head cut off, like I said, and they just kept doing the work and picking up and learning on their own and me helping them along the way as well and then helping me. It was a big team effort and I'll say to myself many times I need to, but I really, I mean, death to those guys, they helped us out a lot. Just listening to you, you know, I think that your painters, as you said, where you're indeed your painters, right? But you must have a response, you must have a response to painters because I find when, you know, with house painting, as long as you're responsible and you put draw cloths down, so if it paint drips, you're not on the sidewalk, you're not on the Weber grill, you can always repaint a side, right? You can always repaint a window as you learn the process. But it's hard to fix paint when you get all over a house that that's not supposed, when you get paint worse, not supposed to be as a problem. So as long as you have the causes of behavior in your brain, not to put paint worse, not supposed to, you're pretty good. - We had one story this year. This was probably one of the current certain points in my crew, but it was early on in the summer and my guys were cleaning out their buckets at the end of the day and they were cleaning them in the front yard next to the driveway and they were dumping their buckets in the grass where they should go. But the puddles were building up so much all the paint water rolled over from the lawn onto the driveway and becoming the next morning in the driveway is a whole color of blue. And so I spent about 15 hours that weekend I'm power washed in a driveway, ends up actually getting all of which is pretty nice. They probably shouldn't have happened, but I don't know what I did. But yeah, definitely after that, I had to talk with my crew. I'm like, listen, like, I have a lot of respect for you guys, what you guys are doing for me. It's an easy job. I really do appreciate that. But if we can make sure we're returning the respect and we're all on the same page and we're here to work towards our common goal, like the summer's gonna be amazing. And once they bought into that, incentives came, we got a five-star stake dinner together. I took them all out for stakes. That was one of the best moments of my summer. It was really awesome getting to do that. The bill wasn't even a worry for me. They were all just wicked happy and they felt appreciated and that type of respect is something that goes into getting a number like this 'cause without their respect, they're not gonna want to work for you. Like you said, they're not gonna want to be responsible. - How much do you have five-star stake dinner? How much did I cost you with your painters? - And I don't cost you about 700-800 bucks. - Yep. We talked about it on a training. We talked about it on a training day. It's that concept that you think about it. You're a junior at UMass, but you just took your painters that helped you get to over 100,000 or whatever like goal was 150,000 to a five-star stake dinner and spent $700 doing it. And that's the leadership of growth. You got into this program of understanding about 23 people, how you'll lead people and how you think people in a very, what is the cash way in a very thankful way? And I'm sure they appreciated the dinner too. - Oh, they did. No, this internship definitely helped me realize how important is that boss, employee, relationship. It makes such a big difference. I'm always not gonna speak for my guys. I don't know. we had a great summer. I'm not gonna speak on their behalf, but I know from what I understand. That respect was being built throughout the entire course of the summer. It doesn't just happen in a day. You have to make sure I always keep an up. I'm always trying to get my guys. Donuts in the morning or something. I'm always at something with my coffees, trying my best to. And if I'm not, they hold me accountable. Like, hey, listen, we just feel like we're not feeling it's appreciated. They'll talk to me. They'll be right up front with me. And we'll have some dialogue and we'll keep moving forward because we all want to get towards this goal that we've sat in the beginning of the summer. And without that, there's really no there's no 191 without that type of relationship and that communication. So establishing that early on is absolutely critical to the success of your small business, no matter what field or industry you're going into. What a great story that is. I hope you're enjoying the podcast today. And as you know by now, all the people we interview and have on this show are alumni of the entrepreneurs across America. And at some point, they decided in their college careers to join our internship, go down the path that would change their life. And we're very excited right now to announce that we are now hiring for the 2022 summer and looking for new interns to fill our team throughout the country. If you're interested in being part of the number one student development team, please feel free to look into the entrepreneurs across America and to talk to one of our alumni or one of our interns that we currently have. If you have a desire to grow and lead and take on more responsibility, accountability and quite frankly get out of your comfort zone, please look into young entrepreneurs. If you want to reach out to leadersacrossamerica.com to learn more about the program, please feel free to do so. It's changed so many students' lives. I'm so fortunate to be able to coach and mentor so many students last 35 years. And looking for our new interns for 2022 to coach and mentor also. So again, once again, if you're interested in going in different direction that you're at and you want to have more leadership and growth opportunities, learn to manage, create a better story for yourself. Please visit leadersacrossamerica.com and learn more about the program or call me directly if you like at 1-888-839-3385. I'd be more happy to talk to you about the opportunity that's out there for our interns in the summer of 2022. So enjoy the show and look forward to hearing from you. What do you think drew you to the program in the first place? If you backtrack a little bit, go back in whenever we hired you in October, November, December, whenever that was. What drew you to the program in the first place? Yeah. So I got a, I got a DM from one of the series executives Fernando, an amazing kid. Basically you offer me an info session. Definitely getting a DM was very odd for me. I was like, I don't know if I trust this. I don't usually get jobs from Instagram DMs. But I was something about the fact that I was going to learn how to run my own business. My family's bloodline is basically small business. So my dad, before he passed away five years ago, he owned a car wash. He owned a real estate firm. He did residential construction. He owned a self-storage building. And this is all off of about a month of community college. So he ended up dropping out after a month because he hated it. He just went right into the construction field, started building houses, building his own name. And he did very well for himself. And so having seen what small businesses really about through him, just that alone was an option center for me to at least go and at least see what this is about. It seems like it sounds like it's a risk-free basically trial at running your own small business. And I once the info session, I talked with Ian and I think maybe one other executive in there. And I was absolutely hooked. Something about it. It just all made sense to me. And I had a couple more interviews and was completely bottomed and ready to get going. Now, did you have any fears early on though? So you're like, you're your body and you meet the guys in the company. You're excited. You're about to do something you've never done before and even close. But you're your body and you said you trusted the process at that moment time. Back then. Yeah. Which fears you have really on. Any fears? There's going to be some fears you have. Oh, definitely. I was definitely scared of what my friends would think. Which is tough. Usually don't. You assume your friends are your best interests in mind. Which they usually do. They usually always want the best for you. But they're not going to make it easy on you. Do something as crazy as starting your own business. They're going to tell you to come hang out there and stop doing the stupid internship. I got plenty of those texts and calls and conversations this spring and winter. But just getting over the worry of what the other people are going to think of you is very big for me. And once I did that, it gave me the confidence to go and start knocking on doors and really start buying in and enjoying the process. Because one of the things I learned after getting over these fears was that it really is like amazing what we're able to do. There should be no reason to be scared. It's all up to what you want to do. And that's the, that's in my opinion, the absolute best part of this program is that you can do whatever you'd like to do in this company. It just depends if you want to apply yourself or not. And if you want to actually push yourself to get there. So another worry in mind, I guess was also if I'm not going to be able to push myself. The reason I could convince myself to do this program was because I want to see how far I could push myself. I've always done like small jobs like we talked about earlier, like cleaning weights and taking out trash and bagging orders. And I always thought I was a bad worker because I hated working these jobs and like working sucks. Like why does anyone want to do this? Like what's the fun in working everyone talks about all this entrepreneurial side? And I'm like, I don't really, I never got to see it on my own. I guess my dad had a little bit of it. So basically proving to myself the fear of me not being able to prove it to myself was enough for me to push myself to get right needed to go. I didn't want to let myself down at all. And so I made it my goal no matter what. I was going to make sure that I gave myself the best chance possible to succeed in this program. And I think I did just that. Yeah, yeah. And probably it's the fear of failure, right? That that's one of it. The fear of failure because you don't know what you don't know what you're doing. And when you're doing, you don't even know how to knock on a door, let alone paying house. We're doing estimate or price out of the job. But because of the process is in place, you learn all that as you go along, don't you? Yeah. What was your original goal, Nick? If you go back in time, what was your original goal? Your first joint of my goal is X. My original goal is a hundred thousand dollars in my February training, which is a huge number, by the way. It is a huge number. I was very scared. I wasn't going to hit it. I was like, I don't know. I was hoping to come out of here with maybe my original goal is like a hundred grand and maybe like 15, 20 grand in profits. Yeah, I think that is the way I was like, I mean, that's still a very great summer. I couldn't even imagine making 20 grand 365 days ago. Well, 42. So those were my goals and looking back, it's kind of nuts. But that was your goal. When did you decide, I guess, as things were going along, obviously, you knew you had some kind of thing your own being that you were, you know, we trained 200 students right that are out there to be honest with yours. And they all get the same starting point, right? We all do the same training, the same fires, same knock on doors. When did you decide that well, you know, we're down to about five or 10 people here now in the country that look like they're excelling at it bigger than others. When did you decide you really wanted to go for the top award? Yeah. I've always been a very competitive person. So I definitely came into this hoping I would win. That would have been, I always thought that would be really cool. I had a lot of respect for guys like Ian and Charles Bowle right off the start, just based on an reputation that they've gotten throughout the company, hearing about them and training and stuff. But I would definitely say sales, every sales 301, I believe the first sales training we had in April, I came into that training as the number one down in the country at about $80,000 sold. I was already, if I stopped selling, I could have gone to King Coon still would have been, which is not even think about. But I remember coming into that training, I was a top dog and after that it was just a deck thing almost. I just wanted to keep on doing more and more and see those numbers keep getting bigger and it's a little bit, it's crazy. My mind kind of works like that, but that's always just kind of what I wanted from the start. Yeah. So right back in April, you decided, well, I have a chance of being one in the entire country. Yeah, definitely. And there was definitely lots of highs and lows after that too. I mean, it didn't stay like that at all. I think the very next week or maybe two weeks after the guy finished the second place, Gabe, I was rookie the year. I think he sold about 50 grand in like two weeks and he went right by me and Blake Winkley also sold a ridiculous amount. Blake actually pulled me aside at that training I was just talking about when I was number one. And he pulled me aside and was like, hey, Congrats. I'm coming for you. And I was like, yeah, all right. Sure. And the next thing, you know, two weeks pass and I'm in fourth or fifth now. And I'm so upset. And it's like an anger inside of me. I couldn't let it stay that way. And so So, I kept my head down and just kept going. - But now you understand, that's still back to the self-process, it's something part of the institution, part of the enterprise producing it all. - Yeah, exactly. - You mentioned about highs and lows. Can you talk about some maybe some other highs and lows? Is that a high and low that you're having right now? Is it really a high and low from drugled concept? Is highs and lows of someone just past you? But I'm already top five in the country. - Yeah. - What if you keep down highs and lows? You have any highs and lows deep down that you really struggle with? - Yeah, I mean, it's hard to think of highs and lows. I was at the, I was somewhere at the top for most of the summer, so it was always, I guess my struggles might be different than others, but there was one weekend in the end of July when I was about to lose my full-time crew. They were all getting ready to go back to school. I already knew they're there to give me their warning and stuff, they're two weeks. And so I was trying to get them as much work as I could before I lose them 'cause I know I got to find a new crew. And we got finished in this house for a manager who couldn't finish the job up a new hamster. And I was screaming to get work done and I didn't have a house repaired. So I called my biggest job this summer, which is only about $8,700, I believe, which is still a big job, I guess, 'cause I know guys don't know how Michigan don't get jobs like that too often. But I called her like the day before I'm like, "Hey, listen, we're gonna clean your house tomorrow." All this stuff, long story short, my communication was just very, like, not good at all. I was just kinda trying to rush there. I think she picked up on it. And so we actually started scraping our house the next day and I get a call when I'm a new hamster, collecting that final check. And she's like, "Hey, Nick, listen, I don't really feel comfortable with this anymore." I really don't think I'm gonna get my house painted anymore. You mind telling me, guys, I had home. I don't think we're gonna be able to do this anymore. I remember, as I got that call, it's kind of like a movie, but it started raining out too. I was outside on the phone and I called Ian. I just started crying. I was like, "This is ridiculous. I can't be this happening." 'Cause at this point in the summer, it's me and three of the guys battling for the summer in one spot and I haven't worked in all summer for it already. - Yeah. - Yeah, there's no way this is about to happen right now. And of course, we had to return the deposit and everything. That was a big mess too. And so even after that, I still had to find work for my guys 'cause they don't have any works prepared 'cause I still was prepared beyond that house. And so I called my next biggest job. I was like, "Hey, we're gonna start your house. The culture has already done everything, which is nice." And again, that's fine. And we started painting their house. We finished about a day in their house and it started pouring out the end of our last day there. And so my guys just, it was like, that torrential downpours my guys just ran in their cars and went home. I was like, "That makes sense." But I didn't know. I wasn't on the site to close up and they left the site trashed. It wasn't, it was actually my, some of my workers last day. So I think they were getting a little lazy at the end. Whatever it was, they're like, "Ladders everywhere, paint buckets everywhere." And those homeowners call me that night. I like, nine or 10. They're like, "Hey, listen to me pictures." They're like, "Listen, we love what you're doing, but this definitely isn't acceptable." I think we're gonna get it done on our own. We're gonna paint the house ourselves. And so I run to their house at 11 and try and clean up the site and see what I can salvage and couldn't make it work. So I ended up losing about 15,000 dollars with the work in about three days at a time where I needed to get all my work done. And there would definitely be a lot of tears shed. And I definitely could've just been like, "Well, this is not my summer, it's gonna go. I'll take fourth place. I'll take third place." But Ian, help me get back on my feet, convinced me I had to convince myself to more so than anyone that you're still in this. And so I went out, kept on doing some door knocking and some flyers. That probably rolled me down. Yeah, it's about maybe like 16170. Probably around 185. - Yep. - So that was a big blow. I ended up doing about 20 came work with, so I mean, I ended up selling the work. But definitely one of the scarier parts of my summer. I really didn't know if I was gonna make it out of there where I wanted to be. - Well, you just described some reality, right there. There's, you know, if you're not always on every, the job site is being sure it's going well, if you're not over, you're not in the business making sure it's going well, it's gonna happen. And in your case, the story is told there, the listeners, it wasn't if you're gonna win or lose at this, right? You won it, you did $160,000 at that point. - Yeah. - You paid probably $32,000. For most students, they say, you know what, the heck with it. I did great. I conquered this in terms of, I get all the accolades. I can be part of the, you know, the placement office of 35 years of alumni out there. - Yeah. - I can get hired by anyone that does past young entrepreneurs in terms. But in your case, your resilience was, no, no, no. I am, yeah, as you said, it's emotional, right? There's some tear sand. There's like piss, there's, there's any other sadness, but you just took it on and said, no, I am still gonna give it everything I got and that's resilience. And I think that's, you know, when you graduate somebody and talk to future employers about your story here, that one may be the strongest story, nothing you went on for the year. But you were not gonna be denied the best you can be. And that's, but that, the end result was, there's no surprise to me at the end of the day that you weren't the number one guy in the country because you weren't gonna be denied to be the best you could be. - Yeah, I'll send that one if it's. - Did you agree with that? - Oh, definitely not, it was, I, ever since the start, I did this only because I wanted to make myself sure of knowing the best version of myself. And, yeah, if I had not gone forward after that week, I would have seen the best version of myself. And, you know, amazing story though, that's amazing. You know, as you kind of wrap up the last couple of questions here, how is it possible if you could answer your junior in the inner program, but someone listening, how is it possible for a college student to be able to go around a painting business of somewhere between 70 and $190,000? When they've never ran a business before or never painted before, how is it even possible? You can summarize that. - I just remember listening to these podcasts before I started, and I always have the same questions. I mean, 'cause it sounds like it's cliche coming from us, 'cause we've obviously been through the process, but I really truly do think that college students are capable of so much more than we let ourselves believe. It's truly empowering what this program can do for you. It just, you have to put that blind trust in, like everyone does their first year. No one knows what they're gonna get out of this when they start, but it's all about trusting yourself and trusting the team around you. I think that's what gave me the most comfortable that I should do what I needed to do. And I put a lot of blind trust in my executive and my team in a paid individence. It'll pay individence for rest of my life now. So I guess to answer, I would just say, you really are capable of a lot more than you think. Like don't sell yourself short at all. Like I definitely didn't think I could do it. I did this summer coming into it as a rookie, but here I am. - You know, I talk at training a lot because, you know, what the story you can tell at the end of the internship. - Yeah. - That you've created. And that can, that will last you forever, the story. And it should put you in a spot when you graduate college to get, and I've often said, I almost can say 100%, you'll get whatever job you want, graduate, and you miss. 'Cause your story is going to be better than anyone of your peer groups, anyone that you've had, but you have to go through some pan and egging to get there. You know, there's some ups and downs with struggles. - I think you've never worked doing nothing easy has ever worked doing. You were forced to become responsible and accountable, you know, at 18, 19 years old. There's, you didn't have an option. But you also embraced it because that's what you wanted to learn to become accountable in response to what the next level. And that, that I totally respect for what you did. - Yeah, thank you. I really do appreciate it. - You know, talk a little bit about the culture and other interns in the program, did you, did you, how did you fit in? Did you make any friends here? And I know the answer to this question, but it's kind of a loaded question, right? But it's how, 'cause you meet, you meet some of your, we already know you meet some of your best friends in the light that you didn't know, like a year ago. - Yeah, it's crazy. I know you listen to these and you don't think it's true, but I genuinely have two probably my new best friends out of this program. Ben College, I've cried with him on the phone who knows how many times cries laughing probably more. Almost like generic kids, like the culture here is so amazing. You're on average of the, I think I think Kevin said this in the last podcast, but I just want to emphasize, you're an average of the five best people you hang out with. - Yep. - And so if you're at school with a bunch of your buddies, like yeah, they're good friends of yours, but are they making you better? Are they lifting you up or are they bringing you down? And I can definitely speak for every guy and girl in this program that I got to meet definitely brought me up. And I think that's what makes this so addicting is that you see yourself and you feel yourself getting better and better, such a great feeling of these endorphins that you're getting from this. And even beyond that, it's just the friendship that you get as well. I just went to the Red Sars game with Ian a couple days ago, went to the Red Sars Yankees game, like we keep in touch all the time. Porter Clancy, I cannot bring his name up. He'll be an executive this year. - Yep. He's an amazing kid. What easily one of the funniest kids I've ever met? All people I met through this program, it really does, you lose all people in the beginning that aren't really committed to it, but the people that make it out and come through to the end are truly people that you would be still not to keep around in your life for a very long time, just for the business side one, but also for the personal connection they actually make with these people. It's truly one of a kind. You've both gone through, I think what makes it so special is that you've both gone through the same struggles, we've both gone through the pain and agony and running a painting business, and no one else knows that pain but us, and so I feel like that's what makes the bond so much closer is that we all have that same shared experience and no one's ever going to take that away from us. Yeah, you know, and that culture right there, you're so like mind to people, like you didn't know these people before, but they all want to grow better, they want to lead better, they want to put themselves in a spot to see those best possible career choices coming out of college to help live their life. And that's one of the things that that's amazing, you know, with the culture and that, and you know, at the TV in this podcast, we just came back from our worship. How was that being at the worst trip down in the dream jade resort in Ken Kuhn? How was that with you with many other people? Yeah, it was awesome. I got to meet a lot of new people again, like I got to swim in, I work even more. Everyone from Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania requests. I know they all came out. It was great to meet them. Definitely super rewarding to sit back on the beach after four months of what felt like probably two years. It was ridiculous, especially because I was painting in the school, but going, yeah, going with all my buddies and just enjoying ourselves and I'm worried about anything. That was a week and I definitely won't forget. Super, I'm super grateful we got to go on it. You've taken us there. It's really kind of like what you said about treating your employees, right? That's how you build these kinds of great relationships and all starts with stuff like that. Absolutely. Well, Nick, thanks so much for sharing your story to the listeners. As I said, you know, the beginning of the podcast, you know, whether they're there, well, I know I already know all the people in the company are listening to this podcast no matter what, right? Because they know who we are. That wasn't the purpose of this podcast. It was for the new interns coming in and the ones deciding whether to join or not. You know, and if someone was thinking right now about reaching out to the entrepreneurs to apply, what would you recommend them do if they're thinking about it? Yeah. I would say this program is the absolute number one program for the right people and it's the absolute worst program for the wrong people. If you think you're the right person, if you think you're someone that wants to see themselves get pushed, see how far you can really push yourself and have that safety net of being surrounded by this team in this company, that's going to help her tell you in the right direction. It's an absolute no brainer. I can't recommend it enough. It's really done wonders for me. I know you can talk about saying yourself in the future. There's already, I'm already in touch with other people, hopefully, going to give myself a nice internship. People love this story. It's really amazing. Not many kids get to say they've run a six-figure startup in the span of four months. Let alone a five-figure even. Or just anything in general to be honest, no one can really say they've run their own business before. It's a great resume piece. It's a great character builder looking back at May 2021 Nixon Monter. I couldn't really tell you who that person is anymore. I've gained such a new perspective on what hard work really is. I thought hard work was scrubbing plates and doing cleaning weights at the gym, which obviously is hard work in its own sense, but really having to put yourself out there and start your own business is one of the most rewarding experiences. And most challenging experiences you can possibly give yourself. And you're not doing yourself any favors by avoiding it because you're scared. I think a lot of the challenge, a lot of the reward comes from the fact that you're so scared. So force yourself out of your comforts if you think it's right for you. It's going to do great things for you. Yeah, it really is an amazing program. Well, Nick, what's next for Nick? Nick Dermano. What's next for you now, Nick? What is next for Nick? I don't know. I always thought I'd be doing like a financial analyst job when I was older. It's kind of like I'm doing finance and I'll let you know I just did the career fair for Eisenberg at the business school here at UMass and definitely garner some interest, but I'll tell you those jobs are, they sound pretty boring. I'm definitely, it's helped me realize if you want to do great things, you got to bring it to your own hands. So hopefully start something on my own sometime soon. I would really enjoy that. Hopefully, I would say, what's next for Nick Dermano? It was just hopefully bigger things, bigger things, but it doesn't start without a foundation like this. So I'm like, I'm sure you're probably indebted to spend on whatever comes after this is out to the company. Well, Nick, I know you're a school right now, and thanks so much for sharing your story. Great one, and I'm just honored that you chose to be part of our company too. We have done this for 35 years, and I meet great students. I think I have the best job in the world. If I even call the job, just meeting great students I want to learn and want to grow, and I get a chance to see their growth from the time they walk in the program until the time, if they're only here for one year, they leave the program or sometimes they stick around for two or three or four years when they develop that way too. So I seem a little bit longer, but make a great story, and I'm sure one that will resonate throughout 2022 season for interns. And again, if I'm listening and I'm saying, okay, if this is real, I know, I know right now, if they want to talk to you personally, you let them talk to you personally, right? That's an easy one. Definitely. They can call you directly as you're not a paid actor, right? You're a real person. I know how to explain it, but I'm there. No, you're real. And no, great story, and I appreciate your sharing today. And I know that the people in this podcast will be inspired by it. So thank you so much for sharing. Yeah, thanks, do you appreciate it a lot? All right, take care. You too. I hope you enjoyed our podcast episode today. It was just awesome, one an awesome show. If you did feel the same way, please subscribe to this podcast. It is across America. It really is a great way of supporting the show. And if you found the episode valuable, please rate and review the podcast and share it with as many people as possible that really need to hear this. So if you can tell us three of your most driven and motivated friends about this podcast, so they can make the necessary steps to begin changing their lives and separating themselves from the crowd at a very young age, we're going to be having many more interviews like the one you just heard in the future. The reality is this podcast is really meant to highlight what is possible when young students learn and develop the necessary skills to start and run a great business. If you would like more information about this elite program, please go to y-e-a-a-internship.com to learn more about the program that's changed so many people's lives over the last 34 years and continues to do so today. Thanks again for listening and see you next time on the Luzercross America Show.