Business
Screw The Side Hustle with Kevin Mills
What’s your backstory?
Did you ever have an origami folding kick as a kid? I did. At the age of 7, I learned how to make little paper baskets from a book. But as you can guess, I had no need for 100 paper baskets.. What I did NEED was a new toy. Consequently, I loaded all of my paper baskets into a bag and headed to the largest marketplace I knew of at the time. The church my dad pastored! I went up and down the aisles selling them at 50 cents a pop. I was making money hand over fist! That is, until my dad found out!
The older I got, the more I realized the value of building my own companies. It was much easier to get the cash I wanted by building out a product or service that people wanted/needed than it was working 40 hours a week at minimum wage. At the age of 16, my biggest success so far was a landscaping company that my cousin and I built. We consistently reinvested our earnings into the company and new equipment. We were actually doing pretty good! There was just one problem. Landscaping is hot and hard work!
I landed my first gig in sales at 16. I went business to business selling advertisement for a start-up weather company. I’ll be honest. I sucked at first. But, I kept at it and kept perfecting the craft. At 18, I went on tour across the country delivering motivational speeches at schools.
At 19, I had lived quite a life.. Travelled the country, worked in five different industries, and helped start three different companies. I was primed and ready for the next adventure. On my way back to my house from my honeymoon, I stopped by my brother’s house to drop off a gag gift I had picked up for him at the beach. After talking for a few minutes, there was a knock at the door. A door-to-door vacuum salesman wanted to show them his system. For some reason, I decided to stay and check it out. Next thing I knew, I had bought a $3,000 vacuum and quit my very comfortable job in the industrial electrical industry in order to pursue “Door to door fame”. Over the next 18 months, my wife and I grew our team to the largest in our area at the time, over seven figures in sales, and #1 Recruiter in the nation. I then decided to change things up and dive into the mortgage industry for a change in scenery. I also decided to start my podcast “ Screw the Side Hustle” to share my journey and the journey of other successful entrepreneurs with the world.
What made you decide to choose this career path?
At some point, I just had a lightbulb moment and realized that I had gotten to the point where I needed to make the decision of whether or not I wanted to be in the vacuum business for the next ten years. The answer was I didn’t. So, I packed up my family in our SUV and drove across the country where my wife and I secured our MLO (Mortgage) licenses. We knew we wanted to be involved in the real estate world, but wanted to be in an environment that we could exercise our sales muscles and maintain a 30-45 day sales cycle instead of the much longer cycle you often see on the realtor side. I also knew that I wanted to begin building an empire and a community. That’s when I made the choice to begin building out “SCREW THE SIDE HUSTLE” . I knew I wanted to knock it out of the park, so I followed one of my favorite quotes. “Only take advice from someone you would trade places with”. I decided to make a very hefty investment for a day in Vegas with Travis Chappell, host of Build Your Network (Top 25 Business Podcast). As they say, the rest is history.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
When I first started in the door-to-door industry is when I really started honing in on my sales skills. I had only been in the business for a couple of months and I decided to take one of my team members out door knocking to “show him how its done” . I hopped out of my truck full of ego and glee, ran up to the door and started knocking. Within a few brief seconds I was met at the door with a shotgun and a very pissed off person holding it. Needless to say, I tucked my tail and ran back to safety all while checking to make sure my underwear was still clean, ha! Moral of the story, no matter how good you are at what you do always be prepared for the unexpected!
What do you think makes your company/personal brand stand out?
Screw the side hustle is a pretty controversial statement. I think that the only way to really get the success you are looking for is to dive “all in” on your venture. So many people want to “play it safe” ,but they will never see the results they want by doing that. One thing I’m not afraid to do is be controversial. I don’t ever create things simply to cause division and piss people off , but one thing I will always do is stay true to myself, my values, and my ideas.
What’s a quote that you live by?
“Not no, but how” So many people stop when they hear no. No means nothing to me. As soon as I hear the word no, gears start turning to figure out how to make it happen.
