From Yellow Pages to $80K Months: Deryck Richardson on Cost-First Lead Generation

Jordan:0:03
Welcome back to the High Ticket AI Systems Podcast. Everyone, please welcome the winner of the Mr. Derek Richardson. Derek, how you doing today, my friend?

Deryck Richardson:0:10
I'm good Jordan, how are you man? Pleasure to be here.

Jordan:0:14
Yes sir, happy to have you on. First things first, what is your offer? Basically, what do you sell and who is this for?

Deryck Richardson:0:23
So we are in lead generation. So we are primarily in the insurance space. So insurance agents looking for leads. And then also home services. So roofers, little bit of solar, windows, has a new siding, right? We offer leads for those industries.

Jordan:0:41
That's very interesting because I've sat down with, you know, some lead Jane companies in the past, but they're predominantly utilizing their own Google ads on behalf of clients or meta ads, TikTok ads, whatever the hell the case is, right? They're not really providing leads like a, like pay per lead, like a, like a lead list, like data, data. There we go.

Deryck Richardson:1:04
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jordan:1:06
And it's interesting because, when I first got into sales, I sold solar. I first, you know, was knocking on doors for six months and I thought, how the hell am I knocking on doors, man? There has to be a better way to do this. And then I kind of discovered cold calling and I would, I would have to pick up data, you know, smile and dial. And I got actually pretty decent at it. It was, pretty fun for me. but how did you manage to get into the data side of things, opposed to just utilizing, you know, Facebook ads and Instagram ads traditionally, like how every other company does it.

Deryck Richardson:1:35
So a couple of different ways, I'm actually against that traditional digital marketing for a couple of different reasons. It's hard to predict how much your cost prequisitions are going to be. With me, if I say a lead for let's just say $10, and it takes you 10 of them to close it, you know that every $100 is going to be a sale. So it's very easy to scale based on cost pre-acquisition.

Jordan:1:43
It's hard to...

Deryck Richardson:2:04
marketing agencies are doing these digital guys are saying first pay me a retainer $1,500 and then let's pay Meta another thousand dollars a month and then let's sort of cross our fingers and see how many leads we get back. So, you know, the matrixes are not based on cost per lead. So it's hard to then scale to see what your cost per acquisition is. So that's why I'm against that type of digital marketing. I know that a lot of people are doing it. There's a lot of agencies that are good at it. There's a lot of them that are not good at it. But when you're talking about a business owner, He wants to know what his cost per acquisition is. And so it's easy to say, hey, listen, you you give me 10 people, I'll close one of them every single time. My numbers say every single time. If each lead cost X, then I know 10 times X is my cost per acquisition and I can scale and run my business based on those numbers. So how I got into this thing, man, I've always done it cost per lead, but I was a teacher and I was, my specialty is special education, specifically autism spectrum disorder.

And so I wasn't making any money man. My wife was a stay-at-home mom. We have four kids at the time We still have four kids that was grown But we had four kids at home at the time So I'd get home from from school. I taught high school Get home about four o'clock. I would pick up the back then the yellow pages There would be ads for guys who were selling siding and kitchen remodels And it would say something like get a free quote. That's why I call them and say hey Of those free quotes, how many do you close? They say, well, you know, we typically close two to three out of 10 every single time. I said, OK, cool. How much does that make you in profit? They would tell me. And I said, well, if I could get you 10 free quotes, would you be willing to pay me 500 bucks? And they always said yes. And so I would close the yellow pages, open the white pages, and just call people and say, hey, do you want a free quote on home insurance? Or not home insurance, home services.

Right windows or kitchen remodel bathroom model etc And so I learned that I could sell free quotes for $50 to these people that that bottom so it started as a side hustle And then finally I was making more money than Than I was teaching and so so tried to do it full-time. I got a little lazy I wasn't really a seasoned entrepreneur at that point Happened to fall into a job at a company called insurance agents calm and they were doing basically the same thing but with insurance

Deryck Richardson:4:28
Started just as a sales rep on the phone. I had already knew how to sell leads right I was doing it for myself They were paying a hefty salary plus some heavy commissions and plus we needed You know the health insurance benefits and life insurance benefits of a family of six and And got some real good training with that company. They're still in business. They're now smart financial They're the biggest lead company out there when it comes to the insurance space But I've been on my own now for for 11 years and so I got some good training and saw how the guys did it. And I said, okay, cool. I'm still gonna put my flavor to it, do it my own way. And here we are 11 years later.

Jordan:5:08
Well, congrats on being in business for that long, over a decade, seriously. Was there a moment, absolutely. Was there a moment in time when you were working at that company and you said, okay, I have enough training, I have enough liquidity saved up, I'm gonna branch off on my own? I guess what did that look like for you in your world?

Deryck Richardson:5:11
I appreciate it.

Deryck Richardson:5:26
No, so so chain of events happen. So so I Moved up in that I started just as a sales rep. I moved up pretty quickly to a manager and then a director of sales That company was rapidly growing and so I said they're still in business. They're now smart financial They actually sold so I got to see a small business exit also in 2012 and then when they sold there was another company that basically came into Columbus from New York from in Columbus, Ohio from New York We were all laid off And said hey you guys were growing rapidly, you know, we saw the exit. Let's do it again So that company was called precise leads the difference with insurance agents comm is that we were young we were fresh We were like Google light. We had you know, the ping-pong tables going on You know, you didn't really hurt you to go to work on a Monday, right? No real Sunday blues these guys from New York came in and a lot of pressure on us to succeed and the feel was a little different so I was actually able to turn that atmosphere into what we used to have with some grit and some hard work. But I was running the office in Columbus, Ohio, and these guys were in New York. And so what happened was I always knew I could do it on my own, because I did it on my own before, remember? And now I've got some experience. And so what happened was I actually was on vacation. The owner came to watch the sales team while I was on vacation.

I get a call from my top sales rep my top sales rep said I Don't want to say his name, but you know so-and-so just suspended me I said what he suspended you for you the top sales rep he said cuz I had my phone on my desk I get back from vacation and The owner at the time said you know you know your problem is he's like you think you own the place But remember I'm still your landlord, and he didn't like the culture that we had built So we went from the straight-laced Suit and tie which is what they wanted to again light fun Bought the ping pong table back in right music playing while it's a call center. We're getting told no 1 million times a day Right. Nobody wants to be told no 1 million times a day in a suit in the quiet And have to have their phone in a drawer when we're adults and we have families at home, right? and And I left that day and I said cool awesome Well, if you're still you know, if you if you if this is the environment that you want after we've just grown

Deryck Richardson:7:51
15 times in last year I was there a little over a year or so I said then this is not for me They would be out of business two years later And I'm still here. So

Jordan:8:04
Damn, no, mad respect, brother, mad respect. That's crazy. In regards to your current pricing model, how do you typically price out your leads?

Deryck Richardson:8:14
Just really depends on the on the vertical and then sometimes again We're going to back down into the cost per acquisition So we're really you know a cost-first model here right so our leads on the insurance side it depends and we also have different types of leads so we've got anything from your From your appetizer to your five course Menu right so we've got aged internet leads, so we've either bought them or generated them 30 to 60 days ago, and so you can get those for less than a dollar So if you're a young up-and-comer, you know you may be working from your garage or your basement You don't have an office. You don't have a lot of marketing budget You're not the work hard on those right not to pound the phone on those But we can get you those leads for less than dollar we have leads to go up to To $60 on the insurance side on the home services side We price them according to the vertical again because we know what you get paid on that vertical So we know where your cost per acquisition is need to be Those leads will run you anywhere between 60 and 120 dollars or so And then what we what we do is we then have meetings with these guys and say okay? Where's your cost per acquisition right now right and so if we need to adjust? We do so so Up or down right so we want to maximize we want to be a good marketing partner for you if your target Cost per acquisition is let's just say $500 and we're running right now at you know $400 and I need you to pay me just a little bit more and I'm going hard to work for you But if you're at $600, I'll bring my cost down right to try to fall within your margins. So What's really cool? I didn't know that this this was gonna come in the mail before this before this podcast, but insurance business review, which is a trusted magazine in the In the space actually just wrote an article on us about how this costs first marketing I don't know you can read that is reshaping insurance, right? Because everybody's talking about cost per click and cost per impressions and you know, I need to run this meta campaign. I need to run this Google campaign. Yeah, but if you don't know what your cost per acquisition is, you're not a good business owner, bro. You know what mean? So we're a cost first approach here.

Jordan:10:29
That's amazing because from an EBITDA standpoint for adding equity into the company, PE, private equity firms look for predictability.

And if you do not have a predictable system to acquire customers at a consistent cost of acquisition, it's going to be really hard for them to invest into your company or give you outside capital. And you kind of flip the model on its head. You work from the cost of acquisition backwards. You're even willing to become flexible with your clients and move the price so they hit their CPAs or their other CACs.

It's very, very good stuff, man. Nobody really has that approach to be honest with you. A lot of agencies, like you said, I mean, you said earlier, but you know, pay me 1500 bucks as a retainer, go ahead and gamble on meta. And you know, if it happens, it doesn't work out. Sorry about your luck. I think that's a, that's interesting, man. Going from a head count perspective, you know, 11 years in business, what would you guys say that you're at with that?

Deryck Richardson:11:19
Right. Right.

Deryck Richardson:11:33
headcount in terms of my employees. So we've actually downsized and it really depends on what type of employee you're talking about. we used to be very heavy. Remember when I was talking about insuranceagents.com and Precise Leads, we were very heavy on the sales rep side of things. I mean, at one point we had like 50 sales reps calling insurance agents at these companies. And at one point we got up to about 24, 25 sales reps. calling on the company, calling on companies to acquire business. But what we found was that our cost per acquisition was a lot when you're salaries, right? So if we're gonna be cost first, let's be cost first everywhere. And really sort of a chain of events happened that I'm happy to talk about. But during COVID, we had a lack of production and we were sending, we sent people home, right? We have an office here, it's a locker room environment. We got the pool table, the ping pong table, the dart boards. The games are always on the TVs, right?

And so, you know, during COVID when we sent people home, they weren't in their comfort zone anymore, number one. But number two, what happened was they had, everybody had fear of what was going to happen with COVID. And so oftentimes they're working alongside their wives or their husbands and they're working alongside their children who are trying to do homework. And people weren't necessarily trying to invest at that time. Business owners, right, were in business to business sales.

So our numbers dropped dramatically during COVID, but I didn't fire because I didn't want to fire my staff in a time where, you know, we're a team, right? So, you know, I don't want to send you out into this world without income to try to figure this out. But when we came back from COVID, really in 2021, there was a lawsuit against us. It was pretty big. And though we won the lawsuit, it was dismissed. It did cost about $100,000 to defend that lawsuit. And so...

Sometimes you lose even though you win, right? And so at that time, we did have to downsize to keep the business afloat. And so we dropped all the way down to a total of six employees from 25. And we maintained that when you talk about W-2 in-house employees, but we've been able to supplement that with VAs, overseas VAs. So.

Deryck Richardson:13:57
At any given time I may have 25 or 30 employees, but I have six W-2 employees, the same six that have been with me since probably 2017, 2018. And we've been able to supplement with overseas help.

Jordan:14:13
Gotcha. And I have to ask, but why did you get sued?

Deryck Richardson:14:17
So it's kind of complicated if you don't know our industry, but it's called TCPA, is Teleconsumer Privacy Act. Sort of like the bigger cousin of Do Not Call. At the time, we were generating live transfers. And so they have these serial litigators. And what they do, there's literally books and videos and memes on how to get paid when your phone rings. And so what they do, just to let you know the game, is they will opt in legally to a website.

You know every website needs to have TCPA language opt-in language that says I give consent for you to send me a call Send me a text email me etc They know that I'm a broker so though. I do have owned and operated sites. I also buy sites by data from from other sites and So what they do is they opt in? They then wait, you know two weeks three weeks They know that that person has sold that data probably three to five times and then also have sold it to somebody like me who made sell it again another three or five times. So now their data is everywhere legally because they opted import. There's there's list of trusted providers that you're giving consent to have your data when you fill this out. And then they opt out from the initial source, which then the initial source oftentimes doesn't trickle that opt out down. And then when their phone rings, they're like, yeah, you know, to know I'm suing you, blah, blah, blah, blah. Normally, what happens is you get a demand letter and we get a couple of year and you just pay it.

So you you just say, know, here's $1,500 go away. And so if you read this book, you know, how to make money when your phone rings, basically it's teaching you how to get a settlement for $1,500 every time your phone rings. That's about what companies like me will pay on a settlement. Essentially, I got tired of it and I said, you know what? I'm not paying you the settlement. You know, you guys are just bullying me. You you're playing this game. This guy had had like something like 22 or 23 lawsuits under his belt. So he knows that he's making income. picking on companies like myself playing the loophole playing the game of TCPA. And I said, let's go. know, if you want to take me to court, take me to court. He did. I won. But then again, you know, cost some money to defend it. So maybe I didn't win.

Jordan:16:28
Thanks for the insights, man. I started to bring that up.

Deryck Richardson:16:30
No, you're fine. I don't I don't have any problem talking about it, man. It was at the time is actually the biggest lawsuit in our industry. you know, it really opened a lot of eyes in our industry and, you know, really put us on the map in that aspect also that you can beat these lawsuits. Right. So, you know, I don't have any problem talking about my history or my company.

Jordan:16:50
sure. So winning in this case means he can't like nickel and dime you for 1500 bucks anymore. Okay, okay cool cool. Shifting

Deryck Richardson:16:56
Correct.

So what they tried to do, I know you want to shift gears, but why it was so monumental was because he tried to make it a class action lawsuit for $5 million. So this was not a $2,000 lawsuit. This was a $5 million lawsuit. So this was the biggest at the time. There have been a couple bigger since. But what they did was they subpoenaed all of my leads. And again, I have millions of leads at that time and multiple millions of leads that we have generated or purchased.

And then there has to be a class and a class action lawsuit. So there has to be a certain number of people who are upset and want money. So you see all the lawsuits for Camp Lejeune and Methylthromyemia and all that kind of stuff on TV because they're trying to get people into the class. So when they subpoenaed all of our record, they couldn't get the class amount. There was not enough people to have a class, which is why it was dismissed. But it was, you out of Chicago, so my lawyer had to go to Chicago and I had to comp him for the entire day. It wasn't just the one hour of court, you know, because he's in the airplane to Chicago and you know, it was a very expensive lawsuit to defend.

Jordan:18:09
Thanks again for the context there. I was going to ask when it comes to your own client acquisition, we do like to talk about systems here on the pod. Do you have a system in place to go out there and generate new business for either the insurance side of leads or the home improvement side of leads?

Deryck Richardson:18:11
for sure.

Deryck Richardson:18:25
Yeah, we do a lot of conferences. So we were just at LeadsCon, just had a booth at LeadsCon. We were sponsored at LeadsCon. So that's the biggest Leads Conference in the world. And I have a sales team. My five sales reps are literally pounding the phones all day, literally just like a cost.

Jordan:18:39
So, so cold calling. So it's from the, from the commission standpoint on the sales rep, do they earn the upfront commission for sale and selling the data? And then if it's a repeat customer, do they get residuals on that? So clean, clean, clean. Okay, cool. Kind of like insurance in a way.

Deryck Richardson:18:41
That's right.

Deryck Richardson:18:54
They do, yep.

Deryck Richardson:18:59
Correct. Yep. I also have an insurance agency here also. So if you know how to build insurance Agencies you might as well have one so these little orange door Do there that's my insurance agency back there. So we've got and they're also on the phone all day Just kind of leads we're costing a minimum cost of a guy, you know, I got my start, you know again Just on the phones bro pound on the phones, bro. That's how we do it

Jordan:19:22
No, I love that call center atmosphere. When I eventually switched over from door to door to cold calling, we did have a semi call center environment where like the music's loud, you're patting on the phone, you're having a good time. Because like you said, bro, like if you're in a suit and tie and it's dead silent and you're getting fucking hung up on every goddamn time, then like that shit's not gonna be fun. It's not gonna be fun. I'm glad you have high energy there. Good stuff. Okay, cool.

Deryck Richardson:19:43
Correct,

Jordan:19:47
let's see. So do you have any outbound or like, no, no inbound, anything like that? I guess besides, outbound coal coloring, do you, you, do you utilize?

Deryck Richardson:19:55
We some email campaigns, you know, we do a little bit of social media, which then the guys will call on so You know, but we're not having anybody sign up on their own We want it because again, we don't know what your cost of acquisition is So AI can't do that AI can't say sign up here and we'll send you leads, right? We need to know what your cost of acquisitions are what your targets are where your target markets are what you're doing now We use the term clap. So what are you currently doing? What do you like about it? What would you alter about it? And then let us paint the picture of how we can down your cost for acquisition so that's a consultative approach so we can't do that by you know sending out an offer and just saying sign up here so no every every every new client will be speaking to a rep resident of here before they're on board

Jordan:20:36
Gotcha. Gotcha. I mean, I like that's typically, I kind of how it goes. in regards to that process there, is there a minimum order that a client has to purchase before getting onboarded?

Deryck Richardson:20:49
depends on the on the side of the game. So home service is a little different than insurance. So just to let you know, in the home service, this is how I was doing it wrong. And this is how we were able to scale and grow with less people. So I was doing it wrong only because I didn't know what I didn't know. So on the insurance side, we have kept it the same, which is the wrong way to do business, by the way, which is go after the individual insurance agent. So not Allstate corporate, but Mike Jones, small business, Allstate agency owner.

Right is who we're selling on that side of the business our minimum is 250 250 dollars Rarely does do we try to sell that you know what I mean? So our average ticket is about 800 But we have deals coming in all day long. I mean we just put a $3,000 one up We just put a $1,500 one up Wow, you know six nine ten thousand dollars, right? You know because some of these guys might be a district manager and they disperse their leads throughout their district right on the home services side We don't do Mike Jones individual roofer, right? We're going directly to the head of the fish. So we're going directly to what we call the direct end buyer. And so that's how you should do business because you can scale and so on the insurance side where somebody may be getting 100 leads a month, these guys are buying 10,000 leads a month, right? And so on home services, we only do what we call national accounts, which is the big buyer. if you're a big window company, roofing company.

That's who we're dealing with. We're not going to do mom and pop ABC home services. So on that side, we don't really have minimums, but they already know that those tickets are going to be $10,000 to $80,000 a month.

Jordan:22:30
For sure. What is your, just out of curiosity, what's your largest account from a lead purchasing standpoint? Like who purchases the most leads month over month? Insurance or the home improvement guys?

Deryck Richardson:22:41
Home services by far because they're just buying more leads Yeah

Jordan:22:44
Right, right, Would you say like the purpose of that go over a hundred thousand? Like we just want one account?

Deryck Richardson:22:50
I don't have I don't have a client over on the thousand, but I have a couple of eighty couple of sixty Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Jordan:22:55
That's pretty beast, Right on, Yeah, because I feel like if they have a call center of their own, or they're pounding the phones, or they have an overseas call center, et cetera, just buy a bunch of data, give it to them, they can generate a point for you that way. That makes total sense. Let's see here. When it comes to your recruiting process, how does that look like?

Deryck Richardson:23:10
100%. Yep, you got it. You understand. Yep.

Deryck Richardson:23:17
I don't recruit anymore because we've been able to scale because the home service side brings us in those long-term clients. don't need to, you know, there's no reason for me to have 25 people calling on insurance agents and there's not enough people on the home service side that are big enough for us to handle that requires a sales team. So I don't, I don't recruit anymore. We're sort of just a family, family business and you these guys have been with me for 10 years or so. you know what mean?

Jordan:23:40
Gotcha.

Jordan:23:48
for sure, for sure. Whenever you did bring them on board, did you already previously know them?

Deryck Richardson:23:52
I did, I was able to recruit when precise leads went out of business. So I took all those guys from precise, yeah.

Jordan:23:59
life is easy when that happens, man. You don't have to go out there and hunt.

Deryck Richardson:24:00
That's right. And I was their director of sales back then, so they already knew me, trusted me, and loved me. So it was pretty easy.

Jordan:24:09
Trust is a big one for sure when you're you switching companies Let's talk about let's talk about some goals and desires man. So I guess like ultimately what it was What is the big goal for you? Are you looking to sell they're Keep keep riding the wave man. Keep making money

Deryck Richardson:24:11
Right,

Deryck Richardson:24:22
You know, we've had some offers to buy us but they're just not high enough. I'm not old enough to retire so You know, although an exit seems like it's really cool thing. There's only so much golf you can play You know, my kids are out of the house man. I got grandkids. So You know, I love them to death, but you know, I'm not trying to be that kind of grandpa yet You know, I have seven grandkids. So You know the house gets kind of full when everybody's over there and I prefer to be at the office sometimes, you know so so, know

Jordan:24:29
for sure.

Deryck Richardson:24:52
Listen, if the right offer came across my desk, sure certainly would sell. But I'm just having fun, man. I come to the office, I got to work every single day. We have a locker room here, nobody has a Sunday blues coming in here. On a Sunday, everybody makes good money. We make a good living. so I'm cool living right here for right this second. If you talk about ultimate goals, we're just trying to continue to grow. So we are. a two-time Fast 50 in Ohio, which recognizes the fastest growing privately held companies. So we continue to grow every year. And to win that award twice is pretty cool. I'm always looking at just how do I grow my revenue? How can I continue to get the revenue higher and higher and higher? So that's my ultimate goal. year, every quarter, we have a goal. Every month, we have a goal. Every year, we have a goal. And it's revenue-based. And those continue to increase.

Those are those are my goals, but if the right offer came awesome, but these offers that that number one They want me to keep keep working for them. I don't work for people anymore, bro So I'm psychologically unemployable, so they want to buy me, but then have me still run my own business like that doesn't make sense to me Or they want to buy me for you know something crazy like a like a like a three times EBITDA and I'm like No, that's not enough money, bro. You know that's only three years only I'm not ready. You know what am I gonna do after three years you know so So yeah, if the right offer came, I'd certainly sell, but I haven't seen it yet.

Jordan:26:22
That's low funding is. Essentially what private equity firms do is just buy future cash flow from you. Like you said, we're going to pay you three years in advance basically. And I'd rather pass. I love how you said you're psychologically unemployable because I'm the exact same way. Once you work for yourself and you make pretty decent money for yourself, it's like, there's no F in a way. I come back to getting a job, man. Or like, I'm here for somebody else. I totally know what you mean there.

Deryck Richardson:26:29
Yeah.

Deryck Richardson:26:43
Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.

Jordan:26:49
And then you talked about wanting to increase revenue. Love that goal. If you don't mind me asking, do you have any specific strategies besides just like calling more business owners to increase revenue to your desired amount?

Deryck Richardson:27:01
So it's really just bringing in the more national accounts and then being able to scale those accounts, right? So we're working on our efficiency every single day, right? And I'm taking those calls as the CEO of the company. I don't have an account manager that's having these in-depth financial conversations with these multi-billion dollar companies, right? I'm handling that, right? And so it's really just getting better at staying within the cost per acquisition. making sure that we don't have to remember I told you if our cost per acquisition is at six and your goal is five, I gotta bring my cost down, how can I get it to where the cost per acquisition is at four so I can take my cost up? And that's a me thing, right? That's us thing. So we gotta get better at that. And that's what we're working on every single day is getting better at making sure that we have quality stuff that brings down cost per acquisition so that we can then drive costs because they need some more of the RMG stuff because it closes at the highest percentage. and just trying to stay at the top. We're not McDonald's, bro. We're Ruth Chris, right? There's a difference. So yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jordan:28:01
If you don't mind me asking, this question spawned as you are articulating yourself there. Has any business owner thanked you or said, Derek, why are you doing this? Why are you negotiating your own cost to match my target cost of acquisition? I want to imagine that these business owners are thankful and grateful that you're willing to do that. How was that experience?

Deryck Richardson:28:23
All the time, man. All the time I get thanked and all the time they say I'm crazy. I mean, I had a guy, if I could have a meeting with them today, we meet on the last Tuesday of the month. These guys do about 10 million a week in home services. These guys are huge. And the president, and if you know the home services space, you probably know who I'm talking about. I'm not going to name him, but the president is real tough, know, real, you know, burly, older, probably military. I don't know if he was or not, but you know, straight lace, doesn't joke around.

Jordan:28:39
Yeah, that's a question.

Deryck Richardson:28:52
kind of guy. And in fact, last year when I went to LeedsCon, which is the biggest lead convention out there, like I said, and just came back, it just ended last week. Last year when I went out there, I said, hey, do you want to grab a beer? And he basically said, no. know, why? You're already my client. not here to hang out with my clients. And I was like, okay, whatever, dude. But he offered to prepay us. He's like, what can I do to get more?

You the way that the numbers work. mean you know it always works because you know you're based on on our KPIs our matrices So you know I can how much you need like I said these guys do like 10 million 10 million a month plus You know you you got to remember. I don't want to put all my eggs in one basket We have been stiffed before most of my bigger contracts on a net 30 We just had a big company in the solar industry go out of business last week. That's stiff Not only us, but their employees and other vendors. Thousands of people will be affected. Freedom forever. Just just found bankruptcy. Business, bro. And so you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. So when people ask me, you know, hey, can I prepay you? Can you give me everything? The answer is no, because I'm not trying to put my all my eggs in one basket in case something like a freedom forever happened. I mean, they're their employees were still working without a paycheck for over a month.

Jordan:29:51
Who?

Jordan:29:55
No, it went out of business! man, that's crazy!

Deryck Richardson:30:15
The vendors hadn't been paid in two months, again, including ourselves and some of our brokers that we sell to that sell to them. This thing is massive. I thousands of people are affected and not going to get paid. They filed bankruptcy overnight when they told their employees that they had an investor that was coming in that day. Instead of an investor coming in that day, they filed the bankruptcy.

Deryck Richardson:30:38
And this is not the first time this has happened to us To where we get stuck with a big bill so in this business, you know playing with net 30s is scary. You know what mean?

Jordan:30:39
Yes, I touch.

Jordan:30:49
Yeah, well especially during the solder space. mean that's one of the reasons why I left because I kind of I saw the writing on my wall. I this was years ago, but With that this has all different whole different story with the solder ball game, but sorry man that sucks. That sucks, but like you said

Deryck Richardson:31:04
It's all good, it's part of the game, now we have stop gaps in place and policies in place. Once you get punched in the face once, the second time doesn't hurt as bad, you know what I mean? And you learn how to get your guard up a little bit. So it's all good, man, it's all good.

Jordan:31:15
Appreciate it.

Right.

For sure. Maybe like two or three more questions for you. One, looking back over your 11 year experience being an entrepreneur, what is one thing you wish you knew when you first got started that would accelerate your growth?

Deryck Richardson:31:23
Sure, man.

Deryck Richardson:31:35
You know, that's tough to answer. We bootstrapped. We did not take money. Every time something has gotten hard, we figured it out. We've gotten good at handling hard. You I don't lose. I learn. So it's tough. think that if I knew some of the things that I didn't know at first, I don't know that I'd be able to learn those lessons.

You know, and so that's hard to answer, man. If I had to do it all again, I mean, sure, we struggled and we've had some, some, some ups and some downs as every entrepreneur has, but you know, the way that this thing has worked, I mean, it's worked out pretty good. Even with some of those big punches that we've taken again, you know, it would be silly to get into a boxing ring. Even if I think I'm better than this guy to think I'm not going to get hit. Right. So, you know, you're going to get hit. You just have to learn how to, to, take those hits better as an entrepreneur. Right.

And so the only thing that I would say is that maybe I would have went after the bigger insurance carriers instead of the individual agents like I'm doing on the home services side. Maybe we would have grown faster. That may be the only thing, but even then, if that would happen, I wouldn't have been able to employ so many people for a long time through a pandemic, right? And even though we did eventually have to let those guys go and they remain friends and we've connected them with other people that have hired and...

I still get beers with them and play pickleball with them all the time and play golf with them all the time. One of them is my barber that I had to let go. He went back into the barber space. there was no, everybody understood at that time that this was, the business is bigger than they were at this time. But we had a very good run before that happened. And again, I was able to take care of those guys during COVID and where some people were laying off and people were losing their jobs left and right.

You know, I think I've done it how it was meant to be done.

Jordan:33:36
Not for sure. What is the single best piece of advice you ever received?

Deryck Richardson:33:42
So the success is a journey, not a destination. And oftentimes the doing is more fulfilling than the outcome. I've seen a couple of my buddies now in the entrepreneurial space exit and they're bored and they're going crazy. And it's lonely at the top. I'm a pack animal. And so enjoy the ride while you're on the roller coaster. Because when you get off, you can say I rode the biggest roller coaster.

You're just talking about it, you're not doing it anymore, right? I mean, even if you win the NBA finals, you're not telling stories about holding the trophy in the champagne. You're telling stories about the games that got you there, the ones you almost lost, the ones you won by 50, the ones where you had to come back. That's enjoying the ride. That's why so many people cry when they retire, because all the memories are coming back. So success is a journey, not a destination, man. You gotta enjoy the ride while you're in it, and don't rush it.

Jordan:34:40
to add some input into that. Absolutely, man. I played baseball for a long time, loved sports, so I'm glad to keep bringing that up.

Um, when I injured myself and didn't play in college and didn't get drafted, like how I thought I was supposed to, I had an ego death kind of getting back to retirement. It's like, what the fuck do I do now with my life, man? Like I've dedicated 15 years to this at a very elite level. Like this was all I did. Like I played this sport and now I don't. What the fuck am I going to do? So that's basically like selling your business or retiring at 40 and you're like, what the fuck am I supposed to do now? So definitely agree with that statement, man.

Deryck Richardson:34:58
Yep.

Deryck Richardson:35:08
Yep, yep, exactly.

Jordan:35:17
Definitely agree. And then last question or two more questions. Favorite meal?

Deryck Richardson:35:18
course.

Deryck Richardson:35:22
always baby steak I'm about to go get some big ol' tonight man. Now I'm not a potato I'm not a potato guy I'm trying to I'm trying to work on this I'm a steak and veggie guy so yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so Derrick Richardson dot com my name is spelled a little funny D E R Y C K Richardson dot com is the easiest place to find me I know that we spend a lot of time talking about Richardson marketing marketing group but I am a serial entrepreneur so

Jordan:35:24
Steak and potatoes! Yes, sir.

Jordan:35:31
Staying competitive, okay. I respect, I respect for sure. And then where can they find you, Derek?

Deryck Richardson:35:50
I do also have life insurance agency. I do also have a business consulting agency. also play in the Sunglasses Space. sell Blackwoods by Derek Richardson. I'm a speaker, published author. So all of my information is at derekricherson.com. If you're looking specifically to talk marketing, richertonmarketinggroup.net.

Jordan:36:10
That's awesome. Derek, thanks for joining the show, man. It was a pleasure having you on, Thank you. Yes, sir. Audience, we'll talk to you soon.

Deryck Richardson:36:14
Yeah, man. Thanks. Pleasure to be here. Thanks a lot, Jordan.