How To Not Be Mediocre

Welcome to the Born for Greatness podcast. I have special guest Kyrie Harper on Today who is joining me. And we've known each other for a little while, but I am very excited to have him on the podcast today. Thank you very much, Rebecca. Yes. So we were just talking before we got started kind of about what you're up to if you happen to follow him on Facebook or, I don't know. Are you doing it on Instagram too? He's talking about his new company. I'm going to let him talk about it, but it's pretty cool. Yeah. So it's Facebook and LinkedIn is really where I'm tracking that million dollar journey in twelve months. Instagram. I guess I'm not cool enough for the Instagram cats. Wow. That's all right. So what exactly are you doing? What's this new company and why did you choose to go this route?

Okay, so I created a cleaning company. When I was in corporate, I was thinking of businesses to create that I can have the upper hand in. And most of us, when we think of start becoming an entrepreneur, we think of real estate or all those sexy things, agency owners, real estate, whatever it may be. And all I could think about was, what business can I dominate that doesn't run ads, that really doesn't understand customer service or anything of that nature. So I thought I was like, you know what, the service based business, that's what I'm going to go into. But I don't know how to like I'm not the most handy guy in the world, so I usually pay for everybody to do everything for me, but every time I do, the service is terrible. Nobody's ever on time. And I just started like going like, all right. I was like, let me think of cleaning because I needed to get my place cleaned. So I started looking at the cleaning, I'm reading the reviews and Yelp, and then I'm going on their website thinking from an agency owner standpoint, who knows ads, marketing, websites, et cetera, right? And it just hit me. I was like, I could blow this out of the water and just subcontract all of the work and I could probably make a million dollars in twelve months doing it. Because while these cleaning companies are walking to get customers, I'm flying there. That's how it started. Really? Yeah. That's interesting. I have a lot of questions about that, but first we'll go back so that people kind of know your history.

We met because you ran a lead gen company for real estate agents, correct? Yes. Okay, so how come you decided to move out of that and into this new venture? A couple of reasons. A majority of real estate agents that I've, and this may be a little controversial that I know and that I've spoken to, they don't have a budget for marketing and they're not really running their business as a business. And it's hard. I don't really want to get into that because that's a whole new topic. But if you know, you know, if you don't, that probably means you're not running it like a business. So there's an uphill battle every single time trying to say, hey, you need this for your business in order to scale. Word of mouth is not going to help you scale effectively in your real estate business. So that's why I had to get out. And they're cheap. Okay. All right, so now we know why you chose cleaning. What was it that made you think, I want a million dollars in twelve months? That time frame, that amount. What kind of gave you that idea? Last year I made a half a million dollars, and I was like, this was cool. But it took me 18 months to do it. And I did it without a real concept of how to actually structure a business the correct way. Meaning I wasn't tracking metrics. I didn't have a real sales team. I was selling advertising. I wasn't even running paid ads myself. Luckily, I had a decent size following on Facebook.

So a lot of word of mouth helped. But eventually I got tired of it and I was just like, you know what, whatever. Once I left the agency and I came back, if I'm going to start a new business, I was like, you know what? I want to do a million dollars. It's a crazy goal, but the goal isn't a million dollars. That's more of the buzzword. Everyone here's a million. They're like, oh, my God. The biggest thing was documenting the entire journey. So there's a blueprint every step of the way. So when I do go on to do my next thing, which is motivational speaking, you can't say Kyrie is a liar. Because as long as you go back, there's timestamps of everything that I've done all the way up until a million dollars and beyond. That's really interesting. Now, how come you want to share it with people for free? Was there ever a thought process on, I'm going to hold this to myself and then sell kind of my idea. I will sell eventually. I'll sell my systems and my marketing tactics and scripts and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, I come from a background of I grew up in foster care, orphanages, stuff like that. And I think when I was like 1819, really on my own, no help, no car, no parents, no job, all I could think about is, what if this one person just gave me the game? Like, all of it, or as much as possible to at least get me started on producing income on my own? How much further would I be right now?

So that's what I want to do. I want to do it for the single mom, the dad's, on child support that is working a job, getting 80% of their paychecks taken. I'm doing it for everyone who feels they have no out grants. I'm not going to build your business for you, but I promise you that every step of the way and everything that I document is more than enough for you to start making $5,000 a month on your own without paying for a coach or anything. And you can implement everything I'm saying on my statuses and on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can implement that to any type of business at all because it's just the system. Businesses follow a formula. You master that formula, you have mastered business. That's great. I was just going to ask you, does it only apply to a cleaning company? But you answered that question for me, so that's awesome. I love it. I did not know about your past. Was there something or someone that inspired you growing up to make you feel like I have the opportunity to be successful? I've had some inspirations. A lot of my inspirations in my life, they never stuck around. My father was a big inspiration. He was like my best friend. But I haven't spoken to him in twelve years. No one even knows where he is. He was a huge inspiration. He always put hard work, save your money, invest it. He was like, don't work for anyone because you have all these opportunities. And this is back in 2008. He was saying, you have all these opportunities. Wow. It was my mother. My mother. We don't have a great relationship. So at one point, it was about proving her wrong. These were the motivators in my life. Those kids used to make fun of me. I remember when I used to throw parties in New Jersey, that was my thing. And people always be like there was like, girls I would try to talk to, they're like, yeah, you kind of don't have it together. All you do is throw parties. And I just sat there like, you know what, I'm going to prove every single individual wrong, and I'm going to make sure and this is also why I'm doing the journey as well, but I'm going to make sure you have to watch every step of success. It's not going to be one of those things where you see, once I've already made it to my goals, I want you to watch the growth every single month. And you have to sit there and be like, that's what I could have had. That's the friend I could have had.

That's the person that maybe I shouldn't have talked badly about and just maybe understood that he came from a different environment and he was trying to survive at one point in his life. But now I am no longer in survival mode. I am in thrive mode. And it feels amazing. That's awesome. I love that I always say, and I especially teach my boys this, you have to be so careful not to judge because just what you see on the outside, you have no idea what's happening. And I think we all need to be kinder to everyone around us. It's kind of my thing, because I know I've been judged, and no matter what situation you're in, you're a single mom. People think certain things. Even if it's something that really isn't an issue, people can find an issue. So absolutely. I think it's really important that we Treat people with kindness. And I do think it's a huge motivator. When somebody has Told you it is for me, you say, I can't do something. I'm like, oh, watch me, watch me. So that's very cool. That's that's awesome that you you took what could have led to a lifetime of, you know, feeling a certain way and not wanting to pursue something, but instead, you took that, and now you're in this awesome position, and you are loving life. So that's so cool. Congratulations. Thank you very much. I'm actually writing a book Right now, because as I'm documenting the journey and the introduction of the book, you're getting first dibs on this. I promise you. The biggest book out there. You heard it here first. All right. The intro is, you'll never amount to anything. All you'll ever be is mediocre. And then after the quotations end, it says, that's what a mother said to her 16 year old son. And then I go into my story. Wow. It's words like that every day. My stepdad me and My stepdad are best friends. I don't think he realized what he said at the time. Like, me and him, beautiful relationship. And he was like, we were with all of his friends, and we were laughing in the kitchen and everything. And then one of the friends said, kyrie, what do you want to do when you get older? I was 16 at the time. 16 or 17, I was like, I want to be a motivational speaker. When I finished my career, and my step dad was like, you have to have a career first. And I sat there and laughed. But from that, 1011 years later, that thing still sits in the back of my head. And It's like now, even as my social media grows, my Facebook, my LinkedIn continues to grow, I see, like, hey, I'm becoming everything that they said I couldn't be. I love it. That's awesome.

So you've always wanted to be a motivational speaker. Is that just something that you just always felt or because you're saying that you had that vision at 16 or 17, so what was it that made you want to do that? I think it was more so. I really want to help people. I'm very money motivated, but money never clouds my moral value. In business, I think it's fair game, whatever it is. If this is an equal playing field, may the best man or woman win. But I also think in the back of my mind, what about the people who just need that word. Maybe they don't need to attach to me. What if I could just make one great video that goes viral and they hear 10 seconds that changes their entire outlook on everything? Because I can't and I've come to accept this. It took me a while to accept this. I need to be the biggest individual in the world. I need to be number one because the impact I want to make is not a selfish impact. And it's like the whole Kanye West theory, how he gets crazy and everything because he's so frustrated at everything that he's trying to do because he knows he's going to make a greater impact for everyone, break open doors and barriers for everyone, but everyone continues to crucify him because he's in his own lane. And that's where I feel like I'm getting to my life now. I'm in my own lane, where people say you're outspoken or you type grammatically incorrect, a bunch of stuff that doesn't matter, but yes. That's cool, though. That's great. I obviously love motivational stuff. As a business coach, I think it's important to motivate and inspire people. And I think sometimes people feel like they have to do this grand thing to make an impact in someone's life. And what you just said is so important because it could be one sentence, it could be two words, it could be a hello when somebody feels like an outcast and no one speaks to them. I don't think that we give enough credit to what just small gestures and just little things can do to turn somebody's life around. So I think that's so awesome. Thank you. Very cool. Yeah. So it's the small things. Small good deeds compounded make the greatest impact. Oh, I like that. That is good. I might steal that. Do I have to give credit to you at the end? That's awesome. Well, that is so cool.

Okay, what do I do if I want to learn more right now? Can I go back and look at your journey? When did you start? Let's start there. When did you start this new company? I started a company, so I actually thought I was going to go into makeup and skincare. So that was February 12. February 6. The plan was going to become the next Kylie Cosmetics, but there was too much that went into it. Interesting. Okay, so February 13, I made the decision. I was like, no, I'm going to do cleaning. And but the the million dollar journey began April 1 from February 13 in all of March was really foundation building, but I was documenting that as well. So on LinkedIn, I have featured post where it's going to show you basically step by step, and if you go down my entire LinkedIn and just keep scrolling back to, like, February ish every post that I've made is only documenting the journey. That is very cool. So are you doing the hiring of your cleaners, or are you involved in the cleaning? How's that working right now in these beginning stages? Sadly, I do some cleaning. It's the worst. I like to clean. So for me, it's like, yes, come on down to Texas and we'll see if you have that same mindset. That's probably true. Somebody else's house. Exactly. But I subcontract. So basically, in reality, I am the middleman of everything. Okay. I get the jobs, and I just subcontract because remember what I said in the beginning. While people are walking to get customers, I'm flying. So these other companies, all they understand is cleaning, which is not a problem. All I understand is sales, customers, customer service, how to turn this into a machine. So you connect my expertise with their skills to clean really quickly. We have a great relationship there. I'm keeping them fed. I think I'm going to start doing this exclusive right now. I'm going to start doing this for the journey I'm going to begin. Instead of talking about how much money I made, I'm going to talk about how much in commissions I've paid out. Oh, that's a good idea. That's so different. So I like it. Very cool. Yeah. By May, I refuse to be doing the cleaning again. It's my son's mother, and I wanted to get her out of corporate. I saw that us working in corporate really impacted our parenting, and I just had to sit down with her one day. I was like, hey, we need to do this for our son.

Because I don't want to say neglecting. That's a strong word. We're not giving him the time that he's used to when I had my agency. You're just doing the stay at home mom thing. Not just that's a huge job, but when you're a stay at home mom, he is used to a certain type of attention, and that's what we want to give him. Yes, absolutely. Well, that's very cool that you gave her that opportunity and now you guys are working side by side. That's awesome. Yeah. It's been an experience. And really seeing the woman she's becoming because the confidence being instilled in her. She's having that opportunity to really shine in her own light and be the leader and the boss that she is. And she does it well, very well. Our team loves her. The customers love her. Me, I'm just the guy that's like, hey, let me continue pushing the needle forward. You hold down the playing ground, and I promise I'm going to get us to wherever we need to go. You just keep doing you. That's awesome. I'm going to go back to what you said about customer service real quick because I noticed you posted something, I don't know, the other day about it was like I think it must have been a text message to a customer just following up to see how their cleaning service was. And I thought to myself, oh, my gosh, that's so impactful, because how often does that happen for any type of service? I've never experienced that. I've never had somebody come and do something and follow up and say, just making sure you're doing good. So what made you do that? Has someone done that to you before and you thought, oh, this is awesome, and you took that idea? Or how does that work? I think it's more so. I treat every business, how do I want to be treated?

And I have a very high standard of how I live my life. And if I give you money, there's a certain expectation of service that I want in return, because it's not because it's a transactional thing. If I give you my money, I've given you my trust. And if you do not value my trust, then I also feel like you didn't value me as a customer or client, whatever, or even a friend of giving friends money. And some of them never even said thank you. So I was like, you know what? If it only takes me 10 seconds to send that text, and it makes the biggest impact, I can get a Google review out of it, they will give me the honest feedback. It makes me feel good, and it makes them feel good. So it's a win win situation. So let's just both win. That's awesome. I love it. Well, thank you again for joining me. If people want to follow you, how do they find you? LinkedIn kyrie harper so khari and then harper H-A-R-P-E-R. That is the best place where you'll get the best content. And also, if you're looking to start a business, I network with a lot of individuals on LinkedIn on my post. There's a lot of great people that anyone can speak to that work in these multi nine figure tech corporations. They'll also be more than happy to give insights on the corporate structure so you can implement that into your actual, maybe your small business. Awesome. Well, thank you again for joining me, everyone. Thank you. I will be back in two weeks with another awesome guest.