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- Any business, any business that you wish to launch, you're 2,000 conversations away from making a million dollars in that business. So you can either take a phone call every day, or you can make hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of phone calls, go to networking, and just shoot the door if you have to, to get that business launched. But the problem is is most people don't see that as the necessity to launch their business.
So they just kind of eek by when they grow their business and they're not willing to put in the work. But everybody quits that first mile because they put in the sprint and they think, well, I contacted 50 people today. Cool. How many are you going to contact tomorrow? Well, the first 50 didn't work. I'm out. That's your problem. That's why so many people quit. They're like, this should work. I'm one year in. Why is it not crushing? It's like, dude, you've got three to five years of hard, hard work with long hours until you get to where you want to be.
Welcome to In Search of Excellence, where we meet entrepreneurs, CEOs, entertainers, athletes, motivational speakers, and trailblazers of excellence with incredible stories from all walks of life. My name is Randall Kaplan. I'm a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and the host of In Search of Excellence, which I started to motivate and inspire us to achieve excellence in all areas of our lives.
My guest today is Keaton Hoskins. Keaton is a serial entrepreneur, coach, motivational speaker, and author. He was one of the stars of the hit reality TV show Diesel Brothers, which aired on the Discovery Channel for eight seasons, and is the author of The Divorce Handbook, The Hardest Thing About Divorce, Going to War With Yourself. Keaton, thanks for being here. Welcome to In Search of Excellence. Absolutely. It's an honor to be here. Thanks for having me.
Thanks for being there. So I always start with our family because our family shapes our values, preparation for our future. Tell us about your dad, Mark, and we'll talk about his passing later on, and your mom, Bernice, and the influence they had on you, some of the lessons they taught you very early in life. So pretty much everything that I base all my beliefs and who I am today on.
has essentially been a derivative of my experience with my father and the passing of him. My father passed away when I was 21, and I'm the oldest of five children. And they always say a man doesn't really become a man until his father passes away. And I actually genuinely believe that. And for me, that was really, really early. But my experiences with my father all growing up was...
safe route, go to school, 401k, nine to five, work your way up in a company and then retire at 65. Like he preached that into every one of us as siblings.
And throughout my whole life, it was like that was like embedded in us. That's what you have to do. And that's the safe route. And I realized on his deathbed that was all bullshit. The whole thing was bullshit. My dad was 47 when he passed away. He was the CEO of a really big company. And the last two years of his life, they just kind of threw him away. They were like, yeah, your health is so bad, we can't use you anymore. So you're done.
And everything that he had taught up to that point in his life was all kind of just thrown away in my eyes. I watched him tell us all these things. And for every, I think, reason, he was successful, right? You know, he made good money. He was a CEO, all those things. But I realized the safe route that he had been teaching us
was not really the safe route. It wasn't the safe route. And I realized literally sitting next to him on his deathbed, I had the choice of saying, I can either do what he taught me or I can learn from this exact experience. And that is
I don't want to sit on my deathbed and have regrets about the life that I want to have and live. My father didn't have regrets about things he had done. He had regrets about things he didn't do, ultimately. And I realized then and there, at 21 years old, I kind of coined a phrase, and I know it came from that specific time, and it was this. I would rather sink on my own ship than I would sail on somebody else's.
And at that point in my life, I made a commitment that I was going to live the life that I wanted, that I didn't have enough time because ultimately my dad died at 47 and that I wanted to create the life that I wanted on me and with nobody else. And I realized I couldn't work for anybody. So literally at that point in my life at 21,
I decided like, I have to be an entrepreneur. There's no other route for me. Right. We're going to go back a little bit in time because I think a lot of parents, they push their kids to do certain things. And what I've heard from a lot of successful people on my show, and even in my own case, your parents think you should go one route and the other, and then somebody says,
said something that's true. He said, you should never listen to your parents because you can't make an intelligent decision unless you're asking for advice of someone who's been in your exact shoes. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I think too, um, and I, I, I live and die by this now. Cause you know, I do mentoring and people always ask like, who should I take advice from? Right. And I think your parents are a good one to take some advice from, but the age old saying, don't take advice from people whose lives you don't want.
And I specifically remember seeing my father and I was like, I love you, but I don't want this life. I don't want to be tied into this place at 47 that I worked for a company my entire life. And they had the opportunity to go throw them away, get rid of it. I knew that was not what I wanted. So everything up to that point that he had taught me,
It was I don't want to say it was a waste, but it didn't have any real substance to it. And I realized then and there, like, number one, I'm only going to listen to people whose likes I want. And number two, there's no safety in anything. So you might as well go after every single thing you've ever wanted in life. There's no safety. Forget safety. Go get whatever you want out of this life. And that's where that whole idea kind of formed from.
So go back to when you were five years old. Yeah. What were you like as a kid between five and 15? Were you as confident as you are now? And how did your life change as you got into kind of late teenage years? So at a really, really young age, I was called to be a leader, whether I wanted to be a leader or not. My father didn't get sick and then pass away. My father was sick my entire life.
With congenital heart disease. That's how he passed away. But my father was a type one diabetic. When him and my mother got married, he had had his first kidney transplant. And for most people who don't know, anytime you get a transplant, your body rejects that organ. It thinks it's a foreign object. So you spend the rest of your life taking what's called immunosuppressants.
So if I get a heart transplant or a lung transplant or a kidney transplant, I literally have to suppress my immune system for the rest of my life. Otherwise, my immune system will fight that transplant. So my dad from, I mean, I remember when I was eight years old, he sat me down on a couch and said, hey, I've got cancer in my eye. I'm not sure that I'm going to make it. You may become the man of the house. Like, I remember even at eight years old, having a conversation with my father, like,
You might have to step up here. And so from a very young age, I was called to this like leadership of, hey, you might have to take care of your mom. You got four siblings who are younger than you all the way back to the time that I can remember. And and it bled through everything. So one thing my father being a diabetic, a lot of people don't know how the struggle of diabetes is really, really hard, especially back then.
you know, 20, 30 years ago. It's much different today. It's still struggle, but it was much different back then. My father, um, they're always monitoring their blood sugar because as a diabetic, you don't have a pancreas that creates insulin and monitors and keeps your blood sugar where it needs to be. So you're always taking insulin. Well, my father would oftentimes go into a diabetic shock like once a month, I remember.
So from the time I can remember, and I don't know how young it was, but let's say six, seven, eight years old, I remember my mom waking me up in the middle of the night saying, hey, I need your help. Your father has gone into a diabetic shock. Usually that's convulsions and we have to shoot him with a needle to get him to come out. And I did that month after month after month. And there is just something that when you're called to do something, you either rise to the occasion or you cower, right?
So I rose and I remember as young as, like I said, eight, seven. I mean, I don't know the exact age. I remember sitting in my parents' bedroom, holding my father as he was convulsing, shooting him with a needle,
all of my time until the time he passed away. So like those kinds of instances for a child, like you either have to become confident leader and get shit done when it needs to be done, or else you cower into this horrible traumatized child. And I chose the greater of the two, like to step into the role of being a leader. And the other thing is, is when I had conversations with my dying father, it was always,
You're going to have to step up. You're going to have to take over. You're going to have to be the father figure for all of these things because I'm not going to be here as long as you think I'm going to be here. And that created in me a sense of leadership that has come, you know, every year I get better as a leader, but ever since I was a young child.
So you played football in college at Snow College. A lot of young athletic guys. You're a big guy. Were you as big back then as you are? I was. I was. 250. Yeah, I was like even in high school when I was a freshman, I was like 240 and I played varsity football. I was always big into football. That was like my only thing I cared about. I wanted to play college. I wanted to go to the NFL.
And growing up, because of the stuff that I had to deal with my father, there was never any circumstances that were harder than dealing with that. So anytime I was placed into a leadership role, it was easy because it was never as hard as what was at home with my father and my mother and my siblings.
So immediately, like I became football captain, I was always leading my football team and it just kind of led into every single aspect of my life. But ultimately, yeah, like football was my love. That's where I learned to take what I had learned from being my father's son to integrating into being a leader. And from a very young age, like.
You don't get the choice not to be confident. You know, like when you're eight and you have a needle in your hand and you're holding your father who's convulsing, I don't get the choice to second guess. I don't get the choice not to be confident enough to get the shit done that needs to be done.
Otherwise, you're going to have a catastrophe on your hands. So what were your dreams as a kid? I mean, you're an athlete. Was it to be a pro football player? Was it to be a successful business family? And we'll talk about step-by-step your career. So, I mean, as a young kid, I was so singularly focused on just football. All I cared about is football. I was...
I was not very adequate at anything except for football. I was really, really good. I had, uh, I was diagnosed with ADHD, which I think is a superpower. Now, obviously when we were younger, everybody says that's, Oh, it's a disorder. It's not, it's a superpower. Um,
But after being diagnosed, I realized like I can either use this to become a better leader and everything, or I can use it to be what they're thinking it is, which is, oh, it's a disadvantage. He's never going to be very successful. But I wasn't adequate anywhere but where I put my energy and I only put my energy into football and I excelled like crazy. I was a phenomenal athlete. I was one of the best athletes in Utah, right?
I ended up going to play at Snow College. I was planning on playing somewhere bigger, but my grades were horrible because, of course, I didn't do school very well. And then at that time, I graduated. I went down to Snow College, played, and I realized, like,
I think there's something more than just football. So, and you grew up with a family that loved diesel trucks. As I was doing the research, I have no idea. I mean, some families love to travel. Some families like to go to museums.
I've never heard of a family who likes a diesel truck. So where did that come from? And what was the feeling you had when you got your first diesel truck? So my father, we had a big family. I had five kids. My father bought the biggest SUV at that time that you could get, which was a Ford Excursion. It's seated, I think they seat eight cars.
And it was a diesel. And back then you were able to tune them. So you would buy them and then you would get a little tuner and the tuner would give it exponentially more power, like a lot more power.
This is a part that you put in aftermarket part. Aftermarket part. So my father ended up tuning the excursion. It was around the time I was 16. So it's when I started driving. And I realized then that diesel power was much greater than any other power on the market for vehicles. Like there's nothing like a diesel motor.
So I fell in love with diesels. It was like my thing that I loved. And it was also my thing I loved that I did with my dad. Like we would love to load up our big ass boat with all of our stuff, all of our family and just go take hills and do all kinds of fun stuff. Ultimately, that was like you wouldn't be able to do in a normal vehicle. And I fell in love with the power of a diesel then. And so that was like where all kind of stemmed and sparked from.
And then, so you go to snow college, then you become a missionary. Yeah. And you study the Bible, you memorize the Bible. You were going to go to med school to be an endocrinologist. Yeah. And you were working for the Dean of the university of Utah medical school. Yeah. So what was that whole framework? So there's a big piece there that I don't share a lot of, but, um, when I was down at snow college, I ended up, uh,
I ended up in a really, really bad situation. I don't tell this story a lot, so this will be good for your listeners. While I was there, I had gone to a party one night and I, at that time, I had become really close with a Polynesian friend who essentially now is my brother, like adopted brother. We went to a party next day. We came back. We were in, I think we were in the little four-year area and a girl was
who was at the party showed up where we were at, just kind of hanging out. And she had expressed to us that she had been drugged and raped at the party. So my brother, who's much bigger than I am, like double my size, he was like, let's go. Let's go handle this. So we went to the kid's house. She told you who it was? Yeah, she told us who it was. We went to the kid's house. I knocked on his door and I said, hey, I heard that you did some stuff.
And his response made it worse. What was the response? He just said, what's it to you? And as soon as he said that, my brother was around the door. He was on the other side. So I was talking to him like this and my brother was standing here. He turned the corner, hit the kid. The kid's roommates shut the door. I kicked the door off of the hinges and we went in and beat the hell out of this kid. Like beat the hell out of him. We left, you know, we were dumb.
Went to football practice at football practice. The police showed up. They handcuffed my brother and I, they were like, you guys are going to jail. And I was stupid back then. I'm like, what are we going to jail for? And my brother was like, you know what we did earlier. And I was like, oh shit.
We ended up going to jail. They put us in a jail cell and they ultimately were like, dude, you guys, you broke in, you beat somebody up. You're bigger than a normal person. So like, we're going to charge you with assault battery assault with a deadly weapon. We were facing like felony after felony after felony. And I remember sitting in that jail cell and it was the first time in my life that I realized the path I was on, I didn't want to be on.
And I literally first real prayer I ever gave, I was like, I have to get out of here. Like, if you get me out of here, I promise you I'll get on the path that I, you know, ultimately want to be on. So anyways, long story short, I ended up spending quite some time in jail until we got sentenced. The judge ended up hearing the full story. So we only ended up being in jail for, you know, like a month or two.
After we got out, I quit. I stopped football, stopped college. I was only at college for a semester. That's all that I ever went to school. I came home and I was like, you know what? I want to be a missionary. I'm going to go on a mission. So what does that mean to people who don't know what a mission is? So in my faith, Mormon faith, every young man and woman has an opportunity to go and be a missionary.
Um, and a missionary gets an opportunity to essentially tell the church, I want to go be a missionary for two years. You can send me anywhere you want to send me and I'll go out and I'll preach the gospel essentially is what it is. So I came home, decided that's what I wanted to do. Obviously had some preparing because I was a complete idiot at that point in my life and decided I was going to go and be a missionary. So.
Got home, prepared to do that. Ended up getting called to be a missionary in Seattle, Washington, where I went. I was in Seattle for two years. And like the first few weeks, Seattle's a very anti-God place. Like there's a lot of like atheists, agnostics.
And I started running into people who had tons of questions that I didn't have answers for. And I was like, you know what, dude, if I'm going to be here and I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it right. I need to know everything. So something's like clicked in my brain that if I'm going to do something, I need to be fully prepared to do something right. Don't half-ass anything. Let's treat life the way I treated football.
So I went back the day that I had like a little argument. It was like a Bible bash with somebody else. And I said, you know what? I'm never going to be in a place where I don't know anything anymore. So I started memorizing scriptures after scriptures after scriptures. I started memorizing the Bible. It took me forever.
two to three hours every day for 18 months. But I got into a place where I could literally quote anything I wanted at any time from the Bible. And that actually helped me like progressively change and turn my brain on. Well, when I did all of that and I realized I could study and I wasn't stupid and ADHD wasn't really a disadvantage, I came home and
And literally within those three months of being home was the time my father passed away. And I realized that like I wanted to do something that affected him, which was endocrinology. So I decided I was going to go to medical school. I wanted to get into pre-med and I was smart enough at that time. I was like, I know how to study. I learned the Bible. That's the hardest thing you could possibly learn.
So then I decided, well, I'm going to go and do medicine. I don't know if it means opening my own practice or all these other things, but ultimately that's kind of how it steered from. I went to college. I went on a mission. I came home. I wanted to get into medical school, do something in medicine that I could take and help people like my father. And that's kind of what put me into that path. But you work for the dean of the med school. So how does Keaton, who's
He spent some time in prison. Yeah. He kicked the shit out of someone. Yeah. Who deserved it, by the way. And by the way, did that guy go to jail? He did. He ended up serving a long time. Good for him. Yeah. I mean, good. Justice. Yeah. Got double justice. He got double justice. Too far. So how does Keaton go from having...
I guess a criminal record to going on a mission to coming back and we're just, Hey, uh, Dean of Utah medical. I'm Keaton. Can I come work for you? So my mother, um, yeah, Bernice, she had been a registered nurse for years and years and years. And when I came home, she was working at the university of Utah hospital. Okay. She was a very, she was a very high up nurse. She was running about 150 nurses. So,
she said, listen, for us to get you in the door, you're going to have to go work nights working in a neonatology research lab with the deans of admission for the medical program. It's the only way we're going to be able to get you in. And I thought, okay, let's go do that. So that's what I did for about three or four months. I went and started like, okay, I want to get my hands, you know, I need to figure out what I'm doing. And in that process is where I really strengthened my whole
thought of what I told you in the beginning, which was, I can't work for anybody. Every doctor that I had contact with, I would ask every question I could possibly ask. But my number one question was, do you love what you're doing? And every answer was the exact same from every doctor across the board. If you're here to make money, don't do it.
I thought, well, shit. Yeah. I want to make money. I don't. And every single doctor that was the first thing out of their mouth. If you're doing this to make money, this is the worst thing you could ever do.
So I was only there for a very short period of time. Like I, I literally found very quickly, this is not what I want. I don't want to work my whole life. I don't want to have a little bit of money with no time. I had already decided, like, I don't really think I can work for somebody anyway. So if I get my medical degree, I can open up my own facility. I can do something. But if everybody I've talked to says that this isn't the route,
Need to change that and I left I stopped the the pre-med I stopped the neonatology research I literally left everything and said I'm just gonna go work for myself I mean we all have pivotal moments in our life your dad dying Was yours one of your many he died in your arms. Do you remember the last words he said to you, you know? when when he passed away he had been unconscious for about a day and a half and
Um, and the last few hours of consciousness, he wasn't really with it. So I don't remember the last word, but I remember the last conversation. The last conversation ultimately was about a week before he was sitting up at our table. Um, and I, I asked him, I said, are you afraid to die?
And he said to me, I'm not afraid to die. I'm afraid to leave you guys. I'm afraid to leave mom. I'm, I'm afraid to leave you guys because my responsibility is, is you guys. And in that conversation, I had made a promise to him at that time. I was not capable of fulfilling, but I said, dad,
Don't worry about that. I promise you, I promise you I will take care of the family. I promise I'll take care of mom. I'll take care of everything. And ultimately, again, at that time, I had no, I was 21. Like, I didn't know what I was doing, but I knew that whatever I was saying to him, I would figure out.
And that, again, is what stemmed like, if I'm not going to make money here, I can't take care of my family. And if I'm not going to have time, I'm not going to have time to take care of my family. This is not the route that I want to go.
So you became a trainer and then you went to a gym and you crushed it. Yeah. And then you went to the guy that owns the gym. Yeah. And you said, all right, I'm going to take over basically. I mean, you brought your guys in there to train and then you said, oh no, we want you to manage this place. And then the guy fucked you over. Yeah. Yeah. So tell us about the whole story. What lessons did you learn by kind of taking over? And then what lessons did you learn when you got screwed over after your first job?
Well, so I went into the gym and I realized that personal training was really on you. It was your responsibility. Like we were 1099. So I didn't work for anybody and everything that came in was, was on me. Right. So I started selling personal training and I knew as much as I sold is as much as I made. And then I would service it as a personal trainer. And really quickly I became the best sales guy out of all the gyms.
They then came to me and said, we'd love you to run the training program because you're selling like crazy. You're doing tons of training. We want you to do all of these. And I said, if that's the case, I want ownership. Ultimately, I was a 21, 22 year old kid. I had no idea that there was ownership.
dishonest people. I didn't know that when a man said they would do something that they wouldn't do it. I was so new in the world. I just didn't understand that concept. And so to me, I thought everything that we talked about and everything that was laid out would come to fruition. I'd own the gym. I would do this. I would do that.
So I did that for about a year. Um, and he got tired of paying me commissions. He got tired of me taking, I mean, I was making a lot of money at 22 years old because I was running my own program, my own training. What's a lot of money just put in perspective. I was probably making between five to eight grand a month, which, you know, back 20 years ago at 22, that was good, good money, especially for somebody who had never made money before, you know?
Um, I remember I was close to clearing a hundred thousand dollars as a personal trainer, which was great, especially back then. Um, and in Utah. Yeah. And, and I had all these trainers that were looking to me to kind of fulfill their schedules. Like Keaton, if you don't sell it, I'm not going to get clients. So again, I, I created this inward type business where it was like, if I don't do it, they're not going to make money. I'm not going to make money. And it created in me this sense of like entrepreneurship, right?
So ultimately at the end of when it was time to get vested interest, he came into the office and was like, Hey, this isn't working. We're paying you too much and I'm not going to give you ownership. And I was like, what?
That's what we've been working for for the last year. It's like, yeah, I paid you too much money. It doesn't make sense to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So we ended it. I walked out. I left. I told all my trainers there. I said, hey, if you want to continue to make money, come work for me. I'm going to start a company. Right. And they were like, what do you mean you're going to start a company? You don't even own a gym. And I said, I know. I'm going to figure it out. I went home and I was like, you know what? I don't need a gym. I can take trainers and put trainers in people's homes.
And we have the equipment. So I literally started going door to door and saying, I can help you get in shape. You don't need a gym. I'll have a trainer come to your house. They'll write your meals. They'll come grocery shopping with you. They'll train you in your home. They'll bring all the equipment.
And I had all the trainers from that gym go, well, we're following you because you're the only one that made us any money anyways. So right out of the gates, I started a company called MoFit, which stood for mobile fitness. And we just started crushing it. I was seeing 50, 60, $70,000 months. And I was paying five trainers 15 to 20 grand a month, which is still good money for trainers, right?
So from that time in that little piece of starting a company, I didn't know how to start an LLC. I didn't know how to do the backend. I didn't know spreadsheets or taxes. I didn't know any of that. All I knew is how to sell and how to make a company from nothing. And that's essentially what we did. So over about a year and a half, we did that. I brought on five, I think I had six trainers and we were just kind of crushing it and doing really well. And from that point, I was like, you know what I'm going to do? I want to go buy a gym now.
And I'm going to take this whole model into a gym and give people the option to come to the gym or to train them in their homes. Then I partnered with a gentleman. He was about 60 years old, had a gym here in Davis County. Sent a millionaire worth $600 million. Yeah, tons of money, had tons of money. But the gym was losing money when I came in.
And I essentially 40, $40,000 a month, about 40 grand a month. And I came in and was like, listen, I could buy this, but there's not worth anything. It's negative cash flowing. So there's, it's no, no worth to me. I can bring my billing in, which will automatically flip everything. But I want 50% of the business and I want 50% of the building, you know, and I started to structure a deal, which looking back now is crazy. A 23 year old talking to some man with that much money who owned a gym.
He would have been crazy not to take the deal, right? But at the same time, I'm thinking, dude, a 23-year-old structuring a deal with a 60-year-old, that's pretty crazy. So,
So we went in, we partnered, we did the gym thing. And again, I got put into a place where I was making a ton of money. The gym flipped upside down. We started making money from the gym. The personal training was crushing. All of the things that we needed for a successful gym started to happen. We started to see 40, 60, $80,000 of income coming in, which is almost $120,000 swinging. You would think as a partner, he would be happy. He wasn't.
He saw how much he was paying me on commissions and all the things and was like, well, I'm paying you all of this money. Why do you get 50%? And I got into the exact same situation again with a partner saying, you're doing all the work, but I'm paying you a ton of money and there's only 30 or 40 grand in profits.
This doesn't make any sense. And he completely blew the deal up. Well, again, I didn't have contracts signed. I didn't have anything. So I didn't know what I was doing. I was going off of a handshake deal. I was saying, hey, this is what we're doing. It's all laid out. Boom, boom, boom, boom. And ultimately, if I were to go back to that, I could have legally gone after him. We had emails. We had things signed. I literally was the owner and operator of the gym on my card. Everything was there. I just didn't have the paperwork. He also owned a law firm.
And I realized that if I was going to go into battle with someone with that much money, it just, it wasn't going to happen. So from there, I went back and I went, you know what, I'm leaving and I'm going to start another business. And from that point, I started a dental office. Yeah. We're going to go into them one by one, but let's, let's back up for a second. So you mentioned one of the ways that you grew your business is a door to door. I've been preaching and I preach. I do a ton of coaching like you. And I think cold calling is one of the greatest skills that we could have. Oh yeah. I,
And I think people are very afraid to do it. They get sweaty. They get nervous. So we're actually going through neighborhoods and said, OK, I'm just going to go knock on that door. I don't know who's living there. It could be a 95-year-old couple living there and just one by one. Yeah.
So I live and die by a principle. I didn't know it then, but I lived by it then. And that is your 2000 conversations away from making a million dollars, whether that's cold calls, whether it's on the door, whether it's in person, whether it's a networking, your 2000 conversations away from making a million dollars. And I then didn't realize that 2000 number. I was just like, we got to go.
I had just been married. I had just had my first daughter. I now left a gym thinking I had ownership, got kicked out by a horrible human being. And I don't talk ill on a lot of people. But you're talking about a gentleman who had tons of money, who had someone he could have mentored and given everything to to grow. But instead, he took it. He took, took, took, took, took. So we split.
And I literally was like, this is back on my shoulders. I don't have money to go out and market. And even if I did, I don't even know where I would market. So I realized like it was door to door stuff. It was phone calls. It was Facebook. Facebook had first started to come out. This is around 2012, 2013. I realized the idea of social media, you know, all that stuff. And I just went to work like I could not, could not.
could not build a business without actually putting in the time of the one-on-one conversations, whether on a door or on a phone call and any business. Cause you know, I mentor people now on starting business, any business that you wish to launch,
You're 2000 conversations away from making a million dollars in that business. So you can either take a phone call every day, or you can make hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of phone calls, go to networking, shoot the door if you have to, to get that business launched. But the problem is, is most people don't see that as the necessity to launch their business. So they just kind of eke by when they grow their business and they're not willing to put in the work.
Lots to unpack there. So where does the 2000 number come from? It's funny. I was listening to Dan Pena. Do you know Dan Pena? No.
He's called the billion dollar man. I don't really think he has a billion dollars, but I was listening to a clip from him years and years and years ago. And he was teaching all of these people in an entrepreneurial space. He was like, you guys don't understand it. You guys think that I have all the answers and everything. I'm telling you right now, you're 2000 conversations away from a million dollars in your business. And I remember hearing that and I was like,
Man, I really was 2,000 conversations in until I started making real money. Like I had to knock on door after door after door until I got one. I had to have hundreds of phone calls until I had five or 10 clients. I had to take this massive action and I didn't have the funds or the know-how to do it any other way than on my own back.
So when I heard that his number, I literally went back and took inventory of launching these companies in the beginning. I was like, that's a real number. I genuinely think I had 2000 doors knocked before I saw my first 25, 35, $45,000 check.
So for me, that's kind of how I was like, I agree with that number. 100% agree with that number. And it's great to do it when you're younger as well. I sold t-shirts at Michigan, University of Michigan door to door. I took $500 of my bar mitzvah money and then we had to go through the phone book, right? So you couldn't go online and buy these t-shirts. Yeah.
Got kicked out of every dorm. Got kicked out. People slam a door in your face. What are you doing, dude? Well, my dad told me something. I'm going to PG this one. Yeah, yeah. But he said, and I was a nerdy kid. I was bullied. I wasn't confident. None of that. And I remember having a crush on this woman, Robin Bolton. And then I asked her out. But he said, I was so afraid to ask her out. But he said, if you ask out 100 girls, the first 99 say no.
You're going to feel like shit. But when you 100th girl says yes, you're going to feel pretty good about yourself and forget about the other 99. I think businesses like that too, especially waiting for your first sale. Yeah. Well, and I always tell people, you know, like if you were to guess, if you flipped a coin,
How many times is it going to land on heads? How many times is it going to land on tells? Well, we know statistically it should be 50-50, right? But if I flipped it 100 times, it's probably going to land on heads the first 75 times and then the last 25 and then so on and so forth. Everybody thinks that, okay, let's say statistically 10% of who you talk to are going to accept. Most people hear that and they go, well, if I talk to 10 people, one person's going to say yes. That's not the way that it works.
I have to take massive action. And in the massive action, those numbers come true. But if I knock on a hundred doors one day and I get all no's and it's a zero, that means the next hundred doors that I knock on, I'm going to start to see success. But the problem is, is that first hundred, that's where everybody gets deterred. They're like, I knocked on a hundred
doors. Why did everybody say no? Bro, you're 2000 away from making the money. That means the first 100, 200, maybe even 300 are going to say no. But, but through that process, you're going to get better. You're going to actually start seeing statistically the numbers that you want to see. But everybody thinks it's like this mathematical equation that, oh, if I talk to four people, one of them is going to say yes. That's not the case.
25% might say yes, but it's after you've talked to a thousand people before you see that 25%. And that's the hardest thing I think in business for entrepreneurs is they go, well, I'm doing everything right. Yeah, but you got to do everything right for a good amount of time before you really see those numbers. It doesn't just come like, okay, this is the fourth person. This guy's saying yes. This is the fifth person. This guy's saying yes.
It's a continued thing that with massive action, you'll see those numbers, but everybody quits before they actually get to that massive action number.
It's amazing. People don't want to do the work. No. And they quit. And I talk about this with all my CEO friends, my successful friends. I'm 55. How old are you? 36. How old? 36. 36. I mean, in my generation, it's very different. We just work after that. We just prank. And when I started my career, 100 hours a week. And people don't understand what that means. 15 hours a day, Saturday and Sunday, you're exhausted with no break. But I know every successful person I know
Has worked their ass off. And I don't know anyone who's worked like that that isn't mega successful today. Not one. Well, you know, that's the one thing I wish more people like you would adequately portray. Like even saying what you're saying, everybody wants to hear that entrepreneurship is hard, but it's worth it. This shit's hard, hard.
And if you're not ready to really put in the work, this will be so hard. You will quit. Most people don't realize like this is you're running a marathon. You're not running a sprint. And everybody keeps thinking that entrepreneurship is a sprint. I'm going to work really hard out of the gates. And then if I don't see anything, I didn't work. I'm out of here.
Most people are not willing to go. I got 25 more miles to run until I can say that this doesn't work, but everybody quits that first mile because they put in the sprint and they think, well, I contacted 50 people today. Cool. How many are you going to contact tomorrow? Well,
Well, the first 50 didn't work. I'm out. That's your problem. And that's what most people's problems is. Entrepreneurship is long, long time of long, long work until you see what you want to see. This shit is not easy and it's not for most people. And I wish more people would adequately portray that message. Stop telling the world that entrepreneurship is the greatest thing in the world and that's just going to happen, right? You should be an entrepreneur. It's so great. You're right. It is great.
But man, it's a lot more work than you think it's going to be. It's going to be 10 times harder than what you fathom when you start. Now, the payoff, I think, is worth it. But it will be harder and longer than you think. And I wish more people would say that message because that's why so many people quit. They're like, this should work. I'm one year in. Why is it not crushing? It's like, dude, you've got three to five years of hard, hard work with long hours until you get to where you want to be.
It's fun when things work, by the way. Yeah, it's great. But there's a ton to get there. But when you have a model that works, sometimes you just have to keep replicating the model. So you did it with a dentistry, a dental practice. Dental office. You did it with surgery centers for breast augmentation. Your first wife went in there for a breast implant. And they said, oh, look around.
What's the lesson about taking a model that works? Because a lot of people say, if it's not broke, don't fix it. But a lot of people say you have to break it to create more value. Yeah. So that would go back to the everybody's afraid to fail, but through failure is where you learn, right? And so if I look at it separately, then I want to get there, but I don't want to fail. You really should be saying, let me fail as much as I can so I can learn as much as I can so I can create that model.
Once you, through time and experience, have failed and learned, you can begin to create a model that works. Once you figure out what that model is, you can go and implement that into any business across the board. And for me, what I realized in my model was,
If there is something that people want, they will figure out how to pay for it. If I can implement a model that allows them the option to pay for it, I can gather more people for that actual product or service, whatever it is. So for personal training, I learned like people want to get in shape, but they don't have $10,000 to put on a trainer. But what do they have? They can do three or 400 bucks a month.
So I realized this like financing option, right? Where instead of signing a contract for a trainer for six, seven, eight, $9,000, give me your card, yada, yada, yada. I realized more people would spend $200 a month or $300 a month for a year or two years than people that would just pay outright. So when I went into the dental office, it was the same thing. I said, Hey, how many people come through that door that actually get with you and get their teeth done? The dentist said to me, 10%.
10%. I said, you're servicing 10% of the people that walk through the door. He's like, everybody else doesn't have any money or they don't have any dental insurance. And I was like,
What if we offered financing for them? What if I signed them up on a contract after we did their work or showed them what work they needed? And instead of saying as a dentist, hey, your bill for your teeth is $8,000. What if I said, hey, your bill is $650 a month for the next year and we're going to get the work done that you need? Everybody would say yes.
My, the dentist was like, I don't think that's going to work. People will, they won't pay yada, yada, yada. And I said, are you willing to walk this with me? And he's like, yeah. I said, okay, you're going to tell them what they need. I'm going to create a contract based off of the work that they need. And I'm going to build it so that they can afford it. Nobody wants to walk in the door and say, I can't afford to get this fixed. This is the most important thing. Like,
So all of a sudden, we just started having the masses come in without any dental insurance, without anything. They're like, I just need this work done. Okay, it's 12 grand.
that's X amount per month. Are you willing to sign that contract? Absolutely I am. So we started financing people. I took the same model as personal training on a month to month and I added it to dentistry and we started running them through the door. Same thing. I went to the plastic surgery clinic and I said, how many people roll through that don't have six or seven grand for breast augmentation? And he laughed at me. He goes,
every 18, 19, 20 year old girl wants a breast augmentation. They don't have credit. They don't have a credit card. They make 1200 bucks a month in their job. And I said, okay. And their parents aren't paying for it. And their parents definitely aren't paying for it. I said, well, what if we offer them financing? And he was like, there's no way it's not going to work. And I said, are you willing to walk this with me? Absolutely. I am. Okay. What's our cost? And he would say, oh, it's about a thousand dollars. My cost for breast augmentation. I said, what if I could get a thousand dollars down and
300 bucks a month for 18 months, 15 months. And he was like, if they'll do it, I said, all right, let's do it. So we started that financing option. Again, same thing that I had taken from personal training, three, four, five, $600 a month. And all of a sudden, all of these people started coming into the business and they were like, we've been turned down by everybody. They want my $6,000 payment up front. I can't afford that. I can afford $1,000 down and 400 bucks a month. Great. Sign the contract. Let's get to it.
I implemented that in every single thing that I started doing. And I realized when people want something, they'll figure out a way to do it. But if you don't give them an option, they're just going to walk away. So we started servicing people in the dental field that never, they had no option but to pull their teeth. We started servicing people in the plastic surgery community that was like, I want a breast augmentation, but I don't have that money. Okay.
Okay, great. We'll give you a way to do that. And the best part is on all of those platforms, we always had a delinquent payment or a failed payment. It was less than 10%. People were so happy to get the work done and have the option, they stuck to their payments. So I think it's interesting. I think demographics help. So Utah is actually...
the second most popular state to do breast augmentations, which-- Which is crazy. Shock me. Yeah. Because it's a Mormon community largely, so I'm trying to figure out who these people are. So Miami's number one. Utah is number two. Where's LA? It's got to be up in the mix. I don't know. I just know-- It's got to be way up there. At least it was. I haven't looked at those statistics forever. But Miami was number one. Salt Lake City was number two.
I, one thing I really enjoy about the, this community here, people are very up to do with what they look like. Like what you look like is really important. Makeup in shape, breast augmentation, um,
tummy tuck, all of that stuff. That is a demographic that's huge here, but it's also a demographic all over the place. I'm not saying that it didn't work well here because of that, but it could work anywhere. You would just open up your demographic of people who could afford your services. I got into this mindset that you're telling me that people own homes for three, four, $500,000.
They don't have three or four or five. What do they have? Oh, they have a 30 year option to pay on that home. And they're making those payments. They also have a $25,000 car, a $30,000 car. They don't have 20 or $30,000 to their name, but they do have the ability to finance it for five, six, seven years. And I realized like, that's what people need for services that we offer.
So we implemented that. And I still to this day implement that across the board. When somebody wants something and you give them an option that allows them to pay for it, they'll jump on it, which opens up your demographic. And a lot of people even listening on this is like, well,
I don't know if that would work in my industry. It will, you just have to have the infrastructure to build that out, right? The billing, you need to have the bill collector, you need to have the right contract, you need to have the right advertising. Like we started advertising for breast augmentations and it literally, our advertisement was simple, breast augmentation, 399 a month.
People lost their mind. What do you mean? $399 a month, I can get my breasts done? Yes, absolutely. Rolling through the door. Right, and the first month it went from $30 to $80. Yeah, it was crazy. And the surgeon must have been like, oh, that's the greatest thing I've ever seen. The greatest thing ever. He was like, I'm tired of doing this. So I was like, well, let's hire another plastic surgeon so you're not doing all the work.
I literally took him from very little, you know, 10, 20 jobs a month to, I have so much work, I don't know what to do with. Now, the one thing that was hard for him is he was seeing income that was slowly building, but it wasn't the same income of 20 people at six, $7,000. It was 80 people at $1,000 down 399 a month, which for him didn't make sense.
But when I started to work backwards with him and this was part of me structuring the deals, I was like, listen, do you want to sell this? Contractual value is what is a good multiplier for a business that you can sell. If I go to sell a business and it's doing contractually a million dollars a month, why wouldn't I do a six, seven, eight, 10 multiplier if I bought that business? Right. And he was like, oh, I guess that makes sense. So that's ultimately how we created it. At some point.
You got two friends who contacted you. They're doing this TV show. And the TV show, this model is kind of weird, outlandish, and new. They're going to create and build this crazy diesel truck. Yeah. And they're going to give it away for free. Yeah. Which is, actually, when you think about it, if someone had said that, that's...
Ridiculous. Now you think it's brilliant. Yeah. Because think about all the people coming who are going to follow that and said, you know, I would like a free $100,000 truck or whatever it costs. So how'd the show come about? And who are these dudes who have been friends with us since eighth grade? So I had all through this whole time, I was still building diesel trucks because it was something that I love to do. And I was making enough money. I could build really cool trucks.
I grew up with Diesel Dave, who was a character on the show, and he was really good friends with Heavy D. And in 2011, they decided to kind of come up with this model. Well, I had connected with them because I had known Diesel Dave forever and I was building trucks and I was like, I want to do this with you guys.
I'm running a plastic surgery clinic, a gym, a dental office, all of these things, but I would love to come and do this with you. What does this look like? And they were like, well, we came up with this model where we can monetize social media and no one believes us.
So we had Facebook start rolling out and we had all of these followers, all of these eyes, and we were trying to figure out how we monetize. We would go from company to company saying, hey, we have two, three, four, 500,000 followers. Let us show you how to make money off it. Nobody believed us. And we were like, well, let's show people. Let's go and give a truck away for free. And the way to enter is you buy clothing from us. And every dollar you spend with us, you get one entry in to win the truck.
Well, in 2011 and 12, we didn't have a ton of money, but we were like, I think this model will really work. Heavy D was like, we're going to give away a $70,000 truck and we're going to sell wristbands that say diesel power on them. We have three shirts and we have a sweater. That's all we have.
but every dollar they spend on this and the wristband was one dollar every dollar they spend they get one entry into win the truck so let's put it out into our social media let's do social media viral videos and let's try to grow the page and then advertise the page that we've grown so we did we put together this crazy like truck giveaway and the first giveaway it cost us about 75,000 for the truck
and maybe another $100,000 for actual gear and everything. And we did $600,000 in sales. And we were like, holy shit, this model works. Like this really works. We were, for all intent and purpose, we were the godfather of the giveaway model. We were the first ones that ever did it because I think we were crazy enough to do it.
So from 2011 and 12 to about 2020, we gave away 150 vehicles. And by 2013 and 14, we started creating such viral content that we were being seen all over the place. Jay Leno saw one of our content pieces and was like, you guys got to come out to my show. So went out to the Jay Leno show, did a quick clip. It was really cool. Well, the Discovery Channel saw the clip.
They came out to us and they were like, you guys are crazy. We want to do a TV show with you. And we were like, we're making so much money doing these giveaways. We don't want to do a TV show. So we told them, no, they came back to us month after month after month. Finally, after a year of talking, we were like, all right, let's do it. Maybe this will help our giveaway model.
So in 2013, 14, we decided to do our first TV show. But by that point, we were already so big on Facebook. I mean, between the three of us, I think we had almost a million followers.
So we already had this built-in network and we told our network like, hey guys, we're starting a TV show. Come watch our first episode. And our first episode aired on Discovery. And to this day, we were still the number one most watched premiere reality show on Discovery Channel. And from that point until we stopped filming, I think in like 2022, I
That was the, I think it was like eight or nine seasons ultimately, but that's how the TV show kind of went about. And it was just us doing crazy shit, building trucks, giving trucks away, doing viral stuff, viral content that more and more people would watch. And we just grew our network. Oh, yeah.
we have a lot of similarities in both our background and our goals and our dreams of one of them which is important to me i had this dream when i was 18 years old i want to be a millionaire by the time i was 30 years old yeah so i know that was your goal as well and you said you can't make it and be a millionaire without a team
Oh, absolutely. Is that true? Absolutely. Why is that true? It's funny. I thought I had to do it on my own, like all the way up until I was 30 when I made that money. I thought I had to do it on my own and I acted on my own. I never built infrastructure. I never built a team. I never did anything the right way.
Like I only started mentoring two years ago because all the way up until that point, it was such a huge learning curve for me. I learned what most people learn in five to eight years where they're learning in 40 or 50 or 60 years because I was willing to do the stupid shit and take the risks like the TV show and the giveaways.
that by the time I was 30, I do remember when I was 30, I remember sitting back, I had a million and $13,000 in my bank account. I still, to this day, I took a screenshot of it. And I remember sitting there like, I did it. I reached the goal that I wanted. I was like 30. I mean, I had been 30 for a few months and I
I realized then literally right at that time, I was like, if I'm really going to exponentially grow, I have to do it with the right people. I don't have enough time and bandwidth to build what I'm seeking to build without real teams, real infrastructure.
And then in that same time, I became really good friends with Andy Frazella and his brother, Sal Frazella. And I had a conversation with Sal. I had owned a supplement company for a little while. And I sold your family when the TV show got popular, right? You sold it to your siblings? Yes. Yeah, yeah. The dentistry, the plastic surgery, because I didn't have time. I was filming and all those other things. So I sold out of there. They bought me out.
And I had started a supplement company. We started an energy drink company. I started a marketing company and I was just doing all of these things. And I literally sat back and I sat down with Sal, who I just, to this day, I love. I said, Sal, how do I go from all of my time and energy to make a million dollars to where you guys are? You guys are making, I mean, first form is just crushing. And he said, Keaton, I'll tell you, it's only one word, infrastructure.
And I was like, okay, what do you mean? And he's like, you will never be able to grow the way you want to grow and have the time you want to have without building a team and infrastructure in the companies that you're seeking to build. And I was like, holy shit, I've been doing this by myself the whole time. That's why I'm 30 and I barely made a million dollars. Like I'm never going to get to where I want to be because I'm going to be the one doing it all. That's when that mindset shifted. And I was like, okay, so I've got to build teams that
that are duplicable, that build infrastructure, that do all the things. I'm not gonna be the marketing guy. I'm not gonna be the CEO. I'm not gonna be the CPA. I need to build teams that can do these things to give me my time back so that I can create the vision of where I really wanna go and then do what moves the needle.
which again, most entrepreneurs don't realize this. Most of the conversations I have with entrepreneurs that are making 800,000, a million, 1.5, they bottleneck themselves because they haven't built the teams and the infrastructure.
But as soon as they begin to build that, take their time back, start creating the vision again to go bigger and bigger and bigger. That's when they really start to see growth. So now for me, I own a few companies. Now, every one of my companies has a CEO. Every one of my companies has a COO. Every one of my companies has a sales team, has a marketer, has an assistant.
all of those things that I once thought I had to do, I realized really quickly, I got to build infrastructure. And that's ultimately now where I spend the majority of my time with mentoring people is you're making good money, but you want to grow big. We got to build a team. And that means spending more money and more time up front. So you can create the team that then you can step away from. And that's what they're usually so fearful of. It's like, well, this is going to cost more money. It's going to take more of my time. Yeah. But
we're setting it up so that you can walk away much quicker. You're listening to part one of my awesome interview with Keaton Hoskins, a serial entrepreneur, motivational speaker, coach, and author. Be sure to tune in next week to my awesome interview with Keaton.
