Conoce al multimillonario que trabaja en un empleo común

Introduction

Yeah, basements meet Larry Janeski, the blue-collar billionaire. He has built one of the largest and most successful basement repair companies in America. He’s invented revolutionary products that millions use across their homes. He has a portfolio of blue-collar businesses making $650 million a year, and he’s achieved this all while working less than the average CEO. If you have to work 70 hours a week, you’re doing it wrong. So today, we’re finding out what it takes to build a billion-dollar blue-collar Empire.

Early Career

You’ve been running this for 40 years. Well, I started when I was 17. And how much did you make your first year? I made, you know, $188,000 maybe. I don’t know. I got a call when I was 18 years old. Can you build a house for me? Yeah, but I’m 18 years old, so if that’s a problem, let me know. In six weeks, me, my friend who was 17 years old, and my younger brother who was 14 years old on summer vacation, the three of us, you can’t make this up, we built the house. And then when we were done, the guy next door comes over, says, “Can you build mine?” And then we built his. And the guy on the other side comes over, “Can you build mine?” And that’s it. I was off to the races.

Blue-Collar Billionaire

How does it feel when I say the phrase “blue-collar billionaire”? You know, it might be surprising to you, but, you know, hello. You know, in before, you know, whatever, 1990, we didn’t have computers, and there were people that did well before then. Okay, so tech isn’t the only way to make money. Okay, you know, you go to the store, you buy groceries, you go to a mall, and you have all this retail. But, you know, the cool thing is about working with your hands is that you can never be replaced by AI. Amazon’s not going to take over your job. It’s not going to be offshore to India or anywhere else, right? Nobody can go into a homeowner and fix their basement, you know, from Amazon or from India. No robot is ever going to fix a crawl space. It’s just not going to happen, right? We need guys who are willing to get dirty. They know how to do what to do and why they’re there. And that’s what we do. These guys are real men, okay? You would see what these guys do; you would not believe it. You would not believe what these guys do.

Hard Work

What do you mean, the work that they do? How hard work it is, crawl space work. We go into crawl spaces that are this high, and they’ve got dead mice and snake skins and bugs, and it’s all mud under there. And they crawl in there. When they leave at the end of the day, the customer could crawl in there in their pajamas and slide around. And these guys go into these very difficult environments every single day, and they make an incredibly almost impossible job look easy. And we pay them very, very well.

Salary Range

What’s the range of salary someone these guys make? Over $100,000 a year because they earn it. It’s hard to see this here, but he who works with his hands is a laborer; he who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman; he who works with his hands, his head, and his heart is an artist.

Building the Empire

From Larry’s Secret making $188,000 building homes to owning a $600 million a year business, I had to find out what Larry’s secret is. That’s a big jump from here to $600 million a year. Like, did you just start it? Hey, I’m just going to do basements, and just the demand was there. It’s been 40 years, okay? Come on, we didn’t make a big jump; we made a lot of little ones. There’s a lot of business people looking for the quick hit, right? I’m going to start this business; I’m going to sell it in 3 years, right? You’re going in it with the wrong mindset to begin with. My doctor energy saver business, I went $5.5 million in the hole with no end to the losses in sight. And then my partner quit and sued me. So what do I do? Do I quit? No, I kept going. 11 years later, I made $1 today. It’s very profitable. We’re making houses more comfortable, more energy-efficient. They burn less fossil fuels and electricity, and they’re less expensive to own. I’ve had a great positive environmental impact on the world because I didn’t quit.

Work-Life Balance

Do you have regrets about working too much, and was all this worth it? That I’m glad you ask because I don’t want people to think that I was the classic story of the busy business guy who was married to his business and worked so much and ignored his family. That is not the issue. And I haven’t worked the weekend in 30 years. If you have to work 70 hours a week, you’re doing it wrong. You cannot ignore your family; you cannot ignore having some fun in the beginning.

The Real Purpose

Think it’s about making money? You think it’s about making a lot of money, right? I think that a lot of business owners don’t stick with it long enough to realize what it’s really about, and it’s not about the money. I don’t get my self-esteem from how much money I make. I get it from those people, right? From them looking at me and saying, “I trust you.” At your funeral, nobody’s going to say, “Oh, we had so much money.” They don’t care. It’s the relationships and the good that you’ve done, the footprint. Did you leave the world better than when you found it? That’s what it’s about.

Upcoming Book

I’ve been working hard on my upcoming book, “Million-Dollar Weekend,” which is coming out early 2024. Stay tuned. Looking through my notes, I found a lost chapter that is not in the final book. Very serious. It reveals things like how to double your income without any new customer, how to create complementary products to generate more income. One entrepreneur did this and made an extra $340,000. How to optimize pricing strategy and maximize profits, and more. The lost chapter is not online or Amazon or anywhere else. It is only for people on my list, like you. You can download it for free at noah.com/lost. That’s noah.com/lost. It’s also below in the description. All right, back to the video.

Positive Mindset

A huge part of Larry’s success that he downplayed in his early career was how serious he took having a positive mindset. You got a lot of your education through motivational tapes. You got a lot of your learnings early on. I discovered N.G. Conan audio programs when I was 19, and it changed my life. And I would listen to cassette tapes driving around in my truck, and my friends would make fun of me. You know, listen to all that motivational crap and stuff. So I kind of hid it from them for a long time, you know. But I wore those things out, yeah. Brian Tracy and Earl Nightingale, you know, he’s like a father to me, you know. And now it comes full circle as Larry has created his own motivational tapes to inspire others on their journey. Some people say, “I can’t be successful because I’m not talented.” Really? I don’t believe that.

Larry’s Office Tour

Now was the time for Larry to give me a tour of his $13 million office, and as he was taking me through, we met a few of his employees, and I was blown away by how loyal they are to Larry. Michael, how long you’ve been here? 9 years, November 14. All right, 9 years, November 14th. Sue, how long you’ve been here? Almost 20 years. Yeah. How long you’ve been here? 16 years. 16 years. How long you’ve been here? Going to be 21 years. What makes you want to stay? Oh, the people, just the whole atmosphere of the company. The thing I don’t understand, Larry, how are you so calm? There’s a saying, “Flows uphill.” All the problems that no one else could solve go up to the leader. I don’t get those problems. My phone doesn’t ring, uh, and it’s on right now. I didn’t turn it off because I have good people.

Building a Great Team

Need to create a team, a great team of people who stay. If you have continual turnover, nobody gets good at what they’re doing, right? And then you’re constantly rebuilding your company. You know if you turn everybody over every 24 months, you have a brand new company every 24 months. You can never get traction. You’re going to go for a ride on the world’s slowest elevator. No, come on.

Learning Skills

How did you learn your initial skills? I went to a Technical High School, a Regional Vocational Technical High School. I chose carpentry. Yeah, so I wasn’t afraid to cut wood and nail it together.

Marketing and Lead Generation

So this is marketing, so they generate, you know, 15,000 leads a year. If Kim gets a lead from the internet, she’s calling within 60 seconds. I just want to see the Google reviews. This is just so good, so well run. Let’s see what the customers say. “3 days ago, five stars. Added a full bathroom to my basement. Tech professionals came on time, high-quality work. They put in a basement dehumidifier system.”

Inventing Products

All this is displays of different products that we either manufacture or distribute to our dealers. I invented most of our key products for basement waterproofing and crawl spaces. I have 32 patents. Can you show us some of those products? Yeah, this is a dehumidifier that my son designed. This is the most efficient high-performance dehumidifier in the world. My son also developed the world’s best air purifier. He built this room that we would fill with smoke and watch it clear the air. And we have videos on it to prove that this is the world’s best air purifier. We set up lasers in here so you could see the smoke. And we put every competitive air purifier in here and did the same test. And you could see the smoke go right through it with your own eyes.

Boomtown Theme

So this is Boomtown; this is the 1880s mining town theme. So this is the Boomtown mine, and this is what the miners would have been going after there. That’s cool, that’s cool. Plus, this is your stuff too, right? No, this is foam. Yeah, so I sprayed the foam and pushed them in. We built all this, designed and built the whole thing. We’re contractors, right? That’s like, I’m so over Tech; these tech companies suck, dude. I’m getting dirty, my hands messy.

Vintage Industrial Space

This is a vintage industrial space, and all the desks are like 100-year-old oak desks. And you know all this stuff is most of all this stuff, including light fixtures, is from old factories and stuff. This is a sculpture of the Business Machine model. All my dealers walk in here; they know what that is, and it actually operates. This was from Grand Central Station, literally mailbox is from Grand Central Station.

Blue Collar Perspective

This year when someone says Blue Collar, what does that make you feel or what do you think when you hear that? For me, I’ve always been blue collar. I don’t think of it that way. I don’t think that white collar is any better. I mean, you could have a guy who’s a billionaire, but if his foundation’s messed up, who are you going to call now, buddy?

If you liked this video, you are going to love this video right up here where I talk to five millionaires over the age of 80 and ask them if the money was worth all the sacrifices they made. Make sure you’re subscribed to the channel if you are not already. We have some exciting billionaire interviews coming soon. Uncle Noah loves you, and I’ll see you out there. PE PE.