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Twenty years ago, Daniel Giordano took a leap into the internet marketing industry and developed a business that provides him an enviable lifestyle including fulfilling his most important goal of spending more time with his family.
In today’s episode, Daniel talks about how he built his business from scratch, the importance of going all in to reach your goals, and how you really can achieve your professional goals while still maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
You will learn:
- Why you shouldn’t follow the hype.
- How to find your ‘why’.
- How to maintain a sustainable work-life balance.
- How to generate leads and convert them into sales.
- How commitment can get you to your goal.
Important Links & Mentions
Steve Coombes’ Guest Appearance on Dan’s All In Podcast
Choose: The Single Most Important Decision Before Starting Your Business by Ryan Levesque
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Solopreneur Success™ Transcript
SSP051 Going All In with Daniel Giordano
Daniel Giordano:
As I’m reading this conversation about Elon Musk, the guy basically says “most people look at him and think that they would want the wealth that he has, but if they were to be in his shoes for one day, they would say ‘I don’t want to do what he does’.”
Steve Coombes:
You’re listening to digital marketer Daniel Giordano, who like myself and many listening to this podcast started his own business to build a better life with more time for his family. He went all in on that goal and achieved it. And you’re about to learn how you can do the same, because Dan is today’s guest on Solopreneur Success.
Narrator:
Welcome to the Solopreneur Success™ podcast, where successful business owners gather to share true stories and sound advice to help you start and grow your own solopreneur business. Come soar with us and design the life you love. Now, here’s your host, Steve Coombes.
Steve:
Hello, solopreneurs. Today, I’m interviewing Daniel Giordano, who specializes in online lead generation, business development, and finding hidden income streams that already exist in your business right now. I love that. Over 20 years ago he started with no marketing, no website, no list, and his first child was on the way. I’m sure many listening can relate to that. I can. Now, Daniel is driven to success by his passion for being that dad and husband who is engaged and involved with his family. Again, my hat’s off to you, Daniel. I know how that is. That’s my goal, my driving goal here. For me, personally, I have seven kids. I want to be there for them. To do that, he followed a similar path that I and many listening to this show has. He decided to create a business that he could run from home and choose his own hours. I’m looking forward to diving into your story. Dan, welcome to the show.
Daniel:
Thanks for having me, Steve. I appreciate you having me here.
Steve:
Fantastic. Well, Dan, tell me a little bit about how you got into your own business in the first place, because a lot of people listening, they’re just thinking about starting and not even sure what the first steps would look. How do you get down the path of saying “I’m going to do my own thing” instead of a corporate gig or regular career path?
Daniel:
I was fortunate that in high school, I had an accounting professor. He was actually a professor at a university, but he also taught at our school. So, he was a teacher and he taught accounting and marketing, and I just was fascinated with the marketing, and he would always talk about differentiating yourself. So, it just always stuck with me, anything you do in life, in business, you need to differentiate yourself from the competition. What happened for me was I decided, just like everybody else, go to college after high school, and I was fortunate that I had had the equivalent of about two years of college accounting already under my belt by the time I got to college, even though I still had to go through the two years in college, but then when I got to my third year, I was in a tax accounting class, and I don’t know, it just finally hit me.
I asked a question, and the question was “how much money could I make as a CPA?” and the professor looked at me, puzzled, he said to me this. He said “well, if you do your best and you work your way up the ladder, when you become a CPA, you could make,” at the time, we’re talking many moons ago, it was $60,000 a year, and I looked at him and I was like “I want to make more than that.” So, I started questioning why am I even doing this? Why am I even going down this path of accounting, if this is something I’m already making close to that with my painting company part-time? Why do I even need that? So, I just started questioning it. I made the decision after, because I was kind of crazy when I do things, I did summer classes, I just wanted to get it done, so I was accelerating the process to get through school, and then, at the end of my third year, I decided that I wasn’t going back because I was not going to pursue that path. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I had the painting background because my dad had a painting business part-time.
Steve:
House painting, I assume?
Daniel:
Yeah, house painting, wall covering, we did a lot of commercial buildings. Basically, from the time I was 9/10 years old, he used to yank me out of bed, and I’d go to work with him, and then I eventually started, by the time I was 15/16, I was pretty much proficient at running a crew. Before I knew it, when I got out of college, my dad wasn’t doing it anymore and I decided “well, I like historic homes, I like Victorian homes, and all you do is move over the bridge into New Jersey and there’s some affluent areas over there that have those types of homes,” and this is my first niche, differentiating myself, and I decided to start a painting company that focused on historic homes.
Here I am, all of 21 years old and trying to figure out how to run a company. I started hiring people. I was fortunate. I always had work, so it was seven days a week. I started building this company to the point where we had 25 employees, and then, not knowing how to run a business, then I started looking up stuff like “how do I actually run this and take me out of it because I’m doing so much?” Fortunately, in 1997, I got exposed to the world of network marketing. I was not looking for another opportunity. I definitely was not looking for network marketing. I didn’t even know what that was, but what it did was, it expanded my mindset into thinking bigger than where I was at. There are other ways to make money. So, what it did was, it set me on the path to ultimately decide that I want to live in Florida. We were living up in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, at the time, and I said I want to live in Florida, so I want to sell my company. It took me about three years, and I did that.
When we moved to Florida, I had no intention of getting back into the construction industry, and I think this is important for a lot of people. By default, we automatically have these things were good at. Even though we may be good at, but we do them for certain reasons because that’s what we were brought up with. I was introduced to a decorator at a party we were invited to the first week I was here in Florida, and the next thing I know, I’m working in $10-20million homes on the beach and I’m building another painting company. This is 1998 now, ’99, and then in the 2000s was approaching and my daughter was going to be born in 2000. I started asking myself this question of “how did I get here again?” I literally just repeated this pattern. I repeated exactly what I didn’t want to do when I sold, came here, and started this again. What else could I do? That’s where it got me to the point of starting the question and discovering some stuff on the Internet marketing world.
Steve:
I love that you came to that realization. We kind of do that, too. We gravitate to what we know. Now, some people would call that “that’s successful. Daniel, you’re successful. You built this business, you sold it, you built another business, and you’re just growing,” but success is more, I would say, than just hitting the finance. Are you enjoying where you’re at when you arrive?
Daniel:
Exactly, and I can tell you that we talk about this, obviously in the Internet marketing world where everybody talks about clearly defining the niche that you’re serving, and blah, blah, blah, and all that. For me, this is before YouTube, before Facebook, before Google Ads, any of that. None of that stuff existed when I started. All we had was forums and email, basically, and basic search, and that was it. So, I had to figure some things out and I literally just stumbled into the world of affiliate marketing. Somebody had sent me a book and they sent me this link, and it said “if you go over here and buy this, they’re going to send you the book for free,” and it just intrigued me to think “where’s the money coming from?” and then I tracked it back to an affiliate program and then I said “how much do you pay for every person that comes here and does this?” and they said “we pay for anywhere from $75 to up to $500 depending on how much volume you send us.” I was like “This guy is just giving away a book that costs 5 bucks. I could give away something of much more value.”
So, what I did was, I started giving away physical products in that industry, and that was the poker industry. I’m not a poker player. I’m not a gambler. It was just something that I happened to stumble across, and it’s actually what got me free and taught me the skillsets to be able to generate leads in a very obscure niche and be able to build something substantial to the point where, when I actually hired my first mentor, he drilled me for the entire day, asking me questions, writing things on the white board, and I was trying to get some systems in place, and he looked at me and he goes “you’ve never been to an Internet marketing event?” I said “I don’t even know what that is. What is that?”
I didn’t even know they look something up, because I didn’t know it existed. What’s fascinating is, that’s what gave me the freedom to be able to be home with my kids, to not have to be on the job sites anymore, not be doing it, and I remember the day I walked in. I had three big contracts with some big high-rises, and I walked into another painting contractor that was a friend of mine, and I walked up to him, and I said “here’s the keys to everything. It’s your job from this day forward.” I said, “I’m not coming back,” and they thought I was crazy, like “why would you walk away from this?” I don’t want it. I want to be home with my family. I want to be traveling with my family. I want to be able to do some things that I wasn’t able to do being on a job site 12 hours a day.
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