Home Service Master With Tarik Khribech

Episode 478: Home Service Master With Tarik Khribech

 

 

Managing a vast number of connections can significantly improve your business reach as well as your overall reliability and authority. Network building is something every entrepreneur should focus on should they want to reach a bigger audience and escape working hours on end for somebody else. Tarik Khribech provides this kind of opportunity to different contractors through his all-in-one online booking platform, ChoreRelief. Joining Mitch Stephen, he shares how they connect plumbers, cleaners, movers, landscapers, and more to property owners, allowing for easier and secure deals between the two parties. Tarik also emphasizes how one could succeed by adopting the motivation of an immigrant: ready to sacrifice everything and give any bit of extra for the sake of realizing their dreams.

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Before we get started, I would like to thank my sponsor, LiveComm.com. They are smartphone numbers that capture incoming caller’s cellphone numbers and put them in a text distribution list for you so that you may text all your clients at will when you’re ready. I’m in the real estate purchase and sale industry. I average four days on the market because of some technology and LiveComm.com. I’m happy to show you how I do it over there. Thank you for the sponsorship. I’m here with Tarik Khribech, and we’re going to talk about the future of work. How are you doing, Tarik?

I’m doing good. It’s another day.

First of all, let’s start with you. What’s your background? Where are you sitting right now? What city? What state? What country?

 

I’m sitting in Chicago, Illinois, United States. The weather here crappy, but I want to make sure that it doesn’t bother me. I think it’s whatever comes from God is welcomed. Whatever comes from people, it’s technically skeptical for me. Other than that, I’m grateful. It’s another day, another life.

What’s your background? Tell us about your business history. Where are you getting your wisdom from?

My background, I was born and raised in Morocco. It’s a country stop of Spain and Africa. I moved to the state in 2003 at Christmas to finish my grad school. I moved to Chicago in the summer. I fell in love with the city. The weather was great. Fast forward, I got into Corporate America, but three years down the line, I realized and I’m sure a lot of people also now get to have that epiphany, that we’re not built for cubicles. We’ve got greatness within us. Some people are fortunate enough to discover that earlier, took the leap of faith and jumped the cliff. Some of us are holding back, which the pandemic unlocked more of those opportunities.

I got into the tech space. That’s what my background is. I got a Master’s in Computer Science. The first business I built was manufacturing a hair care product, which was producing argan oil, also known as Moroccan oil, directly from co-op run by widows and divorcee women in Morocco. I want to build a business with a social impact movement behind it. We did well. My wife at that time was a hairdresser. The next logical thing for me was, “Let’s create a hair salon where we can create a safe space for stylists that have talents and don’t have access to capitals to build their own space. Let’s get them on board, create a healthy incubator space, and then create an opportunity for them.”

The sooner you start your business, the sooner you start to discover who you truly are. Click To Tweet

At that time, I learned real estate because I had to rebuild everything, get our permits, deal with the city, and all that jazz. We all know that’s not a pleasant experience. For some reason, the government does not want us to be independently successful businesses. They put all these barriers and hurdles in front of us so we can stay dependent on actual salary, which is a drug to forget about your dreams. I didn’t move to this country 4,000 miles away to work on someone else’s dream. I will take the chances no matter what. I think a lot of people in this country are some sort of an immigrant from somewhere. Down the line, some of them get too much pressure from life that they keep forgetting about the dream and postpone it. Long story short, I got into real estate at that time.

One of the things I’ve noticed is the service business industry was completely archaic. We’re talking about stuff that I grew up in. Coming from Morocco, a third-world country in Africa, and you think like, “I’m in America. Things are going to be faster.” I realized it was easier over there because I can find a plumber in a snap of a finger. I don’t have to worry about costs because the cost is the least of my concerns. The cost of parts is one of my concerns. Here in America, it’s completely the opposite. I had bad experiences with plumbers, and this is a true story. My wife was funny. She was like, “We got this plumber. He’s my cousin.” I was like, “Okay, great.” As a Moroccan, I was thinking, “This guy is a cousin from a long-distance family technically. He’s going to hook us up and give us a good deal.”

After I negotiated with him, I came back and I was like, “By the way, my wife is this. She got a cousin, Ken. I will give you the best deal.” I was like, “Okay. All right. No problem.” It’s the Eastern European’s mindset. I’m sure Latins, Moroccans and Arabs have a different approach to this. If that guy was a Moroccan, he probably would say, “You’re my people, and I got you. Don’t worry about it. Just pay for the cost.” Long story short, that was a learning experience. I started getting into more of an Airbnb style, fixing up properties, getting them ready, either rented for a passive income or perhaps have a short-term income. Now, I moved completely to short-term income.

I realized there are some fundamental issues going on in the service-based industry. I realized that the people who are dominating this space are the ones who have huge budgets and are heavily present online. They have capitals to spend digital ads, website and classified listings through Yelp, Google, Foursquare, you name it. The little guys are always crushed and dependent on word of mouth. He depends on his nephew, cousins and neighbors to refer some people’s business to him. I have an issue with that.

I’ve heard the first thing as an immigrant the American Dream. My vision was, “How do I take that American Dream? How do I decentralize it? How do I make it accessible to everybody, regardless of your race, color, income and background? The only thing that distinguishes you and the only thing that we differentiate people with is your skillset, and build this ecosystem that focused on empowering the community and people?” That was what led me to my venture, ChoreRelief, which I like to call the social network for homeowners, landlords and contractors to connect and prosper. We create an infrastructure for them to meet based on budget as well as availability. We don’t dictate what the rates or the costs are. It’s between the buyer and the seller.

In fact, we even give the customers who have a budget in mind to post a project with that budget. This way, we can only match them with vendors in that area that can fulfill those requirements and needs. My philosophy in this business is, “My users have to win first before I win.” I don’t make any money until I make sure that they make money. Unlike HomeAdvisor or Thumbtack that charge small businesses $10 to $200 per lead with no guaranteed income, I take those costs myself. I make sure that, “Let me provide you with some value first before I can process that payment, take care of all the back-ends and managements behind the scene for you, and then take a small cut out of the transaction.” That’s who we are.

Let’s say I’m a plumber and I need some business. How does it work?

If you’re a plumber, you download our app and set up a service area. Let’s say you’re in San Antonio and you set up a 15 to 30-mile radius. They use that app only when they get plumbing business. No problem. Anytime we have a customer in San Antonio within that 30-mile radius, looking for a plumber and posted a job to ChoreRelief, we instantly send it to all the plumbers that service that particular area, including you, giving you an opportunity to read the client’s requirement. It’s total transparency. If they have a budget included, you can see how much they’re willing to pay. It’s up to you to respond back with a reasonable offer that they can accept. You can have a chat communications to ask them more questions. The clients have the option to upload photos of the work. If they don’t have them uploaded, you can ask for photos through the built-in chat.

 

All of this costs you $0, nothing. These entire connections have no costs. If they decide to hire you, this is where we create a safe ground because my philosophy is I have to serve both constituents. I don’t favor one over the other. We put the money in an escrow account from the client’s credit cards. Once the work is completed and the client is satisfied, we ask them to rate their experience with you. That’s the only thing that keeps you on our platform. It’s your code of conduct. Once they approve the invoice, we take the payments and put them directly into your bank account. As a plumber, you don’t have to worry about chasing unpaid invoices. You don’t have to worry about all the stuff. All of these invoices you’ve earned will be stored in the cloud for you to go and access and see your earnings month by month or day by day, perhaps in your yearly tax income.

What do you charge me for that?

We take a 17% transaction fee. There’s a plan we’re also adding. We understand that there are some plumbers that might have a successful business, but they have downtime where they’re looking for a platform like ChoreRelief to fill those downtimes. We’re in the process of building a field management tool, which is going to be subscription-based, ranging from $59 all the way to $249. That depends on how many employees you have. The field management will primarily work for you to create professional quotes and invoices, dispatch works to employees and collects payments. From that, we don’t take any cut. It’s one flat subscription-based that has a lot of you to do all of that and compete with the big businesses, so now you look more professional. The other thing is it also comes with a lower percentage of a transaction. Rather than paying 17%, now you only pay 10% from only the job that we send your way. Anything you get on your own, that’s yours. It makes it a one-stop shop for both getting clients and also managing your team.

I see how it works for me. If I’m a customer, I get the peace of mind of knowing that the money is being held in escrow and no one is letting anything go until I’m satisfied. It’s still up to me to shop. Can I still shop for people online or I post my job, and many people call me until I decide?

They don’t call you. Nobody calls you. At this point, there’s no exchange of personal information. Everything is building within the app. Now, you want to talk about it from a homeowner or landlord perspective. From a homeowner or landlord perspective, imagine you have a plumbing issue. You have guys at San Antonio’s flood, and you need a plumber or some kind of handyman. Ideally, at this point, you’re going to feel like the prices are being marketed so high because there’s so much demand on this workforce. That’s number one.

Number two, if you pick up the phone in normal circumstances and try to call plumbers in your area, you’re probably going to have 80% or 90% of the calls go to voicemail. Maybe 1 out of 10 that might pick up a phone. If they do, they will not likely give you a price range on the phone. They have to schedule peek meetings. It’s usually a week in advance. If you try to schedule something the same day, that’s what we like to call the service price. What ChoreRelief does is solve all these problems. You have all these issues in your mind. You asked these questions, “Is this person reliable? Am I being overcharged? Will the work finish on time? Will the contractor run away with my deposit?” These are all questions that happen subconsciously in your mind as a homeowner or customer.

Humans are the most variable elements in any equation. You have to give people a choice. Click To Tweet

The way we solve those issues is when you give us your work order, which takes less than 30 seconds, we immediately go to our database. We have about 13,000 contractors. It depends on what city and county you’re in. We might have hundreds of thousands of those plumbers in your area. Instantly, we dispatch all of them. All of them are looking at your requirements. They can respond back to you directly through the app with what is a reasonable price. If you suggest a budget, we see 80% of people accept the offer as is. Let’s say you need a replacement of the faucet and want to pay $100, 80% or 90% of the plumbers will probably do it for $100 or maybe even less.

Can it be $100 plus parts?

If there are parts, that’s exactly right. You can provide the parts. What you use ChoreRelief for is purely for labor. We do have an option for the contractors. That’s subject to agreement between you and them, for them to purchase the parts that they want. They can add those to the invoice at the end and then invoice you everything afterward. There’s no service charge or commission from the parts. We feel like it’s fair that they spend that money they need to get all into their bank account. However, there’s the credit card processing fee that the client is subject to pay for.

How long have you been doing this, Tarik?

We started back in late 2017 as a mobile car wash business. We’re savvy entrepreneurs. We pivoted and changed. We went through a lot of three different user interfaces. Finally, we get to these products that we have that do all these things that I told you about by mid-2018.

Are you a programmer?

I was. When I started this, I was the only solo entrepreneur engineer in this process. Now, I have a full dev team in-house that handles that. I focus more on the strategy, user interface and also sales and marketing.

What country do you hire from for programming?

I have two dev teams. I have one in Morocco and I have one here in the US because I like the 24 hours and the time difference. We move faster. Things that would normally take a year to develop, we can do it now in six months. In the beginning, it was tough. I lost a lot of money hiring the wrong developers from different countries. They send you this bad product that they think is amazing. Some people call me too rough. I don’t want to settle just because it does what it does, but we can do it better. I lost a lot of money in the process.

Starting a new business wasn’t easy, smooth and hunky-dory. What a surprise.

It’s the greatest tuitions you’ve paid for. You spent $100,000 in a school of education to practically give you nothing in the real world, but this gives me some perspective. Now, I ask the right questions before I hire people. I want to make sure that our mindset is in line with, “Are you the kind of guy who always comes to a meeting prepared to say no? Do you come prepared with asking questions? Do you come prepared with some ideas?” These are things that you learn in the process. For people, the sooner you start your business, the sooner you start to discover who you truly are.

You bought your network with that too because you knew a lot more people at the end of $100,000 than you did before you started. You knew who was good and bad. You start to get some relief. Some people can do some things for me now. I don’t have to do everything. Hopefully, by the end of $100,000, you have a lot of people doing a lot of things for you. I want to point that out to the audience. You have to have a passion for whatever it is you’re going to do because if you don’t, you’re never going to make it through the gauntlet of a fresh new business, or trying your first entrepreneurial endeavor because it’s always a learning curve. I don’t know hardly anyone who just woke up one day, had an idea, made money from the beginning, and there wasn’t a problem.

A drug dealer.

They got a problem. They get arrested.

You’ll never see a young drug dealer. They’re always old drug dealers. They always die young or go to jail. To your point, it’s true, this idea of going through a business. You’ve seen businesses now are starving to get employees. A lot of people are confused in this concept with debt like the government is paying them the $300 or $600 unemployment credit, which is going to end shortly. Some states have already declared that by the end of June 2021, they’re going to stop doing that. This is my perspective. You don’t have to agree with it. What I think is that people finally, for the first time ever in their adulthood, found 12 to 16 months of free time. To kill time, they decided to go online and learn and use side hustles. Some people discovered what they’re good at, and then they chose to pursue that. They discovered that they were making way more money than flipping burgers at McDonald’s.

I had that epiphany myself. One day, I realized I was tapped at about $15, $16, $17 an hour many years ago. I didn’t have a college degree. I had a conversation with myself and God. I said, “Take this job away from me. Give me whatever it takes never to go back,” because I want my ass backed up in a corner so far that I have to figure out how to do something myself. If I cave in and take another job, then I’ll never find out what it is. I have to hold fast, not take a job and make this body and this mind figure out what to do. How is it going to eat? This body and this mind is an amazing thing. You give it enough water and protein. If you can keep your mind, it will figure everything out. I heard that from a POW in how he survived.

 

I took what he said and thought, this man was under torture and death in an indefinite period of incarceration. He didn’t know how long he was going to be if he was ever going to live through it. All I got to do is figure out how to get enough water and protein in the United States of America and have enough mental discipline not to take a job, and I will figure out where I belong. I did. I figured out how to make $1 an hour, $5 an hour, $17 an hour, $50 an hour, and then $80 an hour. Every time I figured out how to up the game and my income, I was the 100% recipient of the benefit.

Here are the different things happening, Mitch. You had to go through what I like to call the roughest time. You have to do this work to make that dollar.

I put myself in the woods by myself on purpose.

We live in a different time, which I want the audience to read carefully. You don’t have to get your hands dirty to make money. You just need to be great at finding potential clientele and outsource their work to a subcontractor team and resources that you can put together. I remember I had a friend of mine. He used to charge $15,000 for building up a website years ago. Do you know how much time he spent on it? Two hours. The hour-meeting with the clients. He takes notes, finds a dev team in India and gives them the project. They do it for less than $1,000. They come back with the final product. He shows it to the clients, gets some feedback if there’s any, goes back and tweaks it and then passes it along.

Here’s what’s cool about it. This is why I think the rich and the CEOs are getting paid $5,000 to $10,000 an hour while an employee gets $15 an hour. It’s not because he has 600 hours a day. He has the same time as you do, but he can do things in 24 hours that would take one individual 1,000 hours. They allocate. They take a big project and they’re like, “You do this. You do that. I’m taking your 24 hours. Suddenly, I have 100 hours a day timeline. That’s the value that I can create.” People who are here and you’re thinking about a side hustle, this is a true story. I had a gentleman who had a landscaping business. We met at the gym and started talking. He was like, “I had 5,000 clients.” I was like, “You must be making a good amount of money.”

Unfortunately, he was like, “By the time you pay expenses, the truck broke down, the equipment and merchandise, you probably make maybe $2,000 net profit a month.” I said, “What if you can subcontract people who already had their equipment, tools, time and they’re available, and you get to keep that 20%, 30% markup price to yourself? They’re happy because you’re sending them an opportunity that otherwise they couldn’t find on their own. You’re happy by simply creating this management. Now, you don’t have to limit yourself to San Antonio 5-mile radius when you could potentially be San Antonio 100-mile radius.” He said, “How do I do that?” I said, “Have you heard of a company called ChoreRelief?” He was like, “No. What is it?” I told him, “Here’s how it works.” I didn’t even tell him I’m involved in it. I’m just giving him an idea.

I said, “You post a job, set a budget, and then landscapers bid on it. If you like someone, hire them. They go and do the work. They send you photos through the app. Everything is app-based. You don’t have to exchange your phone numbers and email if you don’t want to. They send you photos, you approve the work, and then you pay. You’re getting paid directly from your clientele, paying you whatever the price for that bid is. You’re paying that landscaper a fraction of it, and you get to keep the difference to yourself. How cool would that be? Now, you can do more work in a day than you would have done if you have four employees.” He took my advice and went on it.

There are ways for people to be creative in being entrepreneurs. Most people think, “I got to be an entrepreneur. I got to roll my sleeves and get my hands into the dirt.” That’s maybe 2000 or 1996. Right now, you have resources available to you. You just need to be willing to work and build a team around you. The reason why you think Apple and the big corporations are worth trillions of dollars is not because they just built everything themselves. It’s because of the partnership that they built. Their licensed technology from this small company, they plug it into their iPhone, computer, watch or whatever. They go to the other ones and then they help create that working environment where now we make a boatload shit of money, but we’re splitting it among us, so everybody is getting rich in the process. The little mind we’re programmed like, “Don’t talk to your neighbors. Don’t do this. They’re going to spy on you. They might want to steal on you.” That’s a trap.

When you start a business, it's difficult at the beginning, but it gets easier down the line. Click To Tweet

I think it’s a wonderful idea. I like the true ratings and that the contractors are rated.

Even the customers. Everybody gets rated.

Many times, I’m always skeptical about the ratings.

You’re right and you should be because as far as how Facebook, Google, Yelp, and all these classified listings, anybody can go rate anybody.

I have a few books for sale. I always tell everyone because I like to be transparent. When you go to Amazon, the first ten reviews are me, my family, my cousins, my uncles and everybody. After that, it’s real reviews. I don’t want to start with no reviews. If you can do ten, I imagine there are some companies out there that do 50 or 100 reviews.

They go to these farms in Bangladesh, Thailand and the Philippines, and they buy all of that. For us at ChoreRelief with the ratings, the only time you’re able to rate someone is if you paid for the service. It has to be a physical transaction. We like to call it the Notary Public. If you’re willing to pay money, then you’re able to rate that person. That’s the way how it is because I realized this. In the future, as we grow into this ecosystem, I want to create a safe place where if I have a need and I come to ChoreRelief, I want to think of ChoreRelief as a safe place. The reviews are legit. The prices are affordable. The timing is convenient.

As an example, and this is a true story, my best friend’s friend. She was looking for a handyman to do a complete gut out on a basement. I’ll tell you the moral of the story. I said, “Does she have an idea of a budget?” He said, “She got two quotes from a couple of people from Moldova,” which is her country, “at $4,700 and $5,200.” This was a 1,300-square feet basement. She wants to take the walls and ceilings and peel the tile floors. I said, “Sure. Why don’t you try it out?” I can’t. I don’t know. I’m not a contractor. I’m not going to stand in the way if someone wants to do it for $100. I’m simply the connector. We build the infrastructure.

He posted the job. As we were talking for a few minutes, he started getting text messages. Four bids came in right away from $750 to $3,000. He looked them up. Some of them have reviews because they had been with us for quite some time. Some are brand-new and don’t have any reviews. I said, “Don’t get discouraged. Just because they don’t have any reviews doesn’t mean they’ve never been doing this before.” Ultimately speaking, you have safety in mind or price protections until the end. Long story short, he hired a person for $2,600. Imagine from $4,700 and $5,200 to $2,600. We’re not trying to kill the prices but it’s you.

A lot of times, these technology companies keep forgetting that humans are the most variable elements in any equation. You have to give people a choice. You have to give people the freedom to decide for themselves. Unlike some places where they have the price structures ahead of time, there’s a missing opportunity for the workers if they’re dictating what their rates are upfront, but there’s also a missing opportunity if the clients are pricing themselves way lower than what they think. The way to bypass this is because you’re getting random bids from the different vendors, As a client, you have a vision of what’s the actual market price for what you’re looking for versus getting 1 or 2 quotes.

I want everyone to go to 1000Houses.com/leadsource. Over there, you’re going to be able to learn all about the program that Tarik is talking about. If you’re a vendor, go over there, check out the app and try it out. Tell him about your free giveaway and what you’re offering to incentivize people to get started.

I’m giving a 10% off code. It’s called 10OFF. Although I don’t think that you need my code for getting 10% off your first project because you get to dictate the price you’re willing to pay. We want to give you guys that 10% off, which we’ll pay for to try to serve it and see for yourself. It’s a ground root built by the people for the people. We’re industry agnostic. I’m a real estate guy. I’m also in the service business industry. My father-in-law is a contractor. When we built this up, we wanted to build to serve the people. My philosophy as I said, “If they win, we win.”

What does the contractor have to lose to go over there?

Nothing.

It sounds like if you’re a contractor and you go over there, fill out your form and get a bid, you could have way more business than you need. Especially if you’re starting a business or if you have a young business, it doesn’t have to be your sole source. This is just another source where you can get some leads from. I don’t know why you wouldn’t do it. Make sure you go to 1000Houses.com/leadsource. You’ll get all the information you need over there to hook up. There will be some links to click on that you’ll get set up. I would also like for Tarik to know that it came from my website. He has a little affiliate program that helps me out if it goes through my links. It doesn’t cost you anything. It comes out of his site.

If you’re a person who does podcasts or likes to make money from affiliate programs, get ahold of Tarik and see how you can offer this service to contractors and clients in your own circle and sphere of influence and maybe make some money or a lot of money. I’ve looked at your affiliate program. It looks interesting. I don’t have to do anything except for what I’m doing right now. I’m being completely transparent as you want. If you want to know the truth, I make about $18,000 a month doing these shows and little affiliate programs that I believe in. I don’t sign on to interview people with affiliate programs that I think is junk because it’s my name on it and I recommended it. If I think it’s junk, I won’t do it.

When someone comes through my show to sign up, it always comes out of the vendor side. You can go around, over or under me, whatever you want to do, you’re going to pay the same price. At least reward me for having turned you onto the lead if that’s what you want to do. Go to 1000Houses.com/leadsource. Everything will be there that you need to know. You can get signed up and start getting some leads. Start trying to generate some business from a direction that you’ve never had the opportunity to get a lead from before. I think it’s a great idea. I love your idea.

A long time ago, when I was a kid, I had the idea to build a company called Construct All. I had cards printed and I saw that card. My deal was to go out and get jobs from people who want to ask. I would ask anybody, “What do you need done?” “I need an asphalt driveway.” I would call asphalt people and say, “Give me 10% of the job. Here’s a lead.” It didn’t matter what they wanted but I was physically knocking on the door. I didn’t have the technology like this at the time, but I had the same idea that you’re doing but on a much different level. You can go national. I was in my neighborhood trying to generate some money for myself.

 

The idea is to go national eventually because we’re following homes and roofs. Wherever there‘s a home, there’s going to be a need for repairs and maintenance.

It goes back to your core idea. I didn’t need to know how to do an asphalt job. I didn’t even know how to be an expert. I didn’t need to know how to build a set of stairs, fix a chimney, clean a chimney or build a deck. It didn’t matter. All I wanted to know is, “What do you want? I’ll hook you up. I’ll help you find someone to do it.” I would go and get 2 or 3 people that would say yes, and they would go get bids. No matter who got the job, I would win.

You started it with the old-school way, which is you leveraged technology and not do it on a larger scale. That’s exactly the same concept.

I’m impressed in the simplest terms because I’m a simple man. It’s this simple. You don’t need to know how to build a deck to get paid for deck jobs. You don’t need to know how to drill teeth to get paid for a dentistry job. You just need to know how to drive a business to whatever it is that turns you on.

That’s it. That is the key. You just need to find paying clients. The workers are there. People are starving. They will do it. That’s so simple. You see people on social media constantly posting, “I need a plumber. Anybody in the area? I need this.” You respond to them, “I got you. What do you want?” Now, you got an app. Post it, get the plumber and then send it over. That’s what entrepreneurship is all about. It’s thinking outside the box.

You’re the traffic director. You just direct traffic. Do you want this? Go right. Do you need this? Take a left.

There’s a time where you’re like, “I can’t do it,” then move on to the next opportunity. Maybe that might be an opportunity for you to even get a test of the actual business before you even decide to go and start that business yourself. You have some expertise. You’re like, “Money looks good. The service looks decent. I know the ins and outs. It’s time for me to build my own team.” You’re derisking your situations before you start. Like me, you probably put your own capital. You’re putting in the time. You risk spending time with your family. You sleep maybe three hours a day if you’re lucky, but at least you get to utilize these resources available to you to have an inside look at what that actual business might be worthwhile. Is it worth your time to be fully invested in and put some of your savings into it? Is it like, “I like it the way it is?” At the same time, you have the freedom to run this business practically remotely, from your pickup truck, anywhere in Texas.

From the cruise ship, from The Bahamas or wherever you can get an internet connection.

That’s it. When you go to Mars, and there’s an internet connection, you can still run your handyman business from Mars. It’s geolocated. All the heavy lift work has been done for you.

Tarik, I love your spirit. I love what you’re saying. There’s no reason in the world for anyone to work for $10 or $12 an hour for someone else.

Tell us if you would like to watch your dream being killed in front of you. That’s it.

Life is unpredictable. If you want to go out, do so with no regrets. Click To Tweet

That’s what I’m saying. There’s no reason in the world except the challenge of you need to figure out how to make $10 or $12 on your own. That will turn into more because once you get the hang of how the ebb and flow of entrepreneurialism works and the particular businesses that you love or passionate about, you have a way of finding better and more streamlined ways. You increase your pay, expand your territory or come on with a second add-on. It’s the beginning to learn how to make $8, $10 or $12 an hour. Number one, so you can quit working for someone else, which automatically frees up about 2,600 hours a year. You don’t have to be an expert to study something.

Forty hours a week, you free that up.

People go, “That’s more than 40 hours.” I said, “Do you know why it’s more than 40 hours?” If you’re going to be this guy I’m talking about, you’re the kind of guy who was only supposed to work an hour but worked ten hours. You’re always supposed to work 8 or 10 because you took pride in your work, and it wasn’t done right yet. You’re the guy who puts in a little extra. You won’t make it if you’re just a person who puts an eight and goes out.

Here’s what’s interesting about the concept of business. This just hit my head. When you work for someone, as a job, it’s easy at the beginning being in a new job, and then it gets difficult down the line. When you start a business, it’s difficult at the beginning but it gets easier down the line.

You get smarter. You get better. You get more connections in the network.

You find these resources and add-ons. As you’re building those, the business becomes easier. With a job, it’s easy at the beginning, “Do this work,” then the boss comes in, “I want you to do this more work. Can you go and do this? Can you go and do that?” Now, the job difficulty level becomes increasing and increasing.

Your pay doesn’t go up. The cost of everything else goes up. You start getting squeezed and it gets very uncomfortable.

If there’s anything that I want anybody to read on this, it’s just the time is now.

One of the things that changed my life was a book by John M. McCormack. It was Self-made in America. It posed the question, “Why can immigrants come to the United States of America and find financial independence within a reasonably short period of time, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15 years, when Americans can live here their whole life, born on the corner of opportunity and success and they die never knowing financial freedom?” They’re 65, 75, 80 years old. Why is it that immigrants can come here and achieve what Americans can’t achieve? The answer was very simple. Immigrants come here and see a world that they only dreamt of from where they came from, and infrastructure to be able to move into a function that they only dreamt of.

They come from places of genocide, corruption, caste systems and place where they were held down. They came to a place and saw the opportunity. They weren’t afraid to sleep on the floor of the restaurant that they worked at until they bought it because they could see how close they were to it. One of the things I got from that book was, “The reason why I wasn’t successful was I was not willing to sacrifice at a higher level.” I was reading about people who came from other countries who were sacrificing even way more than I can fathom now. One, in particular, would sleep in the cabinets of the restaurant as they closed the mall restaurants. As everybody left, they would get up and eat the old donuts. They would eat and drink the old coffee. They would take showers from the sink. He got his wife a job there, and then he got his sister a job there. They all slept in that place and ate until they had enough money to get their own lease and start their own restaurant. I don’t know any American who is going to do that.

I think it’s an advantage to being an immigrant. You’re right because you see the crap that you came from, and then once there are opportunities, you see it. Sometimes I feel like people have no idea how grateful they are to be living on this land. If you don’t believe me, go to a third-world country. I will happily pay you a first-class, one-way ticket.

I started to think like an immigrant. I started pretending like I had nothing. I wasn’t ashamed not to have anything. I was lucky to be here. I was looking around and trying to find an opportunity. I started to pretend that I was an immigrant. That started right after I finished that book. It made such an impression on me. I was born right at the intersection of opportunity and success, but I didn’t know it until I read that book. I figured out, “That’s why these people barely speak the language, and they’re over here busting their ass.” You see them in ten years driving a Mercedes with the free and clear house because they don’t waste their money, either. They’re very frugal and things had to count until they got to a level.

 

I’m years in this country, and I still translate $1 to send to my Moroccan currency. I’m like, “For $1, I could buy this and that.” This guy wants me to pay $5 for this crap. Are you out of your mind? I’m still thinking that way. I still do these currency changes. Money is a tool. You could spend $20 on a shitty drink that might hurt your body, or you can spend that $20 on something that might generate more income. I see this all the time, “Get rich before you look rich.” You’ve got to have a little bit of life too. Life is not meant just to be work and watch your bank account growing, but you’re miserable inside. You don’t get to enjoy things in life. You don’t get to spend time with your family and loved ones. Have some balance. At the end of the day, if there’s anything we learned from this pandemic, we all know so many young and healthy people who passed away out of the blue, whether from the virus or sudden death. Life is unpredictable. At least if you want to go out, go out with no regrets. That’s my biggest fear, in my death bed, lying down and having all the things that I wish I have done.

You’ve been a pleasure to talk to. It’s very eye-opening. I hope some people struck a chord. What this show is all about is to help people find where they belong so that they can become financially independent on even the most modest level so they don’t have to have a job so they can free up 2,600 hours to figure out who they’re supposed to be and become great at it. That’s what the intention of this show is. Whether it’s through real estate or building an app, it doesn’t matter. I don’t care where you find it. What I want to do on this thing is to encourage you and help you find it.

If you need $4,500 a month to live, then quit worrying about being a millionaire. Figure out how to get $4,500 a month to come in so you can quit your damn job so you can free up 2,600 hours so we can start to do something. The first step is to replace your job with something you have more control over that takes a lot less time. Hopefully, it’s passive. Try to make 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, or 15 deals that, for the next 25 years, will put $3,500 in your bank account whether you get out of bed or not. Now, we’ve got lots of time to figure out where we belong. If you want to go spend the day with Tarik or the week and you don’t make any money when you go visit him, it doesn’t matter because your stuff is paid for at home from some little things that you did. I think if people are meant to be wealthy, they will all start by replacing their income and freeing up that 2,600 hours so we can start to have the time to figure out where that wealth is and how we’re going to get to it.

Most people don’t need to worry about, “10X this, 10X that,” just double X. If you make $1,000 this month, next month, the goal is $2,000. In the following months, you want to go $3,000, $5,000. Most people want to go like this giant leap and jump, and they get disappointed in the process. Have realistic goals. There’s an illustration of a guy trying to climb the ladder with a smaller step versus a guy who has a ladder with faraway steps. He’s still in the first step because he can’t make it to the next step. When you do baby steps, two things happen. Mentally, you feel excited by the achievements you’ve done, which gives you confidence and encouragement to go to the next goal. Have realistic goals but don’t settle for nothing.

I think that this has been a great conversation. I hope that we connected with some people. I want you to go over to 1000Houses.com/leadsource. Check this out. If you’re sitting at home and don’t have anything to do, try this out. Start putting some contractors together and finding some jobs. I don’t know. You figure it out. I’m sure Tarik will help you. With this one thought, it’s always about where the carrot is. Imagine if our government would have paid an extra $400 or $300 to people who had a job. What would have happened? Instead of paying people who had no job, what if they paid $300 extra to people who got a job?

What if they pay it to the businesses that are hiring people?

That’s what I’m saying. You got to remember where the carrots are. When you find a good business, the carrots are in the right place because when the carrots are in the right place, the right results will happen that you want to happen. If things aren’t happening for you the way you want, your carrots are in the wrong place. Something is happening. You’re not being driven in the right direction or you’re not driving people in the right direction. Change what you’re doing. I wanted to leave you with that one thought. If our government would have paid anyone who got a job an extra $300 a month, I wonder what our unemployment would be.

Everybody will be enticed to go to work.

They will get a bonus to go get a job.

That would be ideal, but then the government as we all know is not on the favored side of businesses. They will do whatever it takes. Look at the wood shortage. If you go by stall manufacturers, there are piles like high-rise buildings worth of wood that soars in the Home Depot. Why is that? Is the goal to prevent people from being able to purchase affordable homes and then turn everybody into tenants? What’s the strategy here? What’s going on?

That’s what I was saying. It’s not hard to figure out how to decrease the unemployment rate. You put this thing there for people to get a job, not for people to be at home.

All of these stimulation checks, “Let’s send you $1,200, $600.” If there is anything it does, it deflates and loses the value of the money that you currently have. We printed almost 40% of the total money since the debt in 2020. If anybody has $10,000 or $1,000 in the bank, in normal circumstances, by the end of one year, that $1,000 now has a 97% purchase power. Meaning you can only buy $9,970 worth of goods with that $1,000. That’s not including this crazy inflation we have. Now, the cost of merchandise is going up. Costco has done a different strategy. Rather than an increase in prices of goods and products, they went ahead and reduce the size of the product and maintained the same price. I noticed this.

A paper towel used to have maybe 200 sheets. It costs you $19 something. Now, it has 160 sheets but costs you $19 something. People don’t freak out like, “You just increased the prices by 15% to 20%.” They were like, “No worries. We’ll trickle it down this way.” It’s the system. If more people were open-minded in terms of how the financial world works, we wouldn’t have this dilemma. That’s the biggest concern. People need to educate themselves about finance and how to properly allocate and understand the numbers. Once you do that, then you’re able to start any business. You’ll be able to succeed in any business.

I would like to thank each and every one of you for stopping by to get you some Tarik Khribech. Thank you so much. Get over to 1000Houses.com/leadsource and check it out. You could be making money tomorrow. I’ll talk to you in a bit.

Take care.

 

Important Links

• 1000Houses.com/leadsource
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• 1000Houses.com/Moat
• 1000Houses.com/aof
• 1000Houses.com/Coaching

 

About Tarik Khribech

Masters in CS. Real Estate Investing. A Serial Entrepreuner. On a mission to enrich the Quality of life in our community. Helping people connect and prosper. I’m a Chicago-based entrepreneur, and my love for connecting people and solving problems led me to found ChoreRelief, a marketplace that transforms the experience property owners.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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