Latest / Coffee, Chaos, & Cashflow / #2 Meet a Founder - Aram Street

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#2 Meet a Founder - Aram Street · Coffee, Chaos, & Cashflow

• 0:45
  Speaker 1: So we are back for another episode of Coffee Chaos and Cashflow, and our last one was very like very poignant moments.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: I'm glad that Eric you know we got deep with Eric, yeah, and he, just he really showed us a side that I don't know.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: I just it really just made me think differently of you man, like I think highly of you Even more so than I already do.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Today we're going to get into your co-founder partner in crime, mr Aram Street.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Howdy, howdy, howdy, spring break.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: So, aram, give us some background.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: What brought you to the field of entrepreneurship, errol give?
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: us some background.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: What brought you to the field of entrepreneurship?
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: So I got involved in my first career my only career, I guess as a household manager, which is essentially a North American term for a butler.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: I came to Lexington very much on a whim back in 2012.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: And a few months later I started working for a private family here that had a really big house on a horse farm and kind of tripped into that position by accident.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: They sent me to an academy up in Toronto, ontario, where I got certified to be a certified butler.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I managed that estate for eight years and then, when that wrapped up and I was done, my wife and I talked we had an interview to several other similar jobs like that across the US and just realized we didn't really want to be in that genre anymore, so left that to start a cleaning company and we've been self-employed ever since.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: So that's how we got here and, uh, I've done a handful of different things since then some really short-term, uh, business endeavors as well.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: As you know, I'm still I sell the cleaning company.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: And then I got involved with eric clean space.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: That's kind of one of the more recent projects and uh, um, yeah, so I've been a little little all over the place.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Good stuff.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: So what would you say was the biggest challenge?
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: I mean maybe from a mindset shift and going from like a W-2 employee to owning a small business.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, um, so I I'd like to think of this as, like, what are characteristics that make people want to get into business or keeps them in business?
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: And, for me, one thing that's worked very well in my favor um, maybe it hasn't worked well, I don't know, but it's definitely.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: The reason I'm here is I am not a risk averse person, and if you are really really risk averse, like if risk scares you, business ownership is going to be significantly harder, because there are just so many unknowns and when you go from getting a paycheck every week and you know how much it's going to be and you know it's relatively the same thing and maybe you've got a bonus at the end of the year like these are just boom, boom.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: You can, you can build, like everything around that, and it's very predictable.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: And then, all of a sudden, you have to replace that with something that you've got to generate, you've got to go out, you've got to create that, it's got to be there and you're gonna have to get creative on how that comes about and there's just a.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: There's an awful lot of risk involved in that, especially with the number of things that we have done in the past gosh, four years now the different ways that we've done shorter term things that were good for a certain economy, for a certain market.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: We did things during COVID that were specific to that time.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: They were like six months that the market was just a certain way and it wasn't going to be around forever.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: So you've got to be able to think on your feet and adapt to those changing things.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: But you know, if you're really scared about what could happen, it's going to be really hard to be self-employed, because it probably will happen and it'll probably be worse than you anticipated.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: True.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: It's true, it's true.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, so as a you know, as a business owner and everything like what was the, you've had a day where you've wanted to quit, where you wanted to like dust off the old resume and go household manage for someone else, or you know something else.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: You mind sharing that day, or sure you know?
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: And obviously you don't have to, you know.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: It's.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: You know, okay, I don't.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: I honestly have not had that day.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: I have had really rough moments and you know, I'm sure there will be times where we talk a little bit more in depth about some of those points, but I can honestly say at least that I can remember I'm trying to be careful here so I don't say something that's not true.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: But I don't think I've definitely never considered going back into household management and E, and there were a couple of positions that I thought I might take at a couple of points as very, very part-time, you know, positions just for a momentary thing.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: But I have definitely, definitely decided to not go back into full-time employment as a primary source of income.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: Um, I, it's known I call that being thoroughly unemployable Um, and that's definitely where I'm at now, like I may have had to do some things differently.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: I might have to, you know.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: You know I've done Uber and Lyft driving.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: Uh, that's how Yemi and I got connected.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: We're here because I was driving Uber and Lyft years ago, so that's how the three of us are all on this podcast together.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: Doordash have done all those things.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: There were different pivots and things you have to do along the way when you're building a business.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: Potentially, but, getting a job was just not.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: That has not been on the table for some time, and that's just the mindset thing.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: If you've ever read Rich Dad, poor Dad or the Cashflow Quadrant, robert Kiyosaki is the guy that's responsible, like if you're the one person or one idea that really has got me here.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: It was his cashflow quadrant and just understanding that there are other ways to make money that aren't strictly just showing up, clocking in and out at a job, and it was that moment that was like a real watershed moment for me.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: Mentally.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: It was like, oh, there are other ways this can be done.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: There are more efficient ways it can be done.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: There are ways you can make a lot more money a lot more efficiently, and that's been hard to disengage from that once you're there.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: So I'm pretty, pretty committed to it now for better or worse, awesome man.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: So Eric has shared you know his side of things regarding the start of clean space and you were already busy when he came to you with it.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: You know, not just like professionally, but also like you know you've got a sizable family and you know shepherding, leading your family, those kind of things Like how did you, how did you make the?
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: What changes did you have to make in life to go from you know small business owner to like a founder of a startup?
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: One definite change that came.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: It wasn't immediate, but it was a few months into it.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: I was building LexClean.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: I was also part of another organization that was basically an MLM business structure that I'd been building for several years with a wonderful group of people that I dearly love to this day and still really enjoy a lot of aspects about the business model.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: But at the time that I started getting more involved with Clean Space especially because early on Eric was developing it and there wasn't since I'm not the programmer there wasn't really anything I did in the very, very early days while he was building it.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: Right, I was just kind of waiting around for us to get close to launch before we could start.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: You know, I could start implementing stuff on the sales and development side paths to actually having a product.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: So initially I was doing three things.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: Right, I was doing that business, I was doing LexClean and then I was like starting to figure out what was going on with CleanSpace as he's developing it.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: But when we got closer to launch, I had to.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: I had to make the decision like, look, I'm going to either end up doing three things very, very, very poorly or I've got to narrow some things down to make this work, and so I actually had to uh, put put on essentially on whole and put on the back burner.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: The MLM business that we were building at the time, right Like that had to.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: That had to happen because I'm human, uh, and I still have the same number of hours a week that everybody else does, and when you have a family and multiple children we have we have five, uh, that you know.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: You've just you've got to figure out what's what's going to take the hit Right, and ideally it shouldn't be your family as business owners.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Sometimes it is.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: There are just some points where your family is going to be struggling along with the development process.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: So it happens.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: But over the long term you're going to have to make concessions elsewhere, and so that was definitely a moment where it was like I know I want to be involved in this, I know I want to be a team player at a higher level and I'm not going to be able to do that if I don't reorganize some things.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: So I had to let that go for sure, and that was a game changer for me.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: It was kind of hard because we'd been doing that for years, again with an incredible group of people that I'm still very, very close to today, but you have to be willing to, yeah, make those, make those adjustments as you go along.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: How long did it take you to make that decision?
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: And I asked you just because I know that.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: You know with the, you know with it, with an MLM style business, the relationships are so important, like it's build those relationships and you're around like-minded people who are all working to get you know toward this common goal and with the, you know taking a step back from the business.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: You know how.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: How long did it take you to?
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: to dial that in.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: It was probably a couple of weeks where we like you know, my wife and I really spent some time thinking and praying about it and ultimately the re.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: The reason why we knew that that was the right move was, you know, I think God was faithful to help us go that direction in guiding us.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: But also, you do have to your family does kind of have to rank order in there as a pretty high priority, and we had to decide which of these three things were going to continue to demand the most from our family.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: Right, and that was just one where it's like this from a time aspect, it's very it was pretty time intensive and a family was definitely going to you know, it wasn't wasn't going to go well, trying to invest into our family while doing all three.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: So that was really the biggest consideration there.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: It was like, okay, we know we're getting into clean space, we know we're going to do this, but you know we're going to ramp to like go something.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: And LexClean was at the time paying the bills as well.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: So financially it wasn't really a decision.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: That guy goes oh yeah, I can stop doing the cleaning business because that was that's where the income was.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, it took a couple of weeks, but it was it was.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: It became clearly obvious pretty, pretty pretty much by the end of that.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: So makes sense.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: So let's say, you know, let's say Clean Space has an exit.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Somebody comes and writes a uh, massive, you know 10 figure check, or something like that.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: What does aram street's life look like?
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: um, a lot of travel.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: That's always been a.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: There are a couple things we've always wanted to do as a family and that's travel as a family pretty extensively.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: So you know what we want to be able to actually live in other locations for a few months at a time, do a lot of immersion learning.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: Um, you know, we want to be able to actually live in other locations for a few months at a time, do a lot of immersion learning.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: You know whether that's learning new languages, things like that.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: So that's always been like a really big thing we want to do.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: But we want to balance that to some degree, especially in a few years as kids are a little bit older, with foster care and adoption.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: Foster care and adoption that's been a big thing that we've been passionate about for ever.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: Since we got married, my wife and I outlined that as just a goal in our personal ministry that we wanted to be involved in.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: So that's definitely, you know, going to free up the time and availability for us to be involved with that at a high level.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: I also want to have a lot more kids, so I wouldn't mind if we were able to biologically uh get get back into that.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: So we're at five right now.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: I've always told people that I plan to get to double digits eventually.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: I say that generally just to scare people off and like kind of freak them out a little bit.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: But I, I just, I do not have a number, like I've never thought, oh, this is the number of kids I want to have, you know, six or eight kids or like, and then I'm done, I don have it.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: So we'll keep having them, um, as long as Lord is, you know, faithful to to give them to us and try to, you know, do the best we can as steward and raise that family to honor him.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: But yeah, so a big exit would be well, we've got time to invest and grow the family and then at that point I'd really like to take a role in developing the next generation of leaders and business leaders.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: So that would be a big deal for me.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, I have a lot of fun with that.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Where's the first place y'all want to travel to?
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: The first place.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: There's so many, I don't know which one would come first, probably, generally speaking, europe.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: I have two sisters that live in paris, france, today, so I think we would most likely go there first and then, like, just do a tour of europe, you know, but just kind of get to paris, say hello to the sisters, you know, have some, have some fun there and then, you know, hit as many european countries as we could, be kind of cool.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: so I just want to go to paris for baked goods, that's all or baked goods man.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: They have good baked goods.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: I have been to paris and, yeah, they don't do food poorly there, for sure.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: That's uh, yeah, yeah, it's stuff.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: So what is one thing, or maybe more than one thing we don't know about you that you'd want us to know?
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: No, Something interesting.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: Make it something, yeah.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if you don't know about it, it's probably because I don't want you to know.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: So it's an interesting qualifier there, something that you don't know.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: Gosh, the two of you probably know just about as much as me.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: This is the other side.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: Maybe most people don't know that I'm very spontaneous for the most part, like I have a pretty spontaneous nature.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: So the more you get to know me, that comes up pretty fast.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: I don't think that's like too well hidden, but I like to do things because they're spontaneous, and I think spontaneous spontaneity is really great for um, seeing how adaptable you are to a really changing situation.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: So, even if that's pretty random, like I will I will like I like to put people in very awkward like situations in public and like see how they can adjust to it.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: So that's like jumping on a table and and belching out this crazy song or something.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: I, I just I think that's amazing.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: So, um, yeah, spontaneity is fun and if you stick around me too long, I might, I might, you know play a wild card that I might, uh, might, surprise you.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, okay, yeah.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: There you go.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: Cool, cool, aram.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: It's been good chatting with you, man, just getting to get to know you better.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Another man, another myth, another legend.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: And we'll see all of you next time for another episode.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Yes, sir.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: Catch you down the road.