Episodes

In this episode Neel chats with Brian Leubben, host of the Action Academy Podcast and author of the forthcoming book From Passive to Passionate: How to Quit Your Job, Grow Your Wealth, & Turn Your Passions into Profits . Neel and Brian discuss: - his entrepreneurial path which started as a college DJ, then to corporate sales, then to creating a Vivid Vision for this future. - how "house hacking" brought him $4k a month in passive income, until he discovered affiliate income, which added another ...

In this episode Neel shares his experience of hiring and working with dozens of remote team members since 2013. He shares: — Which platforms you can use to find remote talent (Upwork, Dynamite Jobs, We Work Remotely) — What countries he's had great experiences with (South Africa, Honduras) — Which countries have talent "on sale" because of inflation (Venezuela, Argentina) — Why all great hires start with solid job descriptions (learn more here ) Enjoy the episode!

In this episode Neel and Johnny answer the question: "Should everyone go into entrepreneurship?" (Short answer: No.) Entrepreneurship has been so glamorized lately that it's made to seem that everyone can and should be an entrepreneur. Neel and Johnny offer some thoughts on why that's a bad idea: People with low risk tolerance won't do well — every day involves some kind of risk in entrepreneurship. People who have a 9-5 for a very long time (though a franchise might be a good fit in that case) ...

In this episode Neel sits down with Jon Matzner to talk about his journey to small business ownership and eventually a type of franchising Jon calls "affiliating." Jon bought a garage upgrade business and grew it really quickly but when he looked at the franchising landscape he didn't like what he saw and didn't want to create a scenario where franchisees had to come to him with "may I" requests all the time. So, instead he created lots of resources and allowed others to leverage his knowledge t...

In the experimental episode (literally recorded on the road), Neil discusses the differences between being a business builder and a business investor. Neel has long tried to do both, but has recently realized that means he's only doing half as well in each field. He thinks it makes more sense for him to pick one and make the other more passive. Since it's rare to find someone who can excel in both building and investing, it makes more sense for people to pick, and either is good, but it probably...

In this episode, Neel gives reviews of software he has used to run his remote local businesses in a more automated fashion. Neel starts by breaking down software into core vs. spoke. Core software includes companies like Launch27, BookingKoala, ZenMaid, Jobber, and Housecall Pro. Neel shares what he likes and doesn't like about them and also reminds listeners to consider whether they want a more industry-specific or industry-agnostic platform. Neel also discusses Slack, Zapier, G-Suite, Active C...

In this episode Neel and Johnny tackle the question of how entrepreneurs feel about what their business does. While Johnny delves into the idea of what your goals/endgame are and how that can create different answers at different times in your entrepreneurial journey, Neel unapologetically says that you do not have to like what your business does, as long as you don't hate it (people who don't like donuts shouldn't open a donut shop). They also discuss: how sometimes working in your business ins...

In this episode Neel and Johnny welcome Sergio Silesky and Chris Munn to discuss different ways to deploy cash. Sergio is a business partner of Johnny and is in "cash stack" mode so all the income they are earning is getting reinvested into the business. Chris has often used his active income to invest in more passive businesses like real estate or already-running businesses doing between $1-5M in EBITDA. They also discuss: Why buying and renting out a single family home is a terrible idea (Chri...

In this episode Neel and Johnny discuss the business of gurus and how they've both changed their attitude on them over time. Johnny was formerly a hater until he himself became a "guru" by sharing information in free and paid form. As for Neel, he used to be anti-guru too, until he learned to simply "respect the funnel" and see that these guys did work really hard, even if their style wasn't for everyone. They also discuss: Some of their favorite gurus — both Neel and Johnny are Alex Hormozi guy...

In this episode Neel and Johnny give four proven tactics that they have used to drive hundreds of thousands of dollars of sales for their respective cleaning businesses. Those tactics are: Local Facebook Groups (Johnny explains his method of guerrilla marketing in these groups) Cold Email (Neel highlights the template for this underrated way to get new clients) Giveaways (Johnny harnesses the social power of Instagram to get a huge list of new leads) Postcards (Neel shares a brand that allows sp...

In this episode Neel and Johnny discuss the benefits of a $50,000+ mastermind that Johnny and his business partner joined. Originally Johnny had hired this company to help with sales and in classic "value ladder" style the company overdelivered on the entry-level product so that Johnny was primed to hear an upsell. Things had gone so well with the original sales help they asked for that it was a no-brainer to join the mastermind (even though they had to split up the payments). Johnny's loved all...

In this episode Johnny catches up with Neel about his recent visit with the Hazda tribe in Tanzania. Neel got the special government permission necessary to go out there and learned a lot. Neel's day started with joining some of the members of the tribe hunting for food. He was blown away at how fast the tribal members moved through the bush and how accurate they were with the bow and arrow. Neel and Johnny also discuss: what an average day is like for the Hazda why the Hazda reject newer techno...

In this episode Neel and Johnny revisit the old quote about the five closest people to you and talk about proactively upgrading those people. They discuss: the power of groups like EO, EOA, and the Dynamite Circle why it's worth paying to join some groups (Johnny paid $50,000+ to join one particular group focused on e-learning businesses) the power of meeting people in Facebook groups and on Twitter. Neel and Johnny also talk about how easy it is to reach out to people on Twitter but how few peo...

In this episode, Neil gives listeners a step-by-step guide to starting their own vacation rental biz. He starts by highlighting the opportunity: people prefer vacation rentals to hotels now, and there is a huge demand for hotel-level cleaning services and a massive lack of companies to fulfill that need. Steps which Neel outlines include: Your website: it doesn't need to be perfect...it just needs to get up ASAP Your booking system: will be different for residential cleaning and vacation rental ...

In this episode Neel and Johnny discuss opportunity vehicles: what you are doing in your career, and how is it helping you achieve your life goals? Things they consider include: different "levels" of opportunity how those levels can be completely different for people with different skill sets and personalities the undesirability of low margin businesses with lots of moving parts Enjoy the episode!

In this episode Neel and Johnny chat with Sergio, Johnny's business partner in Orange Window Cleaning, about their recent sale of the business. While Sergio and Johnny had always had a goal of growing a business to $10M, they realized over time that the vehicle they had built was not going to get them there without a much higher commitment of money and time. By contrast, another business they had built did have that potential, and they realized over time that they couldn't succeed in that busine...

In this episode Neel sits down with Dan Andrews of the Tropical MBA podcast. Neel reveals that Dan is the one who first used the phrase "remote local business" to describe what Neel was doing at MaidThis. Alas, there will be no royalty payouts if the podcast ever sells for a billion dollars :-) Neel and Dan discussed: how to disconnect your location from your earnings to live remotely why remote-first businesses should really spend time on their first few job postings how Dynamite Jobs (one of D...

In this solo episode, Neil offers 8 Pillars he uses to audit and improve his personal life. A couple years ago Neil was happy with how systematized his business was, but was shocked as to how not-systematized his personal life was. Inspired by Gary Keller's The One Thing , he created a monthly and weekly system to help him level up in: Health and Vitality Friends and Family Productivity and Performance Lifestyle and Wealth If you want the other four, and how you too can consistently level up in ...

In this episode Neel interview Mike Grigery of ClickCallSell.com to get the scoop on how to market your local services business. Mike has helped hundreds of companies execute thousands of marketing campaigns and he's been Neel's business coach for sometime. He definitely knows what he's talking about when it comes to home services and how to properly market them. Tune in to learn: The importance of LTV The relationship of brand awareness and online reviews to conversion rates The power of social...

In this episode Neel and Johnny talk about the impact of sharing what you've learned in business. After five years of grinding and building a window cleaning business, Johnny packaged what he learned to create Home Service Academy, which is an e-learning platform that helps people build their own home services business. Neel packaged what he learned after years of building MaidThis in a single location to go the franchisor route. It's important to share the information you learn, because You can...

In this leisurely spitball episode, Neel and Mitko Karvoshki talk all things remote work and digital nomad as it applies to different spots around the world: who's winning, who's losing, and who's underrated. If you don't know Mitko, you're missing out! He runs Parable , which produces HBR-style case studies on online bootstrapped businesses and has a weekly newsletter called Remote Insider (subscribe here ). You'll hear Neel and Mitko rap about: Who's winning lately (Bankso, Portugal, and Mexic...

In this episode Neel and Johnny discuss various pieces of software that they use to run their businesses. There was clear agreement on some of the big hitters today, like Slack (can't live without it), G-Suite (tons of tools), and Loom (great for training). But there were also some different companies and use-cases discussed: Neel shared his love for Launch27 as his CRM with ActiveCampaign as the email outreach arm of that CRM Johnny loves BookingKoala and uses integrations from NiceJob to get l...

In this episode Neel and new co-host Johnny Robinson offer a blueprint for earning your first $10k from scratch without reference to cleaning companies, a sector both of them have had a lot of success in. Neel and Johnny outline: where to find subcontractors and how to pay them the importance of the "money milestone," earning that first dollar on the Internet why there really is no such thing as "market saturation" They both also recommend $100M Offers by Alex Hormozi to give you outlines and id...

In this episode Neel and David discuss David's three-month meditation teacher training course and what his future looks like. His last appearance featured his explaining what he had to do in order to be gone that long from his businesses . This podcast originally began as a co-hosted effort between Neel and David but this is the final episode of that era, as David moves on to what's next in his life (which does not include running a podcast). David shares what his teacher training was like (whi...