His Rentals Made $12K a Year - So Instead He Built a $400K Pool Business w/ Darian Richardson

Darian Richardson (0:00)

Working my way all the way up to GM, I think I was making maybe like 60 I didn't really have any freedom, and I had to ask him certain things just to be able to do what I really want. And now I operate a pool service company. It's so many other ways to make 30 to 40 grand in a quarter of the time.

Brian Luebben (0:17)

100%.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Action Academy podcast, Corporate America's Least Favorite Podcast. Guys, today we have somebody on the podcast, brand new Action Academy member, just joined three months ago. We were hanging out together in Cancun. I heard his story and I was like, Darian, you have to come on the podcast because what we're talking about today is what a lot of you guys are going through right freaking now, which is you got six-figure opportunity working that job, where you're in management, you're in leadership, but you have seven-figure skill sets with a six-figure income ceiling. And so Darian went through this process where he was working for a pool management company and eventually he was like, man, I got to be able to do this on my own. And now last year he did not a million dollars, but $10,000 less. We're going to rag on for it. $990,000 of revenue last year. Now he's pacing for over a million dollars this year, and he's about to hit it. And in his own company that he has control of with his time, his location, he can do it work in remote. And that is what we're talking about today, ladies and gentlemen. So Darian Richardson, my friend. Introduce yourself, say hi to the people.

Darian Richardson (1:27)

What's going on, good people. I'm Darian. I operate a pool service company, and also I am in the real estate space, just searching for freedom, trying to build the life, build my life by design.

Brian Luebben (1:39)

Let's go. So let's walk backwards a little bit, man, because you have a really, really interesting career. You're like the perfect Action Academy journey. So we started out, we're working at this pool company, and you're doing really, really good. You're not a random person in this company. You're climbing up the ranks. So talk a little bit about what it feels like to be that higher performer where all of a sudden you start banging your head against the ceiling about how much income you can actually earn.

Darian Richardson (2:04)

Yeah, that's a really good question. It was very frustrating because it was pretty much dependent on, like, my boss and outside of that, I didn't really have any freedom and I had to ask certain things. I had to ask him certain things just to be able to do what I really want. I think I was making 35 grand coming out of college, then I worked my way up to maybe like 60, but it was a cap. It was no, I couldn't be able to increase it.

So I needed to find different ways. So that's when I started to get into real estate, where I would buy different rentals, did the whole house act method, bought a duplex, lived in one side, renovated it, then bought a single family home, repeated it over and over again. At that time, it was more defense-based, where the duplex, it reduced my monthly expenses, and it cut my monthly expenses. So during that time, all of the extra money that I was making, I lived below my means, and I was paying off extra debt over and over and over again.

Brian Luebben (3:04)

So you started off as a manager. So tell them a little bit about the job and the career that you were in, because now you've started your own company in the same industry. So before you were managing, you were managing the pool cleaners, and then you went up to leading the managers, basically managing the managers, correct?

Darian Richardson (3:20)

Well, at that point, it wasn't pool cleaners. I started as a lifeguard. So I've been lifeguarding since I was 15 years old. And I worked my way up to a manager where I managed lifeguards, and then I worked my way up to a regional where I managed every single facility. Every single facility had maybe 5 to 15 different staff. And I managed 10 to 15 of those and everything in between, from getting prepping the facility, prepping the pool, making sure everything runs, opening inspections, communication to the client, sales. And then I became the guy that managed three of the regionals, which was like the GM. And at that point, I just got out of college. So it was mainly, I'm just going to work. I'm just going to hustle. The owner of the company, he was sometimes a little difficult, but I cut my teeth. I hustled. It was more of like, I am not going to let you beat me, so I'm just going to work. I knew that the money was going to come and it was a motivator, but I knew that it was going to take time. So yeah, working my way all the way up to GM. And I don't know if you want to go into what happened.