Making $30M, Cold Emails & Biggest Failures | James Bonadies DSH #309

Like I'd rather make 100k less a year but be happy.

Oh and free.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The freedom is the best part.

When I resigned,

that was actually the hardest part because I was so used to, you know, going to work.

Like it was not easy.

Yeah.

One of the most difficult things was the transition

from job to, you know, entrepreneur.

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And here's the episode.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back.

We got another fellow Jersey in here today.

James Bonades, how's it going?

Awesome, man.

Appreciate you having me.

Yeah, fellow Rutgers alum.

That's right.

I did it many years ago.

What did you major in there?

Economics.

Okay.

Yeah.

Did you find that was useful in your entrepreneurship journey?

No.

No, definitely not.

What I found was, you know, just like supply and demand.

That's always like just in knowing how the economy works was really you know money in money out right, that's about it But you ended up becoming a teacher for a bit, right?

Yeah, was that a high school level college level high school?

Okay, yeah, public school public school Patterson.

Okay.

How long did you do that?

I was there for seven years, I think teaching okay business I did like international business computers.

I started like the

very small school, so I started like the computers in that time because it was so long ago.

It was like 2002, I think.

Those were the big box ones, right right?

yeah I remember those and then we got new ones where they were like thinner yeah I remember the box ones those

those were slow man yeah very slow but it was fast like at the time yeah because you're comparing it to to what it was

but yeah so I did that for about seven years and then I left

in about 2008 I bought

my best friend

father owned a sporting goods store.

Okay.

And he wanted to retire.

So I bought into the sporting goods store, ran that for two years, and it was the most miserable.

Like, it was seven days a week, 18 hours a day.

Plus, it's during a recession.

08, you said?

Yes.

I got in at the worst place.

Yeah, the worst time.

But the interesting thing is, is that that business was

most of that money came in from uniforms.

So it doesn't matter what the economy is, parents are going to put their kids in sports.

I'm not going to take them out.

So sports are kind of recession-proof.

100%.

Right.

Now, why did you leave teaching to do that?

Money.

I wanted to make more money.

Okay, so teaching wasn't paying enough?

No, I think I started at $33,000.

That's it?

Yeah.

Dude, that's rock.

I think it was $33,000.

Teaching?

I thought they made more than that.

That's weird.

Well, I mean, like, now it's higher.

I think they started at like $55,000 but still.

That's

I don't know how they survive.

Nah, because that's

nah, you need to live with someone at that salary.

Yeah, even, I mean, think about even

husband and wife make, you know, teachers.

Was it 100 grand?

Yeah.

And your taxes are 20.

Yeah, in Jersey, right?

Jersey has high property tax, high state income tax.

Just high everything.

You're getting wrecked over there.

You're still there, though, right?

Yeah.

I'm still there.

Same town.

So after the sporting thing for two years, what was the next move?

So

my wife was pregnant.

So she got pregnant when I was running that business.

And I felt really stuck.

Like, I'm working so much.

Like, what am I going to do?

Like, she's going to be, her parents, she's Eastern European, so her parents don't live here.

And I was like, how am I going to, she's going to have the baby at home.

I'm I'm never going to be home.

This is going to be like a disaster.

So God's grace or, you know, whoever pulls a trigger up there,

I had a, an old colleague that walked into the store.

It was August of 2010, maybe or 11.

And

I heard his voice like, Bonnady, is she here?

And I was like, oh my God, like, I know that person, Mr.

Mr.

Moody.

And he

begged me to come back.

And so what they wanted me to do was, instead of teach, they wanted me to do student schedules, like build all the schedules with the software and all that stuff, teacher schedules.

They had, it was like August.

They had no student schedules because the scheduler quit.

Wow.

So, I convinced my buddy.

I said, listen,

buy it back.

Whatever I paid into it, just pay me back over the next three or four years.

And I was like convincing him.

I'm like, look, think about it.

The money we made, that's all going to go to you.

Like, I'm like convincing him.

He's like, you know what?

Sounds good.

Do it.

So I went back for until that was 2011 i think until 2018.

so now i was a vice principal at that time

so that's what i was doing so i went from teacher because i got my master's degree early on and then i became a vice president

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Vice principal, but I wasn't really doing vice principal stuff.

They just hired me as a vice principal.

Interesting.

Principals used to scare me, man.

Was it?

Principals used to scare me as a kid.

Of course.

I never knew what they did, but I would end up in the office and it was a dramatic time.

that's right

i think it's the it's the fact that it's the principal that leads to the parents right so it's like yeah the principal but you just know they're gonna call your parents and you're just like oh god yeah were you like that growing up too a little troublemaker

um no actually okay not really well i should say i just never got caught okay there we go yeah i just like i have an older sister she would get caught with everything yeah and i think i just like learned how like not to do things like do them but just don't do them like that see i didn't have a mentor in that regard i was an only child child yeah so i had to figure everything out through trial and error right it's pretty rough yeah but um so you went back there and then from there is that when you got into the sort of the online marketing space yeah so

funny enough um i was already trying in 2007 is when i really first trying tried to do this online thing and if you can imagine 2007 was like google ad um ad sense yeah so it was like ranking sites and spamming them and stuff like that so i did start to try to do that and that was one of the the trigger points for me to get back out of that sporting good business because I'm like, you know what?

I don't have time to do that.

So, I was like, if I can get out of that, you know, I'll have more time at home, but I also could put more time and effort into this digital, you know, laptop millionaire thing that I keep hearing everybody doing that I can't figure out how to do.

And so I started dabbling back into that.

And I, in 2014, is when I finally,

it was like an aha, I shouldn't say aha moment.

It it was like an ad that like slapped me in the face, basically saying, make money by helping local businesses make money.

And I'm like, well, that's a lot better than a push-button software for millions, right?

And it just made sense.

And that's when I started ranking rent sites and ranking sites for businesses, pool installation, and all that stuff.

Right.

So SEO.

SEO, basically.

Right.

So these business owners have no idea how to rank and you would step in, charge them a retainer and get them on higher pages of Google, right?

Yep.

That's exactly how it worked.

And does that model still work in 2024?

So the way we were doing that was we would create our own site

and rank that site in local area, right?

So it would be like pool installation, Wayne, New Jersey.

But we would own the site and then we would rent it to like a pool installation because we would be getting leads.

And then when the leads would come in, we would just forward it to them.

So they would rent it for $1,000 a month, $1,500 a month.

You can't really do that nowadays.

And that model kind of really wasn't, it didn't do too good even back in like 1516 because you would spend all this money and time building the site, ranking it, and you may not get any leads.

Like pool installation in Wayne, you get leads for maybe a month or two.

Just a summer.

Yeah.

And so like, you kind of really, you're guessing.

And so we transitioned from, I say we, because I have a partner, but he joined later on.

In 2016 is when I transitioned from rank and rent to, you know what, we're just going to go

pay-per-click advertising, SEO on the back end, but with their sites.

So I stopped the whole rank rent thing because it just was too, it became too difficult.

A lot of crackdowns on the Google Business profiles.

Right.

Couldn't get away with like easily ranking those anymore.

So we moved.

So PPC, that worked for a bit, and then it got expensive, right?

Yeah, it still works.

Oh, it still works?

Oh, yeah.

Pay-per-click ads is one of the fastest way to get leads for

because I hear guys like Gary Vee say it was super cheap.

Yeah.

And then for the wine business, he had it got too expensive or something.

But yeah, I mean, listen, you know, ads always going to go up, right?

It's just always going to be exponential.

It's never going to be, it's like it's guaranteed inflation.

Yeah.

Pretty much without yeah, Facebook ads used to be super cheap.

Oh, please.

Yeah.

Facebook was great.

I mean, they were all great.

But, you know, you just charge accordingly.

Yeah.

You know, you just, as your price goes up, you charge more.

And when was that year where you could be like, wow, I could leave my job right now?

Yeah.

So, and this goes kind of into the story of in my space, a lot of people, their goal is to get out of the job, right?

And I'm always harping because I have a coaching business, as you know, and I'm always harping to

treat your job as an asset because your job is enabling you to create the side hustle.

It's funding your side hustle and your life.

And so I held on to that job way longer than I needed to.

Like way longer.

I was probably making, I think it was 2000.

I was actually going through this today because I knew we were probably going to to get into this.

2016,

I was making about 80,000, 67,000 that year in my job.

Okay.

And then I made about 300,000 on the side.

Holy crap.

Yeah.

So 5x.

Yeah.

And that, I think it was at the end of 17.

I'm like, what am I doing?

Like, this is crazy.

And then January of 17,

we pulled now we started our coaching business.

We pulled in January of 18.

I think my business partner and I pulled in like $140,000 each.

Wow.

I'm like, now this is ridiculous.

I'm like, this has got to stop.

Yeah, and that's not profit or...

That was all profit.

Wow.

Yeah, because coaching is high margin on that.

It is high margin, you know.

If you do it right, you could also burn all your money through ads.

Yeah, the one good thing is the health benefits from having a job and stuff.

Even to this day, I'm like, man, you know, I probably could have stayed.

I'm paying $3,000 a month for health insurance.

Dude, it's so much as an entrepreneur.

And people don't talk about it.

They don't talk about it at all.

i pay three grand a month i'm about the same and it's like and you're you're a single guy right yeah and i'm not even using it yet hopefully i won't ever need to but it's still a lot wow that's crazy that's how much you you well me and my fiancé yeah okay yeah

it's so crazy yeah my guy in my office he uh

he's got four kids and he pays he ended up doing like a charity one like where he was like he went to like a catholic like they have like the old there's a lot of different avenues you can go but i like my father used to always harp on: don't worry about it if you never use it because you're not going to need it until you need it.

And so I just

pay.

Yeah.

You never know.

Yeah.

Because it's one of those things where if it does happen, you kind of screw it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Those hospital bills these days.

Now, your parents' support, were they supporting you in the entrepreneurship side, or did they want you to have a job?

Oh, my, my father's an old school Italian, came here with nothing.

Was a teacher.

His first salary was eight grand a year.

He was a football coach in high school head football coach and uh it was

you know school college job pension retirement be done yeah that was it but while he was preaching that he was also purchasing real estate on the side okay so in my mind i was like you know it was like if he was always doing something on the side i should be doing something on the side so i got into real estate i'm in real estate a lot more now are you interested in coming on the digital social hour podcast as a guest well click the application link below in the description of this video.

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But

my real estate originally was the, you know, was the side hustle, was digital.

But he, yeah, they, when I went to quit, my father was like

beside himself.

Huge argument.

You're not my son.

Like, jokingly, like, he's like, this can't be my son.

Dang.

Yeah, no, they still.

And my father, even to this day, he'll every so often, how's business?

Yeah.

You doing okay?

I'm like, I think I'm doing pretty good.

All right.

Just make sure you're saving your money.

Yeah.

Different generation, man.

Oh, yeah.

That was normal for his.

And now with your kids, I'm sure you're going to even promote entrepreneurship.

Oh, 100%.

Yeah.

I'm already thinking of how big of a waste college is going to be

because, you know, listen, unless you're, you're, you're going to,

you know, like a lawyer or a doctor, like, but just to go for like like even economics i mean i guess you could go work on wall street i mean i have friends that went and got great jobs and they they they're crushing it now but they put in 20 years before they you know 15 years yeah and i i i just say it like this if you're passionate about it do it but don't do it for the money 100 you're gonna be miserable 100 like i'd rather make 100k less a year but be happy oh and free yeah yeah the freedom is the best part yeah we have travel freedom we have time freedom we have location freedom right exactly those three freedoms we can travel whenever we want Yep.

We can work whenever we want.

And not many people have that.

It's the greatest thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

When I, when I resigned, um, that was actually the hardest part because I was so used to, you know, going to work.

And then it was like, I don't even know what to do.

You know, my wife was like, oh my God, you're home.

You want to go have lunch?

I'm like, yeah, let's go have lunch.

And all of a sudden, you have a couple martinis.

You're like, whew, it's like two o'clock.

And then the next day, it's like, you want to go to breakfast?

It was like, it was not easy.

It was one of the most difficult things was the transition

from job to entrepreneur.

Even if, even though you've been running the business for a while, it's the schedule change.

And you really need to create, I think I did a video about this.

You need to create your

business as a job as much as you don't want to admit that.

Because if you don't, it gets away from you.

And then you, all of a sudden, you don't even know what's going on in your business anymore because you haven't been there in weeks.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

You still got to be a little hands-on as entrepreneurship, no no matter how many employees you have.

100%.

Do you use any AI in your business yet?

So, yeah, so we're AI is,

you know, you see a lot of now, the YouTubers like AI this, AI that.

I mean, I don't, I'm not going to say that I don't think it's going to play a big part.

I don't think it's anywhere near what people are saying it's going to be, but I do use chat GPT all the time.

I use it at least once a week.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Matter of fact, I was at the Ritz Carlton in Aruba last week.

We had a little bit of an incident.

And I wanted to write a professional email to the manager.

And I wrote mine and I just copied and pasted it into ChatGPT.

And I was like, oh my,

that's unbelievable.

And made it better?

Oh, better.

Wow.

Now I want to know what happened.

What went down in Aruba?

Nothing that involved me.

I was there with a lot of friends.

And, you know, just...

little

drunk shenanigans yeah i was like they were really drunk like just weird people are weird

Like, people are just weird.

You could interpret that in so many ways.

I know.

Listen, they were playing loud music

and some guy, like, drunk guy came over.

And

somehow my name kept getting brought up, but I have no idea why.

That was what pissed me off about it.

Oh, they banned you?

They didn't ban me, but like, I almost felt embarrassed to give my name because there was an incident on one day.

And

the host from the casino was looking for me.

Oh.

And I'm like, yeah, you know, what happened?

Well, you tell me what happened on the beach.

I'm like, I wasn't even there.

I was on ATVs, and they're like, Oh, well, you know, it was your crew.

I go, My crew, like, I'm me.

Forget my crew.

I was like, They didn't know it has nothing to do with me.

So, I didn't really appreciate that.

So, I sent an email.

I feel that I don't like being dragged into situations I'm not part of.

I can only control myself.

That's it.

Yeah.

Do you travel a lot?

I do.

I mean, a lot.

I don't know.

It's a lot.

My, my wife likes to travel with our kids and stuff.

So, you know, the kids got school.

Yeah.

So every once in a while we'll take them out.

But usually when they have vacation, we'll go somewhere.

Yeah.

I find traveling is a great way to kind of reset things.

Oh, absolutely.

Mentally, at least.

Because

you get so locked in sometimes.

You do.

I get my best ideas when I'm not even thinking about what idea I need.

Same.

It just comes.

No, same.

Because I used to just work non-stop and never leave.

But once I left, you get good perspective.

You get great perspective.

And then even things that have nothing to do with business give you an idea for your business.

Exactly, yeah.

Why'd you decide to stay in jersey this whole time uh my parents my family's there okay so that's very important to you yeah i think that you know i put myself in my parents shoes and if my kids left it would crush me yeah even though i would encourage them to

you know it's that is a tough thing right yeah it's tough and my sister's there and she has three kids okay and my brother-in-law so we're all in the same town yeah i mean it would like my parents would be devastated actually my mom my mom's a free spirit okay she would just be like go fly like my father father, old school Italian.

Father, yeah.

Nucleus.

It's the family nucleus.

Right.

So he grew up in Italy?

Yeah, he came here when he was like 12 or 13.

Wow.

Have you been out there?

Yeah, we went there when I was younger.

I haven't been back since then.

Nice.

My wife is Russian, so

we would travel to Russia a lot.

Now you can't go there.

Did your parents support dating her?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Matter of fact, my father, this is a funny story.

My father said,

I think it was when I first started dating her.

He said,

very nice girl, beautiful girl.

You know, she's Russian, right?

Yeah.

You're not going to be able to afford her.

That was the first thing he said.

She likes nice things.

Yeah.

I go, so then I got to step my game up so I could afford her.

I have heard that about Russians, actually.

You're not the first.

Yeah.

Listen,

you're going to get one or two sides

because they all

grew up.

in the Soviet Union era, USSR, and you're going to get the side where they hold on to every penny, or you're going to get the side of where they had to hold on to every penny, so now they want to live freely.

It's one or the other.

So which side did you get?

You can take a guess.

But she, listen, my wife,

my wife, I never probably would have done a lot of this if it wasn't for her.

She popped.

That's cool.

Yeah, she used to always say to me, I respect that you're a teacher, but you have so much more to give.

And I used to say, like, really?

Like, like, what?

She's like, you don't even see it.

Like, go go find, like, start a business, do something because you're like a zombie going to teach these kids.

You come home at 3.30

all this time.

Yeah.

Do something.

I'm like, you know what?

Maybe I will.

That's awesome, man.

A good woman by your side can really elevate you, man.

No, no, it's going to either elevate you or it's going to tear you down.

There's no in-between.

Yeah.

There's no in-between.

Luckily, we got elevated.

I know certain individuals that, yeah, didn't go that well.

Oh, yeah.

They will, you know, they will pull you down or lift you up.

Yeah.

When you were teaching, were you really passionate about it?

Oh, you weren't at all?

No, I wasn't.

I was, you know, I taught in a very rough school.

Okay.

And I was, and I was very

young.

You know, can you imagine?

You have like these 18-year-old girls and I'm 22.

Oh, wow.

And it just became like very like.

They were hitting on you.

It was just not pleasant.

Yeah.

Not pleasant at all.

Being around.

Plus, probably a lot of the students didn't even care, to be honest.

They didn't care.

They didn't listen.

And I don't have that kind of personality to yell at people no yeah I can't

like teachers

yeah man I got some wild you know I failed marketing class in high school oh really and now I'm now the number one marketing podcast in the case because they don't because listen we were going to talk about education right you said everybody has a negative negative thing you know I think about education as

more about

like you're learning as a person to be organized and not necessarily it's not what you're learning it's that you're showing up to class like you're doing the things necessary to live life after this what you learn you're gonna learn in the field yeah no absolutely you're not learning anything that you're gonna no yeah even my son says that to me he's 12.

man my teachers hated me because they would always say like show your work right right and i just do stuff in my head and i get the right answer right oh the show your work thing is ridiculous piss me off so much and then when they tell you to show it you don't even know how right you're just doing it in your head.

Yeah.

And you get deducted points for that.

It's the worst.

Yeah, it's the worst.

Yeah.

But what are you working on now?

What's coming up next?

So now,

you know, running the coaching program, we've got about 7,200 students in there now.

Wow.

Yeah, it's, it's big.

And, you know, COVID was a

we didn't get into that story, but that was, you know, if you can imagine when local businesses are closed

and you're teaching people how to help local businesses that are not open.

Yeah.

It was one of the toughest times.

Yeah.

I mean, it was ridiculous.

Did you have to pivot the model a little bit?

I had to, not really, because there was really nothing to pivot to.

Like, this is just what we know.

It was more about just like, everybody, lower your costs and, you know, just start to explain to your clients that this is going to be over.

And everybody, the good thing is that after, now everybody's like, I need to be online.

I need to like do media.

I need to do video.

And so that it went from like, you know, top to bottom back to top.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it was just weathering the storm.

Unless you were in Florida where nothing shut down.

Unless you were in Florida.

But it was like the sentiment, right?

Around what the heck was going on.

So.

Yeah.

Well, where can people find out more about you, your coaching, and your process?

I mean, if you could just Google James Bonnet East, I got tons of stuff.

The coach program is Local Marketing Vault.

So you can go to localmarketingvault.com.

But my YouTube channel is probably the best way.

Yeah, your YouTube's great, man.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I got to be more consistent with it.

Yeah, but you get good views and you're teaching very valuable stuff.

Yeah.

So that's that's what I'm really working on now.

Awesome.

Well, thanks for coming on, James.

Appreciate it, man.

Yeah, thanks for watching, guys.

Thank you.

As always, and I'll see you tomorrow.