Founder Todd Johnson on exits, mistakes to avoid, and building “accountability-as-a-service.”
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Show Notes:
On Mission Matters, Adam Torres interviews Todd Johnson, Founder of TJ Millionaire Mentor, about scaling companies, why speed wins, and his new accountability-as-a-service platform designed to help people execute their goals consistently.
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Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. Alright, so today I’m in Beverly Hills, California. Man, I didn’t make last month, but this month I am back.
David Rivero’s Monetize Talks. I think this is the 21st 22nd edition already. I cannot believe this is one of my favorite events. I do not miss it every month. It was sold out actually this month he told me. So if you haven’t been to one of these monetized talks.com, my next guest is one of the speakers.
TJ Man. Tj, welcome to the show. What’s up, brother? All right, so what, what, what are you gonna hit us with today in the speaking? Come on. I don’t know, man. You’re gonna have to wait and see. I don’t know. I, you know, obviously I’m gonna talk about what I think is important in business. Yeah, I think, some people get it wrong.
And I want to talk about some of the things that young entrepreneurs should think about. Yeah. When they’re starting a business. Some of the mistakes I made when I started my business and what I think is the most important for an entrepreneur today in business, and that’s of course speed.
Yeah. How, how’d you originally get introduced to David the event? Give us some of the backstory. I met David through a mutual friend. Yeah. And you know, is this your first monetized talks by this? This is my first. Oh, you’re in Per tree and you’re a speaker. Come on. That’s awesome. Yeah, and I live just right down the road.
Mm-hmm. So it’s funny, I go by this place all the time. Oh, that’s amazing. So Millionaire Mentor, tell, tell me a little bit more about that and what you do. Yeah. So, well, what I do is build businesses. Mm-hmm. Right? Primarily, so I built a, a tech company and sold it. Had a really good exit. I built a, construction company in Washington DC sold it. Mm-hmm. We built a supplement company. We’ve had over 700,000 unique customers. Wow. That’s still going. And we built a company with a lot of that, sold a lot of coaching and digital products. Mm-hmm. But my focus has always been building businesses.
Mm. And as such, I’ve had to help people. That’s worked for me. Become entrepreneurs. Yeah. Right. Or partner with folks that has needed help. So one of the biggest things that I’ve done is from a vision strategy. But building people and mentoring people to grow my businesses. So that’s been one of my keys to, to growing businesses.
Were you, were you always an entrepreneur? Like even when you were younger, were you, is this your thing? Like, yeah, I came out. What was the first, what’s the first thing you remember selling? Yeah. Yeah. Cutting grass. Cutting grass. There we go. Okay. Newspapers, you know you know, that type of thing. Yeah.
Yeah. You know, I grew up in South Carolina, so we Oh wow. Pick fruit and sell that, you know? You know, what keeps you motivated? Like what keeps you in the game and hustling still, even after you’ve had exits, you’ve done things, you’re helping others, you’re paying it forward. You’re coming here to speak.
You don’t have to. What keeps you motivated? What keeps you going? Yeah. Chasing my potential man. I think that’s always been, is one of those things, like you’re competing with yourself. Yeah. You know? I feel that. And the best version of yourself. Is pretty damn good, so mm-hmm. Trying to beat that guy.
Mm-hmm. You know, and so it’s really like chasing my potential, I think. And, and then additionally I think there’s a much bigger impact mm-hmm. That I can make socially. Yeah. So I’m gonna do that as well. How do you find your business ideas? I know there’s no lack of ideas out there, lack of things. Like how did these, how do you find.
That, that what’s next for you? Because I’m sure you’re approached often. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I am, I’m approached a lot. I’m aware about different ideas, investing this, they’re gonna approach you like 10 times today. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. At this one event. And that’s good because I, I, I like looking at opportunities, right?
Mm-hmm. So opportunities you know, looking at them and vetting them mm-hmm. One makes you better as a business person. Mm-hmm. Right? But. You know, I think the opportunity that I’m working on now yeah. That I’m most excited about is something that came out of things that we’ve already been doing for a long time.
It’s really around human or personal development. Mm-hmm. So what I’m building is something called accountability as a service. Oh, interesting. Yeah, it is. Yeah. And we’re trying to get to MVP by the end of this week, so we got a couple Hold on. But you know what the acronym is though. Come on, man.
Oh, oh. Minimal. I had to do it. It’s, it’s, we’re trying to get to our first product. Yeah, right. By the end of this week. Mm-hmm. And being testing, man, starting next week. How’d you, how’d you come up with this idea? Like, where’d that come from? So, we’ve been, so one of the big things that happens in, in, in our spaces.
In In the supplement space, in the fitness space, in the business space. And when I say our space, I’m not the fitness guy. Yeah, yeah. You know, I’m not the weight loss guy though. I’ve had you look fit man. Whatcha you talking about? Yeah, yeah. I’m not the Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hear you. But I’m not the face of the brand at all.
I’m just the business guy and the strategy. I’m the CEO of the brand. Yeah. But I’m not gonna face at all of the brand. Yeah. In fact, most people don’t even know I have a supplement brand. Interesting supplement business. Yeah. And I never promoted me personally. Real business person. Yeah. Yeah. I get it. Yeah.
And you’re not saying that, I’m saying that, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. That’s, that’s me projecting that, that, go ahead. I’m not gonna put, yeah. Because it doesn’t mean that the other guys are I understand. Yeah, I know. I mean it like that for many people in my space, it’s okay, but that’s me talking. Not you.
Go ahead, please. So, so in what we do in terms of personal development, coaching Yeah. You know, in, in whatever form, whether that’s mm-hmm. Business, whether that’s weight loss, whether that’s fitness, whatever it is. One of the biggest problems that people have is they know what to do. They know how to do it.
There’s all types of people giving ’em the how and the what. They don’t have enough accountability. Mm. So they fail there. If I had someone to tap me on the shoulder Yeah. And pull me along. And so we’ve built technology that solves that problem. Mm. And so I’m excited about that particular technology.
Mm-hmm. And so that’s how, so it was very organic. Yeah. And how we came up with it, we were seeing people fail, not having the kind of success that we wanted them to have, not kind of not having the kind of success that they wanted to have. Mm-hmm. Oftentimes, you know, I think there’s three types of people in the world, right?
Yeah. There’s people that won’t make a big promise to themselves. Mm-hmm. Those aren’t my people. Hmm. And then there’s the people that will make a big promise to themselves. Yeah. They struggle to get there. Mm-hmm. To execute and know what to do. And they’re trying. And then there’s other people that make big promises to themselves and they execute flawlessly.
They kill it. Yeah. They’re fearless. They keep that. Yeah. I get it. And we end up reading about those guys. Seeing those guys on tv, right? That’s the ones, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but the guys that pull my heartstrings are the guys that make big promises to themselves, but they struggle to, to execute and get it done and finish and know exactly what to do.
Those are people that need mentors. They need coaches. Mm-hmm. They need business people that can help them kind of accelerate what they’re doing. Yeah. So those people pull my heartstrings and, but I know most people Yeah. Buy books and that’s the majority. I mean, when you’re talking about the people that just get it right the first time for everybody at home, I am not one of those people that get it right the first time.
That ain’t me neither. Neither is that me. Right. It’s that. Me either. But the, the issue is a lot of people buy books. But most books aren’t read. Mm-hmm. Right. So people need a push. People need coaching, people need motivation, people need inspiration. Mm-hmm. Nothing happens without first someone being inspired.
So I think once they’re inspired, how do you keep them on track? Mm-hmm. To gotta keep moving towards that big promise to themselves. So, so we built technology. I’m really excited about it, knowing I’m being a little bit ambiguous about it. No. Who’s that? Who’s, who’s the, who’s the target market for this one?
The target market? In this particular case? Yeah. In this case. Well. Is it entrepreneurs? Is it health, fitness? Like what is for our MVP? It’s gonna be for JD Smith’s brand of customers. That’s who the MVP is for. That’s awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Again, it’s a big group of, of course that’s huge, but it’s women.
30 and over that are on a fitness, on a weight loss journey. Yeah. Not necessarily a fitness unit. Yeah. In our case. That’s awesome. Yeah. Well, tj, man, I, I can talk to you some more, but I know they’re gonna be calling you up on that stage soon, so I’m gonna let you go, but I want you, last thing I want you to do, look into the camera.
Yeah. How do people follow up? How do they connect? How do they follow you? TJ Millionaire Mentor everywhere. Right. Send me an email at tj. At in hop proceed.com. Mm-hmm. If you to you know, collaborate somehow. Yeah. But TJ Miller, a mentor everywhere else. Awesome. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll definitely put some links in the show notes, so you can just click on the links and head right on over.
And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet. Hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show. Each and every day I’m bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well.
So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And TJ ma’am, look forward to seeing you speak, man. Thank you, brother.
