647 – Guiding beginners to be a leader: Tom interviews Eddie Molina

Episode 647 – Eddie Molina
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody, is Tom here with episode 647 of Screw the Commute podcast? I'm here with Eddie Molina and he's got a couple cool jobs and an avocation or a hobby, I guess, of writing articles, some of some really big and important issues with some really big name people. So we'll talk about all of that when we bring him on. Hope you didn't miss Episode 646. That was Joshua or Josh Addison. He's a retired from the Marine Corps. He's got one kickass deer head up on his walls. No, it's an elk. That's a it was so big, I thought that's a big deer. It was an elk. And he he's helping a lot of of military folks with their marketing. Any time you want to reach a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash and then the episode number. Josh was 646 and Eddie was 647. That's what we're doing today. All right. Make sure that you pick up a copy of our automation e-book. This e-book has saved me. I'm not exaggerating here. 8 million keystrokes over the years has allowed me to save hundreds of hours. Just one of the tips in the book is just so powerful, and all of it is either cheap or free things that you can do to automate yourself so that you can spend more time with your customers and prospects and and doing the things you want rather than fighting with your computer. So pick up a copy at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. This isn't some three page checklist.

[00:01:57] This is like a 60 page e-book that lays out exactly how to do all this stuff and how I'm lightning fast by taking care of customers and stuff. Screwthecommute.com/automatefree. While you're at it. Pick up a copy of our podcast app. It's screwthecommute.com/app and you can put us on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road.

[00:02:20] All right. Let's get to the main event. We got Eddie Molina here. He's a former US Army officer with the New Jersey Army National Guard. That was ten years of doing that, and I had to ask him what his wife was. And I finally figured out if he was also a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. And he started a small business a couple of years ago, home inspection. I know a little bit about that, so we'll talk about that. And he's currently adding consulting and leadership development and sales training as another business, all this beautiful stuff so he can work out of his home. And he's the author of A Beginner's Guide to Leadership and the upcoming book. It may be out by the time you hear this nine pillars of sales supposed to be out this month. And he also volunteers to write articles covering veterans and first responder nonprofit organizations. So you can check all this out at EddieMolina.com. So Eddie, are you ready to screw? The commute?

[00:03:21] Yeah, sure. And brother.

[00:03:23] Well, good to meet you, man. We're we want to thank you for your service on behalf of everybody that listens to this. And myself were very pro-military and thank you for doing the things that take so we can do what what we do safe as possible. So thanks. Thank you very much. Now, so, Eddie, tell me about the beginning. Did you have jobs and stuff? How did you when did you get into the service?

[00:03:47] Oh, 1999. I was a couple of years out of high school and I couldn't figure out what to do, where I was going. I was going to college at the time, but I wasn't taking it serious. You know, I looked at as 13th grade, you know, third grade. So I didn't do well. And I was attracted to the National Guard. I was like, you know what? That's that's a good compromise. I'm so close to home, but I can still get to serve. And that's where it started. I did a few years of that before I got out and then I wanted to readjust, go back to school. So I re-enlisted a few years later and that's where it began.

[00:04:20] Wow. And you're from where?

[00:04:22] New Jersey. Right outside of the home of Rutgers University.

[00:04:25] Yeah. Yeah. What what forts are around there? Or did you is that where you served?

[00:04:30] Yeah, well, the National Guard, they don't really have forts, per se. I mean, there is Fort Dix, but that's the active duty component side of it. But for the National Guard, there's there's armories throughout the state and every state has them. Right. And that's where we that's where we report to.

[00:04:45] When did you decide that home inspections was a good business to get into?

[00:04:50] You know, I worked for the state government for years and I've been looking into getting into my own business for the last few years. And I did some research. I looked into franchises, I looked into buying a business starting from scratch. And the more homework I did, I kind of got drawn into home inspection because I. I like to get out there in the field. I like to work with my hands. I don't like to be stuck in an office, per se. And it's scalable. So that's what drew me to that.

[00:05:16] Did you do you have any construction experience or do it yourself stuff or how did you how do you know what to look for other than what you learn in the training school?

[00:05:27] Nothing. I had no experience. And that was one of my. That was one of my big concerns. Go in. You know, part of my my research and preparing for was to develop a pros and cons list. And one of the one of the major cons was I didn't have a background that many guys that enter this business do. But I'm still fortunate I did because New Jersey and many states have a very strict process to get a license. You just apply for it. It's not like a construction where you just sign pieces of paper and get issued a license. There's a very, very in-depth training process that includes in classroom and field training.

[00:06:04] Before you have to do ride alongs with people, right? Yeah.

[00:06:08] Yeah, correct.

[00:06:09] Yep. Yeah. So so one of my students does a home inspector here in in Virginia Beach area and Norfolk, Virginia Beach. A lot of military is probably the biggest collection of military in the world is right right here in Norfolk, Virginia. But yeah, but but they are so desperate for construction people around here. Right. They allow what? Well, I'm not sure how kosher it is, but he told me when he does a home inspection that they said the realtors are so desperate because they can't get anybody to fix anything and make the deal go through. He's allowed to as long as he discloses it. Fix up to $1,000 worth of stuff with no questions. Ask and up to a 5000 with a little bit of questions about it. It seems to me that's a conflict of interest, but they're so desperate around here to find workers to do work, they had to do it. And so that's that's what he's doing.

[00:07:09] Yeah. You know what? I think two full classroom days was discussing ethical issues.

[00:07:15] Right, exactly. Which go out the window when they're everybody's desperate.

[00:07:21] Yeah, not just that, but some people take advantage of it and abuse it. Yeah, I get I get that all the time. Do you know anybody get to fix it? And and to me, some projects are simple enough I could fix it, but, you know, I can't do that. And I wouldn't want to do that. I wouldn't want to risk my license. But some guys get carried away with it and some people, when they know it, repair isn't that critical. They'll still stress it. So they'll double down on that ethical problem.

[00:07:48] Yeah. And but around here, like I said, all the everybody's so desperate because I mean, it took me two years to get somebody to come out and give me an estimate on like a 20 foot walkway so you can't find people to work anymore. And so they know houses would be sold because nothing's perfect out there in the in the world when the home inspector checks it out. But they couldn't fix anything, so.

[00:08:16] Yeah. Yeah. That that that a lot of it, I believe it comes from covered it. Everything was frozen. And then now everything's opened back up.

[00:08:23] Oh yeah. They have all these trucks and people, you know, had to go do something else.

[00:08:27] Yeah, not just that, but a lot of homeowners, their projects had been delayed, so now they want to get it all done now. Mm hmm. Yeah. So there is that. And I'm trying to that drove up the cost of material. So we're putting off any major projects in our home. So at least next year, maybe the next year after that, until things start to settle down.

[00:08:45] Oh, my God. I had to go. My electrician was putting in a new service for for me and he said, Hey, I need a backing board here. There's some PVC backing stuff. Just go get a six or eight foot piece at Home Depot, $38 for an eight foot one by six. I was like, Are you kidding me? Jesus.

[00:09:06] Yeah. Everything is through the roof.

[00:09:08] Yeah. My dad built our home and all it. He was electrician by trade, but he built everything by hand. And it was a different, different world in those days, that's for sure. Now, tell us about your leadership business. So so you're an an officer. So that's a leadership position. Is that some of the things you're bringing to the corporate world?

[00:09:30] Slowly. Yes, that's something that I want to pursue more regularly. It basically came from my time in the service right when I got first prior to getting deployed, I went to officer school and then from there, as soon as I got sent to my unit that same month, our commander is like, All right, well, we're getting deployed, so don't get too comfortable. And I was like, No, I didn't. I didn't even know anybody. And so I was kind of like thrown into that position. And while we were deployed, I learned a lot of basic similar lessons that I saw in my past and in the future. And then I decided, you know what, I do have more knowledge, and a lot of guys in service have more knowledge than they realize that they can translate into the private sector. And with a writing background, I decided, you know what, let me just write down everything I know and at least document it somehow.

[00:10:17] Now, when you say writing background, are you trained at all or you just started writing articles? What how did that come about?

[00:10:24] When I went to when I came home from the deployment, I worked for the state and a local magazine was just looking for content. And I was like, you know what? I was taking classes at graduate school at the time. I had a ton of papers. I'm like, You can have them freely. And they started publishing them and it was something local that no one's ever heard of, but that's how it kind of got started, and then it turned into a hobby after that.

[00:10:46] How did you end up reaching some of these people that are pretty well known, like Eddie Gallagher and.

[00:10:53] You know what? I can't pinpoint how that started. I just started making connections on Facebook. You know this guy who knows this guy and that guy? That guy. And then one of the first persons I had reached out to were Steve Murphy and Javier Pena. I don't know if you know them from the Narco series.

[00:11:11] Oh, yeah.

[00:11:12] Yeah. They're the actual DEA agents at that that series was based off of. So I saw that we had similar connections on Facebook. So I reached out to them. I'm like, Hey, you know, you guys want to talk and I can write an article about you guys. And they were like, Sure. And I'm like, Wow, that was it. Those sounds easy.

[00:11:28] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:11:30] I started to recognize that you reach out to anybody, not anybody. But there was a good feedback rate. Like I would ask if they wanted to chat and I could write an article. And most of the time, yeah, let's do it.

[00:11:41] Yeah, that's that's a good lesson for everybody. I mean, especially during the pandemic, all these big shots were sitting home like everybody else, and they still wanted publicity and their name out there. So it was a good time. But now having a podcast or having being able to write articles and get them placed allows you to, you know, get in touch with people that you might not be able to get in touch with otherwise.

[00:12:05] Yeah, and another unique angle I had, in addition to the strength, the perfect timing was that I wrote articles and there's a lot of guys that do podcasts and with the social media algorithms, everybody's kind of in the same community. So then we started sharing contacts like, Hey, I saw that you interviewed so-and-so and you might have passed on his information. And then we kind of shared information like that. But I never competed with anyone because I was writing, right? And everybody else did. Everyone else did the interviews.

[00:12:33] Now, have you thought about doing a podcast?

[00:12:37] Yes. There's two parts. That's my son opening the door. And I told him not to tell him.

[00:12:42] I say hi. I'll tell him how great his dad is. And that and he should revere you.

[00:12:50] I tell him that every day. I'm still waiting for I'm still waiting for them to agree. But there's two parts to that question. The first one is I did do podcast with my friends way back in 2010 for about a year and a half. And this was way before it blew up to what it is now.

[00:13:09] Exactly.

[00:13:10] And we were just a bunch of guys just kind of goofing off. We didn't really take it serious, but we did that for about a year and a half. So we kind of like lost steam and gave up on it. And then I thought about doing it again with the interviews, but I'm like, I'm not good at interviewing in that sense. And I wasn't comfortable. I was like, My strength is writing. I want to stick to that.

[00:13:31] Okay. Well, that's that's fair enough. It's just, you know, I pooh poohed them back when you were doing it. No, I didn't want anything to do with it because it was it was mostly people just wanted to hear themselves talk and there was no money in it. But but when I when I started this one, the what episode 647, about four years ago, that's when new cars were able to play podcasts from their dashboard. And so for free. So that podcast have exceeded XM radio, which you have to pay for satellite radio. And then the other thing, Eddie, was all these in-home devices like Amazon's Echo and Google assistant, there's a billion of those out there in the world now. And so people can just say, Hey, play Screw the Commute podcast that starts playing in their house. So that's when I said, Hey, there's and people were starting to make money. So that's when I got into it. But yeah, maybe you'll change your mind one of these days.

[00:14:31] Maybe. And I will say that back in 2010 11, it was a project for anybody to listen to us. They had to go online on desktop or if they're lucky enough to have a laptop and the phones weren't really compliant or compatible then. But the downside is to how easy it is now is that you have a ton of really not good ones out there.

[00:14:52] Oh yeah. Everybody in their brother is doing it. Yeah, but it's just like anything though is persistence and consistency. I think the average podcast lasts eight episodes, so they come and go and disappear. But like anything, you're never going to get good at it. Hey, somebody's killing kids in your house, too, I think. Yeah.

[00:15:11] So far I thought they were far enough, but apparently not. It's probably the same one that walked by because he has a hard time listening.

[00:15:16] How old is he?

[00:15:18] Seven years old.

[00:15:19] Oh, seven years old. He should have a job by now. Come on.

[00:15:22] Yeah, he's one of those hyperactive like. I bet if we took him to the doctor, they would say A.D.D..

[00:15:28] Yeah.

[00:15:29] Oh, and. But we refused to go that route. Put him on. Yeah. Hey, William, come here. I hope that didn't come to light on your end.

[00:15:41] No. My ears are just bleeding. But that's all right.

[00:15:45] William. Well, I told you.

[00:15:47] He can't hear me.

[00:15:48] Hold on one second. Come here. Let me know if you can hear this.

[00:15:52] William.

[00:15:54] Can you hear that, William? He says yes.

[00:15:56] Hello, William. How are you?

[00:15:59] Good.

[00:16:00] So, you know, your dad is a superstar.

[00:16:02] He laughed at that. I don't know how to take that.

[00:16:04] You always have to. When he comes in, you have to bow down.

[00:16:10] You read it that way. Do you agree? No. No. He said no. Which is. Which is about right now. Be quiet. Okay. He's a he's he's our. He keeps us busy. That's all I can say.

[00:16:24] You got another one? I thought I heard a girl.

[00:16:28] No, I have another boy. He's somewhere far.

[00:16:30] Away. Somebody was screaming. I don't know.

[00:16:31] Who knows?

[00:16:34] Do you have any pets?

[00:16:37] No. We had a cat years ago and got away from that. But we do want to get a dog and dogs are super friendly.

[00:16:42] There's so many dogs that need good daddies.

[00:16:45] And.

[00:16:45] Yeah, brothers and sisters, I have a protection dog company on the side and I got two German shepherds sitting and looking at me. And then I got a rescue husky in there that's she's funny as hell. She, she howls like, oh, just cracks me up because the German shepherds are looking like, who in the heck is that? No, that's not.

[00:17:06] That's not. Yeah, and, and that's that. We're currently at an impasse because my wife grew up with German shepherds. Oh, and, and she has her heart set on it, which I'm okay with. But we don't have a fence and we need.

[00:17:19] A fence for that kind of dog. Should have a fence and and a big vacuum cleaner and a brush and spend most of your day picking up dog hair.

[00:17:28] So absolutely. And it's not cheap material. Again, same problem with material because I can do the fence myself, but it's a lot a lot of real estate to cover.

[00:17:38] And I bought just some stuff to build a little utility trailer. I was making a wooden frame for it and I could not believe the cost. I mean, even a leg bolt, there was $0.76 for a bolt or something and and it all adds up. And my dad would be rolling in his grave. My dad was in the cavalry in the early 1900s. He had a horse, everything, and he had a real 1911, you know, the 19 1140 fives. He's I've got a picture of him. And it was one of the original 1911 coffee. It was back in the early in the teens, 19 something. But so we've got to take a responsive break. And when we come back, we're going to ask Eddie, what's a typical day look like for him? And then how we can read some of his stuff and the leadership books will find out where he can find those things. So, folks, about 25 years ago, I started teaching Internet stuff. I've been selling on the Internet since it started in 1994. So but 28 and one half years. And then there was so much rip off stuff going on, I thought, you know, I need to do something to set myself apart. So I started the only licensed, dedicated internet and digital marketing school in the country, licensed to operate by the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia, the only one. It's a distance learning school, so you don't have to be in Virginia. And we give a 50% scholarship to law enforcement, military, first responders and nurses and their their immediate families.

[00:19:18] So we are totally pro taking care of people that take care of us. It's something where you can get a really in-demand career is considered vocational actually, like welding or plumbing or anything else. But you don't have to go out and dig ditches to to sell online and you can get an in-demand skill in about 6 to 6 months if you really dig in and take advantage of all the electives six months to a year. But we've had people making 6000 a month before they even graduated. So it's a really powerful thing that every business on Earth needs this service. So not only can you work for somebody else, you can work for yourself, you can do it all remotely. And especially we have a military spouse scholarship program with the Department of Defense. They want portable skills so that military spouses don't have to get dumped on everywhere they go because they people know you're going to leave. So it's a beautiful thing. So if you like to discuss it, check out our website. It'll be in the show notes at IMTCVA.org/military and we'd love to talk to you about it. There's never any high pressure here. We're just totally want you to be successful.

[00:20:37] All right. Let's get back to the main event. Eddie Molina is here. He's got a couple of businesses and he's got some books out and he's a fiend of a writer. He writes all kinds of stuff about I think it's almost all veteran stuff, right?

[00:20:52] I would say, yeah, a majority of it is. I also write for law enforcement today.

[00:20:56] Right? Right. That's right. I'm so I read a lot of them.

[00:20:59] Yeah. And I've gotten more into that lately and that's more like news coverage. So that's kind of how what occupies my day. So with the inspections, it's unpredictable. I don't have them all day, every day. There are days where I don't have much going on. So I write for law enforcement today to fill in the gaps, and that's what keeps me occupied. But my passion is the veteran stories and getting the good word out there for nonprofits.

[00:21:23] Yeah. Yeah, it's it's a great a great thing that you're doing. And with speaking the law enforcement thing, I read one of your law enforcement articles. That's another thing that irks me is that everybody yap, yap, yap and against the police. Yeah, I read your article about split second decisions, and I've had enormous amounts of gun training, including police training with simulation, video simulation where they, you know, they a computer can control who's going to get you and everything. And and if some of these people flapping their mouths would go in and and see the kind of decisions that have to be made on a dime, maybe they would just shut up a little bit and appreciate the the people that are out there risking their lives for so so I'm glad you're bringing that to light. So a typical day, though. I mean, do you get up early? What do you eat? You meditate. You know, you've got kids. What's the day, the whole day look like?

[00:22:20] Well, since we're in the summer now, I spend the first few hours of the day with the kids before I take them. So any time I have appointments, anything I can push off, I wait till the afternoon. Right. This way I don't burden my mother with these two wild cats bringing them to their house. So, yeah, I spend the first few hours of the day with them and then I drop them off and then I get started. And once I actually knocked out that sales book and probably about a month and a half. Wow. Yeah. And I was I was really excited because I've always been a sales nerd and I've always been fascinated by the art of sales. And that's what it is. It's an art form. And I was like, You know what? That's kind of kind of like leadership. I'm like, You know what? I have a background in it. Might as well just write about it. And that's where it got me. And that for the last pretty much all summer, I would just get up and just start writing. And I was looking forward to the next time I get to write about it again because that's how geeky I was about the sales industry.

[00:23:15] Now, you you're interested in in speaking and consulting at all.

[00:23:20] Yes. That's something that I want to work in. Yeah. I just have to I have to balance that with the home inspection. So it's right now, it's a little bit of a balancing act, but I'm getting I'm getting it all done.

[00:23:30] No, I totally get it. Speaking can be extremely lucrative, you know, way more than a home inspection. I mean, I never break. I've I have the, I don't know, kind of distinction of having trained more professional speakers than anybody living. And I never break anybody in less than 5500 bucks for a speech. And if you have any kind of creds, you can make 25,500 or more for speeches, and then that can turn into consulting, which can be 20,000 or more for longer contracts. So so it's it can and it definitely kicks catalyst catalyzes your book sales and everything else. It's just all stuff that I've been living most, most of my adult career. So, so so the books when's the when do you think the. I know I don't know when they'll hear this, but it might be out by then. But where would they find your new book?

[00:24:26] I'm shooting for October 1st.

[00:24:28] Yeah, this will.

[00:24:29] Definitely.

[00:24:30] Be out by then and.

[00:24:32] I'm shooting for that. It's going to be available on Amazon. I have to break I have to figure out how to break into Barnes and Noble, which is not hard. It's it's a similar process. And then I'm going to sell them directly off my website. So if people want to buy them directly from me, it's, it's a similar process. They can just go off my website and do that as well.

[00:24:50] And that's EddieMolina.com. And that'll be in the show notes for everybody. Am I pronouncing it right?

[00:25:01] Molina Yeah, yeah.

[00:25:03] Okay, great. So yeah, I can't wait for that to come out. The Nine Pillars of Sales is the title by Eddie Molina, and there's the other book still available, A Beginner's Guide to Leadership.

[00:25:14] Yeah, that's still available on Amazon. That got some pretty good reviews. It's it's simplistic and it's not very long. It's basically it's exactly what it says. It's a beginner's guide. So if anybody who's especially small business owners or frontline leaders that really have no experience being in charge of people, it's the book for them.

[00:25:35] Beautiful. Yeah. I imagine if you're in the F thing. Let's see. What is that again? Operation Iraqi Freedom, right? Is that right? Yes. And the o f what? That was Operation. What's that.

[00:25:51] And during freedom that's basically.

[00:25:53] Afghanistan and dirt. Yeah. Enduring Freedom. I don't imagine you can take a three weeks to explain a concept when Afghans are shooting that shit. I don't imagine.

[00:26:03] So.

[00:26:03] Yeah. So you got to speed it up and and get the ideas across in a hurry.

[00:26:09] So yeah, absolutely. And that was one of the hard lessons where we call it drinking water through a fire hose and you're just getting flooded with all this information and learning. And then as I kind of settled in, because everyone settles in after a while, once you kind of get a routine, I would see over the next months and years, I would see new lieutenants come up the chain and I would see them go through this same cycle, the same insecurity, the same doubts, and doing the same things that I did. So I'm like, I took it for granted how much I knew because I've already been there and I kind of moved on. But then I'm like, You know what? I can almost predict exactly what you're going to do. What are you going to say and why are you going to say it? And that's that's what stemmed the book down the road.

[00:26:52] Got it. Got it. Oh, that'll help. Help them move up the ranks faster. And one of the previous episodes, they were talking about flags. Does that ring a bell with you?

[00:27:05] Yeah. I will have to curse on this.

[00:27:07] Oh, yeah, well, I'm just the frickin new guy. So that's what you're talking.

[00:27:12] About, basically. Yep. The new guys?

[00:27:15] Yeah. They kept I heard I was listening to some of the guys on other podcasts talking about getting ready for this month, and they kept saying F and G. And I finally emailed him asking, What the heck is that? And he don't know. So yeah, you don't want to be the new guy too long, right?

[00:27:31] Yeah. Not only that, but officers have it worse because when you're an officer, you're we we call them butter bars. So now you have all this responsibility and authority over everybody with zero experience, right? So coming out of the gate, no one respects you. Like, first of all, you're 20 whatever, years old, you're in charge of all these guys that have years and years of experience, you know, a lot more than you. So you have to earn that respect. Quick Yeah, that was part of the reason for the book. I'm like, you know, you're going to be judged right away, so you might as well try to get the basic stuff knocked out as soon as possible.

[00:28:04] Well, that's yeah, you did a great service probably for a lot of people because I'm sure they take a lot of guff just being in that position.

[00:28:12] So stressful.

[00:28:14] So thanks so much for coming on, Eddie. We're we again on behalf of audience, our audience and myself, we really appreciate everything you've done for us and that's why we honor you and all all veterans during this month.

[00:28:27] Thank you for having me on, Tom. This is a great time. I know I could talk all day about leadership and sales and pretty much anything, but I really appreciate the opportunity.

[00:28:35] Yeah, we're looking forward to the new book and the the other books already ready to go so well. Thanks so much, folks. We're in the middle of that preneur month here on the podcast. Tell all your friends about it and support our veterans. They've sacrificed them. They and their families have sacrificed enormous amounts for us. And it's time. We appreciate it. All right. We'll catch everybody on the next episode. See you later.