Today we’d like to introduce you to Rashad Gaines.
Rashad, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Personally, I would like to think that I started my entrepreneurship at an early age in the 3rd grade when I started my first bank account off of the money I made from selling my old school clothes to buy new ones, lol. In all honesty, all of my experiences from that time and wanting to be independent and control my own money and way of life led up to the person that you see today.
Being raised up in a small town like Sylvania (Screven County), you see a lot of people who have the work ethic and talent to be successful in life but the lack of opportunities stifle the options to do more than what you were taught because that is all you know. I can truly say that I was blessed with the mindset early on in life to tell myself that there has to be more out there for me; I remember quitting my first job at Subway when I was 15 and going to work next door at Pizza Hut because they had more freedom because it takes longer to make a pizza than a sub and offered to pay me .25cent more, some things just make sense lol.
Fast forward to after college graduation at Georgia Southern University in Fall 2014, I was working two jobs averaging about 19 hours a day (5 am -5 pm at a warehouse and 5:30 pm to 12 am as a kitchen manager), I did that for five months before I got my first real job in corporate America working at Verizon Wireless, much love and respect goes to Cornelius Miller (RIP) because he was the one who actually hired me after trying to get on with the company for several years. I was successful with the company and moved up through ranks with sales awards and management titles but the last two years of my 5-year career is where my mind shifted back into entrepreneur mode. As you start to see close friends and coworkers lose their job simply because the position is no longer needed or experience yourself living paycheck to paycheck working for a Fortune 500 company at some point in time, you have to tell yourself “there has to be more out here for me.”
I quickly shifted my focus and my circle of people towards those that were in alignment with becoming their own boss, funny thing is that they were the same people that worked in corporate America with me so we knew the success and struggle of having a job the only question was what do I have to lose with working for myself? In 2017, I put a plan together that would take a lot of discipline and sacrifice to prepare myself for where I am today because nothing happens overnight. When I got into the financial services industry, that’s where it clicked for me that I was never “good at sales and management” I was great at listening to people and helping them to solve a problem that they didn’t realize they had until someone brought it to the light. When I got my insurance license in 2018 and partnered up with Equis Financial to help service multiple clients, I knew that this was where I was supposed to be all along, I have the opportunity to help someone secure their families’ financial future from a client perspective or as a business partner I can put them in a position to never have to work for anyone ever again. I feel like my sole purpose is to educate people on what else is out there besides typically what you’ve seen or been taught all of your life because I will be the first to tell you that you don’t have to do what I do, you just need to do something different because you are clearly unhappy with what you are currently doing at this point in your life. I used to tell my friends all the time, “you don’t hate your current situation enough to change it” but I didn’t start taking my own advice until two years ago. Having a job doesn’t make you a slave, but being solely dependent on it does, once I grasped that concept, my business started growing and I was no longer mentally nor financially chained to my job anymore, it wasn’t easy but it was all worth it to get here.
One of the scariest things I ever did was fire my boss in May of this year, but it wasn’t scary in a bad way, it was more so the excitement behind not knowing what was next for me but also knowing that there was more out there for me and I was going to get it by any means necessary. I made the decision to bet all my money on the man in the mirror because I knew that regardless of whatever happens, I would never quit on myself.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Smooth road?! Lol, definitely not. The biggest struggle that you are going to face is battling your mindset because life is going to test you from all directions. Every day is not going to be a good day, every week is going to be tougher than the last. I look at it like this, you can’t cut down a tree in one swing, it takes multiple chops and each consistent chop is more important than the next. Break your life down into 24 hours and focus on making each 24 better than the last. Once you string together enough productive days by YOUR measure, you will start to feel more accomplished. We all have the same 24 hours, the only between me and you is what I choose to do with mine.
Protecting your time and energy is critical as an entrepreneur, family, friends, and overall, people who don’t understand your vision will distract you from your goal, you have to be willing to be selfish with your time and spend it either by yourself focusing on your goals or with people you can mutually gain knowledge and positivity from in order to hold each other accountable to the end goal. The law of attraction and the sum of 5 is real! If you hang around five people that would much rather have a job, hang out at the club, or do anything other than progress in life, then it is inevitable that your outcome would be any different. So, association is key and influential in your future success if you want to live a different lifestyle, get around those who are doing the things that you want to do and living the life that you want to live, not to be a leech but to learn what you need to do.
If you study successful people (Eric Thomas, Grant Cardone, Inky Johnson, even Future and many others from all industries), you will see that they all have one thing in common, they didn’t quit. Regardless of the struggles and hardships, wins or losses, they remained consistent throughout and kept going. You don’t have to be the best in your industry, you just have to be phenomenal at not quitting.
All Gaines No Losses – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
We partner with Equis Financial to operate a distribution channel for top-rated insurance companies. It is a lead generated business with the potential to be paid daily, definitely a great part-time opportunity and even better full-time career game-changer. I specialize in all types of life insurance and retirements in the form of indexed universal life policies and annuities. I am an independent contractor which gives me the opportunity to create my own schedule and the freedom to travel and work in any state that I decide and make as much money as my work ethic will allow me to make.
What I love about this business is that it will give you everything that you desire as long as you are willing to go out and work for it, what I do is not easy but it is simple as long as you consistently pour into your business which is yourself and put the work in. What I feel that I am most proud of and also what separates us from any competitor out there is the opportunity to gain equity in a multi-million dollar business that is rapidly growing in order to set yourself up for retirement and gain time as well as money back into your life. The best part about it is that YOU are 100% in control of everything that you just read, you literally get back whatever you put into the business, so the only person you can blame if you fail is yourself.
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
Personally, I use to define success by the amount of money I was going to have, cars, houses, jewelry and every other superficial thing you can think of. I no longer have a monetary value placed on my success anymore. I measure my success based off of the people whose lives have changed for the better because of my help. Not even for the credit or clout because nothing I do is for recognition. I believe that you can get everything in life that you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want. Seeing other’s happiness and success develop after a conversation has always been a small sense of enjoyment for me because something that I said or did had a bigger impact on them. Once you find something that is bigger than you that will change the lives of others, you won’t look at success from a selfish perspective anymore.
Contact Info:
- Website: Rjgaines.com
- Phone: 4046061966
- Email: Rashadjgaines@gmail.com
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