NFA Finance

I think people have the wrong picture in their head of what building something big is supposed to look like.

They picture the finished version.

The building.
The employees.
The cars.
The money.
The brand everybody recognizes.
The schedule that’s completely booked.
The businesses all running like machines.

That’s the part everybody sees.

Nobody sees what it looks like while you’re actually building the fucking thing.

Because most days, it doesn’t look like an empire at all.

It looks like chaos.

Today I was working on a Lexus, replacing an alternator and getting another job finished.

I’m returning a couple tools tomorrow because I don’t need them. That’s another eighty bucks back in my pocket.

I’m making YouTube Shorts.

Posting on TikTok.

Building X.

Writing this blog.

I’m working on getting myself to 225 pounds by Halloween.

I’m thinking about an old Cadillac Escalade EXT I want to buy.

I’m trying to get a 1970 Chevelle back together.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I’m learning about fucking coffee beans because apparently I’m building a coffee brand now too.

That sounds ridiculous when you put it all together.

And maybe from the outside it looks scattered.

But I don’t think it is.

Because there’s a common thread running through all of it.

Ownership.

I’m trying to own more of my life.

Own the businesses.

Own the audience.

Own the brand.

Own the products.

Own the cars.

Own the content.

Own my time.

And ultimately, own my future.

That’s what I’ve realized after being in business for more than 25 years.

Big things usually don’t start big.

They start with somebody doing a bunch of shit that doesn’t make sense to anybody else yet.

A video with 300 views.

A blog nobody knows about.

A bag of coffee beans sitting on the counter.

An old car sitting in the garage with the engine half apart.

A conversation that might turn into a business relationship.

A customer job that puts another few hundred dollars in the bank.

One more subscriber.

One more post.

One more connection.

One more idea.

One more fucking brick.

That’s how it gets built.

And some of those bricks aren’t going anywhere.

Some ideas are going to suck.

Some investments aren’t going to work.

Some videos aren’t going to get views.

Some businesses will never become what you thought they could become.

That’s part of it.

You don’t need every seed to grow.

You need a couple of them to turn into giant fucking trees.

That’s why I’m becoming increasingly obsessed with stacking daily wins.

Make some money.

Create something.

Learn something.

Fix something.

Meet somebody.

Improve something.

Put another piece on the board.

Then wake up tomorrow and do it again.

Because momentum creates opportunities that planning alone never will.

I’ve had plenty of periods in my life where things looked much more successful from the outside.

More employees.

More cars.

More money moving around.

More traditional signs of success.

But there’s something different about what I’m building now.

It’s mine.

The audience is mine.

The voice is mine.

The experience is mine.

The mistakes are mine.

The story is mine.

And I’m documenting the entire fucking thing while I’m doing it.

Maybe Modern Day Dealer becomes enormous.

Maybe the coffee becomes something.

Maybe the blog becomes something I never expected.

Maybe one video changes everything.

Maybe an opportunity shows up six months from now that I can’t even see today.

I don’t know.

That’s the fun part.

But I know one thing.

I’m going to keep putting pieces on the board.

Because I’ve learned that when you do that long enough, eventually people start calling it success.

They’ll look at the finished product and think there was some master plan.

There wasn’t.

There was a direction.

There was persistence.

There was a willingness to keep moving when things were messy.

And there were thousands of small decisions that eventually became something big.

So if you’re building something right now and it feels chaotic, don’t automatically assume you’re doing it wrong.

Sometimes that’s exactly what building looks like.

The empire doesn’t begin when everybody else can see it.

It begins during the years when you’re the only one who can.

— Nicholas Francis
Modern Day Dealer