"Self-education is everything in entrepreneurship."
Meet Paul Alex, founder of ATMTogether. He started his initial interest in Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) while he was working in law enforcement as a narcotics detective. After being involved in hundreds of cases involving murderers, gang members, narcotic traffickers and some very dangerous criminals, he realized that he was working more than 60-100 hours weekly in law enforcement.
Paul was very passionate about the career, but I had a bigger “why” to start looking into side hustles to build wealth or passive income. His “why” was his family.
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Table of Contents
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
Paul Alex: My name is Paul Alex Espinoza. I started my initial interest in Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) while I was working in law enforcement as a narcotics detective. After being involved in hundreds of cases involving murderers, gang members, narcotic traffickers and some very dangerous criminals, I realized that I was working more than 60-100 hours weekly in law enforcement. I was very passionate about the career, but I had a bigger “why” to start looking into side hustles to build wealth or passive income. My “why” was my family.
I launched my ATM business and within 18 months, I was able to generate a 5 figure income monthly on top of my salary while I was working in law enforcement. I eventually decided to leave my 7 year career in law enforcement and launch an online community to help other entrepreneurs build another source of passive income through the ATM Industry. I created the “ATM Business for Beginners” Facebook Group, which currently has over 41,000 members.
As the Facebook group was growing in the past 18 months, I learned that entrepreneurs were having issues with finding locations to place their ATMs at. In January 2021, I created ATMTogether.com, which helps entrepreneurs with setting up their own ATM business in their own city.
Our automation services include education, the actual ATM, technical training and we even provide the actual location for the client. It’s a done with you concept, which caught the attention of thousands of entrepreneurs throughout the United States.
Since January 2021, we currently have over 1,300 clients nationwide. ATMTogether.com grew from a 1 person team to over 16 employees as well!
Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? Did you ever consider giving up?
Paul Alex: When I installed my first 6 ATMs within 2 weeks of starting in the ATM Industry. 3 out of 6 ATMS were a bust! I barely made $50 dollars from 3 ATMs total. I felt like a HUGE failure. I actually wanted to quit and start a new business. Being that this was not the first time I have experienced failing in business, I did a few things to overcome this.
Analyze what went wrong.
Being that I had over a decade in sales experience and I was at the time a detective in law enforcement, I believed that starting the ATM business was not going to be a problem whatsoever. I actually thought it was going to be quite simple. I realized that I did not know what I was really doing and I needed to learn how to analyze locations to place my ATMs.
Found a Mentor.
What you don’t know is what you don’t know. Self-education is everything in entrepreneurship. I initially had a chip on my shoulder and thought my own experience would be more than enough to have a successful ATM business, which I had no prior experience in before. I realized that I needed to learn what works in this specific industry before I invested any more funds towards trying to scale a failing business.
When I was able to hire a mentor that had over 1000+ ATMs and a successful business himself, I was able to adapt quickly. I removed the 3 failing ATMs and placed the ATMs in GREAT locations. Within my 3rd month of my new ATM venture, I was profiting around $3,000 dollars monthly. Getting a mentor is a game changer for any entrepreneur!
Invest in self-education.
Spending over $100,000 dollars in mentors and self-education has been the biggest needle mover for me. I have been able to 50x my initial investment within a couple of years and have multiple businesses now. Self-education is the key to financial freedom.
Often leaders are asked to share the best advice they received. But let’s reverse the question. What’s the worst advice you received?
Paul Alex: You need to research every single step before executing on an idea”. Based on my experience and results, I would consider this the worst advice that could be given due to the thousands of “wantrepreneurs” I have spoken to in the past two years about starting a business.
This is one of the main excuses entrepreneurs tell themselves that delays the process and can keep someone stagnant. Analysis paralysis is real and I have seen so many people research for years without taking one step forward.
One of the main reasons I was able to scale ATMTogether.com to $130,000 dollars in revenue my 3rd month as a one man team is because I would take imperfect action and learn as I go. That’s the fun part of entrepreneurship! Figuring it out in the start up stage of your business! Go out there and execute! You will gain experience and also learn what works and what does not work for you.
Resilience is critical in critical times like the ones we are going through now. How would you define resilience?
Paul Alex: Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustments to different environments. As an entrepreneur you will deal with difficulties everyday. Mindset is everything in this game. It has helped me through the good and bad times.
In your opinion, what makes your company stand out from the competition?
Paul Alex: I Built the RIGHT Team.
As I reached over $130,000 monthly in revenue by my 3rd month of launching ATMtogether.com as a one-person team, I realized quickly that it was not sustainable to try to grow a company by myself.
The hardest part of building your own business or company is hiring the right people for the tasks you need covered. Now as a team of 16 employees, we have quadrupled our business revenue since 2021.
I truly believe we have been able to scale our revenue tremendously due to having the right team in place and making sure everyone does their part. Team work makes the dream work.
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success?
Paul Alex: Solution Driven. There will always be hiccups or roadblocks in your entrepreneurship journey. This is why you are getting paid the big bucks. I do not dwell on the past and I keep my eye on the prize. This pushes my team and myself towards our goals.
Confidence. You have to have self-esteem to admit mistakes when you make them, and the commitment to seek new solutions to address the mistake.
Creative Thinker. Having vision and being able to articulate the vision to your team will increase your employees to work harder because now they have something to look forward to. Creative thinkers are also able to come up with new solutions that could increase productivity and overall help companies grow.
What have you learned about personal branding that you wish you had known earlier in your career?
Paul Alex: Storytelling and authenticity are the two biggest factors when it comes to personal branding. If it wasn’t for law enforcement and having years of experience with writing very detailed police reports on a daily basis, I believe I would have not been able to articulate my stories as well as I do when I speak on stage or during live webinars.
If you are currently building your personal brand, you have to have a story and be able to relate your story to what niche or industry you are currently in. Majority of your audience or cliental will relate, build a foundation and trust you. If you are selling services or a product then that would mean that you will have loyal clients.
Most new entrepreneurs have a major issue with story telling because of fear. Most people are afraid of what other people might think of them. My best piece of advice would be to not care what anyone else thinks and to just execute.
If you want to be considered successful in the near future then you will have to fail in order to learn how to be successful.
What’s your favorite leadership style and why?
Paul Alex: Consultative leadership. I believe in working as a team with your employees and it’s extremely important to get the information directly from the workers who are executing the tasks that make the company function everyday. This allows my COO or myself to plan for the following days or weeks based on the employees feedback.
We use this type of leadership style with our marketing, sales and customer service departments. It has worked extremely well for our company.
What advice would you give to our younger readers that want to become entrepreneurs?
Paul Alex: The #1 piece of advice I would give my younger self is to stop caring so much what people think about you.
We are all human and no one is perfect. In order for anyone to reach a certain level of success means that they have failed before and know what not to do in order to succeed.
I was always afraid of what others would think about me. As I got older with more life experience, I finally realized that it does not matter. Most people do not care if you succeed or lose. Everyone is worried about their own life and you should be worried about accomplishing what you have to do. Life is too short to worry about what the next person is doing.
When I was younger, I always wanted to be perfect and wanted the stars to align with everything that I was going to do. In entrepreneurship, this rarely happens and to be honest, there are several days where I do not feel like getting out of bed at 5am to get that workout in or working that extra hour to finish a piece of content for my marketing content, but I stay disciplined and get it done. The “boring work” will get you to success. Stay disciplined and just get started.
What’s your favorite “business” quote and how has it affected your business decisions?
Paul Alex: “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”
Your most unhappy customers will be brutally honest with you about your products or services. I really like speaking with all my clients and figuring out how my team and I can serve them better in the future. It’s a great learning experience.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Paul Alex for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Paul Alex or his company, you can do it through his – Instagram
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