Paul Alex is a former law enforcement officer turned entrepreneur. He has experience in sales and digital marketing. He founded ATMTogether Automation Services to help clients establish their first ATM locations throughout the United States. The company has helped educate an excess of over 25,000 aspiring entrepreneurs nationwide regarding the ATM industry and currently has over 1,000 clients enrolled into their ATM Automation program. For more information, please visit ATMTogether.com.
Where did the idea for ATMTogether.com come from?
ATMTogether.com was created and launched in January 2021.
At the time, I had built a 5 Figure income from a side hustle with ATMs (Automated Teller Machine) that I started 5 years ago while I worked as a detective in law enforcement full time.
I was not on social media for the past 7 years and decided to make a Facebook profile to network with other ATM entrepreneurs. I quickly realized that there wasn’t a group or community where newer entrepreneurs that are interested in the ATM business can join and share their experiences with like minded individuals.
I decided to create “ATM Business for Beginners” Facebook group, which has over 31,000 members currently. I quickly learned from the Facebook community that there was not a one stop shop that helped entrepreneurs build their own ATM business and there was a massive void in the ATM market for location finder services.
I created the first ATM Automation Program that would build the entire ATM business for anyone in any state in the United States.
“ATMtogether.com” was born and I wanted the name to have a meaning of teamwork behind it!
1100+ clients have joined since launching January 2021.
What does your typical day look like and how do you make it productive?
To be fully transparent, there is no typical day. The life of an entrepreneur is basically “controlled chaos”. I find it being more difficult as an entrepreneur now than when I was a detective investigating criminal cases. Even with a team of 11 employees and 3 managers, I have learned very quickly that I have to motivate my team to keep employee morale up in the workspace and assist my managers with problem solving and mindset development.
In order for me to stay disciplined and productive on a daily basis, I have several white boards in different rooms of my home. I have a morning, afternoon and evening checklist with different tasks that need to be completed daily.
In order for me to keep track of my priorities, I always focus on tasks that are going to generate revenue. Marketing & Client Acquisition are always on the top of my lists! It’s the bread and butter of any business!
How do you bring ideas to life?
Whenever I think of any new ideas, the first thing I like to do is to make sure the idea is aligned with what I am currently doing or going to contribute to my business or future plans. I have been a victim of the “shiny object syndrome” for over a decade and I feel that it was one of the main reasons why it took me a few years to figure out how to execute and take action on ideas. As a serial entrepreneur, I always believed I could handle multiple ideas or ventures at the same time. When I spread myself too thin with multiple ideas or ventures, then nothing will ever get accomplished. When I found ATMs then I focused solely on ATMs. Now that I have created a couple companies based on my ATM venture, now I have more time and resources to start other ideas and ventures. My advice for anyone reading this is to find an idea, do your market research, take action and solely focus on that one idea until you have “made it”.
What’s one trend that excites you?
I know it’s going to sound cliché, but cryptocurrency! The main reason is because ATMs are all now integrated with Bitcoin! Every ATM we provide to our clients has a Bitcoin integrated program built inside the ATMs. Customers can purchase and sell Bitcoin at any ATM we provide! It’s pretty cool that customers can use our ATMs for their cash and crypto needs.
The world is changing and so is technology! ATMs are changing with the crypto wave, which is going to secure the future for the ATM industry.
What is one habit of yours that makes you more productive as an entrepreneur?
Routine. I am huge on checklists. I always recommend every entrepreneur or even person who works from home to purchase a whiteboard. Structure your day the night before you go to bed. As soon as you wake up then you have a clear overview of what you have to accomplish for the day. By doing this daily, it’s going to help you with your mindset, but also is going to help you become more proactive by executing on your checklist. The greatest feeling at the end of the day is marking every task off my checklist that is accomplished. It will give you purpose.
What advice would you give your younger self?
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.
Tell us something that’s true that almost nobody agrees with you on.
“No matter how good you are, you are replaceable.”
We can be the best in our niche or industry, but there will always be others that are working towards the same goals, same ideas and trying to be better than you. This is why it is important to always develop your skills as much as you can and keep learning. Be obsessed and relentless with your craft.
As an entrepreneur, what is the one thing you do over and over and recommend everyone else do?
I invested in my self-education as much as possible. I think it’s a very critical aspect to being an entrepreneur and growing your mindset in business.
What you don’t know is what you don’t know.
We are very fortunate to have access to great entrepreneurs all over the world, thanks to the internet and we can learn from other individuals that are exactly where we want to be in the future.
I remember paying my consultant $30,000 dollars for a 1-year mentorship back in 2021.
The ROI in that $30,000 dollars helped me think differently as a marketer and try different strategies that helped me scale ATMtogether.com to over 4 million dollars in revenue since January 2021.
In order to earn you have to learn until you can take away the L.
What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business?
Building the right team.
As I reached over $100,000 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 11 employees, we have tripled 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.
What is one failure you had as an entrepreneur, and how did you overcome it?
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 40x my initial investment within a couple of years and have multiple businesses now. Self-education is the key to financial freedom.
What is one business idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?
I actually was just thinking about this new business venture the other day!
I am always thinking of generating passive income and having my money work for me.
If I was trying to start a new venture that was semi passive in 2022 it would be investing into electric car chargers and finding placements throughout the United States right now.
You can charge a high premium fee for this and consumers will be more willing to pay for convenience.
I believe we are in the very beginning of electric cars and more car brands are building their versions of the electric vehicle.
What is the best $100 you recently spent? What and why?
The best $100 I spent recently has been on purchasing 3 books.
“The Power of One More” – Edy Mylett
“Atomic Habits” – James Clear
“Can’t Hurt me” – David Goggins
For personal and professional reasons, I believe the strongest characteristic behind any good leader or CEO is their mindset. These three authors are the best when it comes to self-development, which is the reason why I purchased their books.
I strongly encourage any serious entrepreneur to work on their mindset before working on anything else. For $100 dollars you will be able to learn and gain knowledge of multi-millionaires that will show you how to overcome your limiting beliefs and create the life you always wanted.
What is one piece of software or a web service that helps you be productive?
Slack. Slack is a messaging platform that I use to communicate with all my employees and executives for my company.
I am a strong believer in communicating with my employees and management team to make sure we are on the same page with our vision and goals every single day.
This platform allows me to create separate group chats based on the different departments or sections within my company, which is awesome so I can talk to a specific group of employees at one time.
What is the one book that you recommend our community should read and why?
One book that I would recommend would be “How to win & Influence friends in the digital age” by Dale Carnegie. This was one of the first books that I read when I started entrepreneurship several years ago and I believe it shows you the basics of communication and human interaction. I recommend this book to any entrepreneur that has to provide customer service or have any sales aspect to their business, which 99.9% of businesses do. This book will help you become a better leader and help you build better relationships with your clients.
What is your favorite quote?
“Slow success builds character. Fast success builds ego.”
Key Learnings:
- Be prepared to be flexible as an entrepreneur – business (and life) don’t always go as planned!
- Don’t be afraid to fail – learn from your mistakes and move forward
- Never stop growing, never stop learning, never stop being creative and curious
Steve (Stefan) Junge hails from Germany and helps with the day-to-day publishing of interviews on IdeaMensch. While he and Mario don’t share a favorite soccer club, their enthusiasm to help entrepreneurs is a shared passion.