How to become a War Dog
Estimated Reading Time: About 4 minutes
The goal of The Steel Road is to help you see opportunities everywhere you look. Driving around in the winter time? Oh look there’s a snowplow. I wonder how profitable that business is? We got you covered.
In 2016, long before our newsletter was ever conceived, longtime entrepreneur Daniel Crowley did exactly that when he watched a movie called “War Dogs”.
It was a pretty popular movie, two young hustlers convinced the United States Military to give them a government contract to provide guns and ammo. It may seem far fetched in the movie trailer, but it was actually based on a true story.
They began by supplying 50,000 gallons of propane to the military, and eventually won hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts.
Their illegal methods of procurement landed them in jail, but the idea still stuck with Crowley.
Could he too build a business by winning these government contracts? He started looking at sam.gov, where the government posts their requests for contractors.
He submitted bids for cardboard boxes, leather jackets for the Air Force, and a bunch of other random items.
Eventually he settled on gravel, and was finally able to win his first contract. This lead to him growing his business to $10-$15 million a year hauling gravel for the government.
Are we suggesting you go to sam.gov and start looking for government contracts? No.
But we are suggesting that you follow your curiosities. If something looks interesting go find out as much as you can about that subject. You never know when a good opportunity will be unearthed.
Daniel Crowley did an interview with Hampton. Here are a few of our favorite quotes and takeaways from his interview:
Direct quotes from the article are shown as bold font.
Buying and operating the second dump truck is much easier than the first. Winning the second government contract is way easier than the first.
The first is always the hardest. When this newsletter was started, it was incredibly difficult to find the first interested subscribers. Now things are running like a well-oiled machine and we’re getting almost 10 new subscribers per day.
Once the first is out of the way the snowball begins to roll and get bigger and bigger.
Business is good! Crowley Holdings and Crowley Properties are both profitable and growing. They more or less were always profitable from the jump.
This is the beauty of starting a non-tech business. You don’t have to go out and raise a bunch of capital, you just identify an opportunity and pursue it. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Just make processes smoother and more efficient.
“Screw it, just do it.” There are a million different ways to make money — and in my experience, it doesn’t have to be that hard. You just have to get out there and do it.
Do not overthink things. Once you have the opportunity do not make it more complicated than it needs to be. Be a doer, not a planner.
Find an idea that is profitable for someone else and make it even better!
Your business will never be perfect. Often, you see people trying to make everything perfect before launching their business or product. Most businesses fail before they start because they never make it to market.
You’ll find success along the way. Continue to improve and iterate and it will come.
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