He Dropped Out in 9th Grade… Now He Has a $90M Business | Joshua Crisp

Joshua Crisp says he built his career with only a ninth-grade education, no GED, high-school diploma or college degree. He later became an e-commerce entrepreneur, digital marketer, author, coach and consultant, and says he has taught in Harvard boardrooms and worked with multiple eight-figure earners.

Crisp was 35 at the time of the interview and described roughly a decade-long rise from poverty to multimillion-dollar business success. He said his highest personal income in a single year was about $11.3 million.

He became a felon at 18 and says the conviction sharply limited his employment options. With no diploma or GED, he relied on temporary staffing agencies and jobs that other workers did not want.

After leaving jail, Crisp worked through Spartan Staffing at a recycling plant for $7.25 an hour. He was about 23 or 24 and manually sorted trash, including extremely unpleasant waste, inside what he described as a roughly 50,000-square-foot facility.

His recycling job was an overnight shift, and he says he was working constantly without escaping poverty. He described the period as evidence that effort alone was not enough if the economic value of the work remained low.

Crisp's family was living in a one-bedroom apartment with rent of roughly $375, and he sometimes needed help paying it. His son slept in the bedroom while Crisp and his partner slept on an air mattress in the living room, separated by a shower curtain.

The emotional turning point came when his children complained that Santa never brought what they wanted and his wife questioned why the family repeatedly ate ramen and spaghetti. Crisp said he felt he was failing as a father and provider and decided he would do whatever was necessary to change their circumstances.

He says the same sense of frustration later returned when his businesses were stuck below roughly $10 million a year. His broader argument is that dissatisfaction can create the urgency necessary to change behavior at both very low and much higher income levels.

Crisp had spent time in jail roughly three hours from home, where he says nobody visited him and fights were common. He described himself at the time as having no father, mentor or meaningful support system beyond a struggling single mother.

His mother's most important lesson was to deliberately find something positive in negative circumstances. Crisp says that principle became one of the central ways he handled prison, poverty, failed products and later business setbacks.

His father spent his career in construction and was 77 at the time of the interview, having recently had a birthday on the 14th. Crisp says his father's lasting advice was to learn to generate income with his brain because intellectual earning capacity can outlast physical labor.

Crisp's introduction to entrepreneurship came indirectly through the woman who later became his wife. He visited her workplace during breaks and saw the owner casually running a business from an ordinary office, which challenged his assumption that business ownership was reserved for an inaccessible class of people.

That business owner became Crisp's mentor and eventually his business partner. Crisp says simply seeing an apparently normal person owning a company expanded what he considered possible for himself.

Crisp says he became intensely observant once he found his mentor, studying how the man sold, marketed and operated. He also repeatedly asked detailed questions rather than waiting for a formal invitation to be mentored.

His mentor manufactured bath-and-body products for other businesses to resell. The company was primarily business-to-business rather than direct-to-consumer.

Bath bombs were originally one of the mentor's weakest products. The mentor gave Crisp unwanted colors and fragrances that were not selling and told him to figure out how to sell them.

The mentor's recurring advice was to sell online because it offered lower overhead, higher margins and fewer operational touchpoints. Crisp observed that many of the mentor's wholesale customers instead opened physical boutiques, hired staff and spent on advertising, only to disappear within three to six months and stop reordering.

Crisp initially had no computer and says he sometimes walked to the library to work. He nevertheless became absorbed in learning e-commerce and digital distribution.

He started experimenting with eBay and Etsy, then Shopify and Google Shopping, before concentrating heavily on Amazon. He says he viewed Amazon as the major future opportunity even before he fully understood the platform.

Crisp says that by early 2015 he had become one of Amazon's top 200 sellers. He also says his eventual bath-bomb product generated $1 million in sales in less than 12 months and ultimately sold millions of units.

The bath-bomb success came only after several product failures. Crisp first tried products he personally believed should sell rather than following his mentor's recommendation.

His first failed Amazon product was a dual-port USB car charger. He says he pushed the supplier so aggressively on price that product quality suffered while entering an already saturated category.

That failure convinced him that improving margins by deliberately lowering quality is destructive. He distinguishes legitimate supplier negotiation from cutting quality in the product, team or customer experience.

Another failed product was a garlic mincer. It had search demand, but Crisp concluded that the generic product was difficult to differentiate or improve enough to create a compelling advantage.

He also tried a sticky dashboard or wall mat designed to hold phones and loose objects. He later categorized it as a trend-driven opportunity rather than a durable business.

He experimented with fidget spinners and reached the same conclusion about trend products. His lesson was that products which rise extremely quickly can collapse equally quickly, so he now prefers categories with a longer history of sustained demand.

Crisp now uses historical demand data such as Google Trends rather than relying primarily on intuition. His larger rule is to make business decisions from evidence instead of emotion.

He says his breakthrough came when he finally stopped choosing products for himself and returned to the bath bombs his mentor had originally suggested. The experience reinforced his belief that outside evidence can be more valuable than the founder's personal taste.

His product-development rule became: do not create what you think customers want; create what customers actually ask for. He recommends surveying existing or potential customers about their biggest problems, unmet needs and desired outcomes before building the offer.

Crisp specifically recommends inexpensive tools such as Google Forms for customer research and using AI to help construct surveys. He advises refining AI-generated questions through several iterations rather than accepting the first output.

He built Facebook communities around people interested in bath bombs before deciding exactly how to position the product. He describes this as cultivating a concentrated audience that could provide both research and eventual demand.

The most important customer complaint he discovered was lack of variety. Existing sets repeatedly contained the same six, 10 or 12 bath bombs, while shoppers wanted new fragrances and experiences.

He contrasted that problem with Lush, where consumers could choose from a large assortment but individual bath bombs could cost roughly $10–$15. Lower-priced sets offered better economics but much less choice.

Crisp's solution was a recurring box containing 12 new bath-bomb variations each month. The changing assortment directly addressed the customer demand for selection while also creating a natural subscription product.

The monthly variation unexpectedly gave the business recurring revenue through subscribe-and-save behavior. Crisp considers recurring revenue one of the strongest business models because customers did not have to repeatedly reconsider which brand to buy.

He strengthened the recurring offer with a surprise free gift every month. The gift could be soap, lotion or another bath-and-body product and was intended to represent at least roughly 20% of the box's market value.

Crisp says the bath-bomb business eventually produced hundreds of thousands of dollars in monthly sales and, at times, six-figure monthly profit. He attributes the growth primarily to solving the largest customer problem rather than merely creating another listing.

He describes identifying the single largest customer obstacle as finding the “big domino.” His theory is that solving one highly important problem can remove several secondary objections at once.

Crisp estimates direct-to-consumer product margins at roughly 30%–50% in favorable channels such as Amazon or a company's own website. He says margins can fall toward roughly 15%–20% when scaling through large retailers such as Walgreens or CVS.

A host used Chewy's response to a customer's pet dying as an example of long-term customer value. The example described Chewy refunding the final subscription order and sending flowers and a card, creating goodwill that could bring the customer back when they eventually adopt another pet.

Crisp connected that example to lifetime value rather than evaluating a customer solely by one transaction. He argues that occasionally sacrificing immediate revenue can make sense when it meaningfully strengthens a valuable long-term relationship.

He also emphasized reciprocity: giving unexpected value can create a strong desire in the recipient to return value later. That idea influences both his marketing philosophy and the way he says he approaches personal relationships.

The hosts recounted an extraordinary UAE anecdote in which real-estate businessman Mohamed Binghatti allegedly gave a visiting Libyan president an approximately $18 million watch simply because the visitor admired it. They used the story as an extreme illustration of generosity, reciprocity and relationship-building rather than as a normal commercial practice.

Crisp believes access to successful people is usually earned gradually through what he calls “breadcrumbs.” A mentor may initially give a small piece of advice, then provide more time or information only after seeing that the recipient actually acts on it.

His own success formula from that experience has three parts: receive an opportunity, take action on it and then push the opportunity as far as possible. He repeatedly warned against consuming education without implementation.

Crisp identifies himself as an introvert despite speaking publicly, coaching and appearing on camera. He says he is not naturally a networker and built his questioning discipline partly because valuable opportunities forced him outside his comfort zone.

His technique is to imagine that he will be allowed only one question. That constraint forces him to prepare highly specific, open-ended questions whose answers can produce immediately usable information.

He believes most people waste access by using valuable question time on small talk or broad questions. His preferred questions identify a precise business problem, ask why a specific tactic is being used and seek measurable results that can be implemented.

At an event of roughly 3,000 people, Crisp says he persisted after speaker Cody Sperber had effectively stopped taking questions. Crisp had studied Sperber's funnel in detail and asked why a specific conversion tactic was being used and what lift it produced.

Sperber responded by asking Crisp for his email address in front of the audience and reportedly offered to send him the funnel and supporting performance data. Crisp says the public exchange also produced leads from the room.

Crisp says he implemented the funnel information and subsequently generated multiple six figures from a webinar. He presents the episode as evidence that one carefully researched question can be economically more valuable than a long general conversation.

He says one of his defining decisions came when a recycling-plant supervisor refused him a $1-an-hour raise. The supervisor acknowledged his work ethic and attitude but said he lacked additional skills, which Crisp says made him resolve never again to let an employer determine his economic worth.

Years later, the bath-and-body company grew enough to occupy the same recycling facility where Crisp had once sorted trash for $7.25 an hour. He presents the return to that building as a symbolic marker of how far the partnership had grown.

Crisp repeatedly argues that people are paid according to the value they can create, not simply their formal education or time spent working. He encourages people to identify skills that come naturally to them but are difficult or valuable to others.

He considers entrepreneurship or some form of business ownership useful even for people with conventional jobs. His reasoning is that ownership can disconnect income from a strict hour-for-dollar exchange.

Crisp's current philosophy for creating an “irresistible offer” centers on two variables: speed of result and size of result. The stronger and faster the promised outcome, the more compelling he believes the offer becomes.

He rejects older marketing presentations that pile up artificial “value stacks,” inflated reference prices and false urgency. He argues that customers care more about reaching the desired result quickly than about receiving a long list of components.

One example of his current consulting proposition is to help a company add seven or eight figures within roughly a year and tie payment to delivering the result. He uses it to illustrate how a large outcome plus reduced client risk can strengthen an offer.

Crisp says “amateurs monetize the front end; experts monetize the back end.” His point is that the first transaction can be less important than recurring revenue, lifetime value, expanded services and the long-term economics of the customer relationship.

He created the acronym “WWAD” — “What Would Apple Do?” — after the older “WWJD” phrase. An Apple user and shareholder, he says he studies category-leading companies for systems worth adapting rather than attempting to invent every practice from scratch.

His competitive strategy is to copy useful principles from market leaders while finding customer segments or problems that large companies overlook. He describes large companies as “giants” stepping over opportunities that a smaller, more focused company can profitably serve.

He argues that focused smaller companies can sometimes outperform major brands inside one channel because the large brand is not concentrating on that channel. His bath-bomb strategy on Amazon is his main example.

Crisp believes a strong product and strong marketing have to work together. A bad product can still generate initial sales through persuasive marketing, but refunds, chargebacks, weak retention and damaged trust eventually undermine the business.

He distinguishes marketing from sales by describing marketing as making the market aware of what exists and why it matters, while sales converts that awareness into a transaction. He rejects the idea that either function alone is sufficient.

He says visibility has an important advantage over individual sales because a view or impression cannot later be refunded or charged back. Brand reputation, however, can take years to build and can be damaged quickly by disappointing customers.

A host contrasted Crisp's view with comments from Samuel Adams founder Jim Koch, who had argued that sales is underrated and marketing can be overrated. Crisp responded that his own experience led him to see marketing and sales as complementary rather than competing functions.

Crisp believes business communication should be understandable at an elementary-school level. His principle is that complicated language lowers conversion because people do not buy what they cannot quickly understand.

He applies the simplicity rule even to sophisticated, multimillion-dollar proposals. His phrasing was essentially that if the message goes over someone's head, it can also go past their wallet.

His lack of success in traditional school did not stop him from becoming an obsessive self-directed learner. He argues that people can be poorly matched to classroom-style instruction without lacking the ability to master valuable subjects independently.

Crisp also advanced a broader criticism that traditional schooling was historically designed more for workers than entrepreneurs or independent thinkers. He used that argument to explain why some people who struggle academically may nevertheless perform well in business.

He views delegation differently at different stages of a company. Early entrepreneurs should do many jobs themselves so they understand the functions they will later manage, while scaling entrepreneurs should increasingly delegate to people who are better suited to each role.

He divides wealth development into three stages: creation, accumulation and preservation. The first creates income, the second scales and compounds it, and the third moves accumulated wealth into structures intended to protect it over time.

For scalable operations he uses the acronym ASAP: “autonomous sustainable action in perpetuity.” His target is a company whose essential functions continue without requiring the founder to personally participate in every task.

He recommends founders identify the “highest and best use” of their time. Activities outside that zone should increasingly be delegated or automated once the business is capable of supporting the change.

Crisp says personality assessments helped him recognize that he is a high-D personality who moves rapidly from idea to execution. He sees himself as a visionary, marketer and strategist rather than a strong integrator, operator or day-to-day manager.

That self-assessment affects how he hires. He looks for teammates whose organizational and operational abilities compensate for his weaknesses rather than simply hiring people who resemble him.

He believes similar compatibility assessments can be useful in personal relationships as well as companies. He even suggested couples could benefit from taking assessments before marriage to understand how their styles interact.

Crisp said he and his wife would celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary on the 22nd of the following month. His later discussion of health and success repeatedly returned to the marriage as an area he had neglected during his most intense business-building years.

The hosts said Crisp's earlier concept of avoiding “minimum wage activities” materially changed their own company. They began identifying low-value repetitive work that founders or senior team members should automate, systematize or delegate.

One host had personally reviewed large amounts of agency video content and was jokingly called the “chief review officer,” while another said he personally edited every interview he published. The discussion showed that not every seemingly delegable activity should automatically be outsourced.

Dan Martell's “production quadrant” concept changed how the hosts thought about those activities. They concluded that interviewing and editing could remain worthwhile founder activities when they generate energy, maintain quality and represent unusually high-value work.

The hosts said their content operation was generating roughly 250 million views per month. They used that scale to justify retaining direct founder involvement in selected production work despite the broader push toward delegation.

For identifying low-value work, Crisp recommends listing every role and activity in the business and assigning the market hourly or annual cost to each one. The founder should then compare those figures with the income they want to generate and score each activity by how effectively it uses their own strongest abilities.

Crisp considers books a central substitute for the formal education he never completed. His personal library is important enough to him that he says it appears prominently in his will and is inventoried and carefully maintained.

Reading is also a form of currency in his household. He says his children earn privileges by learning, an approach he credits partly to Patrick Bet-David.

He recommends audio books for people who dislike conventional reading rather than using dislike of reading as a reason to stop learning. His broader claim is that books provide unusually cheap access to lessons that took other people years to acquire.

Among the books repeatedly discussed were The One Thing, Buy Back Your Time, The E-Myth Revisited, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Peaks and Valleys, The Richest Man in Babylon and Who Moved My Cheese?. He also referenced The 48 Laws of Power during the discussion of reciprocity and influence.

Crisp says he listens to Buy Back Your Time approximately once a quarter. He particularly values its treatment of time allocation, team efficiency and removing unnecessary founder involvement.

He highlighted Peaks and Valleys because it treats both life and business as cyclical. His interpretation is that decisions made during good periods influence how severe the next downturn becomes, while decisions during downturns affect how quickly the next strong period arrives.

He recommends The Richest Man in Babylon as a framework for avoiding lifestyle inflation. As business revenue rises, he wants personal and operating expenses to grow much more slowly so that the gap can be invested.

Crisp compares invested money to soldiers that can reproduce, while spent money is removed from the wealth-building army. The analogy underpins his preference for frugality, reinvestment and living below his means even after becoming wealthy.

Real estate was Crisp's original investment interest, but he initially lacked money, credit and relevant relationships. E-commerce generated the cash that eventually allowed him to enter property investing.

His model became “Amazon will make you rich; real estate will keep you rich.” By that he means using a fast, high-margin business to create and accumulate capital, then transferring a substantial portion into assets designed for preservation and recurring income.

Crisp says he owns or controls close to 100 apartments or properties. He describes their recurring rental income as a stabilizer when revenue from operating businesses becomes inconsistent.

He estimates his personal asset allocation at roughly 75% real estate and 25% stocks and cryptocurrency. Real estate remains his dominant preservation vehicle.

Crisp's view of debt changed dramatically after becoming an entrepreneur and investor. His family had taught him that debt was dangerous and associated with financial distress, but he later concluded that responsibly structured credit can finance appreciating or cash-producing assets.

He described banks through the lens of fractional-reserve lending: depositors receive relatively little interest while banks lend capital at substantially higher rates. His conclusion is that investors should understand and use financial leverage rather than thinking of banks only as places to hold cash.

His current practice is to leave capital in financial institutions while borrowing through loans or credit lines to buy or expand businesses and real estate. He prefers preserving liquidity where possible while making financed assets produce the debt payments.

Crisp described increasing the value of a business or property and then borrowing against that higher valuation rather than immediately selling the asset. In his example, a $1 million asset might support roughly $500,000 of financing at a 50% loan-to-value ratio.

He noted that loan proceeds are generally not treated the same way as taxable sale income, which makes refinancing attractive in his wealth-preservation strategy. The business or property then continues producing cash flow while gradually paying down the loan.

He sees these leveraged, cash-producing assets as part of his retirement and inheritance structure. He mentioned real estate, trusts, wills, operating systems and documented procedures as parts of protecting his family if he dies.

Crisp says he no longer uses a debit card and encourages his family to use credit strategically instead. He cited an American Express card earning four points per dollar in certain categories, subject to a spending limit.

He says accumulated credit-card points have allowed him to obtain unusually expensive travel without paying the headline cash price. Examples included an approximately $30,000 first-class Dubai trip and a roughly $40,000 family cruise in premium cabins.

Crisp believes trading physical labor directly for money is the lowest rung of the economic value ladder because both earning capacity and available hours are limited. His father's construction career reinforced his desire to create assets and systems capable of earning without continuous physical presence.

His financial philosophy ultimately centers on making capital work while he sleeps rather than permanently exchanging hours for income. He treats time as the scarce asset that cannot be replenished, while money can theoretically be recreated.

In the previous 24 months, Crisp had shifted substantial attention from money toward health, relationships and personal development. He says reaching larger financial milestones repeatedly increased the target without creating a matching increase in happiness.

His sequence of financial goals moved from the first $10,000, to $10,000 a month, $100,000, $1 million, $1 million in a month and eventually extremely large launch days. He says he has generated more than $1 million in roughly three hours on multiple launches.

Years of relentless work eventually produced visible health consequences. Crisp said he developed high blood pressure, was losing hair, gaining abdominal weight and feeling miserable despite owning things he had once associated with success.

He now focuses not merely on appearance or strength but on longevity, mental health, spiritual health and overall physical condition. His desired balance is “health, wealth and happiness” rather than optimizing only income.

He openly acknowledged that business success came at a cost to his relationships with his wife, children, God and himself. He says all four were neglected during the years when the business consumed nearly all of his attention.

For approximately the first five to seven years, Crisp says he worked with extreme intensity until reaching multimillionaire status and building preservation systems around the wealth. He now says that approach was probably not the ideal way to build a life.

Despite that hindsight, he still believes founders below roughly their first $100,000 or first $1 million often need extraordinary levels of grit and effort. His view is that perseverance and follow-through can outperform raw ability when the more talented person does not execute consistently.

His newer objective is to become the best version of himself while helping people he cares about do the same. He now uses that definition rather than revenue alone as his measure of genuine success.

Crisp warns younger entrepreneurs against allowing skeptical people to determine the size of their ambitions. He argues that discouragement may come from close friends, parents, siblings or other people who genuinely care about them but do not share the same assumptions about what is possible.

He recalls being told that attempting to make money online while supporting a wife and children was irresponsible and that he should simply get a conventional job. Those criticisms strengthened his determination rather than ending the attempt.

His advice is to commit rapidly once the evidence and conviction are strong enough, then solve the remaining problems through execution. “Success loves speed” is one of his recurring principles.

Crisp says several people who originally doubted him later wanted his training. He claims he gave some of them access for free but refused to accept their money for consulting because they had not supported him during the difficult period.

His preferred legacy is to be remembered as someone who consistently gave more value than he asked for in return. He keeps a relatively small personal circle and says he wants people who enter it to leave with an improved quality of life.

His final recurring warning was not to become “addicted to education and allergic to execution.” He believes information has little value unless the listener turns at least one useful idea into immediate action.