The Business Generals Podcast | Helping You Maximize Your Entrepreneurial Dreams - Every Single Week

Alex Charfen is as seasoned as they come, a diverse experience going all the way back to being trained in his fathers business at as a pre-teen, his challenges with standard education and overcoming that through his extensive reading about what it took to be successful in business and to eventually creating an international consulting brand that would peak at $250m in revenue. Alex had a false start at retirement after exiting his consulting business, he re-invested all his gains into real estate quickly which quickly grew into a $40m portfolio, but hurricane weather and the global financial crisis wiped out their portfolio and took him and his family into bankruptcy. In this show Alex takes the time to walk us through three main phases of two plus decades of his entrepreneurial journey, drawing out some key distinctions that any aspiring or seasoned entrepreneur can use to kick start a multiple seven figure business. With literally all odds against them, Alex shares how him and his wife, a real estate professional, designed a course for real estate agents and the financial services companies whose clients were facing foreclosures at the height of the GFC. Armed with real life experience after being served multiple property foreclosure notices, Alex looked for a way to bring all affected parties to a common negotiating table that would help more families keep their home, and help more lenders preserve their investments. This training course was developed while Alex was bankrupt and it was launched with zero money down, yet made a profit on day one and would sell over 48,000 courses averaging $500 per course, multiple millions of dollars from a standing start. Alex breaks down a simple methodology of how anyone can create a valuable information product that has high conversion and a high completion rate. Identify your target audience or gap in the market Research through direct surveys and find out what their pains are. Alex interviewed over 100 real estate brokers and agents, they shared their pain points and frustrations when it came to foreclosures Develop a product that will answer the needs of your audience. No need for perfection here just let the creative juices flow, if using a computer slows your creative process then write it on paper, draw up all your illustrations or image guides and create the blueprint Beta testing – Alex called his target audience and walked them through the course details. With their feedback and additional input he further refined the course and got their committee to to buy once it launched Launch, don't over complicate or wait too long, get it launched with a few people, see the response and then move on there. Alex went on to be recognised as a key contributor to turning around the home foreclosure industry through the course. If you have any expertise or thought leadership, this methodology above that Alex uses is your guide to creating that service offering your clients want and desire so much they are willing to buy without you “over selling” it to them. We covered other ground during the podcast including: How you can transition from a corporate consulting role into your own business; and A case study of how Alex is helping entrepreneurs grow from $1m to $20m plus in annual revenues: Alex breaks down some of the key strategies that are helping put multiple seven figures in top line revenue for his clients today that you can leverage today Legacy Alex passionately shares about what he would like to leave as a legacy when all is said is done – this was a powerful moment during the show – – – make sure you check it out! Entrepreneurial books Alex recommends for any entrepreneur – – http://www.FreeMomentumBook.com (FreeMomentumBook.com – Alex Charfen – ‘This Book Will Help You Understand Yourself Better Than You Ever Have … So You Can Create Momentum”)...

Timo Rein is the Co-Founder and CEO of Pipe Drive which is a simplified sales management tool that is helping over 60,000 sales teams around the world to get more organised, more focused and helping them sell more. You have probably already heard about Pipe Drive because they have done an amazing job marketing their service, this is a great episode with Timo, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I know we will receive great feedback on this one! Timo is based in Estonia with his wife and kids, born in the Soviet Union, studied psychology in university, he lived in the US for four years and is now back home living and running his business from north eastern Europe in the wonderful Estonia. He co-founded Pipe Drive 7 years ago with 4 other founders, prior to that was a partner is a sales training business for 10 years, so Timo is a seasoned entrepreneur with 17 years in the game of running his own business. Show notes and links at: https://www.businessgenerals.com/timor (https://www.businessgenerals.com/timor) Revenue streams Pipe Drive is a SaaS (software as a service) business, that generates a monthly and annual subscription from customers who are from all corners of the world. They have doubles their revenue each year for the last 5-6 years, so Timo describes as a high growth yet high investment SaaS business. They have invested about $30m into the business which includes successful strong capital raisings. Dilution of your ownership v Investors In Timo’s mind their business is run by a team of professionals right across their leadership and executive level, including the investors who he feels are well invested to give the founders every necessary introduction and connection in the market place as well challenge the leadership and ask more of them so as to get the best that the company can deliver. The big idea and the story of how pipe drive started The big idea with Timo’s first co-founder, who also had a sales background like Timo Coming up with the specification document of the product Looking for developers who would build the code Meeting up with 3 other start up founders who had coding back ground The tipping point for Timo He was running his sales business and going well An old friend quizzed Timo about his consultancy role at the time and in Timo’s mind this made his wake up to his dream of being a doer, a builder and this sent him back to his drawing board so he went back to looking at building a business. Building Pipe Drive With the new 3 co-founders the idea was ready to be dusted off and given another chance. Timo and his first co-founder described the whole software idea again to the new team. A brand new specification document was created and it was much better than their original spec, as it was much more visual with screen shots and clear work flows. The original founders had the idea, they knew how to market and scale a business while the 3 new founders brought in the engineering experience and proven experience in coding a product that can be scaled, so together they created a strong foundation on which to build the business from. For a period of 3 months the team would get together on weekend retreats at a local farm house, from Friday nights and code through out the weekend and would only head back to their homes on Sundays. Three of the co-founders had day jobs during the week so this project was only worked on during the weekends at this time. The other two founders plus one other engineer (who would later become a founding employee) worked full time on the project during this 3 month period. Although away from family, this helped the team focus well on the project and also helped them build a strong team dynamic and start to understand each other better. After a few months a beta version was finalised and ready for prime time, Timo was not fully comfortable with doing a beta (test) launch as the product was not fully ready, but his...

Bobby Umar has been named by Inc Magazine as a top 100 leadership speaker alongside people like John Maxwell and Richard Branson, he has taken to the famous and prestigious Tedx stage four times and has over half a million followers on social media. Bobby is also an international author and a Huffington post contributor. A father of two and loves improv comedy. Bobby started his business full time in January 2017, he rolled out of his corporate role and went straight into launching his business. His number one revenue stream today is professional speaking – inspirational motivational speaker, travelling mostly around Canada and from time to time internationally. Bobby speaks on leadership as a general theme with specialised expertise in three key areas: Networking – leadership building and connection Personal branding Social media and digital marketing Bobby other revenue streams are coaching (executive coaching, career coaching and business coaching) and events. Why and how speaking During his corporate days Bobby conducted workshops and training and received very strong positive feedback about his speaking and motivational skills. By the time Bobby was ready to leave corporate he leaned on this feedback and took all the positives and embarked on building out his personal brand.  After a deep dive into his personal values, traits, personality assessments and some soul searching – Bobby says he found out that his brand was all about connection, people, persuasion, influence, performing, presenting and diversity, speaking seemed like a logical thing to do. First customer Bobby kept track of all his connections throughout his career even before the advent of LinkedIn, he maintained an excel spreadsheet with 3,000 contacts, so the first thing he did was to send out 500 brochures to people on this list and then also sent an email to all 3,000 contacts sharing that he had launched a business, his services and clearly specifying the opportunities he was looking for. After sending that out a few people wrote back to Bobby (not as many as initially hoped for but it was a start…), some called and with a bit of follow up Bobby landed his first gig. Business growth after the first few paying customers Bobby made it a priority to do an amazing job so that it was easy to get referrals from each engagement He leveraged his network some more, set up calls and met up with his contacts – he estimates having met over 1,000 people for catch up chats, coffees and meals in his first 3-5 years of launching his business. He let them know what he was up to and this fueled more engagements and referral opportunities. Maintained a strong social media presence through Facebook and LinkedIn Saying yes to most gigs that were offered to him, a lot of which Bobby says he wouldn’t do today Paid v Free events Starting out, Bobby was doing a lot of events for free as he built out his brand but was always looking for paid opportunities. His paid opportunities were attracting a $500 fee, and after a while this changed to $1,000 with a lower end engagement being $500, and then $2,500 an engagement and continued to grow that way.  Bobby shares how you have to know when to say NO to certain opportunities if they are not within your core niche as saying NO indirectly helps you say YES to what you are really called to do. https://ed.ted.com/on/14bV8YtW (Tedx Talk) & Social Media While previously unaware of what it was, on 5 October 2011, Bobby did the first of his four Tedx talks and decided to launch his social media strategy as it clear in his mind that social media was here to stay. On this day Bobby launched his social media arsenal on all channels – Twitter, Facebook business page, newsletter and announced his Tedx talk – making sure all his content was all synchronised within the brand he was creating. Within 6 months Bobby landed his first speaking gig...

Dr Daniel Crosby is a Psychologist, he has a PhD in psychology and behavioural finance specialising in helping people and organisations understand the cross over between the mind and the financial markets. He is a co-author of a New York Times best seller “https://www.amazon.com.au/Personal-Benchmark-Website-Integrating-Behavioral/dp/1118963326/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1532524547&sr=1-1&keywords=personal+benchmark (Personal Benchmark)” and also authored the “https://www.amazon.com.au/Laws-Wealth-Daniel-Crosby/dp/0857195247/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1532524388&sr=1-1&keywords=laws+of+wealth (Laws of Wealth)“. Daniel is the founder and CEO of Nocturne Capital – an investment management firm whose approach is rooted in the science of behavioral finance. Daniel has a growing family, based in Atlanta Georgia from where he runs his business which he has been running full time for the last 10 years. Check out the full show with detailed show notes and episode links: https://www.businessgenerals.com/danielc (businessgenerals.com/danielc) Lets talk core revenue streams Daniel shares how he started off doing speaking engagement to market his other services in his company but it has since taken off and become a major part of his revenue stream. An early take away from Daniel is not to underestimate the power of speaking as an extra revenue stream in your business! Daniel also manages money on behalf of clients, teaches online courses in behavioural finance and provides consulting services and content development. While speaking is Daniel's number one income stream it's not completely scalable due to the time commitment and extensive travel requirements so Daniel has a focus to grow the other income streams. Daniel has been on the speaking circuit for the last 10 years, and cautions that it is taxing for someone with a young family. Childhood inspiration Growing up Daniel was inspired by his dad who is an investment manager, after getting into college Daniel loved the study of psychology, helping and teaching people – but part way through his PhD he felt emotionally burned out as a clinical psychologist. A conversation with his dad about his next options turned him down the road of understanding the intersection between psychology and stock market investing. Why a PhD and not just a Degree Daniel says in his experience a psychology degree in the US, does not get you very far in your career as a psychologist. The PhD paid off for Daniel as clients more readily hired his consulting services as a PhD graduate even though he was only 28. While the PhD opened doors for Daniel he says he doesn't actually use it in its direct form because he is trained to conduct therapy sessions as a clinical psychologist but he now picks stocks for a living. The skills learned however, of being non defensive, hard work, accepting feedback, critiquing and taking action – are life skills he has taken from his PhD that have helped him in his business. First paying client and a speaking career Daniel managed to secure his first client before he resigned from his job, he recommends that you find a way to get at least one good client account before stepping out on your own. He quickly moved into the world of speaking and in the beginning all his presentations were at no charge, he would look for places to speak at in his city as a way of marketing his consultancy services. After quiet a number of free events Daniel recalls an attendee asking if they could book him for a paid speaking engagement and he began a new journey where he would eventually be charging between $1,000 and $2,000 to speak. A mistake he shares is saying yes to all speaking requests and having to create a special bespoke keynote each time he got an invitation, this would wear Daniel out and he looked for a different solution. Major turning points in speaking and some key lessons After

Rob Jacobs is the guy who gets people up-and-out of their chairs and moving again! A personal fitness expert and the co-founder of UnSit, an innovative company working to get people UP out of their chairs and moving again with the world’s first Treadmill Desk optimized for use in an office environment. His background is firmly in the fitness industry having been in treadmill retail and commercial equipment including a repairs and servicing business model. Being a fitness enthusiast sitting at a chair all day made Rob research into how to help people with desk jobs get fitter by moving more. First business startup – the walking centre. This was a fitness centre targeted at middle aged stay at home mums who would go into the store, rent a movie, and walk on a treadmill while watching their movie! This proved to be a great model for Rob. The results were very good and people started buying these high ticket treadmills in the Beverly Hills area, and opened more stores which also included the sale of commercial fitness equipment. Rob eventually sold out of the retail model after a number of years as the market changed with increased competition and margin pressure. Before selling out of retail Rob had developed a service model that repaired and serviced fitness equipment for health clubs and fitness centres, so with a new business partner Rob developed and grew this business to include retailing of spare parts. Rob has maintained and continued to grow this business over the last 25 years plus and it still continues to be his core revenue generator. The business model is ecommerce based enhanced with telephone technology support, targeted at out of warranty fitness equipment servicing clients in different countries. The problem that turned into a new business idea Rob found himself constantly sitting at a desk, servicing clients and growing his spare parts business, and found himself having less and less exercise, feeling lethargic, lower back problems all from sitting behind a desk far too long. A book by Dr. James Levine, who is credited as the popular inspiration for the treadmill desk, inspired Rob to work on solving his problem. Book reference: https://www.amazon.com/Get-Up-Chair-Killing-About/dp/1137278994 (Get up – why your chair is killing you, Dr James Levine) Rob had seen the idea before but he discredited it on the basis that he didn’t think a treadmill desk provided real exercise or real practicality in an office setting. [During this interview Rob was walking along at 1 mile per hour on his treadmill desk and by about 15 minutes into the interview he had clocked over 2,000 steps! Pretty impressive]. Dissecting the research and looking at the market opportunity Obesity is one third of US population, and this same third is also at the pre-diabetic stage estimated to require medicated treatment in a few years time Sitting disease is a term used in the book by Dr Levine which includes diabetes, heart disease and other chronic illnesses which can be prevented or recovered from through exercise Mental creativity is a softer science but this is the marketing point Rob has picked, exercise leads to a more productive and creative workforce and this can be achieved through the treadmill desk technology Designing the product After reading https://www.amazon.com/Get-Up-Chair-Killing-About/dp/1137278994 (Dr James Levine’s book) Rob decided to work on designing a product that was fit for purpose Most designs at this time simply took a tread mill and stuck it under a desk, but Rob figured there was better way Rob shares that while his academic qualifications are minimal and his learning quite empirical and self taught, this did not disadvantage his entrepreneurial journey Rob took out an old treadmill, a piece of plywood and created a frame around the treadmill, tweaked it and after a couple of months came up with half decent treadmill desk Then after using it a for a

Justin Hales is the CEO and Founder of Camplify, the Airbnb of caravan hire & RV sharing community. Camplify is Australia’s largest caravan hire and RV peer-to-peer sharing community, connecting owners with holidaymakers across the country sharing all types of caravans, campervans, motorhomes and camper trailers to enjoy a getaway in. Camplify gives RV owners the opportunity to earn extra income – anywhere between $280 and $2100 per week – while they aren't using it themselves. As for their hiring members, they get to experience the joy of camping without having to purchase their own RV. During the interview, Justin shared how in 2 years the Camplify platform has grown from just a small fleet of rentals to over 2,500 placing the company at the top of the fleet market in its niche of renting out caravans and RVs, an amazing effort in such a short space of time. The genesis of the idea Sounds a bit cliche but it all started with a seemingly small conversation with Justin and his wife talking about how cool it would be to go on a caravan holiday. Their conversation was triggered while the couple was walking their dog over and noticed a parked caravan in their neighborhood. Having spent his childhood in caravans this was an exciting prospect and so Justin looked for a place where they could hire a caravan for a holiday but found it quite difficult to find a single provider that he could go to and hire from. As a result Justin found a gap in the market and created a space that was like an Airbnb that got all the hundreds of caravans that sit around in people’s driveways doing nothing most of the year and create a sharing economy market place for owners and holidaymakers to share. Working on the idea Justin found a startup incubator program that was looking for innovators and applied to be considered for the program, which included some basic idea testing, putting up a ‘crudely built’ website and a power-point deck. After a stringent review of 500 applicants, Justin progressed into the final 40 that made it to the “Pitch Day”. Following a successful outing at Pitch Day Justin was offered a spot in the 12 week startup accelerator program. This was an intensive accelerator program on how to set up and scale a startup which became the backbone of launching the Camplify business following that 12 weeks Justin’s key take ways from the 12 Weeks accelerator program Understood the customer more Tested more variables Learned about different marketing strategies Learned how to build good products that had a great market fit, using lean methodology Started building a brand and acquiring customers Leaned on the network in the program to raise capital for Camplify which was well received and helped fund the initial Camplify launch Customer targeting The initial market most people would lean towards in the caravan and RV space was the grey nomad market (grey nomad (plural grey nomads) (Australia) A retired person who travels independently and for an extended period within their own country, particularly in a caravan or motor home – https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/grey_nomad (wiktionary) But through testing Justin found that while the grey nomads was not going to be their target market to consume their services, they were going to their target partners as RV owners sharing their RVs on the Camplify marketplace From detailed testing and building customer personas, the ideal customer that emerged was families who were not prepared to outlay $60,000 for an RV but still wanted to holiday in one from time to time, and this was found to a buoyant and growing market The No Money Survey – Just Sweets (…Lollies/Candy) 2nd week in the accelerator program Justin and team stood outside a Camping and RV show with no money for a booth and basically offered attendees a lolly pop in exchange for them answering a few survey questions...

Gil Ado and Carlos Reines are the co-founders of Rubicon MD, an innovative medical eConsult service that connects primary care doctors to same-day insights from top medical specialists. Their mission is to provide better health care through their online platform that enables primary care doctors to easily and quickly access medical specialists and have online consultations (eConsults) and ultimately provide better direct care to patients. With a fragmented US healthcare system, Gil and Carlos identified a need in the market for access to specialist medical care that didnt require patients to physically be in the same room with their specialist doctor. After a lot of networking and hustle, Rubicon MD was officially birthed in 2013. >> Show notes Link: https://www.businessgenerals.com/gilandcarlos (https://www.businessgenerals.com/gilandcarlos) >> Today Rubicon is a strong, growing Venture backed Healthcare startup, which has successfully raised over $19M in funding since 2014. The company is scaling at pace throughout the US now with over 5,000 primary care providers using the platform. The two Harvard Business School graduate co-founders partnered up to launch Rubicon on a mission to facilitate the provision of a higher level of care to patients who may not have access to specialist care due to them not having private healthcare or geographical limitations. The platform allows general practitioner doctors to have direct access to expert specialist help on a case by case basis through e-consult process. Doctor to doctor interaction via the e-consult platform is one of their biggest wins – patients that would have previously been referred to the emergency department for specialist consultation now receive access through the eConsult process through their primary doctors, and as Gil says this is real tangible benefit that clinicians and patients are excited about. The business launch and the first paying customer In 2013 the business was launched with the first key goal being to prove that there was value in the platform and that patients would be able to access greater healthcare through the platform They put a basic minimum viable product from a technology platform standpoint, they found a doctor who was willing to trial the platform and it run for a few months with a few hundred eConsults and the feedback was very positive The founders joined an accelerator program focusing on how to build a business around the idea and how to find the people who could potentially buy into your idea Talked and networked to as many people in the healthcare eco system  – learning, doing the research and also selling the idea at the same time Discovered that groups that are at risk, ie taking care of primary health care patients will be most interested in this Pivoted on the fact that there was limited supporting data for the idea so focused on finding the companies that were ready to take some risk in this space as well Their first paying customer contract was from Boston, Gil and Carlos share with excitement how this client has grown and stayed with Rubicon MD for over 4 years, a testament in their minds to the value RubiconMD brings to the clinician. Cash flow during the start up phase Carlos was still completing his https://www.hbs.edu/Pages/default.aspx (Harvard MBA) at the beginning but working full time in the business, Gil was also full time in the business but they were scraping by and keeping everything very lean financially It was a difficult beginning for the business, so they had to run their operations in a very lean way but they were determined to see the vision come to life The duo managed to live through the first startup phase through their savings, family support and just sheer tenacity to make it through the early days Access to funding 2013 accessed their first seed money from an angel investor, this was enough to run their pilot After this started...

Mike Michalowicz is an American author, entrepreneur, and lecturer. He is a business author including the popular Profit First, The Pumpkin Plan and The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. He is a former small business columnist for The Wall Street Journal and the “Business Rescue” segment host for MSNBC’s Your Business. He also hosted the reality television program called Bailout! Mike has founded and sold multi-million dollar businesses and today shares over 25 years of business experience through his books and on stage in front of global audiences . During this episode we discuss some amazing business concepts with Mike including the following: How to Differentiate yourself in Business Mike has an accounting service business called Profit First. While this is an old established service industry, Mike has found a way to differentiate his business. Mike’s team go out to their over 250 clients as Profit Advisor with a special expertise and focus on not just being compliant with taxes and regulatory obligations but making sure the business is profitable and optimised. They focus is pivoted towards interpreting the business numbers and helping business find sustainable profitability This is all part of the Profit First philosophy which is detailed in Mike’s popular book https://www.amazon.com/Transform-Business-Cash-Eating-Monster-Money-Making/dp/0981808298 (Profit First – A Simple System to Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine ) Profit First System It flips the profit formula used in traditional accounting Commonly referred to as the bottom line, the standard profit formula is “Sales minus Expenses = Profit”. But this creates a mindset problem where a business owner does not focus on profit but leaves it at the last thing, a by product of everything else and invariably what gets put on the back burner can get forgotten and not prioritised. Profit First in Mike’s world has this formula: “Sales minus Profit = Expenses”. So every time you make a sale you allocate a predetermined percentage that you have calculated as your optimal operating profit level, and take the rest as the amount available for all your expenses (not the other way round). Acquiring the First Customer in Profit First Professionals The model is based on finding the right accounting professionals who get trained and accredited under the Profit First Methodology and then operate as advisors under the Profit First banner with a profit share arrangement Mike didn’t go out with a know it all attitude but went out to the potential Profit First Professional with the mission first, “we can eradicate entrepreneurial poverty together” They understood that this was something new and it needed to grow so whoever joined would join as the first customers, and it would not be easy but that they will be great upside in the future They also openly reduced the standard membership fee for the founding members and would bring in the first group of founding members onto the advisory board of the business to help provide real time feedback to help build the business Marketing Strategy Mike went to his existing list of customers and followers who were aware of his brand and his message, and publicly announced that he was looking for bookkeepers and accountants who were interested in partnering on this new project, shared the vision and then established a small community that was focused on this new project. Without a personal community, Mike advises that founders should go and look for the community that the target audience is already established (what conferences do they attend, what podcasts are they listening to or what blogs do they follow) and find a way to start contributing and speaking to them there. The One Problem Every Struggling Business had when Mike was on TV Every business that struggled mainly was because...

Sean Cooper made news headlines across global news channels when he paid off his mortgage in a record 3 years at the tender age of 30! Sean did all of this while working a normal job in financial services in Canada and freelancing as a personal finance coach and writing as a personal finance blogger. Sean is the author of his very well acclaimed book https://www.amazon.com/Burn-Your-Mortgage-Financial-Canadians/dp/0995202907 (Burn Your Mortgage). Sean’s story was very polarizing when it came out on Canadian news outlets and actually got him a lot of hate mail and articles online and offline because of how quickly he paid off his mortgage which goes against standard accepted beliefs around home ownership and the 30 year loan repayment time frame that most banks give home owners. The negative feedback centered around Sean being portrayed as a privileged child with wealthy parents or as Sean living in this basement without a life outside of work and stashing away every cent he earns. Born and raised in Toronto Ontario, Canada Sean grew up in a middle class family with parents who instilled in him the importance of home ownership so from age 10 Sean had the vision of owning his own home. He started working various jobs at a young age and started saving for his down payment even before he graduated university. Sean bought his first home when he was 27 and he paid off by age 30, a remarkable achievement – all on his own savings and his own aggressive focus on beating the mortgage debt! Lifestyle choices – no car! Sean made the decision of not owning a car during his period of paying off the mortgage as it amounts to the second largest payment in most people’s budgets and he found a practical way to make sure he lived near public transport and lived a car free life. This was a very bold and mature decision for Sean to make a young age, when I was 20 all I was thinking of was owning my first car, and the first loan I ever took out was to buy my first car, a white Toyota Mark II. It requires discipline and laser focus to follow through with a car free lifestyle. Admittedly it may not be entirely possible for everyone due to your professional work, if you are a trades person you may work from different sites each week and need a personal car, so you may need a find a way to get a reliable cost effective car that doesn’t cost you too much to buy or maintain. There may also be opportunities for you to car pool or ride share with colleagues from work where you reduce your car running expenses with the goal of saving up for your first home. Saving strategy at a young age Sean found a way to work through his university days which paid off tuition and helped him graduate debt free. He also started saving for his down payment during his college days and after graduating continued on this path and saved 80% of his income after graduating which helped in save up a handsome down payment of $170,000 by age 27. Advice for saving up for your down payment Firstly work out whether they want to own a home in the first place. Work out how much you need to save in order to fund your down payment or home loan deposit. Calculate how many years you would like to give yourself before having a fully funded down payment and this will determine how much you need to save each month. Open a stand alone savings account and ‘pay yourself first’ before you do anything else with your salary put aside your nominated savings amount. Automate your savings process so that it automatically comes out of your salary account into the savings account, and make sure you have very limited access to your savings account so that you can ‘save and forget’ without the temptation to spend it other ’emergencies’. Resisting the temptation to spend Sean kept his goal in mind, work hard for next few years, keep saving up and not defer the savings plan. He buckled down and focused on his...

Sarah Santacroce is an independent LinkedIn Specialist, Online Presence Mentor and founder of Simplicity Small Biz. She helps people convert their presence online into paying customers. She is the creative brain behind the LinkedIn Challenge, an event that has helped 1700+ people so far to improve their knowledge about using LinkedIn for business. She has helped hundreds of clients from all over the world breathe life into their LinkedIn profiles, put together a strategy for their online presence or generated leads for them by using LinkedIn and social selling strategies.  She also coaches fellow introverted business owners on how to run an online business, and is the founder of the Introvert Business Podcast.  Period in full time business and core revenue streams  She has been in full time business for more than 7 years. In her LinkedIn business, she works with corporations where she does trainings for HR departments, sales departments, and the people in marketing. She also works with entrepreneurs through one-on-one coaching and teaches people in transition how to get recruited on LinkedIn. She has a series of products like video trainings that generate revenue for her without having to trade her one-on-one time.  She also does affiliate marketing and is planning to host her first retreat for introverted online entrepreneurs. The retreat will be an offline event where they will get together and talk about their businesses, and come up with strategies on how to take it to the next level.  The retreat  She says it will be a quiet, reflective, and respectful retreat with lots of fun. The link for the event is http://www.sarahsantacroce.com/retreat/ (www.sarahsantacroce.com/retreat/)   Starting out in business  When she moved to California with her husband and their new second-born, she could consequently not go back to her previous job, and decided to take some time off to spend with her kids. After about a year, she decided to come up with her own business plan and choose to focus on helping business owners with their administrative needs, which was what she was good at. That eventually changed, because with the social media boom at that time, she realised how she was able to use social media to create buzz for her own business.  She therefore choose to move away from administrative/virtual assistant work to teaching entrepreneurs/small business owners how to market their businesses through social media. When she moved back to Switzerland with her family in 2010, she decided to start offering the social media training/marketing services.  Focusing on LinkedIn  She decided to specialise on LinkedIn much later after she discovered that things in Switzerland were very traditional and slow. Most people didn't use social media for business. The one platform that the Switzerland B2B industry was interested in most, that she was well-versed in, was LinkedIn. After a year of offering her general social media services, she decided to zero-in on LinkedIn.  Corporate career Vs. Business  Sarah says she would never go back to formal employment. She calls herself unemployable because she creates success on her own terms now. She defines how success should be in her life, which she could not do in a corporate environment.  Tip 1: I don't think business is for everybody. I don't think everybody should leave their corporate job and become an entrepreneur. Getting side hustles is however a great option for anyone in a corporate job  Tip 2: I don't advice you to just leave your job and focus on your business idea  Replacing full time job income in a business  Tip 1: If you have a business model that can guarantee to replace your full time income then obviously, go for it!  Tip 2: Full time business is not for everybody because some people need the structure of a corporate job and they may need a team. As an entrepreneur, you are making up your own structure and it can sometimes be very lonely as an...

Daniel Walter Scott is a certified Adobe instructor (ICE) in Ireland, an Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) and he completed the Adobe Certified Associate training (ACA). He has been teaching for more than 14 years and is the founder of Bring Your Own Laptop (BYOL), an Adobe Certified Training Centre in Ireland, New Zealand, Australia and online. He has over 16,000 students on the Udemy platform with over 1,000 reviews and over 16 courses. Period in full-time business He had always been doing little businesses on the side in his evenings and weekends, but he went into it full-time business in 2009. Core revenue streams He has two main streams that are both based on training. One is a sit-down classroom where people book a course, come in and learn from an instructor. He has such training centres in Australia and Ireland. His other stream is online video training on Udemy and other platforms. Starting out in business Daniel used to work for other people but he was always curious about doing it for himself and when he decided to move from the UK to New Zealand, he also decided to start an online business. He started by building a sit-down classroom courses website and promoting it through SEO. He had to borrow some money from his grandmother to cater for his personal expenses so he could focus on building the website and getting customers. Getting the first set of clients He got his first customers through search engine optimization (SEO). He learnt everything he could about SEO because he wasn't a good salesman so he needed the website to do the selling for him. Through that, his website ranked well and because there were people looking for courses, he was able to get customers. Working with zero budget Daniel says the one crucial thing he did that can work for anyone now, is content marketing. He says content marketing offers the best value for money. He makes his content in form of videos and in the beginning he used to write a lot of blog posts about his work. It was easy and free for him to do it because he wrote them himself. Number of videos At the beginning, he used to write a lot of blog posts and then he did one or two videos a month as a test. When the videos started doing well, he narrowed his content marketing down to videos. He says if he could get a do-over, he would have focused on videos from the very beginning, because progress on getting the website ranked would have taken place ten times faster. He says the content marketing through blog posts was very slow. Growth strategy at the beginning The sit-down classroom courses were more locally targeted so he worked with local businesses like blogs that existed around what he did. He also used to reach out to companies that complimented his work, to see whether he could do free stuff with them. That was the easiest way for him to market the business since it was targeting the local market. Tip: If you have something local, you have to focus your marketing (including SEO) on the local market The fundamentals that worked He says some of the things that really worked for him that can work for a local business include Google local listings (now known as Google Places, Goog Business, or Google Local) which get a business on a map that easily puts a business on top of searches for local products. The other thing, he says, is finding other websites that are linked to the business one is doing (these are mostly professional listings) Other things that may take some time and effort include relationship building with other businesses, going to conferences and meet-ups organized by businesses that are related to what one does. That way, one gets clients through word of mouth and referrals. Adobe certification He says being Adobe certified and having his training centre certified by Adobe, is very helpful. That's because as part of certification, he gets Adobe.com linked to his website, and it helps a lot, because Google likes to see...

Nathanial Bibby is the founder of Bibby Consulting Group, a Melbourne Consulting Group. He is a leading Digital Marketing Strategist, LinkedIn Coach and Social Media Speaker. He is also the founder of Linkedinsider, the world's leading online LinkedIn training course, and a Founding Trainer at the Australian Digital Marketing Institute (ADMi).  With over 12 years of Digital Marketing experience, Nathanial has been at the forefront of the information age. During his career, he has helped 4,000+ businesses throughout Australia and South East Asia gain a competitive edge through effective business growth strategies.   Core revenue streams  His core revenue stream is LinkedIn Lead Generation which is a very unique service that cannot be found easily advertised in marketing. They usually have to first educate people about it before they introduce it. Once they train people on LinkedIn, they also offer them the lead generation service.     Period in full time business and starting out  He has been in full-time business for about 4 years. He started out the day he quit his job and things had gotten really difficult financially, because he was being evicted, and hadn't paid his bills, the power in his apartment had even been switched off. He found a way to get power to his apartment and sat down to write his business plan. The next day, he started making phone calls and one of the people he called was a real estate agency that he convinced to let him pitch on how he help their real estate agents to invest in their brand.   The real estate agents gathered in their conference area and Nathanial pitched a real estate personal branding make-up product that included a one page real estate website. Nathanial was charging $2,500 for the product and 8 of them signed up, with 6 of them paying on the spot. That totalled $15,000 and it enabled him to get freelancers to build 6 websites, 6 Facebook pages, and 6 LinkedIn profiles. He paid $300 for each of the 6 which totalled $1,800. The money enabled him to get out of his financial problems.  He still didn't know what he would specialise in, but he later got an opportunity to sponsor an event for his friend and business coach. At the event, his friend thanked him for being a sponsor and introduced him as a LinkedIn Specialist who could people with their LinkedIn profiles. There were 100 people at the event, and at the end, 30 to 40 people went up to him wanting to have a one-on-one meeting. That was when he decided to specialize in LinkedIn Marketing.  Deciding to become an entrepreneur  He remembers that when he started out, he did it because he had no choice since he could not find assistance from anyone to deal with his financial woes. He was so desperate but got immediately motivated when he decided to start working on his business plan. He knew that he had to go straight to the customers, to the market, without even having any marketing material and systems in place.  Niching  The fact that he specializes in LinkedIn when there are very few people specializing in it, enables him to get clients constantly. Whenever people are organizing conferences on social media and digital marketing, they always want an expert on LinkedIn and when they search on Google, Nathanial's service always comes up at the top of the search results. He gets called to speak at different events and interviews. His company has become an industry leader on LinkedIn and he also gets invited to speak on social media at different events.  Generating leads on LinkedIn  He says it's easier to help a B2B (business-to-business) company but when dealing with a B2C (business-to-consumer) company, he has to ask them a few questions about their target marketing and how they get clients. Normally, LinkedIn marketing works better if a B2C business has business partners or distributors. He says smaller businesses that desire to sell directly to customers may have more success on Facebook than on LinkedIn. 

Here are the FIVE things I learnt that may be helpful for you or a friend you know maybe experiencing one of these “out of body” experiences: Being on Social Welfare Is Not Fun I Should Have started Preparing Sooner Have an Open Mind – Find a Coach and Model them Consider Taking a Pay Cut – Get Back in the Game Find a Plan-B Option that Works for YOU  Personal Lesson I remember it like yesterday, started just like any other Friday: drive down the freeway, get to work have my marmalade-on-toast, and work on completing the financial statements for publishing to the market the following week. At 4pm everything changed, I got the call to the CFO's office, Legal Counsel also present, felt the situation was a little bit unusual, and sure enough I had been made redundant. I can still feel the shock of the reality of the feeling, very humbling, had until 5.30pm to make my way out. I wasn't bitter or disappointed in the people that had hired me to be their Finance Manager. I knew the company was struggling and that the shareholders were putting pressure on the executive team, but there was so much going on, I didn't expect it that day. I got back to my office and made the call to my wife telling her I was out of a job. Like a lot of people we didn't have any Plan-b whatsoever – we were “all or nothing” – single income family with a mortgage, scary. It was a real blessing for us in a sense though, that we had literally just sold our home and so all the gains made on the home became our day to day income, this was only meant to be for a very short while. But soon enough, it became clear that the world was going through the global financial crisis, this was September 2009. Recruiters were not returning phone calls, people were not leaving their jobs. There was zero happening for 6 months straight, not one interview! The FIVE things I learnt Being on Social Welfare Is Not Fun I had no idea where the nearest welfare office was and didn't even understand how the whole system worked. I quickly found out that it does provide a safety net for families but doesn't do more than maybe pay the rent. It didn't cover the car payment so driving our once ‘fancy' German car that at the time had another party listed on title i.e. bank, was no longer fun. I now had to drive carefully each night and be on the lookout for any suspicious looking cars near our house, make sure it's not the sheriff! My advice: You don't want to be on welfare. I Should Have Started Preparing Sooner The social welfare system will not help you professionally get back into a good role – things may have changed now, yes the teams assigned to you will help you write up a resume and prepare you for an interview but in my experience they kind of didn't even do that – just had to tick the boxes and show up each fortnight. Tip 1: Don't leave it too late to have a Plan-B action plan. It took me 6 months to just get a contract role. Tip 2: Think about whether your savings can last you long and If not, then start putting a robust savings plan together or better still a Plan-B income source for you and your family. Have an Open Mind: Find a Coach and Model them In November 2008, my wife and I attended a real estate coaching seminar, the concept was residential property sub-leasing – we had never heard of this approach to generating cash flow, it sounded interesting but life got in the way and never did anything with it. Immediately following my redundancy, we decided to hire the sub-leasing coach and invested over $10,000 from the sale of our home to kick this project off and this was our first venture as business owners. We operated this for about two and a half years running about 30 rental rooms in 3 large furnished properties mainly catering for the student population here in Melbourne. I kept an open mind and learnt a lot about running a business. I made some good money but lost good money too...

Tricia Brouk is a performance expert, TEDx organizer, writer, director, choreographer, podcast host, and producer of theatre, TV and film. She hosts The Big Talk, a podcast series on iTunes and currently directs and dramaturges Big Talks and Keynotes. She is the current organizer of TEDxLincolnSquare – Risk Takers and Change Makers.  She has produced, directed or choreographed several award-winning theatre and TV/Film productions. Through her company, The Big Talk, she helps people identify, craft and deliver a life-changing Big Talk or Keynote.  Period in full time business and business background  She has owned a company for over 26 years. She moved to New York City from Missouri to pursue a dance career and had no interest in being a starving artist. She started Brouk Moves, an elite in-home personal training company where she hired people to work for her so that she could still make money even when she was on the road. The company has been going strong, has 15 trainers, 25 clients and recently started a personal chef service. The business has enabled her to pursue a creative life outside of business and also given her the opportunity to create a new business, The Big Talk.  Brouk Moves has been her primary income for the last 26 years and has enabled her to pay all her bills, avoid the life of a starving artist and produce theatre. Her team works on the business full time so she can have time to pursue other things.  Starving artists  She says she sees this a lot in the industry and she has observed that artists feel unworthy of making money, because when they make money they then feel that they are selling out, and that they are not truly artists.  She says artists deserve to be paid for what they are worth, to have money and create art simultaneously.  Tip: You are not giving up your artist soul by taking a big fat pay check  First gig  In her first big European tour, she got a weekly pay check to do what she loves including touring, dancing, and being a full time artist. That was while Brouk Moves was still bringing in money because her team was doing all the work. That when she knew she could make a living as an artist in the long term while also making a living as a business woman.  Tip: Once you pursue and achieve what your goal is, do not let go of that business! Do not think that you have to choose. You can maintain them both equally  Getting into entrepreneurship  She decided early on that she would live the way she wanted without being poor or waiting for gigs to find her. She is proactive, mindful and kind in the way she runs her business. Her trainers take time off whenever they want and the rest sub for them.  Tip 1: Stop waiting for that big artist contract, start creating your art, start creating your business, because if you wait for someone else to do it for you, you will spend your entire life waiting.  Tip 2: Get busy, create art no matter where it is, no matter what it is. Keep your artist muscle flexing and find a way to make money on your own terms  The first months in the fitness business  She started by working very hard and personally training all the clients she had. She used to wake up at 4.30am and would do the client training while also dancing and performing. Once she realised that she could hire a team to take on some of the work, she created a system where she could always be involved but didn't need to be there. That enabled her to reduce her commutes, and her time was spent doing other things. When she hired other people, she had to trust them, let go, and make sure that she put systems in place to ensure the business would run efficiently.  Tip 1: If you are starting up, you have to dig in, roll up your sleeves and do the work  Tip 2: When starting out, you have to create a solid foundation first, then you can back off and do the other things that you want to do  Choosing personal training  She says personal training was very organically...

As corporate downsizing continues to make news and the internet makes telecommuting ever more productive more and more entrepreneurs are discovering the benefits of running businesses out of their homes. If you are looking to get out of the rat race, to spend more time with family and friends, and to live a more balanced life, a home-based business may be the right decision for you. Home-based businesses are quickly becoming the fastest growing form of business start-ups. Growing your business out of your home allows for flexibility that is difficult when renting or buying office and warehouse space. Although working at home requires self-discipline, the benefits can be substantial-especially in the start-up years. Starting a Home-Based Business Nearly one million Australians are running a business from home according to the Australian government. Forbes reported that home-based businesses were quickly becoming the fastest growing form of business start-ups. With a slowing global economy this statistic can only be expected to grow. Benefits of starting a Home-Based business out of your home There are many benefits and each would appeal to you differently but here are my top five that I find to be key: 1. Ownership – Yours to build and grow 2. Flexibility – No commute and freedom to structure your working hours 3. Taxation – Put simply…the system favours business ownership 4. Low Overheads – Investment can be low, no large office lease expenses 5. Leverage – Ability to leverage your efforts and scale up Personal lesson My late dad was an Accountant – I took after him, he worked long and hard for over 20 years in senior management for a Swedish ball bearing manufacturer. I got back home from boarding school one summer, and dad sat me and my older brother down to let us know that he had been “let go”. Life quickly changed in a space of 6 months – moved out of the company house, no company car, no driver and no more executive perks. It became clear that though dad had a great job employment by nature generally does not provide any “business equity” – he got paid his redundancy package (maybe a year’s salary) and that was it, back to the drawing board…which was starting a home based consultancy business in accounting. This was my first encounter with the difference between business ownership and employment. You get to make your own conclusions here as to how you would respond to such a situation…I have shared in Episode 077: Five Things Redundancy Social Welfare Taught Me, how social welfare became an unwanted reality for me and my wife a few years ago when we went through the same scenario The 5 key benefits of starting a home-based business 1. Ownership – Yours to build and grow Building a business means that you will be building equity for you and your family, if you work it right; and even if it takes you say 20 years to really get it established, that is just under half of your working life, you can build a substantial enterprise that is willable, saleable and transferable. The best time to start is while you are at the peak of your career which for most people is right now, start from your home and grow it from there – don’t just focus on building equity in your home, build some business equity as well. 2. Flexibility – No commute and structure your working hours. A colleague said to me she spent about 2 hours last week getting home because there were two accidents on the major roads during peak hour…that’s happened to me several times before! The ABC reported that Australians on average spend close to an hour each day on the daily commute to and from work. A Gallup survey reported the same for the average American commute. You can save a lot of time and turn that into productive hours, you can work around your family and your own personal...

Anthony Iannarino is an international speaker, bestselling author, sales leader, and entrepreneur. He specializes in the complex business-to-business (B2B) sale. He is also a founder and managing partner of two closely-held, family-owned businesses in the staffing industry, leading both entities in strategic planning while growing sales. Anthony is best known for his work at The Sales Blog, which has helped him gain recognition as a top thought leader in sales strategy. He is the designer of Level 4 Value Creation and Building Consensus methodologies that help sales organizations achieve transformational, breakthrough results. Period in full time business He has been in full time for 10 years now. Core revenue streams Anthony has very diverse revenue streams. He still has a role in their family's staffing business and he is a partner in another one of the family businesses. He just started an accounting and finance group (specialised in staffing) where he is a partner. He is also a speaker, coach, consultant and an author. He says he believes that we are in the age of constant accelerating disruptive change which keeps coming faster and is more disruptive especially for business people. The speaking, coaching and consulting revenue stream makes up about 75% of his overall income. Tip 1: You shouldn't give up any revenue streams, you should have multiple revenues streams going at one time Tip 2: You should really think deeply about how you can create additional revenue streams Starting out in business Anthony used to run their small family business of about $3 Million a year, and with about 6 sales people, he built it up to $50 Million a year. That got the attention of many people who wanted to know how he achieved so much with such a small team. That business was a competitive displacement business which took big companies away from big competitors. People wanted him to help them in that same way but Anthony wasn't interested until at some point when he felt that he could something to help people succeed in building and growing their businesses. So he started waking up an hour earlier than he used to every day, to write down everything he knew, and publishing it on his new blog. His goal at that point was to become a keynote speaker within a year. He worked very hard on building awareness on what he did and within 10 months, he got his first speaking gig. In those 10 months, he used to get a lot of inspiration from Seth Godin, and he applied what he learnt from him in his own work. Overtime, he got introduced to a group of people who had a sales content sharing group. That sharing ended up amplifying all of their messages. Tip 1: Because of the internet, as an entrepreneur, you have audiences worldwide and they are looking for you. Google will help them find you provided that you publish your best ideas, and people can tell how you create value and what you are all about Tip 2: One of the things that entrepreneurs struggle with when it comes to sales and marketing is the consistency of doing the work every single day Motivation during the first 10 months of the blog Anthony knew that the idea for the blog would work because the statistics were good and kept growing. He had confidence, faith and was willing to play the long game with the blog while building a body of work. He started by getting 7 people reading his blog posts up to the current 2,500 readers that visit the blog per day. On Mondays, the number goes up to 4,000. Tip 1: Stay with what you are doing for a long enough time that it actually sticks and you will get some traction. A lot of people give up right before that point where they get the traction because they start to worry it's not going to work Tip 2: You just have to continually do the work and it will pay off, but it does take longer than you think Getting the first set of clients Anthony says his first clients found him through a Twitter link that directed them...

Nicky Billou is the No. 1 International Best-Selling Author of the book https://www.amazon.com/Finish-Line-ThinkingTM-Think-Champion/dp/1492237728 (Finish Line Thinking: How To Think & Win Like A Champion). He is also the co-host of the No. 1 Podcast in the world for thought leaders called The Business Of Thought Leadership. His guests on the podcast have been the likes of Seth Godin, Barbara Corcoran, George Ross, Jen Widerstrom, Tony Hawk, Larry Winget, and Marie Forleo.   As an Accountability Coach at Finish Line Thinking, He energizes people to be their best selves. He works with entrepreneurs and professional sales people (top real estate agents, insurance brokers, financial advisors and sales people for top organizations) who want to be held accountable for producing top results. He offers a unique system that teaches people how to Think & Win Like a Champion when it comes to achieving goals.  Starting out  He worked for different technology and telecommunications companies, but the corporate world was not for him, because he felt that something was missing and every day he felt he wasn't living according to his purpose. He eventually decided to start his own business, and because he did it alone, his success plateaued at some point. Luckily, he found the right mentor who taught him what he needed to succeed in the long term.  Leaving corporate  Nicky left his last job when the last company he used to work for went under. While other people were finding it hard to get a job, he got into consulting, but he went through a lot of years being stuck in the journey of being a business owner. It wasn't until he started to see what his expertise was, that he was able to turn that into success.  He says the stages of the thought leader's business journey are:  Stage 1: Being a new comer – this is for people thinking about getting into business or just getting started in business. They have no real experience owning their own business. They are not skilled at marketing and selling what they are offering, and they have no business systems. At this stage one is lucky to make any money at all. It's a dangerous stage because if one doesn't get passed it, they may need to get back to their corporate job. People in this stage make between $5,000 and $10,000 a year.  Stage 2: An unconscious expert – This is someone who has expertise but they are not clear what their expertise is. They have some systems in place but they are stuck in an obsolete time for money business model. Their sales are inconsistent because their marketing works sometimes, not all the time. They have lumpy billings and make between $30,000 and $50,000 a year.  Stage 3: Conscious Expert – Those in this stage have their message nailed which results in consistent marketing and more predicable sales. The challenge with this stage, is that one has to work lots of hours under a time for money business model which is not sustainable. They make between $150,000 and $300,000 a year.  Stage 4: Thought Leader – At this stage, one has arrived and they are making between $500,000 and $3 Million a year. It's not about time for money, it's about getting paid based on one's expertise. One works between 50 and 150 days a year doing what they love, with the best clients of their choice. Very few get to this stage.  Nicky says there is a final stage called the Celebrity Thought Leader Stage, which is the stage for people like Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Robin Sharma who are global iconic figures. They make between $5 Million and $100+ Million a year. They work whenever they want and they can work a little or a lot. They are sort after by the top business/industry leaders in the world and celebrities. They get to charge whatever they want and their impact is global. The challenge is, very few people get to be in this stage.  Tip: It's possible to achieve the Thought Leader stage, it doesn't have to take you 10 years to...

Nelson Dellis is memory athlete, mnemonist (able to remember and recall unusually long lists of data such as unfamiliar names, list of numbers, and others), public speaker, and consultant. He is a four-time USA Memory Champion and the co-founder of Memory League, a new type of competitive memory platform that allows memory enthusiasts to challenge each other online. He is also the founder of Climb for Memory through which he preaches a lifestyle that combines both mental and physical fitness with proper diet and social involvement. HELP OUT in the endeavour to find a cure for Alzheimer's by taking The Extreme Memory Challenge, a short, easy memory test online. It's poised to be one of the largest long-term memory studies ever conducted. Just go to www.extremememorychallenge.com Becoming a memory enthusiast His grandmother died of Alzheimer's in 2009 and that made Nelson develop an interest in memory. He saw how her mind slipped away and didn't want the same thing to happen to him. From his research on memory, he discovered the US Memory Championship which to his surprise included average people who had just learnt some memory techniques and practised. That's when he realised that memory was a skill like any other and from there he started off on his journey towards becoming a memory champion. Climb for Memory: Research on Alzheimer's He says the current research is not clear on whether or not keeping the brain active deters Alzheimer's. Some researchers say it doesn't while others say it does. Nelson is a believer that keeping the brain active makes a big difference, judging from his own experience with his memory transformation. Core revenue streams He says it's hard to define his business because his revenue sources have not always been clear. He is not much of a business guy. He started doing memory as a business when he found that he had won a few memory championships, had gotten a lot of media attention and was receiving a lot of requests for speaking engagements and different appearances. He used to work in coding and physics as a career but he decided to leave it behind. The majority of his revenues come from speaking engagements, doing different memory-related events, spokesperson deals, and other memory-related projects. Leaving the normal job He loved his formal job in the corporate world but when he started doing the memory-related projects, he had a hard time managing both. When he got an offer to do a memory event sponsored by a certain company, the head of marketing of that company approached him after the event, and asked him to work with them on a long-term basis. For Nelson to take their offer and focus entirely on memory-related work under their endorsement, they agreed to pay him the same amount he was getting as a salary at his job. Getting to the point of winning competitions He had to put in a lot of hard work to become a memory champion and it was easy because he was very passionate about it. He loved the whole process of memorization. He wanted to be the best, so he spent as much time as possible training his memory. He started getting serious about it in the summer of 2009 when his grandmother passed away. He entered into the first competition in March 2010 and came in 3rd place which was commendable considering it was his first time. That inspired him to train more seriously, and in 2011, he won the competition. He used to train every day after work for at least 2 hours. He says he also used to memorize numbers and cards while at work. Two ways to catapult memory retention skills He says one way is to pay attention which includes focusing on one thing at time and not multitasking. Since the brain is not good at memorizing abstract things like numbers, names or directions, the second way is to turn those things by association into pictures (visual imagery in the mind). Tip 1: Paying attention will help a lot with your memory Tip 2: Always try to think in pictures

Mike Wheeler is the founder of Mike Wheeler Media which provides Salesforce training, consulting and development services worldwide. Mike creates the course curriculum and provides training for users and those seeking to become certified on the Salesforce platform. He is also a world-class online trainer and instructor with over 27,000 students, over 9 courses and over 7,600 reviews on the Udemy online training platform. Period in full-time business He has been doing his own business since 2001 before which he used to do technical writing, training and curriculum development. He also supplements what he does with the business with some consulting work. Core revenue streams One of his primary revenue streams are his online courses on the Udemy platform. He says he has had sales on the platform every single day since he started offering his courses there. He also makes money from Salesforce consulting and development engagements. Starting out in the business Mike had a long career in the corporate world doing technical writing for different software companies. That work led him more towards contract work, but he says he had a few stints as an employee. He would always go in at the end of a project to write manuals. That was back when the internet was still new. The contracts would typically be 6 to 9 month engagements with different companies. He would basically go where the work was. Getting into Salesforce Mike encountered Salesforce in 2008 when he was doing technical writing and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to better rank his technical writing services on Google. He then started getting into WordPress for websites and building his own websites. While building a website for a client, he was asked for a web delete form on Salesforce and he did it but as he was offering the website development services, he realised that Salesforce was becoming more and more popular in the market, so he decided to train more on it. One day, in 2011, while in a Barnes and Nobles book store, he came across a book on Salesforce development, read it and felt like he had what it took to go into the Salesforce platform professionally. Salesforce Mike says it's a web-based or cloud-based platform that one can use and customize to fit any business or process. It can be used for marketing, sales and customer service. It can be used by any business, in any industry, and is customized through clicks instead of code, though a person can also use code if they want to. Salesforce is best known for the fact that it can be customized to meet the marketing, sales and service needs of any business. For example, a business owner can use Salesforce to replace Legacy systems, spreadsheets and many other processes/systems. Mike says Salesforce was one of the pioneers of cloud computing and SaaS business. Knowing the Salesforce business would work After learning Salesforce, he needed to use it in practice, so while still working as a technical writer he got more involved with Salesforce related work which enabled him to build on his expertise. Going into Salesforce training services As he was learning Saleforce, getting certified and seeking his first job as a Salesforce developer, he started to develop an interest in sharing the value of Salesforce with anyone who was seeking it as an attainable path to a cloud-based career. For several years, he thought he would blog about Salesforce or develop his own online help system, but he realised that it would be a big time commitment and hard to monetize. He ended up developing Salesforce-based online courses and teaching on Udemy. He came across Udemy when a friend referred him to a sale Udemy was holding for their courses. Mike really liked the Udemy business model which enables people to buy a course and keep it for life. He ended up buying more than 20 courses for everything he would be interested in learning. Naturally, he got interested in knowing whether there were any...

I am excited to have you join me in this solo episode which is actually a workshop I hosted for a over 50 entrepreneurs. It’s a relaxed yet entertaining training environment where I walk you through a couple of key concepts that have helped shape my mindset towards business over the last 20 years. Listen in and find out: What your 2 missions in life should be? The keys steps to move you from Idea Stage to Significance Case studies on ideas and giftings that have been executed into global brands today Plus much more Listen in to get all the juicy details in this episode on converting your ideas and gifts into wealth and your wealth into significance!. Remember to click subscribe on your podcast player so you don't miss an episode. Access all the links and resources mentioned in the episode at https://www.businessgenerals.com/goals2 (https://www.businessgenerals.com/goals2) Thanks for tuning in…see you next time! Cheers, Davis #TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

I am excited to have you join me in this solo episode which is actually a workshop I hosted for over 50 entrepreneurs. It's a relaxed yet entertaining training environment where I walk you through a couple of key concepts that have helped shape my mindset towards business over the last 20 years. Listen in and find out: What your 2 missions in life should be? The key steps to move you from Idea Stage to Significance Case studies on ideas and giftings that have been executed into global brands today. Plus much more. Significance and legacy Find a reason why you want to achieve what you want to achieve. That way, you will always stay motivated even in the midst of challenges 1.0 NUMBER ONE MISSION IN LIFE Find out what you are passionate about and what excites you because it causes you to keep going when things get tough. If you find yourself working in a job that you not excited about, it’s going to be a bit of a drag. Write down what you are passionate about and then write down the answers 1.1 Areas of influence: Seven Mountains of Influence These are the areas where your passion will most likely fall under, and they are: Business: We all go looking for a job from business people. Therefore, they influence our lives. Government and politics: Government makes the policies that influence our lives. For example, when they say, “Drive on the left,” we drive on the left. If one doesn’t drive on the left, they’re in trouble. Arts and entertainment: This is where we find music, movies and other forms of entertainment where there are celebrities, for example, Hollywood. They influence the hairstyles we wear, the clothes we wear and much more. Religion: All of us have grown up in church or some form of variation of that and that influences us immensely Education: This where we learn most of what we know Media: This includes popular media outlets like CNN, BBC and different TV channels. They influence how we understand what is happening in the world. What they show on TV is what we believe is happening. For example, if they show us that there’s an earthquake somewhere, we understand there’s an earthquake somewhere and if they show us ISIS is taking over the Middle East, we understand that that’s what is happening. We don’t actually go to the Middle East to work it out for ourselves. If they present Africa the way it has been presented, that is how the world understands Africa as being. Unless we have somebody in the media sphere from Africa who begins to change the perspective that people have, that doesn’t change. Family: This constitutes how we are raised, how we grow up, the community that we live in. Tip: Once you understand where your passion sits, then you can begin to take the next step. 1.2 Building a career or business Once you have identified under which category your passion sits, make sure it always excites you in your day to day life and then look into your actual skills, strengths, and gifts to determine whether they match what you are passionate about. Your skills, strengths and gifts have to work hand in hand with your passion, to help you fulfil that passion. For example, someone who is passionate about singing has to have a good voice and strong singing skills, or at least be in a position to learn good singing skills. You may also find another angle in the music industry that you can do other than singing, for example, producing music, and much more. 1.3 Ideas As yourself what ideas you have and what ideas keep resurfacing in your mind. Don’t keep sharing your ideas every time you get them, build on them for a while before you start sharing them, because you may share an idea with someone and end up aborting it. Sharing it might discourage you out of it completely. Don’t wait for someone else to do your idea. It doesn’t matter if they’ve made a start because your idea is...

Setting goals enables us to move forward in life and business. Goals are like the oxygen to our biggest dreams. They are the crucial first steps in every journey we choose to take. Setting goals will enable you to: Focus Measure progress Stay locked-in and undetered Have accountability in finishing every task Motivated at all times In this episode, i’ll personally help you learn and implement goal setting into your personal and business life so you can build on your self-confidence and increase your productivity. Listen in to get all the juicy details in this episode on goal setting that works!. Remember to click subscribe on your podcast player so you don't miss an episode. Download your free PDF show highlight reel for all the links and resources mentioned in the episode. Go to https://www.businessgenerals.com/bradys (www.businessgenerals.com/goals) Thanks for tuning in…see you next time! Cheers, Davis #TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

Brady Shearer is the founder of Pro Church Tools and the host of a popular podcast on iTunes called Pro Church Tools. Pro Church Tools is an organization Brady founded to help small, medium and big churches go professional with their media, communications, and videos. The organization was built on his passion for church media and announcements, and has grown exponentially over time to become sizeable.  Listen in to get all the juicy details from Brady Shearer in this episode.  Remember to click subscribe on your podcast player so you don't miss an episode. Access this show highlight reel for all the links and resources mentioned in the episode at www.businessgenerals.com/bradys  Type of business  His business is entirely online, they don't do anything in-person. When he started the business it was entirely laptop-based (laptop lifestyle) for a long time. The business now has 8 full-time employees plus Brady, and has room for about 3 or 4 more people. It has at least 6 to 12 freelancers, contractors and remote employees.  Period in full-time business and core revenue streams  Brady says he has been 3 or 4 years in full-time business and their main product since the beginning is producing video announcements (Pro Video Announcements) for churches. They currently work with about 150 churches each week producing their video announcements. He says what drives the entire business is their brand “Pro Church Tools”.   Since the very beginning he has been releasing videos, articles and podcasts every week to teach people everything he knows. That has enabled them to build an audience called the “Pro Church Nation” which has in turn allowed them to experiment with new products including Nucleus (A boutique church website builder) and Story Tape (An unlimited stock footage site). They are a fully bootstrapped business. Pro Video Announcements has been funding everything.  Starting out in business  Brady started out as the media director in his church while also attending bible college. He didn't have any video, social, web or design skills at the time but he had a knack for going into something he had never done before, and learning it very quickly. He did that with recording software and learnt everything he could. The more he learnt, the more he did for his church and his work was eventually noticed by other churches, that kept asking him to do freelance work for them.  The more he did the work, the more he started to focus mainly on doing church specific stuff and that's when he decided to launch Pro Church Tools. The business brought together his interest in online business and the audience he was passionate about serving including churches, ministries, pastors and church leaders. He started http://www.prochurchtools.com/ (www.prochurchtools.com) and just began teaching everything that he had learnt about producing church-specific video announcements.  Knowing he could succeed with it  He was full-time in school and also worked 20 hours a week at his church so he didn't really have time to work on the business. To make time, he started waking up very early every day to work on the business. From 5am to 8am, he would work on the business before going to school. To date, he does his best work in the early mornings.  He didn't know the business would work but he had money saved up from his freelance work to put into starting Pro Church Tools. He then gave himself 4 months to work on the business but nothing happened in the first 3 months. He was starting to lose hope when in the following next 2 weeks he had 6 churches sign up. It turned out that churches go into hibernation especially with big purchase decisions throughout the summer and that's why he was not getting any sign ups in the first 3 months. With the first clients, he was eventually able to replace the income that he was earning from church. That gave him the confidence to move forward.  Video announcements for churches  He says church...

Yaro Starak is the founder of Entrepreneurs Journey. He is a globally recognized internet marketer and online business mentor and coach who started his online journey before being online was a thing.  In this episode, Yaro shares how he launched his blog for fellow entrepreneurs, especially for people who are interested in following the online business model that he has leveraged to make over a million dollars.  Yaro has developed a simple business model made up of the following three components:   Start a Blog  Grow An Email Newsletter  Sell Your Own Digital Products  Listen in to get all the juicy details from Yaro Starak in this episode.  Remember to click subscribe on your podcast player so you don't miss an episode. Download your free PDF show highlight reel for all the links and resources mentioned in the episode at https://www.businessgenerals.com/yaros (www.businessgenerals.com/yaros)   Starting out in business  When Yaro joined the University of Queensland to study business management, he got his first access to the internet and he was fascinated by the ease of access to information. He started playing a card game called “Magic: The Gathering” and became a great fan of it so much so that he built his first website dedicated to the game.   The website was built using GeoCities (a free website building tool) and he built a strong following through articles written by himself and other card players. That turned into a real business because he created a card game store which did very well. He also put up banner ads on the site and used to make $500 to $1,000 during the best times. The business gave him great experience in basic internet marketing.  Later on, while still in university, he started an essay editing business mainly targeted towards international students with English as a second language. His family would help as editors on the site and later on he hired other editors as contractors.   It was Yaro’s first real “laptop lifestyle business” because it enabled him to travel while doing it. It was hands-off for him because he had contract essay editors and all he would need to do is the website marketing through SEO and putting up posters at university campuses. His job was sending emails between customers and the editors, then he would take a 50% profit margin for every job. Eventually when he got enough volume, he hired an administrative assistant to look after the email job. It was a great full-time business and he made enough money, so he didn't need to get a job after graduating.  After graduating he focused on business and travelling to different global destinations. Eventually he sold the essay editing and card game business because he was no longer passionate about them.   Blogging  In 2004, Yaro learnt about blogging, so he started a blog and writing about business. Consequently, in January 2005, he registered http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/ (www.entrepreneurs-journey.com) purely as a hobby where he wrote 2 to 3 articles a week talking about running his card game and essay editing businesses. In the end, he sold off the card game and essay editing businesses to become a full-time blogger and information marketer.  Period in full time business  Yaro first made a full-time income in 2003 from his online essay editing business and has never looked back since.  Utilizing his business degree  Yaro says that he didn't use it a lot since he never got formally employed but he says going to study business enabled him to access the internet which developed his interest in online based business.  Core revenue streams  Right now Yaro only sells his own digital teaching products including a flagship course, membership site, and a range of lower priced products like ebooks and the interviews club. All these digital products are created by Yaro, and all sold from his blog and email list. He has a bit of affiliate income and other investments. He also has a...

Phil Ebinar is a video creator, educator and online business creator. He is a best-selling instructor on the online learning platform called Udemy with over 300,000 students in 211 countries. He has over 27,000 reviews and 76+ online courses. His passion is always to inspire and educate others through documentary and educational media. He teaches all kinds of things from video production and photography to design and online marketing. He owns the Video School Online brand through which he teaches people the skills that he has. He also started the Online Course Masters podcast to train people how to teach their own online courses. Phil graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Film and Television Production from Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles. Over the past 5 years, he has shot and edited thousands of videos that have played everywhere from the movie screen and television to film festivals and YouTube. ………… Business podcast recommendation for entrepreneurs:  https://www.listenmoneymatters.com/show/ (Listen Money Matters): An uncensored personal finance podcast http://www.madfientist.com/podcast/ (The Mad Fientist): Financial independence podcast >>> Legacy: To touch the lives of millions of people all over world by teaching them skills that will be a benefit to them – Phil. >>> Best way to connect: http://www.philebiner.com (www.philebiner.com) – Phil’s Business website http://www.videoschoolonline.com (www.videoschoolonline.com) – Phil’s Mentorship Program http://www.onlinecoursemasters.com (www.onlinecoursemasters.com) – Phil's Podcast For more info including show notes and resources check out https://www.businessgenerals.com (www.businessgenerals.com/phile) Thanks for tuning in!! -Davis #TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast https://www.businessgenerals.com (www.businessgenerals.com)   

Levi Newman is a freelance international copywriter on fiverr.com focused on crafting engaging marketing and advertising content. His work has been featured by numerous media outlets including Huffington Post Live, U.S. News and World Report and Social Media Today.   He is passionate about copywriting, online marketing, and client-based relationships. Over the last 10 years, he has constructed an improved relationship between brands, achieved success through strategic and focused consulting, and has been an innovator when it comes to engaging people on multiple social media platforms.  He has helped to develop and execute successful, large-scale social media programs that helped curate a following of more than four million people. He has been responsible for brand building and brand awareness by means of cultivating relationships through marketing, public relations, website/blog content and advertising, and he has done so by creating marketing materials in a variety of mediums (print, web and video)  Switching from Army/Police to becoming a writer  Levi enjoyed writing since he was in high school. He joined the army so he could be able to go to college, left the army at age 28 then attended the University of Missouri where he graduated from at age 32.  Crazy army missions  Levi was among the first soldiers in Afghanistan after 9/11 and the first to take detainees to Guantanamo bay. Being the first soldiers in Afghanistan was very challenging for him and his fellow soldiers.  After the army  Immediately after leaving the army, Levi went straight to university. In his junior year, he got an internship at Veterans United, a fortune 500 real estate company. He used to manage their social media and was very successful at it, he took it from 30,000 likes to 1.4 million likes within a 3 year period. After 6 months working there, one of the writers quit and Levi was offered the job.  Later on he became a director and senior marketing writer for about 3 years during which he won industry awards for his great performance. Eventually he decided to leave the company and apply for a senior marketing/writing position at an international crafts company. He got the job and worked there for about one year before leaving to become a freelancer on Fiverr.  Joining Fiverr  Levi had just returned to Missouri from Utah, where he worked at the crafts company. He decided to do freelancing and looked into a few freelancing platforms including Fiverr. He had tried Upwork but didn't like the bidding system and on Christmas day that year, he chose to start working on Fiverr.   Initially he didn't take it very seriously but he got a few orders within 2 days. In the following 3 months, he was doing very well and had made good money. He figured if he could make $100 a day ($3,000) a month, it would be enough to sustain his family and lifestyle. He therefore started aggressively selling his services and after 6 months he decided to raise his prices to earn more as he got more and more work. Levi got so busy on Fiverr that he didn't need to go into formal employment so he decided to go full-time into it  First gig  Levi's first gig was offering a service writing 250 words about a person's business. One of his first big orders was fixing a client's 25 page business plan for $600. After that big order he decided to niche down and streamline his gigs so he could deliver the best service to his buyers.  Income growth on Fiverr  Levi says there is a big misconception that a person cannot make good money on Fiverr or that they will always be limited to $5 jobs. Some people limit themselves by downplaying their worth through providing their services for very low prices, which Levi says it’s a self worth mindset problem.  What is Fiverr?  Levi says it's a universal platform for anybody that wants to make a little bit of money. He works relentlessly for months at a time without taking a single day off. He doesn't care much...

Michael Jackness is the co-founder of colorit.com, creators of top-quality coloring books for adults. He is also the CEO of terrain.com which focuses on domain investing, ecommerce, SEO, PPC, and affiliate marketing. He is also the co-host of a popular podcast called Ecomcrew Podcast.   Michael has been involved in the online marketing world for over 10 years. Since running one of the largest poker affiliate networks in the world with over 60 employees, he now runs a network of ecommerce websites generating over $7 Million in revenue annually.  Period in full-time business  He started in business for himself when he was 18. He was graduating high school and he didn't have much to look forward to because he wasn't going to go to college due to his poor grades and lack of attention in school. So he got a box of business cards and a pager then started computer consulting because he was very good with computers. He would go into people's homes and help them with their computer needs for $20 an hour. That was back in 1998  Core revenue streams  He says that over the last 4 years, they have been immensely focused on e-commerce. In 2017, their projected revenue is $7 Million and in 2018 he projects $15 Million in revenue. They have been growing at 200% to 300% per year and the only thing that slows their growth is lack of enough cash.  They currently have 4 brands. The first one was http://www.treadmill.com/ (www.treadmill.com). He has been investing in domains for a long time and says they are like real estate. He ended up starting an e-commerce business with http://www.treadmill.com/ (www.treadmill.com) and then sold it at the beginning of 2015 after which he purchased another site called http://www.icewraps.com/ (www.icewraps.com) which offers hot/cold packs for different parts of the body.   From there, he developed http://www.colorit.com/ (www.colorit.com) which offers a brand of colouring books geared towards adults. They also have http://www.tactical.com/ (www.tactical.com) which offers information on gear, camping, hiking, hunting, DIY, food, and more. They have a new brand called “Wild Baby” which they recently launched exclusively on Amazon and are currently developing its website.   They also have the https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ecom-crew-podcast/id1056042180?mt=2 (Ecom Crew) which consists of a blog and podcast about e-commerce. His background before e-commerce was affiliate marketing and from his e-commerce experience he learnt that he would need to talk about e-commerce through developing different valuable content. They have been looking into monetizing the blog and podcast.  Tip: There are a lot of ups and downs in business, everything you start isn't going to be successful but it's all about identifying those that can become successful  Domain investing  Michael does speaking engagements on e-commerce and business in general. He says that domain investing comes down to being at the right place, at the right time, and knowing that domain names are illiquid assets and that they cannot be sold on a moment's notice. He never really chooses to pick a particular domain name because he mostly gets opportunities to buy them from different people. He may sometimes resell the domain names or choose to develop them like he did with http://www.treadmill.com/ (www.treadmill.com) and http://www.tactical.com/ (www.tactical.com).  Tip: You have to be prepared for the fact there is only a couple of people in the world that can purchase these mid-6-figure or high-5-figure domain names  Affiliate marketing  He got into online poker affiliate marketing in 2004 and that's where he made a lot of his money. That was during the growth of online poker and being an early adopter of that, he had affiliate sites that were not just about content because he did several unique affiliate marketing-based things. When he got out of that in early 2011, he started doing the keyword domain investing with his...

Kyle Racki is the founder and CEO of Proposify, a software-as-a-service company currently doing seven figures in annual recurring revenue. Proposify allows companies to make better proposals faster to win more business. When Kyle launched Proposify in 2013, he and his co-founders almost gave up in their first year but despite enormous challenges, they now have 2,500 paying customers. He dedicates most of his time to product design, management and customer support, and doing his best to make Proposify all that it can be. He has been an entrepreneur for over 10 years and has lived with hustle, tenacity and resilience. He shares what he has learnt and what he continues to learn every day because he wants to help other entrepreneurs succeed. He does that through his blogs, videos, speaking and his upcoming book on building a SaaS business. Period in full-time business At age 24, he became a freelancer and a while later started a small web design agency with a guy he had met in the agency world. They ran the business for 5 years before starting Proposify which has been in operations for the last 3 years. They sold the agency in 2014 and also raised a seed round of funding for Proposify. The Journey He never thought he would be an entrepreneur and was in fact terrified of it. Core revenue streams Proposify is a software-as-a-service business. People sign up for a free trial of their proposal software and later they can opt for different pricing plans based on how many proposals one writes. Each pricing plan also has a range of features. So far they have 5,000 paid accounts and retention is very good. Starting out in business Kyle says everything he has done so far in business was not planned. He was freelancing in 2008, doing web design and development, but he got lonely and decided to get a business partner. Together they started their agency. Getting the first set of clients for the agency His business partner already had a few clients but they struggled a lot in trying to get clients. They did well in the first year, maintained low overheads and they got several good projects. They also struggled with their growth after the first year because they couldn't effectively manage the volatility of the business. Core agency products Kyle says that social media and digital marketing were there but very new. They used to do a lot of web design, UX work and online marketing. One of the problems they noted with the agency is that they didn't have a speciality. They never focused on a niche so they were stuck competing with local companies for smaller contracts. Tip: When starting a service business especially a creative one, you need to specialise in one thing. Starting Proposify When he was employed and freelancing, he used to write proposals and as he was freelancing he came up with the idea for a SaaS product for proposal management. He didn't have any coding skills but created its wireframe and shelved it for several years. In the process of running their agency, they started getting tired of chasing clients for payments among other issues. They really desired to transition into a SaaS business and tried out different SaaS products which didn't work. That's when they started discussing the proposal SaaS idea and they decided to go into it. Developing a SaaS product Kyle was not skilled in building a SaaS product but he knew how to create the interface. As they were developing different SaaS products, they built a team of developers internally. They got a grant to hire a developer who worked on the Proposify idea for one year. The developer is now the CTO. They got the grant from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) after they pitched their early stage prototype at an event. They also got an investment from another government-related organization which put in $250,000. Tip: To get funding, go to start-up events where they let you pitch or demo your idea. It's better than looking up

Adii Pienaar is a serial entrepreneur best known for founding the successful and multi-million dollar company WooThemes in 2008 which he also built from his home country South Africa. Since WooThemes, Adii has started a few new businesses, most recently Conversio (previously Receiptful), a SaaS business for all-in-one ecommerce marketing including features like email receipts, cart abandonment, follow ups, recommendations, product reviews, search, and feedback. Starting out  When Adii started out in business, he just wanted to be an entrepreneur and work for himself. He got into Wordpress out of necessity because he needed money for school. So he started doing some consulting for clients and he got to a point where he was building free Wordpress themes as a way to gain traction and find customers. That's how he started WooThemes.  That was before the ecosystem around Wordpress products even existed and there were only 2 to 3 other entrepreneurs who were selling premium Wordpress themes. Back then, one could only offer free opensource stuff or consulting services. Today, there is a vibrant community of different kinds of products, services and business models around Wordpress. Adii never thought Wordpress would become so big and that WooThemes would grow sustainably as far as it has.  On 2nd November 2007, he launched the first theme, The Original Premium News Theme, that eventually became WooThemes. The theme sold widely. He had started working on themes a year before that and he used to sell them through his blog.  Themes  Adii says that Wordpress has become a tougher place to build and sustain a business.   Tip: If there is a way to productize and some way extend some kind of service that you are doing, especially cost efficiently, then you will always have a market  Core revenue streams  He says with Conversio, they apply a Saas (Software as a Service) business model. That's unlike what he did with Woo Commerce/Woo Themes which only offered one-off downloadable content.  Conversio  In 2013, he was hoping to try his hand at building a new business. So, he stepped out of the Woo Themes operations and took a non-executive position. He then started working on a new product, Public Data, which was an online developments and learning community for entrepreneurs. While working on that, he was also negotiating his exit from WooThemes which concluded at the end of 2013.  He eventually shut down Public Data as a product. In early 2014, he came across a blog post about Email Receipts and when he read it, he became very interested in the idea. The first version of the idea before it became Conversio was called Receiptful, and it allowed people to include some form of marketing in their email receipts, this became very successful. From there, they slowly evolved into building complimentary tools including email marketing tools (now includes email newsletters and widgets).  Adii believes that anyone who read the blog post that inspired him could have just as easily started the same business he did. He says that what helped him was the fact that he had more understanding and experience in terms of building solutions specifically for people who were building ecommerce stores.  Building up on the idea  The first thing he did was Google to find out who else was doing something similar. His idea was slightly different from the existing ones. Addi identified Stripe (a payment platform) which was going through a massive growth phase as a potential business partner. People could build apps on top of the Stripe gateway exclusively and get a lot of success.   Adii outsourced the development of Receiptful's first version which was an app that would work with Stripe. It was geared towards other SaaS companies instead of ecommerce ones. He didn't want to target ecommerce customers because he wanted to initially build Receiptful as an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) as it would be easier. Once it was built, he had a few

Michelle Dale is the founder of Virtual Miss Friday, an online business consultancy and academy with built-in virtual assistant services. She is also the creator of Insourcing, a service that helps 6 to 7 figure entrepreneurs to organize, monetize and cultivate their online businesses. Through the academy, she offers a range of training programmes and courses for virtual assistants and digital nomads.   Michelle built her business while travelling through 6 countries and has expanded Virtual Miss Friday into multi-6 figure, multi-VA team supporting a global client base.  Travelling the world  Michelle has been on the road travelling globally since 2005. In 2005, Facebook and social media were not invented and there were very few people offering services online. She left the UK to travel the world and she thought to herself that there must be something she could do online to earn a living in such a way that she could keep travelling. Eventually, she discovered that she could provide VA services online which is what she did.  Current base  She is currently based in Greece, on the island of Crete, where she spends most of her time during the summer months after which she travels in the winter. She goes back to England on Christmas and then takes her kids off so they can travel for a few months after which they return during the summer.  Corporate role  She was in banking for a long time. She left school at 16, so she did any work she could do to make ends meet. At age 17, she landed a job in a bank and by the time she was leaving the UK at age 23, she was working as a para-planner and office manager in a mortgage and financial administration firm.  Core revenue streams  She makes money from services she provides to clients including consulting services, VA services, and online-oriented training courses. She also sells products, training programs and does a lot of coaching. She is currently trying to focus more on her programs and courses. She has a membership site as well, which generates income for her through membership fees. This is her primary income source.  Starting out in business  When she started out, her house in the UK was broken into and the thieves took everything except her passport. Michelle took that as a sign and so she decided to start travelling. She immediately quit her job, sold her house, booked a one way ticket and left.  She then did some research online, came across virtual systems and started the business. She also contacted her friends to get people and resources that would enable her to test the services before she started getting paying clients.  She then started taking paying clients for services like customer support, administrative support, and personal assistance. From there, she later branched out into website design, and when social media was created, she started offering social media marketing. Michelle didn't have any skills in website design but she self-taught herself  HTML code and Dreamweaver so she could build her own site and it worked out so well that people started asking her to do websites for them.  Identifying what to do  She had a criterion of things that she absolutely had to have fit into her business and one was that it had to be a business she could do on the internet so she could work while travelling. She also wanted a business that wouldn't require her to commit to specific times. The criteria included many other things which she wanted in a business. She then researched online about working online and she came across many different online businesses including ecommerce. She had tried selling things on eBay but she wanted to use her skills in what she was doing, and enjoy it. That's how she settled on administrative and customer support, and personal assistance services.  Knowing it would work  She didn't know for sure but she had no other option but to make it work because it was all she had.  Tip: You have to have enough pain or passion

Redd Horrocks is a professional voice over artist specializing in British and American accents with a wide range of experience across multiple forms of media including radio to commercial, phone systems, video games, podcasts, and company demo videos. She is an expert when it comes to growing an audience on sites like Fiverr.   She has been featured on Forbes Magazine and Business Insider as one of the top earners globally on the Fiverr website. She works out of a professional recording studio and also offers her voice over services through her company, Red Swift Media. She is also the founder of Instant Voicemails, an instant download voicemail resource. Redd has been helping people to maximize their earnings on Fiverr.  Starting out as a professional voice over artist on Fiverr  Redd says the Fiverr platform is a fantastic marketplace where people can buy and sell digital services with the name “Fiverr” coming from the fact that the base price on the platform is $5. The platform is suitable for professionals like logo designers, voice over artists, SEO experts and others who can provide their services digitally. She says it's a great way to gain business and clients.  One thing Redd likes about Fiverr is that it's got a built-in system where people are funnelled to look at a seller's offering and people from all over the world can find the seller without him/her doing any external marketing. The seller just finds orders in their account, works on them and delivers.  Redd's voice over services were initially a side gig but Fiverr enabled her to turn them into a full-time career.   Starting out in the voice over services space  Redd started doing voice over while back in college when a friend of hers asked her to record a voice for his video game. She really enjoyed doing the voice and it got her interested in doing it more. Over the following years, she would do it as a favour for different people and at some point when she needed to clear her credit card debt, a friend of hers introduced her into voice over work for an audio book company. She did several books for them, and it's around that time that she came across Fiverr.   Redd has a knack for cold reading scripts and switching her accent completely from British to American. The two things have enabled her to offer diverse voice over services on Fiverr for different individuals and businesses. She used to offer her voice over services on Fiverr while also working during the evenings which ended up becoming too tiresome for her so she eventually gave her employer 4 months' notice after which she left to work full-time on Fiverr.   Entrepreneurial passion  Redd has always been entrepreneurial and built several businesses including a bath and beauty company that she built up and sold. She was a co-founder on a big UX blog which she helped build and later sold her share. She also used to make pies and jam for sale. Business has always been a great passion for her and she likes to build and grow things.  Her drive  Redd says she is the bread winner for her family and they are the ones who motivate her to keep doing what she does every day. The voice over business enables her to work from home, spend time with her family, support them and help her husband achieve his dream.   Redd likes the fact that with freelancing she can grow as much as she wants which is unlike when someone has a corporate job.  Tip: Freelancing has its cons because for example one does not get paid time off or sick days, but it's totally worth it  Projecting Fiverr's value  She had no idea Fiverr would be such a great benefit for her. She is a very methodical tracker of analytics with her work so she has details on everything she has done on Fiverr and how much money she has made over time. The reason she was willing to go full time into it is because after a year of working on the platform, she had seen exponential growth month after month.   To move into doing it...

Dinesh Agarwal is the founder of Recurpost, a social scheduler that lets people recycle their best updates on social platforms. It is the only “one click, share all” social media system that seeks out content with the highest “like-and-share-me” power, attracts highly-qualified leads, and inspires sales calls that practically close themselves. Dinesh holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and had initially created Recurpost to help his start-ups build a strong online presence but as his clientele grew, he choose to provide Recurpost to them and it became a huge hit.  Period in full-time business  When he was an undergraduate, he started a software company with his fellow students through which they developed different software for local businesses and it worked very well but after undergraduate he went to a master's program and had to stop doing the software work. He knew that he wanted to be an entrepreneur but didn't realise it until he went into the Ph.D. program.   At one point, a former school mate approached him about a software idea and Dinesh developed the required algorithm immediately. Dinesh used to attend a lot of events in Atlanta based on startups and he realised that most of them had great software ideas but didn't know any IT people who could develop them affordably and reliably. Dinesh saw an opportunity in that and once he graduated from the Ph.D. program, he went back to India and started a company offering the development services to people who had ideas.  Initial project  The first project his company worked on doesn't exist anymore because they couldn't get users to use it so they had to shut it down. He says that over 30 projects they worked on ended up failing.  Tip: If you are working on an idea and it fails, don't feel bad about it, just move on to the next failure. You only need one successful idea  Reason for failed projects  He says there are many things that cause failures. They now don't work on ideas that are not properly defined in terms of the target market and other criteria, Dinesh also says he does not invest in online marketplace ideas.   Tip 1: If you want to get into your software idea then be ready for a lot of expensive marketing or work with someone who knows exactly what needs to be done  Tip 2: If you are getting into an idea with someone who will not be able to contribute a lot of time, the chances of failure are high. You should work with people who are passionate about what they are doing.  Importance of technical founder Vs. outsourcing   Dinesh says that there are 2 problems to outsourcing and they include; the person is not married to the idea, they are more concerned about the money they will make. They may be good people and do good work, they will not be there to handle all the technical issues that will definitely come up. He gave an example of how once they had someone buy a domain for them and the person forgot to renew it so it expired and the client's website went down and affected his business.  Business model  He says that his company works with its clients on a partnership/equity basis where the client doesn't pay them for their time but instead gives up equity in the idea. The client only pays for any required freelancers and pays a small amount for the overhead costs of Dinesh's company. Therefore, the company only works on projects that have future value. They never work on more than 4 projects at a time.  Core revenue streams  Right now, Dinesh says they have some projects that are making them money like Recurpost. Recurpost is making them enough money to pay the bills. One of the projects they just started is about to get funded and he hopes that it will be a great success. The project is based on replacing ERP software from the manufacturing industry. Manufacturers are not highly tech savvy people so they don't want software that increases their work load or requires them to hire more people to operate it. They need something that

Todd Tresidder is a successful entrepreneur who has built many businesses and actually retired at age 35 from his position as a hedge fund investment manager responsible for over $20 Million dollars. He is now a financial coach and educator at financialmentor.com where he offers coaching, a blog and ebooks on how to build wealth and invest smarter.   He is the author of five financial planning books including “How Much Money Do I Need To Retire?,” “Don't Hire A Financial Coach,” and “Variable Annuity Pros and Cons.”    Period in full-time business  He says he has been in business his whole life. He only worked as an employee for 6 months and then got fired. When in college, he was the associate students' business manager at the University of California which involved running the student run businesses on campus. He had been an entrepreneur since childhood starting out with paper routes and working his way up. He also had a boating business, taught sailing and had a pool supply company when in college. He says he is unemployable. He worked for HP straight out of college but was fired after 6 months.  He had made them millions by cleaning up their service contracts but got fired because his great performance made the boss look bad.  Core revenue streams  Currently, his revenues come from http://www.financialmentor.com/ (www.financialmentor.com). He sold the coaching business about 3 years ago. The coaching generated good revenue but he never wanted to become a thousand dollar an hour coach which is how people make money in coaching. He knows he could have done it but he didn't enjoy it anymore after a while because it started becoming like a job.  He is in the process of converting the business into the seven steps to seven figures courses. He began the coaching business because he used to ask himself how he could help ordinary people achieve extraordinary financial results. From coaching people, he learnt that acquiring wealth involves 7 processes that people go through and he finally got it down to a system that worked for clients. He then had to figure out how to formalize it into a structure that worked for everybody regardless of their class. It took some time for him to figure it out but he eventually broke it down into a 7 step process and he is now turning all that into product form so that he can be able to scale it in the long term.  Retiring at 35  He says it was planned. He worked his way through college and came out with debt. He used to work all summer while other students went on holiday. He didn't want to struggle in life and was determined to have financial independence so he figured out how to do it and mapped a path with the hedge fund business being a big part of it.   He figured that since he had to learn how to compound wealth then he might as well get paid to learn how to do it. Hedge funds were the only way for him to achieve that so he went to work for a hedge fund where he was responsible for developing statistical and mathematical trading systems.  Tip: You have to have a plan that‘s built around your interests, skills, resources and abilities because otherwise it won't work: This is step 3 of the seven steps to seven figures  A hedge fund  Todd says that the difference of a hedge fund from a mutual fund is that it's skill based (the return is a function of skill) but with a mutual fund, the return is the function of what the market gives. If the market is up, most mutual funds are up and vice versa. A hedge fund has skill based strategies and therefore they can make money under any market condition.  The 12 years to success  At the hedge fund, Todd started working in the marketing department and all he had to do was attract company presidents and vice presidents into what they called medium size return plans. They had a strategy for soliciting them and started building the business. One day as he was looking at the accounting, he realised that it was wrong and...

Zee Ali is the founder of Zee Group, a full-service custom apparel and merchandising company. Their products include custom apparel/uniforms, promotional products/custom premiums, print material/direct mail, event/tradeshow products, graphic design, award products, brand identity, and packaging/gift with purchase.  Zee started the business as a hospitality apparel company while he was studying restaurant management and culinary arts at Triton College. He started it with just $800 in his bank account and has grown it into a million dollar business.  Period in full-time business  He has been in business for 7 years now.  Core revenue streams  When he started the business he was selling chef coats and uniforms to culinary schools. In fact, he was selling the chef coats to his fellow students while he was studying the culinary arts. When people were asking him for aprons, hats, knives, pastry sets, pens and mugs, he would supply them all without exception, and so far his company offers more than a million products. They have partnered with some of the largest brands in the world including Nike.  His company is a B2B business that customizes merchandise for clients.  Culinary arts industry  His company works with different culinary schools to provide them with all their uniforms, pastry sets and other items. They also manage the logistic fulfilments for the schools. Zee worked in the industry for a while from being a buster to a server, bar tender, and executive chef but he now doesn't have time for that. In future he would like to travel through Europe and do some cooking.   Starting out in business  The root of his business journey started when he was very young. He was always money hungry and had side hustles all the time. He sold bootleg music, dvds, cigarettes, and any item he could get. He eventually got a job at a senior luxury living community as a busboy and worked his way up to a server. He used to really want a chance to cook and one Saturday he got the chance to wash dishes which eventually led him to becoming a prep cook and later a line cook. He had the job all through high school and through sponsorships he got a chance to join culinary school.   While there, he started getting chef coats from a flea market for a few dollars and then selling them to other students from his duffle bag. He kept selling the chef coats because a friend of his used to get them from a good source and together they would make good money from that.  Getting the first set of clients  His first customer was a culinary school he was referred to by one of his teachers. He showed up at the school with his duffle bag and his prices printed out, which really impressed the chef who ended up making an order immediately but Zee couldn't supply them there and then because the chef required him to have some business-related paperwork to become an approved vendor. Zee went and got all the necessary paperwork for his business and went back to them after which he got them as his first customers.  He would always secretly record all the conversations he had with clients and prospects because he never understood all the business language they used. At that time, Zee was not branding the coats and the only reason why he got them so cheap from the flea market was because they were considered defective coats. They used to be in great condition so he could comfortably sell them to his customers.  Growth strategy in the beginning  Zee used to print fliers and give them to people in the culinary schools. He also convinced teachers to let him show up in their classes and let the students try on the coats so that the ones who needed them would order. When he started getting into the other merchandise like t-shirts and hats, he would target businesses that were visible to him like auto shops and many more. It all worked well for him.  Tip: If you are working on a business, make sure to take the time out to identify your ideal...

Sean Cannell is a best-selling author, YouTuber, and lifestyle entrepreneur who has built a 6-figure online business. He operates through Think Media TV and Video Influencers with YouTube channels that have more than 16 million views and numerous high quality video that help people become more influential on the YouTube platform and with online video. He is passionate about helping influencers get noticed and get results with social media and online video.  Through Video Influencers (http://www.videoinfluencers.net/ (www.videoinfluencers.net)), Sean offers educational resources to help brands build their influence, grow their income, and increase their impact with online video.  Starting out  Sean started in video in 2003 while volunteering in church under the youth ministry. He got a Canon HB30 video camera from the youth pastor and started making video advertisements. That's how he slowly learnt how to be on camera, do production, edit videos, manage people, etc. That was before YouTube was even launched.  The first YouTube channel he worked on was his church's YouTube channel back in 2007. He eventually started Clear Vision Media through which he helped small businesses in the North Seattle area with their marketing videos, and also helped YouTubers, authors, and other experts build their personal brands using online videos.  In 2010, he started his personal YouTube channel and began by doing affiliate marketing until 2015 when he went all in. He considers himself a lifestyle entrepreneur and online marketer who works in the e-learning space helping people learn online video from the equipment and tech side as well from the strategy and what works best on the platform side through digital products and free training content. Sean and his team are based out of Las Vegas and now works in that business full-time.  Tip: When you want to start doing online video, just start because you learn by doing.  Period in full-time business  In 2015, Sean worked full-time in client work while working part-time on his online business. By January 2016 he had gone full-time into his online business generating revenues from his YouTube channels and other revenue streams linked to his channels.  In October 2015, he lost all of the 3 clients he had and after consulting his mentor he saw it as a sign from God to go into his own business full-time. The whole experience taught him the power of focus because when he concentrated solely on his online business, it grew exponentially.  Tip: If there is a business that you want to go into, take the leap and with great focus, it will succeed and grow.  Core income streams  Until October 2015, Sean was doing YouTube videos and affiliate marketing. He was making money from YouTube ads on his videos and also did a lot of affiliate marketing. A few months after starting, he found that he was making $500 a month from the videos and their associated affiliate marketing which taught him the power of creating strategic videos that meet what people look for.  When he decided to go full-time, he relied solely on affiliate marketing through the Amazon Associates Program. By January 2016, he had 20,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel and that month he had made $5,000. Later, other revenue streams like YouTube ads started growing. He now makes 6-figures from Amazon affiliate marketing alone. His channels also generate revenue from 25 other different affiliate programs. His biggest source of income is digital products then affiliate marketing followed by YouTube ads.  How to start a YouTube channel business  Sean says today is a very good time to start a YouTube channel because there is massive opportunity for one to build influence online  Tip: One just needs to look into different products and determine whether there is a large enough market for each. If a product is viable then one can develop YouTube videos related to questions people ask about that product  How to choose a...

Nick Loper is an author and online entrepreneur featured on The New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, and speaking at a TEDx event. His latest role is as Chief Side Hustler at Side Hustle Nation, a growing community of aspiring and part-time entrepreneurs, where he also hosts the top-rated Side Hustle Show podcast.  He is the author of 4 books including Work Smarter: 350+ Online Resources Today's Top Entrepreneurs Use To Increase Productivity and Achieve Their Goals, which became an Amazon bestseller in 2014. Nick has been working with virtual staff since 2005 and has a free course on how to hire a high quality and long-term virtual assistant. He also runs the web's leading virtual assistant company directory and review platform, Virtual Assistant, with more than 100 VA companies and 700 user reviews. He has helped thousands of readers identify their outsourcing opportunities and take action.  Period in full-time business  Nick has been self-employed full-time since 2008 and worked in business as a side hustle since 2004.  Core revenue streams  His biggest revenue streams on his podcast, The Side Hustle Nation, include sponsorships and affiliate revenue. He also has several other affiliate websites that do well. He was able to leave formal employment because of an affiliate website. It was a footwear comparison shopping site built on an affiliate model and used to refer traffic to Amazon and Zappos, and Nick would earn commissions from the resultant sales.  He does self-publishing with books on Amazon including some on side hustling. He also does some freelancing work which including book editing for other non-fiction authors, sales courses on Udemy, and selling products on Fiverr.  Key focus going forward  The podcast has been his main focus in the last year. It started out as an afterthought experiment but it has grown faster his blog to become his main focus.  Reason for podcast growth  Nick thinks the main reason the podcast has grown so fast is because of word of mouth marketing but he also highlights podcast marketing and iTunes optimization as some of the other reasons. Some episodes have had people engaged and talking about the podcast.  Focusing on his niche  Nick says that focusing on the side hustle side of business may have contributed to the podcast's success. He only had an email list of 11 people to market the podcast to when he was starting the podcast and that's how he built his audience slowly.  Leaving corporate  The footwear comparison shopping site was the business that helped him leave his job. He used to intern at a shoe retailing company in Seattle which had a brick and mortar store but decided to try selling the shoes online. The online segment of the business grew 10 times faster than their brick and mortar shop. That's how Nick got exposed to affiliate marketing, pay per click advertising and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) which enabled him to build his own footwear comparison shopping site.  When he was running the site, he was very reserved and heads down working on it. He didn't mingle with any people in the business world and faced a lot of challenges with the business. At one time he had a problem with Google and it was very frustrating because 80% of is traffic was coming from Google ads. Later the problem was sorted but it taught Nick the importance of diversifying his business. Later on he started several other different side hustles, most of them flopped but a couple have stayed afloat including the Side Hustle Nation site.  Knowing when to leave corporate  One of the factors that helped him leave his formal job included the income he was making from the site. It was not replacing his salary in the beginning but he felt that if he could work solely on the site, that it could make him more money.  Getting the first sponsors  He says the first sponsors reached out to him about a year ago and asked him to consider doing an ad on the show. To achieve that,...

Rebecca Coomes is the founder of The Healthy Gut where she coaches people with Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO) and guides them on how to live well with SIBO. She achieves that by sharing her SIBO friendly recipes in her cookbooks, on her SIBO Cooking Show and on her blog. Rebecca hosts a popular podcast called The Healthy Gut Podcast where she interviews the world's leading SIBO specialists. She is also a marketing consultant who knows how to grow a global audience in a short space of time.  Transitioning out of the corporate world  Rebecca used to work with a big hospitality company in Melbourne whose management changed at some point and that negatively affected the work environment to the point where Rebecca didn't like working there anymore.   She therefore took some time out and travelled around South America where she had a near fatal diving accident which gave her a perspective on what she wanted in life. When she got back to Australia, she decided to try her hand in the not-for-profit sector specifically working with animals. Later on she realised that she was too commercially-minded to work with people with no commercial experience. In the meantime, her health and work enjoyment were deteriorating so she had to make a change. In her early twenties she had her own business and she loved it.   Eventually she started her own marketing consultancy because she wanted to be the master of her own destiny. She was able to secure clients quickly and at some point her major challenge was having so much work that she didn't know how she would manage it.  Getting the first clients  She had been working in hospitality and events, and was also an executive member of the Special Events Society which exposed her to a broad network of people and businesses. She started by sending out an email to the network to pitch her new marketing services and within 30 seconds she got a response from one of her associates who said their company was rebranding and needed marketing support. She got other clients from then on through referrals and her network. Within 3 months, she was so exhausted from working so hard because she used to work 80 hour weeks.  Fully exploiting her enormous network  Rebecca started by going through her email list, Facebook and LinkedIn to look for everybody she knew in the hospitality and events industry in Melbourne. She then emailed them all with details of her new marketing consultancy business. She used to target small to medium sized businesses that didn't have a marketing manager, but needed marketing support. Her great marketing experience appealed immensely to those businesses. One of her first clients had a successful business but the sales were not good because their marketing strategy was not well developed.  Rebecca helped the businesses with planning to determine where they wanted to go and the future they wanted. She even helped them identify inefficiencies in their operations and streamline their marketing activities to achieve maximum sales. Her support would enable her clients to do a full overview of their business and determine what works for them and what doesn't.   Before working in the hospitality and events industry, Rebecca also worked in the Australian and UK retail industries where she ran more 400 stores and that equipped her with operations management skills that were highly applicable in her marketing consultancy.  The light bulb moment  Rebecca was in the Dent Business Accelerator Program about two and a half years ago and it was very beneficial to her. As she went through the program, she realised that she was standing on a mountain of value made up of 36 years of personal experience with chronic illness (SIBO) and a passion for cooking. She could see an immediate gap in the market because there were no recipes or cook books for people who suffered from SIBO.  It took her a month to launch her first cook book and it was the world's first cook book...

Kurek Ashley is an internationally renowned speaker, author and coach in the fields of self-development and success coaching, he is recognized as a premier expert in personal and professional development, self-discovery and peak performance. He is the founder of Life Success Club that brings together a community of like-minded, positive, success-driven people from all over the world. His No. 1 Best-Selling book How would Love respond? has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people all over the world.  For over 30 years, Fortune 500 companies and major corporations around the world such as Apple, Seagate, Schwarzkopf, Westin Hotels, The Australian Royal Airforce and Carlton United Brewery, hire Kurek to teach them tactical success strategies that have produced awe-inspiring results. His list of private clients include Hollywood film and TV stars, movie directors, producers and cinematographers, a quintuple platinum rock band, hit music composers, top business leaders, oil executives in Kuwait, Olympic Gold Medalists, professional athletes and sports teams, and many others. He is also the founder of Action Heroes Inc., a movement dedicated to sharing inspirational thoughts, ideas and life experiences that have been put into action to produce results that have transformed people's lives around the world.  Shift from movie industry career  Kurek was always coaching people since high school, talking to them about fulfilling their dreams and goals. It was always a passion of his to coach people on personal development.  He started acting at age 12 and at 18 he moved to Los Angeles where he was taken under the wing of a movie director whose best friend was Sylvester Stallone. The director, and a host of books he used to read, forced him to read the book Think and Grow Rich.  As he was acting and working behind the camera, he once got an audition on a Saturday for the lead bad guy in a movie titled Mighty Ducks Part 5. It was an emergency casting, and very rare for a major studio to audition on a Saturday. Kurek was supposed to hear from them on the following Tuesday on whether he got the part but they never called; and on the Thursday that followed, he left for Georgia to do a speaking engagement for the youth in a small town.  Kurek didn't check his answering machine until that Sunday when he got messages from the studio saying he had gotten the part, and that he would start shooting on the Friday that had just passed. His lack of response to the studio's call caused a lot of anger and he was worried that his acting career would come to an end but then he figured it was better that he did the speaking engagement to help change the young people's lives. He loved helping people more than acting so he started doing many more speaking engagements and finally let go of the movie industry. The speaking business became very successful because Kurek directed all his focus onto it. That was 23 years ago.  Going full-time into the speaking business  As he was starting out doing more speaking engagements, he recorded one of the first corporate speaking events he ever did but he didn't like it at all and the people who were to give him a testimonial letter refused to do so because they felt that he did so badly.  Kurek watched the recording over and over again to try and figure out what was good about it and he discovered some pieces that were good. Those pieces were the ones where he was off script and spoke from the heart on what he was passionate about. So, Kurek learnt how to expand on that. Immediately after that bad speaking engagement, he booked himself into 13 others and did that every month from then on because he realised that if he was to get good at it, he would have to keep doing it continuously.  Tip 1: It's always better to keep yourself in motion despite the downfalls you face  Tip 2: Always ask yourself, “How can I make it better?”  Tip 3: In anything you want to be great at in life, you

Ben Settle is a world class email specialist, full-time email marketer and copywriting trainer. He teaches people how to make more income from emails. Over the past 15 years, Ben has written ads, created email campaigns, and cooked up marketing strategies for clients that have collectively earned tens of millions of dollars in sales in hyper competitive, “cut throat” markets. His methods have also gotten rave reviews from the world's top A-List copywriters, marketers, and designers. He has taught methods he pioneered to some of the world's most prestigious direct marketing companies. Ben also publishes a monthly print newsletter called “Email Players” that costs $97 per month and is read by hundreds of people in over 30 countries, including some of the most respected copywriters and marketers on the planet, such as A-list copywriters, publishers at prestigious direct marketing companies like Agora Financial, leading auto-responder and email trainers, world class copywriters, and more. ………… His books Ben's books are available on http://www.bensettle.com/kindle (www.bensettle.com/kindle) and they are mostly business related including topics like copy writing, selling, positioning, traffic generation, and others. Three of them are basically twisted monster books. He says his books are made up of content that he had already written so he just repurposes the content into short books. He makes good money from the books and they also bring him solid leads. >>> Legacy: To have an impact as a teacher and educator, helping others learn, inspiring them to learn the English language, inspiring to pursue their business dreams so they can have a meaningful life – Ben. >>> Best way to connect: http://www.bensettle.com (www.bensettle.com) – Ben’s Business website (opt into email list to get the first issue of the Email Players newsletter or check out the blog) For more info including show notes and resources check out https://www.businessgenerals.com (www.businessgenerals.com) Thanks for tuning in!! -Davis #TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast  

Brian Kurtz is the founder of Titan Marketing, an educational consulting business that teaches direct response marketing to online marketers. Brain started in the list business which gave him a solid foundation in learning about audiences, demographics and database marketing. Brian helped Boardroom, Inc. create tens of millions in revenue from mastering the skill of direct response marketing.   Brian has been able to market and sell huge numbers of newsletters and books via direct response television (infomercials) and email/internet. He has overseen the mailing of approximately 1.3 billion pieces of third class mail over the last 20 years. He has been responsible for buying media in excess of $80 Million and selling over 3 million books via direct response television over a three year period.  Going into full-time business   Brian worked for Board Room, Inc. for thirty four years as a partner in the business with an equity position, and so never felt like he was working for his employer. He says he considers himself an intrapreneur rather than an entrepreneur because even though he didn't participate in starting the company, when he became partner, he came up with a lot of innovative growth ideas that contributed to the company's continuous success. Working there honed his entrepreneurial talents.  After his employer passed away, Brian left the company to start a direct marketing educational business through which he could share what he learnt at Board Room, Inc. about direct marketing. It's been two years now, as of 2017, since he started the business.   So far, within the two years, he has created two high-level mastermind groups for entrepreneurs, marketers, and copy writers. He has written a book; created different products; republished books by other classic direct marketers and copy writers; and he does a lot of public speaking internationally.  Core revenue streams  He generates revenue from the mastermind groups, the products that he sells and his speaking engagements. He also does a lot of consulting for different clients. He says he doesn't prefer the consulting work because it's not as scalable as the other revenue sources he engages in.      Board Room, Inc.  Brian says Board Room mostly sold books and newsletters (magazines without advertising) directly to consumers and most of the books that were the biggest sellers were the health-related ones. Books on personal finance, investments, and consumer information also did very well. They had a big newsletter called Bottom Line Personal which was the largest broad-based consumer newsletter in terms of circulation in the US. At some point it had 1 million subscribers and Brian estimates that it now has around 300,000 subscribers. There were years where they sold up to 3 million books a year through direct mail, the internet, e-newsletters, affiliates, radio, inserts, and TV.  Brian says he prefers to work with companies that are willing to use multiple channels to sell their products. He even owns a url called http://www.singlechannelmarketingissoboring.com/ (http://www.singlechannelmarketingissoboring.com) which directs people to his regular website, http://www.briankurtz.me/ (http://www.briankurtz.me). He says he bought that url so he could talk about it wherever he speaks in order to emphasize how dangerous single channel marketing is.  Tip: Using one medium of marketing is very dangerous. Make sure you do multi-channel marketing  Transition from Board Room, Inc. into self-employment  He says it's been better than he expected despite some challenges. The most challenging part of the business is the consulting service he offers because he can't be as deeply engaged in the businesses he consults for to ensure their success. That is unlike his work at Board Room where he was 100% responsible for all the operations of the business and therefore was always able to ensure all the necessary processes were implemented to facilitate the...

Sarah Shaw is the CEO of Sarah Shaw Consulting. She started her career as a costume designer for Hollywood movies, went on to build several businesses and sold millions of dollars' worth of products including the Sarah Shaw Handbag which got a lot of press, TV and movie placements. The bag is sold in over 1,200 stores and over 70 of the world's most famous celebrities have worn or carried her products. Within a year Sarah Shaw Handbags could be found on the pages of InStyle, Oprah, People, Lucky and Marie Claire magazines.  Sarah provides private one-on-one coaching packages that give entrepreneurs the overall know-how to create and launch a product as well strategies she used to grow her own million-dollar company. One of her special areas of coaching is teaching clients how to get their products into the hands of celebrities and then leveraging their celebrity clientele for press and sales. He experience in production and entertainment has lent itself to unique approaches to packaging, marketing, distribution and public relations.  Sarah also founded Entreprenette, a company through which she coaches female entrepreneurs through the process of taking their fashion, home, lifestyle or accessory product ideas from concept to reality.  Period in full-time business  Sarah started her first company in 1994 but has been in full-time self-employment since 1998.  Core revenue streams  Sarah's current business is Sarah Shaw Consulting through which she works with entrepreneurs to help them launch their product-based companies. She works with them for 6+ months in building their businesses.  Starting the consulting business  Sarah started Sarah Shaw Consulting in 2009.  Starting out in business  After college, Sarah started working in the film business doing costumes for movies. She never thought of entrepreneurship back then. In 1994, she started a clothing company that made clothes for movies. She partnered with a fashion designer and manufacturer who produced the clothes for her.  Her second business was buying wardrobe trailers and renting them to the film business. She later got the idea for a handbag in 1997. She made the bags, sold them, and they took off very well in the market. The handbag was taken up by 20 to 30 stores, and in 1998 she got a big order from Anthropologie, which drove her to quit her job as a costume designer.  Role of a costume designer in Hollywood  Sarah says costumes are the visual aspect of a movie and are therefore very critical in developing a character in the audience's eye. She was a costume supervisor working under costume designers and some of her roles included managing the budgets and making sure all the costumes were on set when needed. She also performed a lot of other tasks and worked a minimum of 12 hours a day.  Take away from the costume supervisor job  The costume supervisor job enabled her to discover her tenacity and willingness to succeed. She learnt how to manage budgets, how not to take no for an answer, and how to put her vision to paper in the best way possible. All that helped her as she started her entrepreneurial journey.  Starting the handbag company and growing it  When she was first creating the handbags, she used to create rough designs and create samples. She consulted her former business partner in the previous clothing company she had, and he connected her to the people who eventually helped her get the first order from Anthropologie.  She had initially contracted a family that sewed the bags for her but she later started using a factory she knew to do the sewing in mass. At that point, she had a small office where she managed all the operations from. She eventually got orders from Nordstrom stores and other boutiques across the US.   Sarah did a lot of cold calling and sometimes mailed out her printed catalogue to get new buyers. Later on, she started sending out the handbag to celebrities. When the celebrities were photographed...

Carissa Reiniger is an entrepreneur and small business growth expert. She started her company, Silver Lining, at the age of 22 and has been highly involved in the world of small business ever since. She spent over a decade of her life learning how to effectively help a small business grow and developed the SLAP methodology which has managed to influence over 10,000 small businesses.   Carissa has written 3 books on how to grow and help small businesses succeed. She has also been featured in many publications and media outlets including the New York Times, Forbes, TechCrunch, National Post, Globe and Mail, Inc., Entrepreneur, CNN and more. She speaks often on entrepreneurship and has worked with the small business teams at The White House, Google, RIM, Staples, American Airlines, Citrix, and many more.   Carissa is also the founder of Thank You Small Business, a big movement to help more small businesses succeed. She is extremely passionate about the arts, has 2 books about relationships, and a play based on her book that she produced across Canada and many other projects under her belt. She is currently working on writing and directing her own play in NYC and producing and directing a documentary.  Period in business  She started Silver Lining eleven years ago when she was 22 years old. It was her first official business.  Core revenue streams  When she started Silver Lining, it was a consulting business which didn't work in the long run because the overheads were too high, their consulting fees to high, and it was not scalable. She eventually changed the business model to a training model where they were getting paid to train small businesses. The revenue streams changed because they were getting paid large sums of money by large organizations, companies and government agencies to train small businesses. Though that business model was highly profitable, they could not support the small businesses in the long term so four years ago Carissa came up with another business model through which she invested heavily in the development of a software product that enabled Silver Lining to become a SaaS business.   That business model has so far been very successful because their prices are affordable, it's profitable, they can scale, and they can work with small businesses long term. They have three different SaaS package levels depending on how much support a business owner needs.  Core service offering  Carissa wanted to help small business owners successfully sustain their businesses while making more money doing what they love. She first interviewed 400 business owners trying to figure out why it was so hard to grow a small business and why the failure rate was so high. She discovered that small businesses never have enough time or money; and they need more time to make more money, and more money to make more time which Carissa called The Cash Flow Capacity Catch 22.    To solve that problem, Carissa developed the Silver Lining Action Plan (SLAP!), better known as the SLAP Methodology, which is based on behaviour change psychology; and it's more of a modern, provocative, interesting, action-oriented, interactive business growth plan. SLAP is a one year program where business owners spend the first 30 days building a one year growth plan.   The business owners start by thinking about where they want their businesses to be, evaluating their business models, setting financials goals, deciding who their ideal customers are, and building an action plan to go into the market and meet their target customers. Once they are done, which usually takes 10 hours, they have to implement that action plan within a 12 month period. Silver Lining offers them support, structures, resources and training for the 12 months to help them achieve their growth plan.  Current business model  Silver Lining's business model is SaaS overlaid with consultancy and their pricing is between $200 and $500 a month. Every client at any...

Joel Boggess is the go-to guy for clarity, confidence, and direction. He is an author, life coach, and online radio host (ReLaunch Show). He teaches professionals and women on-the-go how to find clarity, confidence and direction even when they feel stuck, overwhelmed, or unchallenged. He helps entrepreneurs, owners, and business leaders make better decisions, take bolder actions, and get greater results.  With a Master's degree in counselling and many years' experience working one-on-one and with special interest groups, Joel has the know-how, skill, and wisdom, to help you tune into fully expressing your voice. He is a No. 1 Best Selling Author for his book, Finding Your Voice, which hit the top spots on Amazon. He is also a contributor to Huffpost and Success.com.  Last corporate job  His last corporate job was in the Dallas, Fort Worth area working for Morgan Stanley. He officially left formal employment on November 30th 2006.  Core revenue streams  Joel has been doing podcast coaching and one-on-one coaching. He has helped people create, launch and grow their podcast shows. He recently tweaked his business model to focus exclusively on speaking to get paid, where has had some experience.  Tip: Podcasting is the new networking and the best way to make connections that you would never make through any other channel  Starting out in business  One month after leaving formal employment, Joel got a speaking engagement. During that speaking engagement, Zig Ziglar was seated in the front row which challenged Joel to do his best and also motivated him to move forward as an entrepreneur. He initially started as a one-on-one career and life coach and that was his primary revenue stream for a long time.  Replacing the Morgan Stanley income  Joel says it took a couple of years to replace his Morgan Stanley income.   Tip: If you live under the same roof with someone who is highly involved in your life, make sure you have an agreement with them before you leave formal employment.  Why podcasting?  Apart from having mixes of experience in radio and TV, Joel knew he had to be in the podcast industry and be a leader. Podcasting is of great value to him and he says that having a podcast has been one of the best business decisions he has ever made.  Monetizing the podcast  He says this is not the most important thing because he views his podcast as a door opener and relationship/opportunity maker. It has helped him get on stages and develop relationships with million-dollar speakers, actors, best-selling authors, and athletes. Inviting those people on his podcast show enabled him to bridge the gap between him and them.    Reason for success so far  Joel says focusing on what he wanted to accomplish enabled him to create a show that would add value to people and help him get some growth opportunities. He has been focused on creating that show, getting quality content from the guests that he hosts, and developing the show's social media presence. Focusing on the show has helped him get to the point where he can now move forward into diversification.    Tip: Focus is the number one competitive advantage  Initial wrong move  He says one of the mistakes he made in the beginning was counting on his previous guests to drive his show growth by directing traffic to his website and social media sites. The results were disastrous for him despite having all the biggest names on his show because the show was not growing. Taking ownership of the show's growth later on was a big game changer.  Tip: As a podcaster, add value in the conversation and to the conversation, and that will change the way the interviewee views you  Leveraging the networking aspect of the podcast and the current social outreach strategy after each show  Joel says that he has learnt the importance of repurposing content which involves sending out shows multiple times on various social media channels. He mostly uses Twitter for the...

Jeremy Young is the founder and CEO of Tanga.com, a company he built from scratch to become one of the fastest-growing privately-held companies in Arizona (#14 2015 ACE Awards) and the largest bootstrapped company in its market, with no outside investors or debts. The company has had over 5 million orders shipped and served more than 2 million customers. Tanga was honored by Phoenix Business Journal in 2014 and 2015 as one of Arizona's 25 fastest growing private companies and included in the Internet Retailer's lists of Top 1000 ecommerce companies. Jeremy was named the 2016 CEO of the Year by Phoenix Business Journal at the AZ Top Tech Exec Awards. ………… Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:  Founder's At Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days – Jessica Livingston The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference – Malcolm Gladwell Other Malcolm Gladwell's books in general >>> Legacy: To leave a mark, do something that changes the world, and leave the world a better place – Jeremy. >>> Best way to connect: http://www.tanga.com (www.tanga.com) – Jeremy's Business Website jeremy@tanga.com – Jeremy's Business Email http://www.entrepreneursinmotion.com (Jeremy) Young – LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook For more info including show notes and resources check out https://www.businessgenerals.com (www.businessgenerals.com) Thanks for tuning in!! -Davis #TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast  

Dave Hirshkop is the owner and creative force behind Dave's Gourmet which is a Gourmet products manufacturer that is made up of several brands including Insanity Sauces and Snacks, DG Sauces, Palette Fine Foods, and Chile Today Hot Tamale. They have won dozens of awards, are in national distribution and have a ton of media coverage including The Today Show, Good Morning America, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, The Food Network, NPR, and many more. ………….. Tools and Resources: Blinkist: An app that offers very informative summaries of diverse useful books Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:  Dave reads audio books and has now been reading book summaries on Blinkist, but doesn't have any in particular that he can recommend. He advices entrepreneurs to read books on management. He says Seth Gordon books are also very gainful. He still recommends “The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss” >>> Legacy: To be remembered for having created ideas and products that had a positive impact in people's lives – Dave. >>> Best way to connect: http://www.davesgourmet.com (www.davesgourmet.com) – Dave’s Business website dave@davesgourmet.com – Dave's email address For more info including show notes and resources check out https://www.businessgenerals.com (www.businessgenerals.com) Thanks for tuning in!! -Davis #TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast  

JV Crum III is the founder of Conscious Millionaire Institute, which works with coaches, consultant and people who want to make their first million dollars and do something bigger – even if they have not yet fully identified every aspect of what that is, or how big they truly want to play on this planet. JV is a true master at helping clients discover, craft, and expand their “Big Impact Vision”. Conscious Millionaire works with business coaches and consultants who are next-generation thinkers, people who seek to create a transformational shift – for themselves, their clients and our world. You can find more about JV at http://consciousmillionaire.com/ (http://consciousmillionaire.com/) Join us in this awesome episode between me and JV, and I know you will have a blast!! ……… Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:  Conscious Millionaire: Grow Your Business by Making a Difference – JV Crum III >>> Legacy: To help at least a million people achieve the financial freedom they want by building businesses that make a positive impact in the world – JV Crum III. >>> Best way to connect: http://www.consciousmillionaireshow.com/ (www.consciousmillionaireshow.com) – JV’s Podcast (Send Email or Voicemail) http://www.consciousmillionaire.com/freebook (www.consciousmillionaire.com/freebook) – JV’s Business Website  

Zvi Band is a software developer and entrepreneur, the CEO and co-founder of Contactually which is a software service that gives people everything they need to easily organize and stay in touch with the most important people in their network. He built the company from an idea in his Evernote to 60 employees (and growing), millions in revenue, 12M+ in venture backing, numerous awards, and thousands of paying customers in SMB and mid-market. He previously led Workstreamer as CTO from its initial product development to acquisition. Prior to Contactually, Zvi ran a software consultancy firm, working for clients such as Ford, NYSE AND Volkswagen. He also serves as a mentor to two DC-Based incubators, 1776 and Acceleprise. He founded DC Tech Meetup and ProudlyMadeinDC to promote DC entrepreneurship. He has been named a DC “Tech Titan” 3 times. ……….. Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:  Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers – Geoffrey A. Moore (has been a key part of the business strategy behind Contactually) The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers – Ben Horowitz Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future – Peter Thiel >>> Legacy: To be remembered as someone who made a positive impact in the world and made a lasting effect in some way – Zvi. >>> Best way to connect: @skeevis – Zvi's Twitter Handle (His favourite way of communicating) http://www.contactually.com/ (www.contactually.com) – Zvi's business website  

Russ Perry is the founder Design Pickle, the number one flat rate graphic design service in the world, offering clients unlimited graphic design support at a flat monthly fee. Design Pickle solves a lot of problems for just about everyone, from the small business that doesn't have an in-house designer to the entrepreneur who shouldn't be spending time trying to put Facebook ads together for hours on end. Russ has been involved in branding and marketing strategy for over the last decade, and has worked to shift the status-quo with brands like Apple, Morgan Stanley, Pebble Tec, LG, Botanicare and Harlem Globetrotters. ………. Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:  Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World – Cal Newport The 7 Day startup: You Don't Learn Until You Launch – Dan Norris >>> Legacy: To be remembered as the enabler that ensured his family had amazing, unforgettable experiences – Russ. >>> Best way to connect: Russ Perry on Instagram http://www.designpickle.com/ (www.designpickle.com) – Russ’ business website (Fill out contact form)  

Darryl Lyons is the CEO and co-founder of the PAX Financial Group which helps people improve their financial planning and quality of life through strategies for investing. He is a licensed financial planner and the author of Small Business, Big Pressure. Darryl began his career in the financial sector right after university and throughout his career; he had won awards for recruiting and development form Fortune 100 companies.  He started PAX Financial Group back in January 2007 with his co-founders Andres Gutierrez and Joseph Schuetze. He has built the company to officially become “one of the best places” to work in San Antonio.  Darryl also served as the Chairman for the Brooks Development Authority which earned him the honor of having Mayor Julian Castro name a park “The Darryl W Lyons Park”. He was also named to the 2010 San Antonio Business Journal's “40 Under 40 Rising Stars” which honors people making a difference in business and the community   Period in full–time business  Started out alone about 12 years ago and after 2 years, brought in 2 partners to form PAX Financial Group. In the beginning he had a sole proprietorship business.  Current Revenue streams  The main revenue sources for PAX Financial are managing people's money, insurance services and group retirement accounts. Darryl and his team take pride in liberating people when it comes to managing their money. Their services enable their clients to focus on what they are good at.     Starting out in business  His entrepreneurial journey started while in college. He used to work at a bank full-time to pay for college and that's where he developed his interest in finance. Decided to study accounting and finance which enabled him to go into the banking and investment world. He started by working for big companies. Started his own firm about 5 years later.  Transition from formal employment into self-employment  It was a painful process for Darryl. His father had always motivated him to be an entrepreneur. Getting his first child was the first factor that pushed him to quit his formal job because he had the fear of losing his job while having so many personal responsibilities. A series of other difficulties eventually led him to go into entrepreneurship and despite the challenges he faced in the beginning, he persevered until he achieved success. His faith in God played a major role in his success to date.  Working on his new business  Working in the corporate world taught him how to create a habit of excellence. He used to do aggressive cold calling coupled with direct marketing and they helped him achieve solid sales leads which turned into long term clients. He applied the same to his new business and it helped him achieve sales while also maintaining his previous clients.  Getting the first set of clients  He engaged in a lot of networking which helped him get a fresh list of clients after losing all the previous clients he had when starting out. One of the people he met at a networking event appreciated Darryl's level of integrity in his work, which led to Darryl being endorsed by Dave Ramsey. That endorsement became the new catalyst to his growth. He started getting 100 referrals per month from Dave Ramsey. Still works with Dave's team to date.  Working towards getting endorsed  Darryl had a high degree of authenticity in his work and that naturally led to influential people endorsing his work.  Tip: Doing what you are passionate about will eventually make you visible in your area of business and if you maintain a high level of integrity and professionalism in your work, the right people will endorse and validate your work.  3 minute talk to 30,000 people  Darryl was offered an opportunity by his pastor to talk to his 30,000 strong congregation about financial and investment management. He enjoyed making the talk.  Growing the business  PAX Financial currently has 18 employees and more than 2,000 clients. They

Gavin Zuchlinski is the founder of Acuity Scheduling, a clever online automated way for businesses to manage their appointments online, allowing clients to schedule themselves. He is a self-professed tech geek and espresso maniac who wholeheartedly believes that business should be fun.  Gavin says, “At Acuity Scheduling we are obsessed about helping businesses like yours offer and manage appointments online so you can focus on what you're good at.   It all started with seeing my mom spend hours scheduling her clients. I knew there had to be a better way, so I built it. It transformed her life and now does the same for over 50,000 businesses.”  Effect of relocating to Acuity  Gavin started by working in a government job before leaving to start Acuity Scheduling. He recently moved from New York City to Pennsylvania to be closer to family. His move didn't affect Acuity's operations because it's a completely remote company. Every Acuity employee either works from home, a co-working space or other suitable location. Whenever Gavin needs to hire new employees he still sources them from New York because it's easier to carry out training and on-boarding.  Current core revenue streams  Acuity is a subscription based SaaS business where every client who goes to their website can sign up for a trial and later pay for the service either monthly or annually. 100% of Acuity Scheduling's revenue comes from the subscriptions.  Target clients  Gavin originally built Acuity for his mum's small business and he has continuously ensured that they only serve small businesses that have less than 10 employees. Acuity offers 4 pricing plans including a free plan, $10 plan, $19 plan, and a $34 plan. They also have larger clients who pay the same low prices which enables Gavin and his team to ensure that clients are treated equally in terms of service delivery.  Acuity has tens of thousands of low paying customers. That has helped the company avoid being reliable on one segment clients for its major revenues.   Starting out in business  During a long drive with his mum, Gavin realised that she was having a hard time scheduling, cancelling or confirming appointments, and that inspired him to develop a program that would help her efficiently manage her appointment scheduling so she could concentrate on her core activities. That software program was what became Acuity.   Gavin also set up a web development business around the software but in the beginning he didn't succeed in getting clients. He still kept it running and eventually people started organically signing up for it. Back then, Gavin was still working in his government job so he would work on Acuity during his free time. In 2013, he decided to go into Acuity full-time because it had grown considerably and needed his full attention.  The idea for Acuity  Gavin came up with the idea for Acuity in 2006 and started developing it immediately in his free time. He is a developer by trade and thus built the software himself. It took him a few weeks to build the first version and take it to market.  Getting the first set of clients  The first client for Acuity was his mum and even though he can't remember the second client, he could recall that one of his one first hundred clients is a fly fishing instructor in the Mid-West US who has been a client ever since.  To get the first clients, Gavin put up a self-service marketing sign on the Acuity website to direct new users on how to sign up and pay through PayPal while also setting up their subscription. He did a lot of search engine optimization which the sustainably increased the number of clients directed from Google search results. He also got a lot of clients from diverse recommendations and referrals.  Acuity's ranking on Google  When starting out, Acuity didn't rank on page one. Gavin didn't have Google Analytics to determine where his clients were coming from but he knew that most of them were searching...

Dr. Nicholas Webb is one of the world's top business thought leaders as a senior partner at Lassen Innovation (www.lasseninnovation.com). He works with Fortune 500 companies throughout the world to help them lean their industries in innovation and strategy. He is a Bestselling author who has been awarded over 45 patents for breakthrough technologies including one of the world's smallest medical implants. He is also the founder and CEO of Cravve (http://www.whatcustomerscrave.com/ (www.whatcustomerscrave.com)). He has over 25 years' experience working with leading brands to solve complex strategic, innovation and customer experiences challenges that drive growth and profit. His clients represent top global brands like FedEx, Pfizer, Blue Cross, Kaiser Permanente, McDonald's, Gatorade, Dimer Motors Corporation, Johnson & Johnson and Cisco.  Nicholas is also one of the world's Top Keynote Speakers and travels the world speaking on Innovation, Future Trends, Healthcare, Leadership and Customer Experience.  Time in full-time business  Nick says he hasn't had a job in over 30 years. He left corporate life in favour of being autonomous.  Current Revenue streams  He generates his revenue by providing Fortune 500 companies with a diverse range of consultant services related to strategy, innovation and customer experience. He helps them build future ready organizations.  He also generates considerable revenue from his speaking business. He will have done 60 to 80 talks around the world in 2017 alone.  Tip 1: To be a successful boutique consultant competing with the largest firms in the world, you have to earn the right to serve your target clients. You need to write popular books, speak at all the top conferences, and have your community of fellow thought leaders validate your importance in the thought leader ecosystem.  Tip 2: Books are not a money maker but they help to propagate your message and differential view of the universe.  Science/Innovation type business  Nick invented one of the world's smallest micro silicone implants for ocular surface disease. He also invented one of the world's first wearable medical technologies 18 years ago. He is currently working with strategic partners like universities and industrial partners to start building out a disruption lab that will develop connected technologies that will help meet some of the new modern day challenges of healthcare.  Starting out in business  He used to work as a lifeguard in California when a friend referred him to a new company (STAAR Surgical) that was starting to make the first minimally invasive implant for cataract surgery. His friend needed someone to help market the product so Nick took up the challenge. Before marketing the product, he had to spend several weeks in a lab doing surgery on pigs' eyes. His experience in that lab intrigued him. Nick did very well in helping them launch the technology and later went on to start his own ophthalmology company through which he worked with a famous refractive surgeon, Dr. Ron Jensen. Together they created a line of breakthrough technologies in the area of refractive surgery. He later sold the company to one of the largest medical companies in the US.  He used his experience and expertise from running the ophthalmology company to start providing consulting services to healthcare companies.   Initial focus on strategy and innovation  Nick used to have a new product development function within his previous business through which they used to develop non-regulated medical devices. Eventually, they choose to concentrate more on helping companies understand the future trajectory of technology and consumerization so the companies can take what they learn and apply it towards improving their revenues, profitability and customer satisfaction.  Early inventions  Nick was involved with a company in the dry eye business and that equipped him with the knowledge of the eye-related healthcare...