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

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...

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 th...

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 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...

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,

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 (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 

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...

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 we...

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 downfa...

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 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: 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 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 which directs people to his regular website, 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.

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 ot...

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. 

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  ...

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: www.tanga.com - Jeremy’s Business Website jeremy@tanga.com - Jeremy’s Business Email Jeremy Young - LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook For more info including show notes and resources check out 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: www.davesgourmet.com - Dave's Business website dave@davesgourmet.com - Dave’s email address For more info including show notes and resources check out www.businessgenerals.com Thanks for tuning in!! -Davis #TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast