Launching a brand new product is no easy feat and even more so when that product is something that doesn't even have any comparable competition to match. Now you have to educate the market as well as make sales. Even with those hurdles the guys at Innovative Lifestyles have done amazingly well! Their product has fantastic reviews, good reorder rates, had a very successful campaign on Indiegogo and is promoted by many in the natural remedies market. All that's left now is to let the rest of the world know what they've been missing! Very cool interview with a ton of good tips for anyone going down the same road.
They don't call Mark Podoloski the Land Geek for nothing! He has pioneered a system for finding unwanted and under-valued land and buying it dirt cheap only to turn around and flip it to an interested buyer for big gains. Even better, he has figured out how to automate much of the system so it becomes almost passive income and in the case of installment sales literally passive income that can stream in for years down the road. Very eye opening conversation and it left me with lots of food for thought!
It's not easy to walk away from a comfortable job, good paycheck and well defined career path for the unknown wilds of entrepreneurship. It's not easy that is unless you can't stand one more day of soul sucking monotony and feeling like you simply are wasting your time and your life doing something you'd almost be willing to pay to leave! Sara had a great job but gave it up to follow her passion teaching people to live healthier and more active lives. The journey hasn't been easy and there have been sacrifices but she wouldn't go back for anything. Great interview and very inspirational for anyone who finds themselves in the same position.
Lots of small business seem the same and are more or less the same- until it comes to service. If you can deliver amazing service to your clients you are going to stand out, be able to charge more, get more referrals and generally do a lot better than your ho-hum competitors. In my chat with Vance Morris he gives some very specific examples and tactics of how business owners can use amazing service and a wow experience to make their businesses stand out from the crowd and leave the competition in the dust.
In this episode of Questions and Rants I run through the reasons old school style 30-40 page business plans are going away but why there are still certain things you should think about figuring out before you write your plan. The exercise is not so much about the writing but there is a lot of value in the planning portion. Skipping this has more serious consequences fir any business, not just those hoping to raise money.
Lots of people think buying a franchise is some kind of guaranteed income. It's not. You have to pick the right one and picking the right one is as much an art as a science. It has to be the right one for you, for your area, for your budget, for your personality and the business itself has to make sense. If you are going to pay someone to copy their system and use their brand then you need to make sure their system is solid and their brand has value. Joel and I run through all the details so if you decide to go down this path you won't make any mistakes.
The problem with personal training is you only have so many hours in the day. And if you are going to see your clients instead of them coming to you then you really can only do so many appointments in a day before you max out and hit your training (and earnings) limit. Unless you are Jay Scott and you figure there has to be a better way. Jay has moved personal training to a technology platform that allows his clients to get personal one on one training right from a live webcam. Now they can train anywhere, any time and the trainer doesn't have to drive, face traffic, miss appointments or worry about starting late or early. And Jay can scale his business to anywhere a laptop can reach!
Like so many entrepreneurs do, Drew started out as a consultant, helping business owners get the most of out Infusionsoft. But he saw a bigger opportunity in putting a team together and helping people create powerful sales funnels that would lead to product sales and passive income. The catch was he was offering this service in exchange for a share of the profits, which meant better returns for him and no risk for his clients if he couldn't deliver. As it turns out, everyone wins and Drew shares the details of how to got to where he is now along all the twists and turns.
Ryan James started a business the way many do- by finding a gap in the market and deciding to fill it. What is interesting in particular about his business is that the gap he found was in information on the specifics of starting a business. He created a couple of websites around the idea of very specific information for startups that were based on action items, checklists and great content shared by experts in the various fields related to getting a business off the ground. And as a result, he built a business out of it!
The path to success in entrepreurship is neither straight nor bump free and Eric Basu faced plenty of both on his journey. In this inerview he shares how he went from Navy SEAL to consultant to bio-tech startup founder to government contracting with some bodyguarding thrown in along the way. He survived various issues with partners and lots of other hurdles but has come out on the other side in great shape. What's interesting about Eric's story is he didn't plan it but he never failed to have a plan and run things from a position of strong leadership and a success oriented mindset. Lots of great pieces of wisdom pop out in this interview.
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