Starting From Scratch

Stephanie Leavell created Music For Kiddos to show that kid's music can actually be enjoyed by parents if it's quality.

After finding success as a songwriter she's created quite a following by not only including a song every month in her newsletter, but also creating a blog, music lesson, a book and more.

musicforkiddos.com

Erik Dietrich had his blog Dead Tech and wanted to parlay it into something more. A few years later he was blogging for tech companies. Listen how he built Hit Subscribe from the ground up.

Marin Gerov is the founder of DULO Wear and is based in Amsterdam. Him and his partner wanted to create a unique clothing company and after some hard work found themselves as Shopify experts and now give advice to those starting their own company.

Tanner Callais started blogging about cruises from Galveston, TX and found a following relatively fast. He hit a nerve and started blogging his way to the top of Google's search results with information people were looking for. 

In this episode Tanner talks about creating great content for SEO and how he found success as a true blogger.

Chris Hawkes had to pivot his product from peanut butter to eventually making natural energy boosters for active people. B-Line came from a lack of healthy options for boosting your energy on the trail. After having experience with product marketing in the past he took his skills to building his idea and eventually got distribution.

Entrepreneurs like Chris learn on the go and pivot their marketing and product strategy along the way.

Cat Neligan wasn't happy at her job and she wasn't sure why. After learning about introversion she finally clicked onto why. 

She left her 9-5 job and started freelancing before creating her blog 'The Creative Introvert'. 

Today she has her league of creative introverts and has found success in marketing herself in a variety of ways, particularly in podcasting.

Travis Hancock of Facade Games iterated over his board game 'Salem' over 60 times before putting it on Kickstarter and securing over 100,000 dollars of pre-orders.

Pretty soon Travis was quitting his job to build his company Facade Games, who's success was happening due to the quality of his product.  

Emma Cohen's idea, Final Straw, went viral after a Buzzfeed article wrote about her Kickstarter campaign.

Final Straw is a simple product with a big idea, and was good enough to make her company over 5 million dollars in sales in its first year.

We talk about what it's like to be on Shark Tank, finding manufacturers, dealing with fakes, how to be successful on Kickstarter and a bunch more juicy stuff! Check her out at finalstraw.com

Luciana Torous had recently graduated high school and decided to build a business from something that meant a lot to her, matcha tea.

This episode is in the spirit of this podcast, someone who really created something from scratch and left her old job behind. Despite not knowing anything about starting a business Luciana did, and has been growing ever since. 

Check out her company, 3 Leaf Tea and try some for yourself.

Jenn Granneman started Introvert, Dear in 2013 and quickly found a fanbase who loved what she did. After posting in Facebook groups her viewership quickly grew and she found that she had hit a nerve.

Years later she's an author, podcaster and left her full time job in the rear view mirror.

Check out her blog Introvert, Dear and follow her Intagram for hilarious posts, seriously.