Street Smart Success

Why do they call Artificial Intelligence –artificial? Well, I have no idea. Maybe you do. And I had no idea what Artificial Intelligence was until this interview. But now I know what it is, and that it’s growing by leaps and bounds. Today’s guest, Jerry Abiog, co-founder of Standard Insights, and a fellow buckeye, is leveraging the power of data and Artificial Intelligence to help his clients grow their businesses. Standard Insights is helping their clients increase sales and profits by utilizing data to better communicate and market to their customers.

Anyone can launch an e-commerce website, but getting people to actually visit the site much less buying your product is whole different story. That’s where today’s guest comes in. His company specializes in helping e-commerce companies grow their businesses by providing them with affordable marketing solutions. And he’s doing it from the beaches of Mallorca Spain. Not bad work if you can get it. Mike Zima of Zima Media has a great niche where he currently serves over 60 smaller size ecommerce businesses and is gearing up for future growth.

Audio and video equipment sales are on the rise as more and more people are producing content for YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social platforms. Today’s guest, Mark Brown, is the founder of Editors Keys.com, the worlds’ most popular website for shortcut editing keyboards. Mark also runs Studio Series, which is the umbrella company of Editors Keys. Studio Series produces USB Microphones, Vocal Booths, and Guitar and recording accessories.

Fitness trainers help you get in shape, but sometimes they need help getting their businesses in shape. That’s where today’s guest comes in. He’s the behind-the-scenes guy for many of the most successful businesses in the fitness industry. Pat Rigsby is a marketing expert and strategist who’s helped several fitness business owners become six- and seven-figure entrepreneurs. His coaching and consulting clients have been featured in Men’s Health, USA Today, Men’s Fitness, Shape, Women’s Health, Huffington Post, ABC, CBS, and NBC and more.

If you have feedback on today’s episode please email me at [email protected] or go to streetsmartsuccess.com and send me a message.

Why compete with the big guys when you can build a great business serving the smaller guys? It’s way less competitive and there’s a huge, untapped market. Today’s guest is Robert Brill, of Brill Media, a Los Angeles-based digital media company. His tagline is Advertise Like a Fortune 500 brand Without Spending a Fortune. Robert built his business as an outsourced service for other ad agencies but is now branching out to serve clients directly with a very affordable and compelling offer. Robert is also a super genuine guy who was great to talk to. He has had great success since starting in 2013 and has exciting plans to acquire a thousand new smaller clients with his new offer. After listening to Robert, I felt like I made a friend and wish him incredible luck in this endeavor.

The internet is a more egalitarian place to make money than anywhere else. It just doesn’t have the boundaries that brick and mortar has and the upside is unlimited. Today’s guest, for example, was making six figures while he was still in middle school. After this precocious start, Tim Dick engaged in a number of other successful pursuits before founding his current company, VOIPO. VOIPO sells voice-over-IP to over 100,000 mostly residential customers. It’s a great company with steady, recurring revenue that makes Tim big cash every month with very little stress. At the ripe old age of 34, Tim is not only owner of VOIPO, he’s the owner of a digital marketing company, a consultant, and an angel investor in such companies as Postmates, which is being acquired by Uber, Statuspage, Zenefits, and several others. If you have feedback on this episode feel free to email me at [email protected] or go to streetsmartsuccess.com and send me a message.

Do you ever wonder how we ever got by before the internet? For example, before the internet, if you were a parent and wanted to register your kid for something like a gymnastics class, the only way you could do it was by calling. And the only way you could pay was by check, how incredibly inconvenient! Well, thanks to Jackrabbit Technologies, parents can now register their kids online for gymnastics classes, dance and music classes, swim classes, martial arts, and child care. And they can pay online as well. Today’s guest Mark Mahoney, co-founder of Jackrabbit Technologies and, a super nice guy, tells his story about starting the business while still working at another job and building an incredibly successful software business with 16 million in annual revenue, fantastic margins and zero debt.

Until I was in my mid 20’s I was a daily, prolific dope smoker… but that was a long time ago…. way before the introduction of today’s cannabis products. These days there’s gummies, brownies, chocolate, pills, even cannabis-infused beer. So much for joints and bong hits.  Frankly It’s a little confusing.  But thanks to today’s guest, Jen Chapin, co-founder of Kikoko, I’ve learned a little bit more about cannabis. Jen patiently answered many of my naïve, ignorant questions in addition to talking about her incredible company Kikoko. Kikoko makes tea-infused cannabis. Kikoko is one of the top three cannabis beverage companies in California, the largest cannabis market in the world. If you have any feedback on this episode, I’d love to hear it. You can email me at [email protected].

Sometimes people overcome such monumental personal challenges it just puts you in awe. Today’s guest’s dad died on father’s day when he was just 17 years old and his mother suffered from her own health challenges all along. That’s why Conor Delaney, founder of the Good Life Companies, got his securities license between his freshman and sophomore years in college. Despite these and other setbacks, Conor has built the Good Life Companies to fifty million dollars in revenue with 80 offices all over the country and over 200 affiliated advisors. Conor’s story is truly inspirational. To provide feedback in this episode email me at [email protected] or send me a message through our website at www.streetsmartsuccess.com

From grade school teacher to entrepreneur. After leaving his teaching career and running his remodeling business full-time, today’s guest found a great niche by listening to one of his customers. Scott Selzer started his remodeling business during the summers while he was still a teacher but decided to do if full-time when he realized he was making more doing construction during the summers than he was all year as a teacher. After listening to one of his customers complain about the limitations of the pergolas on the market at the time, Scott patented what he calls the world’s smartest pergola. It’s a pergola where you can open and close the shutters by a remote control or an app. These pergolas are absolutely beautiful. They’re super end luxurious outdoor roofing that keeps the rain out, lets the sun in, or create shade when it’s too hot … all using the latest technology. The company is called Struxure. Scott started the company by himself, with no money – and now has 200 dealers in 50 states with $25 million in sales. For feedback on this episode you can email me at [email protected] or go to streetsmartsuccess.com and send a message.