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Coaching Women to Trade Foreign Exchange (ForEx) – Girls Gone ForEx – With Robyn Mancell – AEP #32

October 17th, 2019 by Ramesh Dontha

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Guest: Robyn Mancell

Company / Business name: Girls Gone ForEx

Robyn Mancell is the Co-Founder and Mindset Coach for Girls Gone Forex, an online trading academy that teaches women across the globe how to trade in the foreign exchange (Forex) market.

Before the Forex business and the nonprofit, Robyn was self-employed for over twenty-five years in almost that many industries. After her divorce in 1990, she left corporate America, going from stable, salaried nine-to-five employee to a commission-only entrepreneur. All while raising her children as a single mom.

Tools / Books / Resources mentioned:

Tools: None

Show Notes:

What is ForEx business? Why is it interesting?

How Robyn got into Foreign Exchange investing and how she met her co-founder.

Details on how Robyn and her co-founder used Facebook to start a contest to recruit first 15 or so women out of hundreds of applications for their first course and used social media to track their progress.

Robyn shares details on how started multiple businesses over a period of 25 years spanning from restaurant business to insurance sales to ladies fitness center.

Robyn’s motivation of ‘being afraid of not doing new things’ as opposed to ‘being afraid of doing new things’.

Robyn’s observations on characteristics of people who do well in her classes as well as life. #1 is mindset. People who can focus, persevering, and not quitting. People with a drive and purpose and not looking at failures as failures.

Robyn’s reflections of things that she could have differently. 1. Connect with mentors early on 2. Be willing to listen to people with more experience.

Final advice to aspiring entrepreneurs; 1. Just go for it. 2. Have a network of mentors, supporters, and collaborators. 3. Don’t look at failures as failures but as learning lessons.

Episode Transcript

00:02

Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to the agile entrepreneur podcast. This is your host Ramesh Dontha. This podcast is about starting and building your own business with purpose, passion, perseverance, and possibilities. Today we have a guest dabbling in a business or build a business that we don't come across that often. So I'm a very honored to have you know, a person from investing and trading side. Her name is Robyn Mancell. Robyn, welcome to the podcast.

00:38

Robyn: Thank you so much, Ramesh. I'm happy to be here.

00:41

Ramesh: Excellent. Let me first introduce your business and then we'll get into the discussion. Okay. Robyn Mancell is the Co-founder of a business called girls gone forex. Okay, we'll get into that business in a second. And she's also a mindset coach. So Robyn, very first I know you know, the name itself is pretty interesting. Just let's go over what your business is about.

01:08

Robyn: Okay. So girls gone forex is a company that was started to empower women to learn how to day trade. We specifically trade in the a foreign exchange or the forex market as it's been called. And that is a $5.3 trillion business a day. So girls gone forex is on online trading academy where we teach women all across the globe how to trade in the foreign exchange market and how to be profitable in that market.

01:44

Ramesh: So first I think it's very interesting that you chose a specific area. How did you get started with the forex business?

01:53

Robyn: Well, I actually had seen a lot of people talking about it on social media. I really didn't know anything about it even though my background had been in sales and insurance. I did not know anything about the foreign exchange market. I think most of us have heard of people day trading, typically stock options. And I ran into a woman who had been trading for 20 years. And one of the things that she said to me that got my attention was that all you need was a laptop and Internet access and anyone, no matter what their background was, could learn how to trade and that you also, it was one of the markets where you needed the least amount of money to get started. And she was very successful at it and I totally respected her. And so just the fact that she said she knew a lot of people did not have access to this information, that I saw as a problem that I was hoping to be able to solve.

03:02

Ramesh: So you decided, I mean, you found a really good partner and then you decided to go into business with her. And how long ago was this?

03:12

Robyn: So in 2000 and I'm going to say around 2016 is when I started seeing people talking about forex most of the time. And in 2016 I had not met my business partner yet. I was actually, I'm a serial entrepreneur. I've been self-employed over 25 years. One of the businesses that I had was showing people how to go green in their homes. So I literally met her on a trip to Dallas to shoot a pilot for my company that at the time was called green makeover team. So I didn't even know her. I literally tell people that the stars aligned, and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. That's literally how I met her.

04:01

Ramesh: Can you believe it? Some of this happening’s occurrences are so serendipitous. It just happened.

04:07

Robyn: Oh yeah. It was amazing because her ex-husband is, he was actually a life coach. And so when I went into do people's homes, I didn't just, you know, put solar and do that. I wanted your home to be peaceful inside also. So I brought in a life coach. We were filming at the house he sent us to was actually her house. And I told him, I said, I'm excited about what I'm doing, helping people go green, but what I really want to learn, but I really feel passionate about bringing to the world is teaching people how to trade forex, but I don't know how to trade forex. And he at that point started laughing and he said, that's my ex-wife right there. she's been trading at that time; she'd been trading for 15 years and I was blown away because his name was Chance. And so I tell everybody that I met her by chance.

05:01

Ramesh: Yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one. And you found a partner, you decided to start the business. So tell us about how it got started. I mean, how long did it take for you to incorporate and then how did you go about pricing your coaching and all that stuff?

05:18

Robyn: So it really, okay. So I am a big science of getting rich fans. I even teach that course. And so first it started with a thought. I had a thought and before I even met her, I was literally writing things as though it had happened on my social media. So I would say I'm going to teach a hundred women how to learn how to trade. And I didn't even have anything at that point. And so I was putting that out there. And what's great about the social media and the memories that come up is that it's just, it is that confirmation that I was manifesting this years ago. So I was reading book called Turtle Traders and turtle traders is about the gentleman, Roger Dennis who is a multimillionaire and he ran an ad in the Wall Street Journal to find people, he told his business partner, I bet you I could take 15 people, teach them my system and turn them into millionaires. I was reading that book and I remember as I was done reading it, I called her on the phone. And I said, look, because she told me no, actually she didn't want to teach. And I said, look do an experiment with me. Play along with me. I just finished turtle trader. She had read it also. I said, I want to do something different. I said, I've already come up with the name girls on forex. I said, what if we did our own experiment, but we just did it with women. Because he only had one woman in his, in the story of the turtle traders. And so I told her, let's do something different. Let's just do women. Let's run a contest. Let's pick our women. And I've been very big on social media for the last 10 years or so. And so we got a hundred applications literally in 48 hours. we gave away the first classes to 15 people. Those 15 women had to go through the entire course. And they actually all 15 completed the course, but 10 actually graduated with the title we now call trade like a girl. and so those women basically, they had met the criteria that Linda had set for them to be able to graduate. So once they graduated, they were given those tools. And there are four of those ladies who are now coaches and they are now helping women who go through the academy to have more success. So that was 2016, the idea was birthed. in 2017, March of 2017 we put on the first class. And we've been going strong ever since then.

08:13

Ramesh: So how long is your class?

08:15

Robyn: So the class initially when we first started it would take you about six months to get started. There were three phases, four existential, prep school and then university. And you had to actually pass each of those classes to be able to go to the next one. And it would take you about six months to do that. So this year, the end of this year, almost like at our anniversary for when we first came up with the idea, we're now trying something different where we have everything together, including the mindset courses which I teach, we put everything together and accelerated it to where now people can be done in 12 weeks.

08:57

Ramesh: Okay. It's about three months. All right. How many people do you take per class? I mean, were you taking and are you planning to take going forward?

09:06

Robyn: So we moving forward now we have had classes as big as a hundred and that's too many, but we found that out after doing it. So now we try to keep classes because it looks like this is our first test on what we call the accelerated training program. We believe that we don't want more than 50 people in a class so that we can give them the attention they really need.

09:32

Ramesh: Okay. So roughly you will have about four classes per year then going forward.

09:36

Robyn: Exactly. Exactly. Three to four. I'm going to say three to four because we typically take off that when the holidays start around Thanksgiving, we know people are not focused and they're not paying attention. So we have been pretty much shutting down around Thursday. I'm sorry, around Thanksgiving and Christmas. And you probably know this. A market tends to be a little erratic around that time too.

10:01

Ramesh: Yup, exactly. So you're right. Okay. So let's say three courses. That's good. and I think I'm assuming that between these courses and all that stuff. So this is your full-time business. This is not your side hustle, is that right?

10:15

Robyn: No, this is not a side hustle. This is, it literally incorporates everything around it. We have been building it out to where we now have a nonprofit called trade by girl foundation. We want to be able to help those that don't have the money to afford the classes. We want to be able to give away scholarships to the entire course.

10:38

Ramesh: Wow. I mean, just, its mind boggling what you guys are able to do here. It's awesome. So Robin, let me ask a little bit about the operational aspects of your business because the way I found you was when I was inquiring about how people got their first paying customers in different ways and then you responded a very unique way that you found you’re paying customers. Let's, can we go through how you found your first paying customers for your coaching academy?

11:09

Robyn: Oh, absolutely. So by using social media and letting people know, because we did get a hundred applications for people who wanted that free class. We kept people abreast of the success of these ladies. We literally let them participate in the journey. And we shared a lot of information. We created a group on Facebook, and we had everybody. So I guess that was kind of our first funnel. So we let everybody know what was going on. So literally when those ladies graduated, everybody was watching it. It was almost like a story that people were waiting for it to unfold. And so we made the big announcement after, you know, proving that what we were doing was working. We then announced our first classes and we literally had people signing up left and right.

12:05

Ramesh: Excellent. Wow. That I taught was a very unique way where it is not just a contest, but it's a public contest where other people could see the journey themselves. That's very good.

12:17

Robyn: Absolutely.

12:18

Ramesh: Very nice. So let me switch gears a little bit and then let's talk a little bit about Robyn Mancell the person here. So Robyn, you've been in the business for 20, I mean like you've been self-employed for 25 years, so why you decided to become self-employed? What were you doing before?

12:36

Robyn: I was working for the phone company. I had worked for both here in California. The Mobil was going through that breakup at the time. So I was going through a divorce. I have three sons who are now grown, but at the time I was working for the phone company driving in all of that traffic. And because of seniority, because I was low seniority, they were going to change my hours. I wasn't going to be able to pick up my kids from daycare in time. They literally changed, I mean I used to work eight to five and they decided that because you're low seniority, you now get off at six. Well, back then six o'clock there weren't a lot of daycares open past six o'clock. So I literally had to make a decision. It was emotional at that time because not only going through a divorce. but my kids, what am I going to do? So I ventured out into the, you know, the 1099 world and that again was something that kind of happened, I don't want to say by accident, but a young lady was came out to talk to me about insurance. And when she did, I asked her, how did she get to do this? Does she make her own hours? She said, yeah. And I said, well, you think I could apply? she said all across the world. And I said, well, what do you need? And she said well you should have a four-year degree. I said, well, I have a two-year degree. She says, well why don't you give it a shot? I went to the interview, I learned about, I didn't know anything about stocks and bonds and the insurance world. I knew nothing about it. They seem to be impressed with my interviews. So they brought me on, and I would leave work early as the phone company. They would say it's slow, who wants to go? And I'd raise my hand and I would drive about 40 minutes so that I could study because they don't pay you while you're going through that process. You guys have to do that all on your own time.

14:44

Ramesh: How long is that?

14:45

Robyn: Oh my gosh. I think it was like three or four months and I went and then I passed my insurance tests. Then I had to pass the series six test knowing nothing about that industry. I did pass it the first time and then it was you got to go out to the world and find business. You've got to go find customers, right? Yeah. I hadn't done that before. I was working nine to five. I came in and I knew what my check was going to be and all that and so I was the only, at the time I was the only female, the only African American woman in that office, and I broke every record they had in that office. I really believe it came out of; I was excited about helping people learn about something I didn't know anything about. But I was also needed to take care of my kids.

15:48

Ramesh: Wow. Robyn, I think that's a, you gave another good strategy for starting your business. When somebody comes to your house selling something, ask them about what they do and how you can get into their business. Excellent.

16:01

Robyn: Yeah, that's what I did. And I stayed in that industry for about three years. And once you do that, once you learn that you can create the kind of income you want, it just really has to do with how much time you're willing to put into it. Then the world is wide open at that point. You realize that you control this, not other people. You get to control it. Yeah. So that's what I did. I literally, I've done, you know, I'm kind of a serial entrepreneur, but the one thing that never changed was that I was able to create my own destiny at that point.

16:38

Ramesh: Correct. So, Robyn, let's talk about other business. So you were there for three years and then so what other businesses did you work in?

16:46

Robyn: Oh Gosh. I owned an executive recruiting company as a headhunter. I owned a restaurant; I did for eight years. I owned a ladies' fitness center. I've done sales in a number of areas. I've even done direct sales and been a top, a top 20 incomer in direct sales.

17:15

Ramesh: So it looks like a, you have a compulsive behavior that you have to, after some time you have to start a different business.

17:23

Robyn: You know what it is. I typically, if I see a void in the market or if I, you know, the world is so big and there's so many different things out there, you can't possibly know about them all. If I see something and I think it's going to help people and I think that people don't really understand or know about it. I do tend to jump into the ring. I will honestly say that I do.

17:49

Ramesh: So a little bit about your motivation, your drive, right. So the original drive, we understand from it life changing event in your life that it started that and then afterwards, so what's driving you to like, for example, why didn't you stick to one business? like you know, why you wanted to start different businesses? What's the motivation?

18:10

Robyn: You know, it really, that's an excellent question because it's on probably why I couldn't stay on the job for that length of time. I really find out that I think the world is so much in the world and I don't, here's the thing, I'm not interested in it everything. But if I see that there is an opportunity, if I start feeling really passionate about something, like when did sell insurance, I could see the true value in people taking care and providing for their families. I could see that a lot of people didn't know that there are things that you can do to plan your future. So I get excited about that. When I had my gym, it was health, people need to take better care of their health and maybe women will feel more comfortable in a place that's just for them. When I had the restaurant, oh, which was one of my most favorite businesses, it was building community. So we had kids that used to bring the parents in because we were all about community. We were all about people coming in and feeling like they were at home. We knew everybody by name and everybody, they used to write stories about us that they said we reminded them of cheers because nobody was a stranger there. So this with the, with forex, it became when that, when the woman said to me, who is a millionaire I would add, when she said people don't have access to this information. I said, well what do we need to do to give them access?

19:53

Ramesh: Right, right. That's awesome Robyn. So as you were going through these changes, were you ever afraid of what their fears that you're going to fail may not work out? I mean, how did you navigate them?

20:08

Robyn: I am more afraid of what my life looked like if I don't do something. I'm not afraid of trying new things. I mean, I have an extremely spiritual feel about just life period. And so I'm more afraid of what it'll look like. Having regrets or not doing. I think money is the easiest thing in the world, but make to be quite honest with you, you just have to find what works for you.

20:37

Ramesh: Excellent. So Robyn I mean, that's a very good mindset there. So let me switch a little bit into because you've been dealing with a lot of people, right? coaching a lot of people. So I wanted to ask you about the characteristics or the attributes of the people who are successful. You know, who find success in life because you've been dealing with many people. So we can take the forex as an example, right. So out of these people, like the first class you said 10 people graduated, but likewise you know so what are the common characteristics that you see in the people who are doing well?

21:16

Robyn: Yeah. Well t that right there is the, probably the million-dollar question, but there are obviously key characteristics and being the mindset coach, 90% of people fail because of mindset. Not just in trading, but in most things in life. So the characteristics are people who are able to focus, know what it is that they want, their why fuels their decision to keep going and to not quit. There's something that, and usually again, that is their why that's bigger than just needing the money, because money is not what fuels, I mean, obviously for some people that's what it is. But I think the majority of people, they're looking for something to be fulfilled. They're looking for purpose. They are driven. They don't look at failure as failure. They look at it as a learning or a steppingstone to getting to where they need to be. All of that rolled into one thing is their mindset. And that, you know, it sounds like a cliché when people say, how do you do one thing is how you do everything. But it is 100% is, and some of that fortunately is how some people grew up. It's passed on from families. It's passed on from the people that are around you. And a lot of times unless you make the decision to do something different, you get stuck and what you know as normal around you.

22:51

Ramesh: Yeah. I mean the other thing, the other question that a lot of people ask is can you change people's mindset? some life changing events of course could do that. Are people just like, they been like that forever. And then let's say somebody who's pessimistic and looking at the negative side of things, they continue to be that way. Or people are generally optimistic. And then looking at the positive side of things, probably you know, will get into this kind of mindset you're talking about. Is that what you observed?

23:23

Robyn: I don't think you can. Honestly, I don't think you can change people. I think people have to make the decision to change themselves. I think I know I can give them the tools. I know I can guide them in the right direction. But something has to click for them. I cannot motivate you to do, that has come from within. And that doesn't mean that you can't get to that point. It doesn't mean that you can't have some experience, or you just can't make up your mind that you've had enough, and you can do that. it’s not going to be because of me. It's going to be because of something inside of you.

24:03

Ramesh: I'm 100% with you Robyn there. So as we come to the final stretch here now, first let look at your journey. the different steps you have taken. And definitely you already said that you don't want to have regrets. But from a learning perspective, what are the things that you think you could have done differently in this journey?

24:25

Robyn: Some of the things I would've done differently is I think from the very beginning of being going on this entrepreneurial journey, I would have made more context with mentors earlier on. I would have met them. I would have, I would have really cherished those relationships a lot more because sometimes you're so young and you hear things and you think, I'm experiencing this now because at my age, a lot of young people, they think you're just, you know, just kind of talking at them like their parents and they don't always value the experience of your wisdom. And so I definitely, this is what I do try to tell my sons that I have and anyone who will listen. Yeah. That although you may feel like you have all the answers, there are some of us who have actually experienced what you have yet to experience. And most things are not that different. I have this saying that technology has changed, people not so much. The way we think and the way we process information that has pretty much stayed the same. It's just technology is what is different. So the other thing about being this age too is that I can pretty much see what's going to happen before it even happens. That's what wisdom does to you. You're kind of like, oh, I've seen that before. but I'm not cynical about it at all. It is just that there are certain things in life that are going to be what they are. Some of these clichés that people don't, you know, that they think are corny and stuff. There's a reason they been around as long as they have because they're the truth.

26:25

Ramesh: Yeah. I mean, that's why I think a lot of this information keeps getting repeated because we don't get it. And Robyn, so as the last question. So what advice would you give to other aspiring entrepreneurs or people who are already started a business, but they want to grow their business.

26:45

Robyn: The advice that I would give you is to really just go for it. Make the decision that you believe you have something that works. Do Your homework. There's so much access to information is, I mean, and I know sometimes it’s too much information. But choose a select tribe of mentors, supporters, collaborators. Find that circle, create your circle very early. And then go ahead and do whatever you need to do to make it happen. There's a lot of free resources, there are so, oh my gosh, there's so much out there. Companies just wanting to help you. I just finished a workshop called elevate your business and that was, they did an article on it in Forbes magazine and it was priceless. Oh my God, priceless thing. You just would be really surprised, but also get with people who are willing to support you. who believe in your vision and just create that circle of people that think like you do and then put on your blinders and just go. You will be surprised how far you will get from not overthinking things and just having the right people that are around you to support you.

28:07

Ramesh: Excellent advice Robyn I can't disagree with any of the things that you said. I mean I'm a firm believer that you get started as soon as possible and especially if you want to do something and then you keep evolving, right. And you learn more about you and more about the business and then you keep evolving.

28:24

Robyn: Absolutely. I totally agree.

28:27

Ramesh: Hey Robyn a very fascinating background, and an excellent discussion. I really, really enjoyed this discussion, Robyn. Thank you very much.

28:33

Robyn: Oh, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. I'm so excited and I've already shared your information with some group of business owners that I have. I think you're doing amazing work.

28:44

Ramesh: Thank you, Robyn. I Appreciate it.

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Building A Coaching Business With Transformational Coach, Desiree Crowley – AEP #31

September 24th, 2019 by Ramesh Dontha

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Guest: Desiree Crowley

Company / Business name: TimeJump Media

Desiree Crowley is a transformational coach, visibility strategist and speaker for women coaches ready to expand their exposure and scale to six figures in their online coaching business. She helps women create a stand out presence online so that they can bust their visibility fears, stand out as the premium expert in their field, and create six figures and beyond!

Tools / Books / Resources mentioned:

Tools: None

Show Notes:

Desiree Crowley starts off by explaining what a transformational coach does which is coaching entrepreneurs to transform their mindset to be more confident and be more visible. She also talks about certification programs in this space.

Desiree’s entrepreneurial journey is a typical journey where she took the opportunity of being laid off to learn all about digital marketing , blogging etc. She finally believed in a coach and her program to invest $5,000 and spent all her spare time on her business.

Desiree started a facebook group and ran a challenge ‘level up your beauty’ to encourage women to go on video. She built her mailing list to 500 but didn’t get any paying clients. She invested in another coach which finally resulted in $12K or so in few weeks.

Even though Desiree’s entrepreneurial journey had ups and downs, she believes that every step that she took (even where she failed) was necessary for her to get to where she is now. She learned from each one of those steps.

Desiree believes that being consistent is key to grow your personal brand. Even though her first lead magnet was a bust, Desiree learnt and improvided and continued to grow the list. Her business is about putting people in front of the camera with video.

Desiree believes that being imperfect is OK. Success is all about the habits and rituals you do every day.

Episode Transcript

00:05

Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to the agile entrepreneur podcast. This is your host, Ramesh Dantha. This podcast is about starting and building your own business with purpose, passion, perseverance and possibilities. Today we have an exciting guest. Her name is Desiree Crowley. Hi Desiree, welcome.

00:30

Desiree: Hello. Thanks for having me.

00:33

Ramesh: So let me introduce Desiree to you. Desiree is a transformational coach, visibility strategist and speaker for women coaches ready to expand their exposure and scale to six figures in their online coaching business. She helps women create a standout presence online so that they can bust their visibility of fears, stand out as a premium expert in their field and create six figures and beyond. So Desiree the way I look at you, you are a coach for coaches.

01:06

Desiree: Yes, I'm mostly specialize in coaches, but I’ve definitely worked with a lot of different business owners. But of course, you know, the mixing is important.

01:16

Ramesh: Excellent. So my very first question, well, what is a transformational coach?

01:23

Desiree: Transformational coach is basically, I guess to me, I don't know anyone else, but for me it definitely means it goes along with mindset. So a famous Tony Robbins quote is that success in business is 80% your mindset or your psychology and 20% is the strategy or the mechanics of what actually goes into it. And I just have fully seen that in my own life in my clients and in my business. And I was certified as a transformational coach and I decided to bring that in and to my previous background. And so I just kind of put that together and I have found that that's really what makes the difference for my clients is that they really do need both. And luckily I have been able to master specifically around my area of expertise, which is visibility and putting yourself out there in a bigger way and helping my clients to transform with it, because it really does take an inner transformation to be that six figure entrepreneur that puts herself out there in that way.

02:28

Ramesh: Okay. I see. So if you don't mind me asking, how do you get certified as a transformational coach?

02:35

Desiree: You can look at, there's various programs you can do. I mean there's like the big ICF one, but I went through a certification program of about three years ago and just received the certification from a coach that had partnered with the ICF. So it just, you just can look for different programs and yeah, that's how I did it. Unfortunately the coach that I did it through, doesn’t offer the program anymore. Otherwise I would recommend that one, but I know that there's many others out there as well.

03:06

Ramesh: Okay, great. Hey, Desiree, and then, so let's look at your own entrepreneur journey. If you could walk us through, when did you start your business and then let's go through or what was the initial business model and then how it evolved. If you could go through the journey, please.

03:23

Desiree: Sure. And feel free to stop because this could be long.

03:27

Ramesh: I'll Probably interrupt and ask you questions anyway, go ahead. Yeah.

03:34

Desiree: Yeah. So the way that I started, I first, I actually was laid off from my job in 2015 and I just knew that, that was basically God's way of saying like, there's something greater for you. It was really devastating at the time, but I just knew in my heart that it was time to do something for myself and to start my own business. I had no idea what that was going to look like. I didn't even know the coaching world really existed at that point. So I started with a just kind of what I felt at that moment I really enjoyed, and that people would just ask me about, which was a lot of just fashion, beauty, lifestyle type of advice and makeup, things like that. And some like, well, I can start a blog with that. And that's basically how it started. I started a blog, it was healing and beauty steals and I started, I really just kind of dove in. I had no idea what I was doing. I really started learning so much about the online space, digital marketing, blogging, all, everything, you can think of social media and I would say that I spent a lot of time just try to teach myself these things. And I did, you know invest in some courses. I invested in my first course I remember right around that time, it was only, I mean back then it was like $197, which was a huge deal for me. I thought that was outrageous.

05:03

Ramesh: And then feel free to mention the courses if you think they are relevant for the audience as well, if you really thought something new in those courses.

05:11

Desiree: Absolutely. I definitely will. So that's how, that's how that started. And I realized, so I invested in this program and then I realized that I got overcome with what we call the imposter syndrome. I just felt like, why am I the person to talk about fashion and style? I need some certifications. I need all sorts of things. Like I'm nobody to talk about this stuff. Even though the reason I started it was from the encouragement from many people around me that believed that I did have knowledge around this and wanted my knowledge about it. So I just, you know and then I realized wow this mindset thing is a real thing. And, slowly I just started to, I guess you can say on accident, right? Things never happen on accident, but I stumbled across an ad for a coach that was promoting something. And long story short, I ended up on a phone call with her, you know how that goes. So and I had no idea, I was so new. But this coach basically gave me just a little bit of that confidence that I was, I guess looking for at that time. But okay, yeah, you know, you can do this, you can teach coach on style and confidence. And so I decided, all right, I pulled out a credit card and invested $5,000 into this program that was a marketing just full on just all my marketing and I thought well, that's all I need. I just need the exact process. You know, I definitely got sold on that belief that you just need a step by step process and you're going to make your millions and that's all you need. And so I'm like, damn, that's all I'm missing. I moved forward and I did. I was, to my benefit I was very coachable. I did everything. I took action. I was obsessed. I started working at different jobs temporarily for that time and I would just go during lunches and just work on my business. After lunch, it was all, I was pretty consumed by it and I did all this work. I learned so much along the way and then I realized, I'm not clear. I'm actually super confused on who my person is. Like who am I really serving? What am I actually doing? What's the transformation that I'm offering? And I just, I got really stuck. I allowed myself to get stuck, I would say. And from there, I don't know how I, aye came to this, I guess my epiphany moment where I realized, you know what, I have been doing videos back then with Paris, I don't know if you remember Periscope, it was like the app for live stream.

07:58

Ramesh: I am not familiar with it.

08:02

Desiree: So before Facebook live was a thing, before it ever existed, there was Periscope. And Periscope was where entrepreneurs, coaches were doing live streams, were promoting their business, growing their business. And I had been doing videos on there, you know, just sharing content, sharing a value. And I just realized that there was so many women specially, I mean, there's men, plenty of men too, but I just came across so many entrepreneurs that just couldn't even think about putting themselves on a video or getting themselves in front of a camera or putting themselves out there in that way. Yeah. Let alone on a live stream. So I just, I decided to run a challenge to help women to learn how to use live video. And then by the time I ran the challenge, Facebook live had just barely become into existence. It had just gotten released. So it was all the rage, but nobody was really using it, because they were so scared. So finally I decided you know, I'm going to just run a challenge just because I see that this is a problem. I found this like a space I guess, that I could fill, and I could teach people. And I was like, I don't know if this is what I'm going to do, but I'm going to try it. I'm going to take some action on it and do it. And I ran this challenge. I also started growing my list right along that time.

09:26

Ramesh: Oh, I'm sorry. Where did you run this challenge? Or did you just send it to your email list or did you do it in a Facebook or a where did you do this?

09:34

Desiree: Yeah, I have been. So I guess to backtrack a little bit, I had started a Facebook group, not really with any good strategy or intention. It was just, I had been in another like a wives group, whatever group and I had just put it out there to, I was like, hey, anyone building a business, like want to just kind of collaborate and talk about business stuff. I'm going to just do a group if you want to join. So it was definitely just very in the sense in that way. Just like, hey, I'm just going to do this group. Someone helped me manage it. Not that I'm going to be the leader of it. So I started that group and as I started going along, I was like, you know what, I’ve got you know some people already in here. And then I realized, you know group can be a really great way to grow a business. So I decided to just run the challenge in the group. So I started growing my list with, I had previously created like a video series that completely bombed. I mean, it was awful.

10:38

Ramesh: What was the video series on?

10:43

Desiree: I called it up level your beauty. But it was very vague. I just, I had no idea like how important messaging was at that moment and I really wasn't clear on what I was doing and so I just, but I was taking action. So I think, like I said, there's something to be said about just moving forward.

11:01

Ramesh: Yeah, exactly. I mean I think you learn from the experience. I mean that is what it's all about, moving forward.

11:06

Desiree: Yup, exactly. So I had done that. But it was just very vague, it was tangible, yes, this is why people would want to join. So anyway, so I learned from that. But then after that is when I decided to do this challenge and I actually, I guess all, I guess conventional wisdom, I just started running ads. I learned the basics of how to set up some ads. I started running an ad to this video series. It converted. And not the video series, I'm sorry, the challenge, so well, I mean I was getting, you know, about $2 leads at that point and it was for a challenge. So that's really good. And I got about 500 people on my list by the time the challenge started and I was, like I said, I was still brand new. I still hadn't gotten one single client and I did the challenge.

12:03

Ramesh: How long did it take? I mean by this time, like how much time did you spend

12:08

Desiree: For which part?

12:10

Ramesh: For the challenge, and then basically when you started and it's few months, I'm thinking.

12:15

Desiree: Yeah. So I mean I had been, I think I did the challenge around like, I think it was in the fall. Yeah sometime in the fall of 2016. And so I did the challenge and I got some discovery calls. People were interested, but I had no sales skills at that point either. So I didn't really know what I was doing there either. But fast forward a few weeks after that I had kind of built this list. I didn't really know what to do with it. Excuse me. And I when 2017 started, I decided okay, something has to change. I'll spare you the drama. But basically that coach yeah, she was not exactly the best fit for me at that time. So yeah. So things just kind of fall apart with her and I realized, well, I still need, I still need to have like help. I still need help and I decided to hire a one on one coach this time. And also I also invested in like a year long program that was kind of a bigger community, which I also felt like I was craving. I really think that's important too, is to have the right support as far as community. So I was kind of trying to decide between the two, like one-on-one or this community with this other coach. And I felt in my heart that both were the right thing for me, which was scary. I really believed in following those, those divided tuition in those hits. And that's exactly what I did. I was like, okay this is like the stupidest thing ever. But I really feel like it's right. And I did it. I invested in the coach and in the community and I made $12,000 within like just like four or five weeks of doing it.

14:13

Ramesh: So basically, okay, this is good. So I mean you went through you know, two or three coaching programs, but each one of them, you're learning something. But I mean, actually even learning that something is not good is also a good learning, the first coach and then by 2017, you started making money.

14:34

Desiree: Yeah, exactly. So I mean, I think that's what people don't realize. Like, I mean, I was at this for months and months and months and I could have easily given up and I wanted to give up many times and I thought like, maybe no one's ever going to pay me. Maybe I'm just this like money blocker, like money just can never ever, I thought all sorts of things and there were all lies obviously, but it's easy to think that. And so I just, I think, yeah, I finally, I finally had my breakthrough and I think it was just this combination of so many, like a few different things that came into play. But I made that the investment that I’ve made in that program and in the one on one coach, I mean, I made that back so quickly that, that's when I’ve realized, wow! Like the universe really does have my back and this was the right thing for me. Even though it seems like the stupidest thing in the world. Why would I invest so much into two different things? But one, they were very different, you know, one was more of a community. The other one was, and it was my certification actually, but the other one was just attention on my business and on what I'm doing and really helping me to pull the hot leads, because I hadn't you know built an email list, but I had no idea what, I mean I was sending them stuff here and there. But I had no idea how to pull the hottest leads out of them and actually turn them into clients.

16:03

Ramesh: Yes. Actually this is pretty fascinating journey. So, but if you were to go back because, and initially you are struggling and then suddenly there was a breakthrough. So, but if you were to go back, could you have done anything different?

16:16

Desiree: Ooh, I just feel like that was my journey. Like I just don't, I don't believe that things happen by coincidence and I feel like, yeah like you were saying, like there was just so much learning that happened all along the way. I would say there's definitely, obviously hindsight's 20:20, and now because of those experiences, like I am more careful with like even my investments and making smart investments into my business and also realizing that it's part of, it's what successful people do. They invest in themselves. They have the proper support, they surround themselves with the right type of people. And I think there's just so, there's not one thing that makes you successful. There's many factors. And I just think that I learned so, so much that I needed to learn in order to even be where I'm at today and to be able to pass that on to anyone that I come across my clients, my community. And yeah, I just wouldn't take that back even though there were some really sucky moments for sure.

17:23

Ramesh: Yeah. So I could see that. So now let's talk a little bit about your business. Like how do you acquire customers and how does your customer pipeline fill up? Is it one-on-one? Are you dealing with you know, multiple customers at the same time? If you could talk about this whole customer acquisition process.

17:42

Desiree: Yeah. For my business personally. So right now, I mean it's a different obviously than when I first started, but a lot of the same principles, you know, I'm still working and focusing on building an email list. So I do have specific Facebook, this is my favorite way. Okay. There's many ways, but Facebook ads are just, they are my thing, that's what I love doing and that's how I love bringing in new leads and clients and the way that, yeah, I really focus on growing my list and then of course, nurturing that list and consistently knowing how to pull those hot leads out of that list. And from there, I mean, obviously there's other ways that I’ve expanded to as well. Like now, you know, now I'm doing interviews like this one, I'm doing podcast interviews, I'm speaking on other people's stages and now it's become, you know, yes, you do have to put yourself out there, but now it's just a lot easier to even attract those opportunities. And so I think those types of things have helped me to fill up my pipeline as well as just, yeah just consistent, I would say overall consistently having something out there that is putting you out there and showing you to the right people, whatever that looks like for you.

19:06

Ramesh: Okay. So, all right, so let's get into the next part of the podcast, which is, it's an advice to the aspiring entrepreneurs or the other people who have started the business. How can they grow? But I think we could take it based on like, if somebody comes to you like this, so you got customers, a women entrepreneur, she started her business. So what is your approach? I mean, how do you go from there?

19:31

Desiree: How do I help them? So for one do I have a process? Absolutely. But I really do believe that. So, and this is why all my programs have my support. Like I'm there, I have some self study things, but it's my actual coaching programs, like whether it's group or one-on-one, I'm there every step of the way. But the actual, the actual process, the first thing is to really identify who is the person you're speaking to and really know them better than they even know themselves. I think that's the foundational piece of everything you do and you know what I learned from my first lead magnet that was a total bust is that you cannot put airy fairy concepts out there and think that people are going to respond. It needs to be tangible. You need to know exactly what you're offering them, even from the lead magnet, even with the free stuff. So that's the foundational pieces knowing that. And then from there you can then start creating content. So of course, as a visibility strategist, one of the first things I have my clients do in my processes, start putting yourself out there. I don't care how you do it. Just the biggest thing is taking imperfect action consistently and just creating that habit of just being out there and publishing and positioning yourself as that authority right away. And the best way to do that is by creating really awesome content that shows that you really know what you're talking about. So that's one of the first things that I have them do. And then of course, teaching them how to, I have a framework that I’ve created along the way that really works for Facebook ads. It works for posts, it even works for Facebook lives. So each of my framework and then I have them start creating content around there person's pain points, around what they desire more than anything. And then of course, the calls to action you need to tell people what to do next and then from there once they start, so that's really early on. And then from there, of course, we start refining. Okay, what do you want to be known as? What is your thing? What's your story? Who are you as a person? Because there may be people that do exactly what you do and knows you. No one is you. And so you need to allow yourself to shine. And this is the person I am, this is why you would pick me over someone else if you resonate with me. So just teaching them how to share their story and in a way that strategic of course, and that is something that the ideal client would resonate with. And from there it just, then bringing in the structure. So building their email list, email marketing. I think that's, like I said, that's the money is still in the list. Does not matter what else is out there. The money's still on the list. And so that's, you know, creating a powerful freebie that people, that your ideal client just loves and response to, building that email list and then promoting that funnel, you know that funnel, that first funnel that you start building and doing it, you know through social media, through either joint ventures or partnerships, collaborations. And then of course my favorite is Facebook ads. So and then live videos is a big part of what I teach them as well. Because I don't think that's going anywhere anytime soon.

23:13

Ramesh: It looks like that's really taking off, I mean like I see more and more live video on even like LinkedIn as well.

23:24

Desiree: Yup. Exactly. Exactly. So that's just growing. And I think any entrepreneur that's not utilizing video consistently, it's going to be a detriment to their business. And I get that it's not easy. You know, there's so many questions that people have, well what do I say on video? How do I make sure I sound good and professional and as an expert and just so many things come up for entrepreneurs and that's really where I started. You know, my first challenge that really that people that I really, I realized, wow, people really need this. They hurt eating it up like candy. I realized that that's such a big pain point for a lot of online entrepreneurs. So that's still such a big part of my process and my program that I walk my clients through.

24:10

Ramesh: Excellent. So Desiree I think you really made a video, you know, I think that's why now I understand your visibility aspect to your overall program here. So as we come towards the end of the podcast are there any things that we have not covered or things that you want to give an advice to the audience?

24:31

Desiree: Ooh, gosh, there's so much I could say. I really would say at the end of the day and this is something that I'm so grateful that I learned, but just looking back and I see a lot of entrepreneurs falling into this, especially when they're getting things going and things aren't going as well as they thought it would. You know, they're going through those stumbling blocks and the challenges. Just take everything as a learning experience. Because it's, that's exactly what it is. And life's not happening to you. It's happening for you. And I’ve just really internalized that. Otherwise you're just going to make yourself miserable and you're going to make the entire journey miserable if you're just blaming and you're like, well nothing ever works for me. And maybe I'm not meant for this. Maybe I'm not good enough or whatever. You know, there's so many things that can come up and doubt, you know I feel like I had what we call entrepreneurial depression for awhile and I think I just suffered unnecessarily when in reality everything, I'm just so glad that I went to those things and then now I understand so much and I feel like I'm so much wiser as a person and I have that much more power now in my business because of that. And so just realize that you're going to be tested. You are going to be tested in this journey and it's up to you to how committed you are and how connected to why you even started to begin with. And if other things started to take over, I mean building a business, it's really the best personal development training you could ever go through. It's going to bring out every insecurity, everything that you didn't even realize you probably struggled with and probably new things as well. And I also believe take imperfect action every day. Perfectionism is a thing. And I see it over and over as I see it in myself. I see it in men and in women all over all the time. And it's that feeling of well I'm just, it's like I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough to do the video. I'm not good enough to, to say this or whatever it is. Just take small, imperfect action. Just pick something that you can commit to every day, whether that's, you know what, I'm just going to post a picture with two sentences. You know, whatever it is, commit to something and start building that muscle. Because at the end of the day, your success is all about your habits and your rituals that you do on a daily basis, that will show over time.

27:07

Ramesh: On the action you take on every minute, every day. So this is fantastic. I mean journey is pretty fascinating from 2016. It looks like the floodgates just opened in 2017 for you. So good luck to you as you keep building your business. It looks like you're on the right trend here with no visibility transformation and then the whole live video thing that you're really focusing on.

27:38

Desiree: Yes. Thank you. Yeah. It's been a journey and that's what it is. Everyone's got their journey.

27:44

Ramesh: Yeah. Everyone has got the journey and then definitely your journey. It's taken a really good turn since 2017. Good luck.

27:52

Desiree: Yes. Thank you very much.

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Building a Leadership Development Consultancy with Dr. Nanette Miner – AEP #30

September 24th, 2019 by Ramesh Dontha

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Guest: Dr. Nanette Miner

Company / Business name: The Training Doctor, LLC

Dr. Nanette Miner is a leadership development and workplace learning strategy consultant. She’s the founder of and managing consultant for The Training Doctor, a South Carolina based consulting firm that helps its clients to prepare today for the organizational leadership they will need tomorrow.

Tools / Books / Resources mentioned:

Tools: None

Dr. Nanette Miner starts the talk by talking about the leadership vacuum that will be there because of the bay boomers staying long in their leadership positions leaving millennials and Gen-Xers out of the loop. Dr. Miner believes that every employee should be trained as a leader from day 1.

Nanette talks about starting her business 28 years ago as a customer service training in the hospitality industry. The initial challenges with that industry made her pivot her business to re-use material designed by other established training organizations and customize them for each company.

Dr. Miner candidly talks about the current struggles about building a steady customer pipeline because of her recent shift to leadership training. As she is not known in the industry for leadership training, Nanette is focusing on establishing herself as a leadership trainer.

Nanette talks about the downtimes in her journey and how she coped with them to continue to be self-employed. Even though she was on the verge of bankruptcy, Dr. Miner never thought of quitting. To some extent, she was inspired by her father who was self-employed.

Nanette detailed her current strategies of acquiring customers by offering online workshops followed by in-person training. She also talks about the pros-cons of investing in leadership training and people leaving versus not investing.

Episode Transcript

00:02

Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to the Agile Entrepreneur podcast. This is your host Ramesh Dontha. This podcast is about starting and building your own business with purpose, passion, perseverance, and possibilities. Today we have a guest from an industry where every business needs somebody to help them. That is a leadership development. Dr Nanette Miner. Dr Nanette Miner is a leadership development and workplace learning strategy consultant. She's the founder of and managing consultant for the training doctor, its South Carolina based consulting firm that helps its clients to prepare today for the organizational leadership they will need tomorrow. Hello, Dr Nanette.

00:52

Nanette: Hi Ramesh. Thanks for having me.

00:56

Ramesh: Thank you. Thank you. So finally, we are able to get together after some scheduling issues. Thank you.

01:00

Nanette: Yes, thank you as well.

01:03

Ramesh: All right, so let's get started with the leadership development company that you have. If you could just to tell us on the listeners what your organization is about.

01:12

Nanette: Okay. Well, I’ll give you a little back story first. So if you're familiar with training and HR publications there's a precipice coming I say. There's a 2030 precipice for business and that precipice is that all the boomers are going to be gone from the workplace. Millennials and Gen z are going to be the primary population in the workplace. And the problem that that creates for organizations is that generally boomers are who our leaders are in organizations these days generally is somebody in their mid fifties to, you know, mid seventies sometimes. They've had a long time in the workplace in general. They've had a long time in the companies in which they work. So they understand the culture and the values of the companies in which they work. And they've been in their leadership positions a long time as well. And one of the things that has happened is that they've basically kept gen x and the millennials out of the leadership positions, because the boomers have stayed in their positions for so long and they were such a large population to begin with. So you asked what is my business about? So with that kind of understanding, my business has three prongs actually. One is to help business owners and operators to figure out who their next leaders are going to be and get them prepared before 2030. The second prong is to give business owners and HR people and operations people the ability to develop leadership skills without having to have a formal leadership development program or a formal training department at all. I just wrote a booklet that came out in June called leadership from day one; 25 activities to develop leadership skills in your employees. Because I think we should be, everybody should be developing leaders. We should have leadership events or you know, leadership department per se. Everybody, a manager should be developing leaders. So how do I do that? I don't know. I'm a finance guy. I'm a, you know, operations guy. I'm a shipping guy. How do I develop leaders? So the booklet is intended to give people who don't know where to begin, someplace to begin. And then the third prong, which kind of grew organically out of the others. There was no intention at the beginning to help this population. But the third prong is to help young business people to prepare themselves for leadership roles because honestly, most employers are not going to do it. So I started a podcast in the spring called be a leader and it has tips and words of wisdom from seasoned leaders, people who've been in business a long time. We asked them to just share like a voicemail. What's a tip that you'd have for a future leader? What's a lesson that you learned the hard way or what's the you know, what's the wisdom that you live by? And then also if they get the leadership booklet that I just mentioned, an up and coming leader can actually reverse engineer the activities in there so that they can look like leadership material in their organization. So that was a very, very long answer, but that's what we do. We help companies get ready for that 2030 precipice in one sentence.

04:09

Ramesh: Wow so 2030 is the precipice. So Nanette, how did you get into this business? So how did you start your business?

04:17

Nanette: Well, I started 28 years ago. Originally planning to do customer service training in the hospitality industry. That was my background for the first few years out of college. And I realized that there was not a lot of good customer service training in that field. So I got laid off from the job that I held in 1991 and I thought this is a perfect time to you know, go into my consulting business and start to do customer service training. And I quickly realized that the hospitality industry does not give a hoot about customer service and they don't care about training generally, not just customer service. Because it's such a high turnover business. So the hospitality industry really falls into that you know, why train them when they're just going to leave? And my argument of, but if you train them, they wouldn't leave, fell on deaf ears. So that didn't last very long. And then I had to do a pivot where I realized that the training that I was doing that was designed by other companies like, you know, things that you could buy off the shelf like Sanger Miller, which is just Sanger now. It wasn't really well designed. And so when I was doing training for companies as a consultant, I was spending a lot of my time re designing the materials or just finding better ways to deliver it to make it hit home for the learners, because what they were offering, I mean basically I felt like when I was giving book reports all the time, like I really wasn't getting people the skills that they needed to go back on the job and do what they needed to do. So then after about four years of that, I realized I should just design training. That is what I'm really good at doing instead of redesigning all these other people's training. So I did that for probably the next 20 years. I strictly designed custom training for mostly fortune 500 companies. But it was for every topic that they needed. So I'm not industry specific, I was not topic specific. I've worked for broadcast media, I’ve worked for pharmaceuticals, insurance, you name it. The industry doesn't matter, because my expertise is in how adults learn and especially how adults learn in the workplace, because they have to get that information quickly. They have to be able to internalize it. They have to be able to use it on the job. It's not just, you know, oh that's nice. I mean there's a reason you sent them to training is because you want them to behave differently on the job. So that really is my expertise is getting people to behave differently on the job. So I spent 20 something years custom designing training for companies and all sorts of industries and all sorts of topics. And then the longer I spent in these industries I realized, nobody's really doing leadership development well. There is leadership development out there. But my problem quote unquote with what's being done in like the fortune 500 companies is that they pick a select few who get that training. Like there's a lot of hypo programs, high potential people, right? So they think, oh well we'll hire you out of college and then, we'll give you this training and eventually you're going to be the star for our company. And I just feel like that's so discriminatory. Like why wouldn't you give leadership development to everybody and let the people who are good at it and like it rise to the top. But meanwhile the ROI and giving everybody leadership skills and it is not even really leadership skills. It's just, it's the soft skills that people have to learn the hard way, like you know good communication skills or how to collaborate with others or even just knowing what your company does. I find that so many people in organizations, you only know their role. Like if you're hired into finance, you don't know what operations does, you don't know what shipping does. You don't know what HR does, you don't know what marketing does. And nobody ever helps you learn any of that either. But if you want to be a leader in an organization, you have to know how a company runs. So I really feel like companies themselves would be better served if they just gave leadership, quote unquote leadership training to everybody. And then those people who like it and enjoy it and are good at it, will naturally rise to leadership positions. But meanwhile you've got everybody communicating better and collaborating better and Etc.

08:04

Ramesh: So looks like the leaflet is probably the right thing to get started. So you've been in this business, been doing this for 20 plus years, so obviously you're well set. And then you also had couple of pivots you said. First you started with the hospitality industry and then afterwards you were doing other people's training and then now you settled on a custom training. And you also mentioned that you don't have a specific industry. So my question is how do the customers come to you or how do you build the customer pipeline?

08:42

Nanette: So I'm actually struggling right now, because I’ve done this. But an additional pivot, which is when I said I'm just going to focus on leadership training. That's not an industry I'm known in. I'm known for designing any kind of training. It's not a skill set that I'm known for. So I'm really starting my business over I feel. Finding new clientele because the fortune 500 are not my clientele anymore. They have their leadership departments, they have their training department, they have a protocol that they believe is working, although I don't believe it is. So I realized why I can't sell to them anymore because they don't really need my philosophy and the people who need my philosophy are smaller and medium sized businesses who probably haven't even thought about this. You know, right now there's such a problem with unemployment. Their biggest concern is, you know or lack of you know such low unemployment rate that their biggest concern is how do we get people in the door to do the work that we need to do. And so I don't think many small and medium sized businesses are looking to the future, because that's just so far off at this point. But you know, here I am raising the flag that goes, yeah but you have to start preparing for it today because we can't see you in 2030 going, Oh crap, we didn't have anybody left to lead this company.

09:55

Ramesh: Right, right. So that is very interesting. It looks like I caught you at a time of your career of the business in a while you're pivoting, I 100% agree with you. Is that the fortune 500, one of the companies that I worked for, I mean they go with the one of these larger I would say business school kind of a leadership development. They have their own internal in house kind of stuff. So given that I'm mean first actually let me ask you why you thought of pivoting to this area.

10:31

Nanette: I feel like it's a mission. I feel there's, I think it was Ray Dalio, but I'm not a hundred percent sure who said this, but there's like three phases in your life. There's the phase where you're learning the phase where you're earning in the phase where you're giving back. And I feel like I'm in the phase where I'm giving back now. Like this is and I love business. I am passionate about business. Like I just said to somebody the other day that I read inc magazine for pleasure. I mean, I don't read like fiction. I read business magazines for pleasure. That's what I get a thrill from. So I really feel like it's just such, this is going to be such a crisis and you know, honestly I’ll be out of the workforce probably by the time it hits. So it's not like it's going to affect me. I just feel like it's such a big problem that's coming down the pike. Nobody really looks to the future. I think that's a part of, you know how companies run with the stock market and all that. We can't work 10 years ahead, don't be ridiculous. We have to look like, you know, by the end of this year. That's as far ahead as we can look. And I just feel like I’ve gotten so much experience and knowledge and insight into what makes successful companies and successful leaders over the last 25 plus years, that this is what I'm doing to give back. So whether it makes me money or not is not the point. It's just helping companies to stay afloat. Cause I really think a lot of companies are just going to implode. You know, there's a lot of small and medium sized businesses out there that are run by the person who originally founded them and that person would like to retire, but often they can't because there's really nobody to step in. So that's one of the niche markets is, you know, are you approaching your seventies and you'd like to let go, but you can't, let's figure that out. Who can we get trained up?

12:03

Ramesh: So given that this is the time that you're trying to attract new clients and you're pivoting as well, so what strategies are you looking at in a building and promoting your busine

12:17

Nanette: Well in any industry, this is a hard market to sell to business people. Because even myself, when I find a vendor that I like, I stick with them forever, even if there's probably a better way to do it or more cost effective way to do. Like I know I just know how this program works or this vendor works and you know, I'm in my comfort zone. So it's tough to get people to even want to have a conversation with you. But my perspective has always been from the first day I was in business that you have to give an order to receive. And so when I was first starting my business, I spoke a lot for free. And I’ve said once like that said to one audience once, you know every time I speak it give me back exponentially and this one woman said, well zero times 10 is still zero. So that's really not the equation. But I do speak a lot for free because again, I feel like this is just a mission I'm on. I'd rather give you the Intel, even if you don't buy this solution, you should at least be aware of the situation. That's you know, you'd want to know if somebody was, if you're in a canoe and somebody telling you you're headed towards rapids right? I mean that's Kind of my philosophy. Like if you don't do anything about it, well you know at least I tried to help you. So that's Kind of my philosophy. So I do a lot of speaking. I speak at chambers of Commerce professional associations. I am very active on LinkedIn, which I really wasn't you know, I was a member. That's funny. Like when I look at my profile, it says I’ve been a member since 2009, like really? I don't even remember signing up for LinkedIn. So I’ve been a lot more active there, just like in terms of thought leadership and getting in front of the, hopefully people who might read one of my articles. And then I'm trying to do a lot with social media, which is something that I completely ignored as a phase for a long time. Because I just didn't think it was business. It was personal, right. And I ran a business, but now I realize how many companies are, if you're not on social media, you don't exist. Like one of my most successful marketing strategies in the 90s was my webpage. Like that just brought me tons of business because I was one of the few people that had a webpage at the time and I could look like a big company with my web page. You didn't know how big or how small I was and I mean that hasn't brought me business in years. So now I'm doing kind of the pivot there as well into social media and trying to be more, I mean one of the things that I don't love about social media is, it's hard to be a business without being a personality. And I spent 20 something years behind the veil of the training doctor where, you know, that was our corporate entity, but I think it worked because I worked for corporate America and you know, I really you have to develop more personal relationships with smaller and medium sized business people who have a real pulse on their organization. Because I mean this sounds terrible, but even training departments in corporate five hundreds are kind of removed from the operations. Like they still take their orders from somebody else. Like we need this training and then we farm it out to and the training doctor, whereas, you know a smaller or medium sized business fair hands in there with you saying, you know help me work this, you know, salvage my business. I don't mean to make it sound so dramatic, but you know help me figure this out so that we can continue to be successful. When you work for a fortune 500 company, you're never going to see the CEO. Although I did accidentally bump into Jack Welch once in the hallways at GE. That was like the most thrilling day of my life. I was coming out of a conference room and he was going into the one next to mine. I'm like, oh my gosh.

15:44

Ramesh: The management guru there. That's excellent. So you're doing the social media, you're trying to establish yourself as an authority. By the way, I saw your name referenced yesterday on LinkedIn. I think you are referenced in a Forbes article, so looks like it's working. So I looked as well. And by the way also I think nowadays it's all about personal branding. Other new thing that's happening out there. And then so let me get into a little bit of a publishing. So you publish a lot. And then you recently had a book, a future proofing your organization by teaching thinking skills. So what is that book about

16:25

Nanette: So that came out in 2018. So basically future-proofing organization by teaching thinking skills is my whole premise on leadership development. That basically we're not teaching thinking skills anymore. We're not teaching critical thought or decision making or problem solving, which are all leadership skills. And I found that future proofing your organization by teaching thinking skills was a highly offensive title. So I even pivoted off of that in just a year or two since that's been published because people think, oh well you know, why would you say that? We're not thinking like, well cause you're not, but all right, let me tell you that it's not, you're not developing leaders. It's the same thing. So it is basically, it's a giant sales letter, that book. Because it is my thinking and I have a overall curriculum design that I think would work for, I think would work, I know would work with organizations, but it's very immersive. It's a three year program and it has a lot of moving parts, but they're all integrated. Like, one of the problems I’ve seen in corporate America is like, let's say we send you to a course on decision making and you'll find out the four or five ways that decisions can be made. And then we just release you back into the wild and like, is there any possibility you're ever going to remember or apply the right decision making style at the right time three months from now when you have to make a decision? No. So what I do in my curriculum designs is integrate your decision making, learning with actual on the job application and over and over and over again. Because the only way for people to learn is through repetition. That's why you had English every single year from grade one to grade 12 right. But then we get to corporate America and we go, hey for four hours, you're good. You know how to do this now. So it's a very in meshed curriculum program where people will revisit the same topics over and over in different ways, in different situations and always with on the job application and always in conjunction with not only other people, cause I don't believe in e-learning because that's just self study and people aren't self directed enough to do that. So not only is the learning with other people, but it's other people within the organization, like lateral people, like I call them cohorts. Because I think one of the reasons we're not developing business people is because like if you're hired into a finance role, any training you will get from here on out will probably be finance. We're keeping you in a funnel or a silo. Like we're going to expand your skills in finance, but we're never going to teach you about the rest of the company. So if you put people into a finance course, but they're from HR and shipping and your route drivers and your operations people and your marketing people think, everybody can benefit from a course in finance or a course in decision making. And meanwhile, I'm also benefiting from the fact that I'm getting exposure to you in another department that I don't know anything about. But now you and I are developing a relationship. So as we grow up through the organization, you and I have been buddies for three, four or five years. We're more likely to work together, collaborate together, cooperate with one another. Because I know you as a, like you and I were saying earlier, it's personal relationship, right? I know you as a friend, I know you as a colleague and I also understand what your department does. That's not how training is typically done in an organization. We keep people in these silos and I think a lot of the reason that people leave companies is because they think, well, there's nowhere for me to grow except up. I think companies really do a poor job of saying, well why don't we send you over to marketing for six months, so you can see how they work and learn how we market this business. Like I think you would keep more people in your organization if you made, if you had lateral moves available to them. But that's not how corporations are typically set up.

20:08

Ramesh: So Nanette as you're pivoting right now, one part that came to my mind is that over the span of this 20 plus years that you've been in the business there'll be ups and downs like as every entrepreneur, right? We all have our ups and downs. Was there a time even now I would say that you think forget it. I don't want to do it. Let me get back to a comfortable, get a job kind of stuff. Or what are the thoughts that you had or how did you get through this downtimes

20:37

Nanette: Ah, well, you're right, there's been plenty of downtimes. There's been twice in my career where I was basically on the verge of bankruptcy. But no, I’ve never considered getting a real job cause that's not in my DNA. And I think that my father was self employed and that's the model I saw. So it's just in my, that's in my realm of possibility. I mean obviously you did have a job out of college. I worked in the hospitality industry. I was pretty autonomous in that job, so I was lucky in that regard. But no, I mean I just, I have a vision and I'm going to carry it out, whether there's anybody buying it or not. And my father was a salesman. He was a self employed salesman. So there was periods of feast and famine in that world as well. You know, like you just knew, even a lot of times people go, I didn't know we were poor. There were times, there were times where we had plenty of money and times where I, you know I knew that we didn't. And so that does not panic me. And I do have a lot of self-employed friends who always say to me, you know, how do you not panic? And I'm like, I don't know. That's just in my DNA to not panic, because I know it always turns around.

21:42

Ramesh: That's excellent. So I mean, I think you need to have that kind of a DNA to survive. And definitely you've been there 20 plus years, so obviously you withstood those times. So then let me ask you this question. I think there are a lot of things that we think about, I was also. So what do you think is a unique value proposition that you bring to your customers or to your profession?

22:05

Nanette: Well, so I think I’ve just developed my unique proposition in the last eight months. Actually this year I think is, I’ve finally developed it. If you were to Google or even go on LinkedIn and look for leadership development, you would find thousands and thousands and thousands of people that like I would never show up in that search. I would be so buried. Oh, I do know. But most people, most organizations that do leadership development do it on a small scale or a one to one kind of relationship. Whether that's, you know, coaching an executive at a company or just like I used to do going into a company and doing work for them. And I realized, you know, I’ve had a lot of introspection in the last few years and I realized that doing what I used to do for 20 plus years, where I would work with maybe three to five companies a year, designing customer curriculums for them, that's not reaching enough people. You know, I'm such on such a mission about this leadership precipice and there's such a, to me, tight deadline for that to get prepared for that in just 10 years. I realized I cannot impact enough people doing business the way I had been doing it. So for the first half or so of this year, I looked at how I work with a company. If I were to go in and sit with your organization and help you strategize your leadership development for the next three or five years, how could I basically, commoditize is not the word I'm looking for, but how could I re-imagine it so that I was doing it more in a public way and less as a one on one way. So I now offer these leadership development strategy sessions as workshops. I figured out a way to develop, to offer it as a workshop. So we have an online workshop that is four sessions online with me, but then a lot, a lot, a lot of homework or the same workshop, but it's done in two days in person where the client comes to us at our facility. But there's other clients there as well. So in the online workshop, I can have you know, say 60 individuals. I wouldn't want to do more than that because, then you really can't, you know then it's really me giving a webinar and that is so much, you know offering them consultative guidance. But then in the, in person when we do a max of six companies, because there is a lot of personal coaching from me and my associate as well as doing a lot of work on your own. So I mean, for instance the first session of the workshop as well, who's going to get the leadership training. So we know the boomers are leaving. Gen x chronologically would be the next leaders because that's, you know in terms of their age and how long they've been in the workforce. But there's not enough of them to fill all the leadership positions. It's a much smaller population than the boomers and the millennials. And then the Gen z's are joining us rapidly as well. So yes, chronologically it makes sense that Gen z or gen x would be the next population to ascend to leadership, but that might not be the right decision. Because they're going to also leave in the next few years. So maybe you want to get the next generation ready, because the millennial generation is huge. So I say to clients, you know, there's no right answer. There's no wrong answer. You have to figure that answer out for yourself. Who are you going to apply the training to. In the nets Ideal world, Everybody should get the training. The minute you walk in the door, you should be enrolled in a three year or a five year leadership development. We're not going to call it leadership development, then its just going to be business acumen development, right? Learn how to write an email. Learn how to behave in a meeting, all that kind of stuff. Learn not to have a verbal communication skills. Learn how to cooperate with others. Learn how to ask good questions. Nobody asks good questions. So, you know, I don't give the answers to anybody. I just say here's all the possibilities. You know, look at your own population. Who's going to cycle out in 10 years, who do have in the pipeline. If you don't have anybody in a succession plan, then you know what are you going to do? Are you going to keep hiring from outside? Beg, borrow. And steal from other employers. Because while that's possible, but it's not really, cause you can see right now we have a really low unemployment, right? So what you are doing is buying people. If you're going to get them all, you're just buying them. That's the only attraction you have right now is to dangle more money in front of them. So that's a losing proposition. But the problem with bringing people from the outside is then they come with their own set way of thinking and their own experience from their own, you know, from their past organization. And then they have to adapt to your culture or they try to change your culture. And so, you know, that doesn't always work to bring in people from the outside. So it would always be my advice to bring people up from the inside and expect that they're going to be there for their career.

Although we know with millennials that they say that's not true. They expect to have seven jobs in their lifetimes. But you know, zig Ziglar years ago said, what if I train them and they leave? And the opposite of that is what if I don't train them and they stay?

26:59

Ramesh: Yeah, that’s right, that’s right.

27:01

Nanette: So I would rather, I mean there's a possibility that you're going to train these people to be excellent leaders and they will leave you. And I think that's a price you'll just have to be willing to pay. Because so many people want professional development and like I said earlier, I think a lot of people just leave their role because they're like, well, I'm never going to go anywhere here. I can't go up. There's only three levels above me and there's not enough room up there. So I guess I have to go out. But if there was the ability to do lateral moves, if you knew more about how the business worked, you know, you just, if you knew you were going to get professional development, you would stick with that employer because you're going to get it here and nowhere else. Everywhere else you're going to have to keep switching jobs to develop yourself. Which is scary.

27:42

Ramesh: Yup. That's excellent Nanette. I think that's a very unique I think proposition that you have, which you brought to development across the company, across disciplines, functions kind of stuff. So as we wind down Nanette anything that we did not cover any last minute thoughts?

27:58

Nanette: No, I think I talked your ear off for 30 minutes Ramesh.

28:01

Ramesh: So last question. So you were executive assistant to Ronald McDonald in your past life at some point. Can we wind down our podcast with that?

28:11

Nanette: Nope I can, but I was not his executive assistant. So when I was a teenager I worked for a company that owned, I can't even remember how many stores, but they owned a whole bunch of McDonalds’ stores in three different states. And we had our own Ronald who would travel by motor home to all of the stores over the you know, during the summer it would be a different store every weekend. And the back of the motor home folded down and there was a little stage and he would put on a little show, we'd have kids come up from the audience, you know, put on grimace costumes and you'll have all sorts of games and stuff. And so it was a big deal to throw a party at a McDonalds’ site because Ronald himself was showing up. And so I was the one who would greet all the kids and make sure they got all settled and that they, you know I would introduce Ronald and it was so funny because I wasn't supposed to know who he was, but there was only one guy who traveled with the motor home. So like he'd come into the store and he'd go, okay Ronald is here. I was like, okay, 30 minutes, you know, and then we'd go out into the back park and I go like, oh, there is Ronald. I don't know that if it's that Guy is Steve who just came into Ronald's here. It was very funny.

29:19

Ramesh: That’s probably Very funny, I think this is like a very interesting job that you had. That's very good.

29:24

Nanette: Very interesting. I spent a lot of time on the road driving over three states.

29:28

Ramesh: So let's end this podcast. On that note.

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Building A Full Service Entertainment and Technology Agency with Larissa Lowthorp – AEP #29

September 24th, 2019 by Ramesh Dontha

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Guest: Larissa Lowthorp

Company / Business name: TimeJump Media

Larissa Lowthorp is the founder, president of time jump media, which is a full-service agency that works in the entertainment industry. She’s a designer, technologist, a screenwriter, emerging director and producer.

Tools / Books / Resources mentioned

Tools: Freelancer (Mac), Quickbooks, Canva, Pixabay, Pexels.Com

Show Notes

Larissa Lowthorp started out as a consultant and freelancer offering her services to the entertainment industry in various roles as a screenwriter, designer, and technology and worked for 12+ years before she started a full-fledged business.

Larissa talked about how she is building her current business by using referrals from her past life as a consultant. Larissa also talked about the challenges of switching from being a freelancer to a full fledged business with having to take decisions on type of corporation and number of sites needed.

Larissa talks about the importance of mentors and in her case the huge role played by her mentor. Larissa also talked about the significance of life events which were up and down and how they motivated her to pursue her entrepreneurial path. Larissa also talked about her mother and sister being great supporters of her work.

Larissa advises aspiring entrepreneurs to not have fear hold them back. Even though the overall entrepreneurial journey is overwhelming, takes it in bits and pieces.

Larissa talks about some important tools: Freelance on Mac is a good project management tool. Quickbooks is great for accounting. Larissa also mentioned stock photo sites like pixabay and pexels.com that she uses.

Larissa talks about some areas she’d have worked sooner. Being assertive and believing in herself much earlier than she did. Larissa is careful about screening the customers and being firm when needed.

Episode Transcript

00:03
Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to the agile entrepreneurial podcast. This is your host Ramesh Dantha. This podcast is about starting and building your own business with purpose, passion, perseverance, and possibilities. Today we have a very exciting guest works in an exciting industry, that's entertainment industry. So her name is Larissa Lowthorp. Larissa is the founder, president of time jump media, which is a full-service agency that works in the entertainment industry. Larissa is very, very talented. She's a designer, technologist, a screenwriter, emerging director and producer. Larissa welcome.

00:49

Larissa: Hi Ramesh, thank you so much for having me.

00:51

Ramesh: So what is it that you cannot do? It looks like I talked about everything that you can do. Are there any things that you cannot do?

01:00

Larissa: Oh gosh, you are hitting it right away. I just come out and say it. I am dyslexic at math, so don't talk to me about math.

01:12

Ramesh: So let's talk about your business then now. What is time jump media?

01:16

Larissa: Time Jump media is a full-service agency. Working within the entertainment industry. We do work with all other types of industries, but we specialize in entertainment. We provide branding, digital strategy, web solutions, app development, video production. You name it, we do it.

01:41

Ramesh: Okay. So how long have you been in the business?

01:44

Larissa: Time jump was actually just incorporated this past October 2018 as a limited liability company, but it was founded about two years ago.

01:59

Ramesh: Okay. So what was going on between the two years when it was founded and then LLC of October 2018.

02:07

Larissa: You know, I have to be honest with you, I was a little bit scared. I've managed small businesses and online businesses for a number of years and time jump was, it was my idea to form an agency from a very long time ago, but I had a mental and emotional block towards starting it. And so two years ago I bought a nudge from a very dear friend of mine. His name is Gino McCoy. He's a film director, screenwriter. He's the CCO of gold dot entertainment. And he said, why don't you just do it? So I said, okay, you know, let's make this a reality. I was in the process of transitioning out of my nine to five job. But in that year and a half or so, between that time and when I incorporated it was pretty overwhelming. You know, I was afraid to find funding, startup funding, writing the business plan was very intimidating to me. So I had to work on it just a little bit every day. And then seeing that build piece by piece was very inspiring to me. I started reaching out to colleagues, professional, some of the best people in the industry that I knew to talk to them about it. See if they were interested in coming on board and just trying to fit all those puzzle pieces into place. So really working behind the scenes to get things set up.

03:48

Ramesh: Wow. So Larissa actually you, you're walking right into the methodology that I talk about starting a business, which is, you know, try to bite you know, some small chunks every day. So things are not overwhelming. It looks like you have really taken that approach. So when did you actually get a paying customer?

04:08

Larissa: You know, time jump itself does not have paying customers yet. I myself as a consultant have had paying customers over the past 10 or 12 years in my freelance business. And so what I'm doing is I'm working to transition some of these into time jump customers. And then what I'm going to do is I'm kind of implement my outreach and marketing plan to get those official time jump customers.

04:39

Ramesh: Wow. So the time jump was not your first business. You had a freelancing business for the last 10 to 12 years?

04:45

Larissa: Yes, yes. I've been on freelancing, I’ve been consulting, I’ve been doing all that on and off since about 1999 or 2000 in various forms. Time jump is a formalization of that.

05:04

Ramesh: Okay. So actually that makes more sense to me. So you've been an entrepreneur for at least 10 to 12 years, as a freelance business and all that stuff, but as a formalization into a company, an organization LLC happened over the last couple of years.

05:17

Larissa: Yes, yes, that's right. And I mean it's been such a learning curve because the process of actually incorporating and figuring out the taxes, the legal side of it, structuring it, getting business partners on board, that's all pretty new to me. I did have to rely pretty heavily on Gino McCoy to help advise me and guide me through. So hopefully this conversation could help, you know pay it forward and help other entrepreneurs do the same thing.

05:50

Ramesh: Excellent. Actually, so then how do you support yourself? Is it through your freelancing business you're supporting yourself as you are building time jump media?

05:59

Larissa: Yep. I'm working as a consultant for a fortune 100 company and I'm reinvesting that money into time jump and I'm working on building on time jam on the weekends, on the evenings and the side. You know, partnering on some really exciting projects.

06:26

Ramesh: Excellent. So well right now, I mean, do you say that you have a line of sight to getting a paying customer for time jump media or is still a work in progress?

06:37

Larissa: Absolutely. I have a definite line of sight towards getting my first paying customer. I'm both looking forward to it and I'm afraid of it. I feel like in some ways I am afraid of success. I feel like I have this inside of me where if I just unleash this, it's going to be really good and it's going to be really big. But I'm not sure what the outcome is going to be. And I find that that's stopping me in some ways. I'm trying to work through that.

07:09

Ramesh: Wow. Actually, this is a pretty good conversation because we are talking to a business owner who is actually you know, work in progress building the business. Excellent. So Larissa can you talk about how the journey of getting the paying customer like what things you have to do for the customer to trust in you and then say, okay, I’ll go with Larissa on time jump media.

07:33

Larissa: Well, I feel like on this part of the journey I actually do have a leg up. Because I have previous referrals. I have previous paying customers. I do have an established client base and established network that I have built a reputation with. And I have built relationships and cultivated those relationships with over the years. And so even in my work previously as a freelancer, previously as a consultant, in the future I can lean on my network for referrals to people that they might know if their own businesses need something else and things like that. And so that is probably going to be my first line of attack when it comes to getting those first customers. And then I would pair that with you know, probably some more cold calling, cold emails and I'm putting feelers out there. So it would be a hybrid approach.

08:35

Ramesh: Oh, excellent. So in the last couple of years or so as you've been thinking about formalizing this company, what specific areas really held you back or you know, took longest time. Was it an incorporation piece of it or legal, funding? Trying to figure out your pricing? Can you talk which elements really were the hardest nuts to crack?

09:02

Larissa: Gosh, that's a tough question, because they all pose their own unique challenges. I'm going to start with incorporation itself. Because once I got, I began researching it, things began to fall into place, but I'm mobile. So I personally am based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. But you know, we have satellite agencies in Los Angeles, satellite agencies in Toronto, Ontario. And so it was a lot of research to figure out where should we incorporate. What's best for our goals, what's best for our tax purposes. What's best for the type of company we do. Do we do an LLC, do we do a subchapter S? So kind of where do we want to go. There was a period when I was exploring a partnership with another person and that ended up not working out for that person. Hopefully she will you know, come on board and be able to lend her expertise in the future. But so that wasn't so difficult as much as it was time and research invested. When, once again, I have to think Gino McCoy for helping me through that. He'd put me on to a lot of good research about the best places to incorporate. He had previously done that with his company. Gold Dot. So that advice was really invaluable.

10:45

Ramesh: Wow. Excellent. I mean I also based on recommendation; I’ll get Gino onto this podcast show one of these days. It looks like he's got a lot of knowledge behind him.

10:56

Larissa: Absolutely. Absolutely. He would definitely be a help to any entrepreneur looking to get their, get their business off the ground.

11:06

Ramesh: Alright, so let's talk a little bit about you. Why did you have this drive? Like why you want to have your own company and why don't you go work for somebody else and live happily ever after?

11:22

Larissa: Well, I have always thought that I would be an entrepreneur one day. My parents were entrepreneurs. They opened their own business a few years before I was born. So I’ve been exposed to that lifestyle in that environment all my life. It was kind of a given that myself or my sister would take over their company at one point when they retired. And so I feel like, you know, in some ways I was encouraged you know, to pursue my entrepreneurial spirit from a very young age. So, you know, I would have stands out in my yard and I would sell toys, I would sell whatever. I was a very creative child. I was always making things. I sold jewelry to local customers. It got picked up by a local art galleries. So it's just kind of built throughout my life. Well then it happened, I didn't know where to get started. You know, once I'd graduated from high school, I had been a university student. I had to drop out when my dad got sick. So I kind of shifted focus and I shifted plans and I'm going to take you now back to your previous question about the hardest things to get started, because really the hardest thing for me has been to secure some startup funding and investments. And this has been the case for a number of years. Even when I was starting out as a freelancer, I'm starting out as a consultant. So I put this plan in place that maybe I could get a corporate job and I could work my way up the corporate ladder and save away enough money that one day I could start this this big company. I had a vision of kind of a, a conglomerate company that did many different things. So the evolution of time jump is an aspect of that. So really kind of how I got here is I’ve been working in the corporate environment for the last 10 to 12 years. Back about four years ago, I got very restless in my corporate job. I left it and since then I’ve been working toward what eventually was to become time jump.

14:06

Ramesh: Excellent. Thank you very much. I mean that is an interesting journey there. So I'm thinking that there is probably some story behind time jump the name.

14:17

Larissa: Yeah. Actually, it's funny that you've asked. Because I always have a hundred ideas for everything, but somehow I was having a lot of trouble with choosing a name for my company. So once again, I have to bring up Gino McCoy because we were having a phone conversation and I was very excited. I'm like, let's get this off the ground. You know, that I got to do this, I have to do this. I was so jazzed and so pumped up to do this. I said, I don't what to call it. I wanted to buy my domain name, so that I could set up a website. And he said, well what's your favorite animal? And I said, kangaroo. And then he said, what's your favorite aspect of outer space? Because he and I are both outer space geeks and I said, time warps. Because I love star Trek. So he said, well how about calling it time jump?

15:21

Ramesh: Wow, That's good. So a couple of things that you really like and then put them together. That is so very, very creative. And then also very personal as well.

15:30

Larissa: It is a very personal, and you know, I’ll be honest with you, I wasn't entirely sure about the name. It was so unique. So I thought of a few different names, but I kept coming back around to time jump. Because like you said, it has that personal connection and I just love that and I think too, it works for the vision of the company because my company is about stepping customers forward and getting them, you know ahead of the curve and ahead of their competition so that they can really meet their customer's needs. And I think any business that a person forms the name is so important. It has to convey so many nuanced things.

16:19

Ramesh: Yup. Yup. So actually that is very good. So let me talk a little bit about the customer pipeline and then the customer itself. So typically what is the starting point for your work with the customer? Is it like they'll come to you and say, build me a web design, website? Or how does it start?

16:40

Larissa: There's a few different ways that it starts. Usually I will have a potential client come to me who has a very definite idea of what they say they want. And a lot of times this client has previously worked with a designer, previously worked with an agency and for whatever reason it wasn't working out for them anymore and they needed to change. And so they'll tell me, their backstory, I will listen. And then once we start working through it, we'll have a consultation, we'll have a conversation, and then it's kind of a matter of reading between the lines. Like you are telling me that this is what you need and this is what you wanted, but you weren't satisfied with your results. So why aren't you satisfied? And the answers that they give are not what they think the solution should be. Very seldom. So I help them to read between the lines to find a new solution and a new approach for services that really work for them and meet their goals. And I try to work with them and educate them throughout the entire process that we're working together.

17:59

Ramesh: It's really a very consultative process that you're taking. So let me ask you this question. Typically how do your potential customers find you? Like what kinds of promotional strategies that you've been working on that are working out in a way that the customers are finding you?

18:20

Larissa: Well I have to say for time jump, I have not implemented my promotional strategy in full force yet. And so I have been getting a number of queries through my websites. I have social media channels set up that people are finding me through. And then again, it's word of mouth Ramesh, it's word of mouth. My previous clients, the past several years I have been traveling to film festivals and film markets throughout the world. Those are great for networking. Those are great for finding people who were missing a link between their analog services and their digital services. Because I have noticed that film in particular, many processes are still analog. And so these people that I met, I can then reached back out to and say, Hey, you know, I noticed this and you told me you're trying to do that. Would you be interested in talking? So personal outreach really works best for time jump because of the bespoke nature of our services.

19:29

Ramesh: I see. So one thing I'm still trying to understand because you had a freelance business, you've been a consultant, so in some ways you are in business for yourself for quite some time. But how is time jumper as a company different from your freelancing business and consulting, especially given that you're getting referrals from your prior freelance and consulting business anyway.

19:52

Larissa: Time Jump as a company is different because my hope is to do that full time. You know, it's going to, the goal is that it will afford me the freedom of time. It will afford me the freedom of finance to be able to do what I love, which is to go travel, to go explore, to do, you know activism, community outreach. I recently started a humanitarian organization called Pen power, which helps female entrepreneurs throughout the globe to access crowd resourced tools to improve their businesses from micro entrepreneurs all the way up to you know C suite entrepreneurs. So it's really an Avenue to pursue my personal passions without being tied down to a nine to five Monday through Friday job that I have to stay in one location for.

20:59

Ramesh: Got it. Okay. So I understand that. So as you look through the journey like what are the things that you could offer to other aspiring entrepreneurs? So what is that you would tell about if they want to start a business?

21:18

Larissa: Oh gosh, I'm so happy you asked. Well, first of all, I hope that they could go on my website or go on my Facebook or Instagram and reach out to me and we could start talking. I would suggest do it. Don't let fear hold you back. I did that even though I had been, you know, freelancing and consulting, somehow the step of formalizing it into a company and saying, I want this, I want the freedom of you know, managing my own company versus letting somebody else manage me. That was a difficult bet for me. So just do it. And if it seems overwhelming, take it in small bites and this is what you teach, which is wonderful. And I’ve been spending a lot of time on your website, because I tend to think so big picture. It was really a practice to discipline myself and jewel little bit by bit by bit.

22:21

Ramesh: I see. So Larissa as you are building your business I'm assuming that you are going through selecting some tools that will help you in various aspects, whether it's legal accounting or whatever, whatever. So I mean, what are the kinds of tools that you're using other people can say, Oh yes, those are the good tools that I should look at as well.

22:45

Larissa: I would say, you know, first and foremost, invest in a really good project management software. I believe there's one for Mac computers, it is called freelance. It lets you, you know it lets you keep a portfolio of your clients, your project history, your invoice numbers, the billing dates, the payments, everything like that. You can get one of those that fully integrated into in account management software like QuickBooks. That's great. I would say you know get that all squared away, so that you don't have to get muddy down and doing, you know back paperwork all of the time and you can just focus on moving your business forward.

23:35

Ramesh: Okay. So a freelance is one. And then the accounting one, I mean are there any tools that you use for your design work and then things like that?

23:45

Larissa: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm always trying new ones. I mean, as far as web design goes, Jovi creative suites. They have, you know, their cloud based system. Get a good package for stock photos. There are some really good free stock photo websites like pixabay.com, pexels.com, they have very high quality photos. That is really going to make or break your project. If you're putting together an RFP, a request for proposal or a concept development. I mean, the images, I have seen firsthand that quality images can make or break whether or not a client decides to go with you.

24:35

Ramesh: Wow. So I'm familiar with the Pixabay and then those kinds of sites as well. I agree with you that some of the media and by the way, I use like Canva kind of stuff where I use for some design work as well.

24:47

Larissa: Canva is a great tool.

24:50

Ramesh: Yeah, exactly. So and then I know you talked a few times about Gino who really inspired and who helped you. So likewise , are there any other people one beyond Gino that inspired you in your life?

25:05

Larissa: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, my mother was a huge inspiration. She is a writer. She and I actually wrote a screenplay together. My mom and my sister in particular, they always wanted me to cultivate my creativity. My father as well. You know, my family has gone through probably like most families. My family has gone through some really hard times together. Internal family struggles. But one thing that they've always encouraged me to do is be myself and believe in myself. And that really meant so much to me.

25:51

Ramesh: Excellent. So likewise, are there any books or any movies or anything that inspired you? That you keep going back to make sure that you know, this path progresses?

26:04

Larissa: Yeah, I feel like I should have an answer to that. And now that you asked me, I can't think of any. I'm looking forward to your upcoming book. I'm definitely going to read that when it comes out. But I try and take inspiration from everything and any little thing and sometimes I don't realize until after when something in particular has inspired me. Kind of a funny thing that I’ve been thinking about doing lately as taking some improv classes. Just to help with my personal communication skills. Especially if as time jump moves forward, I am going to be trying to do more of that face to face networking. I think that could really help.

26:55

Ramesh: So that's excellent. So Larissa a couple of questions more before we end the podcast. So one question is, if you were to go back and restart, right, so restart even the freelance business or restart the time jump, what kinds of things that you've learned that you would do differently?

27:15

Larissa: Oh gosh. I would be more assertive in my favor. I feel like, especially when I was first starting out as a freelance and as a consultant, I let other people's opinions shape my actions a little bit too much. And so again, I would believe in myself more. I would have more confidence. That was a really hard one. But you know, and stand up for yourself. Sometimes you get clients who want the moon and they don't want to you know pay formally for their demands. And so yes, like customer service and satisfaction is very, very, very important. But you also need to learn how to set your limits and be firm with customers yet tactful.

28:16

Ramesh: Yeah, I know about those kinds of customers. One of the podcasts guests that I had previously said she would fire those kinds of bad clients.

28:25

Larissa: I've had to do that once or twice in my career and it's never fun.

28:29

Ramesh: It's never fun. Yeah, I agree with you. So the last one. Anything that we have not discussed, any information that you wanted to share that, but we didn't get to as we close the podcast.

28:39

Larissa: I don't think so Ramesh. This was just so wonderful to speak with you and thank you so much for having me on.

28:46

Ramesh: Thank you very much. I mean, you have a very, very interesting and fascinating story. I'm so honored to talk to you, Larissa. Best of luck with time jump media. Looking at the kind of mentors that you have, looks like all good things will happen to you.

29:01

Larissa: Thank you. You as well. I'm really excited for your release of the agile entrepreneur and I will definitely put it on my preorder list.

29:12

Ramesh: Thank you. Thank you.

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Building A Real Estate Business buying, selling, and managing properties with Michael Rogers – AEP #28

September 16th, 2019 by Ramesh Dontha

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Guest: Michael Rogers

Company / Business name: Chandler Properties, Sell Michael Your House

Michael Rogers is the owner of Chandler Properties, a real estate investment portfolio that focuses on self storage and residential rentals in Cleveland, Tennessee market.

Tools / Books / Resources mentioned:

Resources: Dan Barrett Facebook Ads course

Show Notes:

Michael shares his entrepreneurial journey from an accountant to real estate over a span of 20 years. He saw at least 2 real estate cycles of ups and downs.

When he started with real estate, he used to buy to full price and do all the work himself and make some money when he sold for higher price. But Michael realized that he had to buy at value prices and possibly pay others to do services to really scale his business.

We talked about financing and how relationship with local banks is key.

Michael said his analytical background helped in this business. But Michael also talks about how real estate transactions are different because of all the emotional attachments above and beyond just financial transactions.

Michael explained how digital marketing was a huge game changer and how he learned digital marketing (Dan Barrett classes) and did Facebook ads, retargeting all by himself.

Michael talks about some of his learnings namely importance of value investing, knowing your circle of competence, and the importance of patience.

His advice is to start with a side hustle, follow value investing principles, and the importance of value investing.

He is a huge fan of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger (who is not).

Episode Transcript

00:04

Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to the agile entrepreneurial podcast. This is your host, Ramesh Dantha. This podcast is about starting on building your own business with purpose, passion, perseverance on possibilities. Today we have a guest who has branched out into an area we all somehow will participate in our lives. Michael Rogers. Michael Rogers is the owner of Chandler properties, a real estate investment portfolio that focuses on self storage and residential rentals in Cleveland, Tennessee Market. Hi Michael. Welcome.

00:45

Michael: Hey, Ramesh. It's good to be here. Thank you.

00:50

Ramesh: All right. So I have to admit, I have seen your ads on Facebook and where ever I go the ads seems to be following me. So you are a prolific advertiser.

00:59

Michael: Yeah, yeah. So you've been on my website somewhere and I’ve cookied you and that's why you're, that's why you keep seeing me.

01:07

Ramesh: Very good. Very good. So that whenever I see that it's following me, that tells me that they're doing well, so that they are able to spend at advertising. Okay, excellent. So, Michael, so in your own words, what is your business about?

01:20

Michael: Well for the, I’ve kind of got two main things to do. One Chandler properties, like you mentioned there we've got self-storage. I got started in doing selling short probably eight or nine years ago. And then we also got some residential rental properties. And then I’ve got a website that I use also where you're probably seeing those, those Facebook where you're getting retargeted for some like your house.com where I'm looking for motivated sellers and I’ll buy houses and fix them up in rent them or I’ll wholesale them to somebody else and let them fix them up and flip them. But those are the kind of two big parts of my business. And my background is I'm a CPA. I sorted out, I graduated college in 2001 and went into public accounting, split out five years in public accounting. And then I went into corporate accounting for about 10 years doing internal audit, basically insurance companies. And the whole time I was doing that, I was on the side kind of as a side hustle, doing real estate, you know, buy a duplex, a house and just rent those on the side until eventually it got big enough to be about 15 years. Got big enough to where I could do it full time.

02:32

Ramesh: I see. That's great. So actually interestingly I interviewed another podcast guest as she was an internal audit as well, and she called it the dark side of accounting.

02:44

Michael: See all the interesting things what people are doing.

02:48

Ramesh: Yeah. Yeah. So then she also did a side hustle like you. So that's excellent. So, all right. So yeah, accounting background. You could have gone many different ways. Why real estate?

02:59

Michael: I’ve always been pretty entrepreneurial. And real estate is something I understood. I'm a big Warren buffet fan, Berkshire Hathaway, Charlie monger, value investing. And it was something that I could understand. You know you can figure it out what something's worth and then buy at some sort of discounts. The basic idea of value investing as sums worth a dollar and you can buy for 75 cents or 50 cents, whatever. That's what you want to do. And you can sell it later. And ii found real estate is one of the things it's easier for me to Value and look casual. So when I got really big into is when the economic downturn of 2008, 2009, I bought a lot then, you know, I was able to look at one of these things, sell for how much cash kept bringing on rent. It was kind of a no brainer to me, to buy as many of them as I could. And so that's really where I bought a lot. I'm not buying as much now as I was then just cause from a value investing standpoint, I don't see things as good now as they were in real estate.

04:03

Ramesh: I see. So Michael you've been in the business for what, 20 years.

04:07

Michael: Yep. Right about 20 years.

04:10

Ramesh: Okay. So in this 20 years, that means you started probably around the 2000- 1999 kind of stuff.

04:17

Michael: Yep. Yeah right around. Yeah, that's Fair. 2000, 2001.

04:21

Ramesh: So it looks like you have seen at least two cycles of ups and downs during this time. So how was it when you started? How challenging was it? I know it's a side hustle, so if you could talk about your starting journey.

Michael: Well, I was just about to graduate college and I bought a duplex and I didn't know; I took my first five years, I did not buy them right. I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't lose money on any of these investments, but I paid, you know, I thought getting a good deal was if I could, if something was worth a hundred grand and I could buy it for 95 grands, that's a good deal. And the thing I’ve learned over probably five or six years, was I ended up working my tail off to really make very little. I learned a lot, but I was doing everything. I was the property manager, I was the landlord, I was the painter, I was the plumber. I was the carpenter. And because I would look at my financials or when I would look at buying a property, I'd look at it and say here's what the projected revenues are and here's what the expenses cash outflow. But I was estimating, I'd be doing everything. So I wasn't counting on labor and I would say four or five years into that I had five or six units and I was working my tail off every weekend and I was like man, you know, at the end of the year I'm looking at my cash and be like, I just don't, you know, this isn't making any money. This is crazy. I really would be better off instead of putting several hundred thousand dollars in investment. And all these side jobs for free. I'll be better off just going and getting a part time job and blows or something. Not investing all this money. And I would turn out just as well cause that's what I'm doing is $10 $15 an hour jobs all the time. And so that kind of came to me, I got really into the value investing, watching Warren buffet at that time frame. A couple of years after that, that's when you had the big stock market, you know, or the recession. And that really presented a good time for me to apply that and say, okay, I can buy these things at prices to where I can afford to pay people to do all these things. You're really treating it as an investment, because there's kind of two parts roles. So you've got, you've got the investment itself, almost like a mutual fund. You buy it, you do nothing other than you just, you get the reports every year and see how it's doing. And you've got all this active work that goes into managing them. And you really, you know, I got into buying at that point, I realized I need to buy these things like I was buying an investment. And be able to pay people to do all that other stuff. Otherwise I can't scale and I'm not going to make any money.

06:51

Ramesh: So Michael, tell me, so when I look at it, I'm not really much into real estate investment other than my home and a rental property. So it's a capital-intensive kind of stuff right. So then do you rely on external funds or you're primarily working through your own funds? You're working off a syndicate, how does it work?

Michael: Have a relationship with the banks, local banks, if you're going to do real estate investing, you're probably going to needing private funds. You know, you've made some, you get a family member or something. There's people that do that usually there's a little bit higher interest rate, but you can go if you get pretty good credit. And that's a good thing for your audience members that are working a job and doing the societal. So if you've got W2 earning job, you're much more likely to get a bank to lend you money. And I would recommend you go to a local bank as opposed to a big, you know, us bank or bank of America or something like that. Because they're much more the real state launch driven off a smaller property. They're much more flexible and they are more willing to work with you. So if you've got a local bank, I would work with them and get started out and borrowed a lot of money. As time has gone on, I’ve been able to build up some money and set up lines of credit and buy more with my cash. I've been trying to do, as the market's gotten warmer, I’ve been trying to almost in the last year or two, start paying down debt, getting in better cash positions you know, for, you know eventually we'll have another recession and that'll be the time in my opinion, really I’ll probably buying more.

08:24

Ramesh: So, Michael, is this at this point of time, is it still a side hustle or this is your main thing?

08:30

Michael: This is my main thing. About two and a half years ago, I left corporate audit and just did this full time. And so that's managing these self storage facilities, of some small block of residential rentals and then buying properties and whole selling.

08:51

Ramesh: Okay. So Michael, so how was that switch? Like what kind of numbers you ran, how did you feel comfortable that Hey, this is the time I can make this switch?

09:02

Michael: It was good. I had no issues. I was pretty, you know I'm an accountant by trade, so I looked at the numbers, you know the big thing is that you're going to have, they're different. Health insurance is going to be more expensive. You're going for all of your insurances. I've got a family, I’ve got four kids and a wife, so I had to make sure that I had life insurance. You've got all these expenses, you got to pay self employment tax as well. So those are some things that I kind of knew about those and I just budgeted for it and it took me a while. You know, like I said, I wanted to do this run rundown to college, but it took me 15 years to get in the position where I had something that was producing enough cash that I could do that and feel comfortable stepping off. But for me, I stepped off and things went really well. You know, we've done projections, what are we expected to make, I made that and then sum, so it wasn't like I had a bad experience, but I prepared for it for awhile and had a solid 15 year base of doing this as a side hustle before I stepped off.

10:01

Ramesh: Yeah. So actually let's talk a little bit about Michael Rogers as a person. Right? So I mean, for something like real estate I’ve seen people, whether the agents or whatever, they definitely need to be an extrovert, right? So, and then people generally see them pretty positive kind of people. So Michael, if you could describe yourself, what kind of a person you are and then what characteristics, attributes of your own personality either helped or hurt your business?

10:29

Michael: I would say I'm pretty analytical. I'm pretty, I tend try to think things through. You know, the all CAPs, we don't tend to be particularly extroverted. I'm probably among, you know, maybe a cohort of CPA's. I'm probably a little more on the extroverted side and compared to marketing people, I'm introverted. So I think though, if you're going to be buying and selling real estate and you know, buying from a motivated seller, I think you need to have some people understanding people, being able to talk to people, you know figure out. One of the big things you're doing when you are buying real estate is, it's not so much about the piece of property you're buying when you're buying from motivated sellers, cause you're interacting with them directly. It's about understanding what their need is, you know what is their pain point, what are they trying to accomplish? Because a lot of times, you know their thing isn't, do they just want to sell houses, do they got this property they've inherited from their mom and dad. There's a lot of emotional baggage there. They have three or four brothers and sisters they're going to have to split the proceeds with, but they're the one that's having to do everything. And they really don't, you know, they live five hours away from this house. They just want this thing gone, you know? And they want somebody that'll come in, clean it out, do everything, make it as easy as possible. And it's really not about, you know the house and getting this maximum amount of money. As much as it is, they want to know they've got somebody that's going to be straight with them. That's going to close on whatever date they need to close and be flexible with them, buy it as is, take care of their problems and make it really smooth. And so I think having that ability to understand and listen to what they're saying and figuring out what it is they need, come up as sort of win win situation. I think in real estate it helps you. It's about solving problems more so than it is about just looking at a piece of land.

12:17

Ramesh: That's actually fascinating Michael. I mean it's not just a financial transaction. There is a lot of emotions, a lot of human relationships. That actually makes a lot of sense to me. So Michael you said you always wanted to be an entrepreneur right from college. It's like where is that drive coming from? Why you want it to be an entrepreneur at some time, at some point in your future.

12:42

Michael: I think it was the idea of just kind of that freedom. There's a lot of freedom in the building to kind of do what you want to do. Now you suffer the consequences of what you do. So if you're not doing what you're supposed to or you make a bad decision, you get more of the consequences. But you kind of eat what you kill, you know? And I like that. I like that ability. You could, you know, if you did things and you set things up, you could make more money and have that financial freedom. I think the financial freedom to be able to do what you want is most of entrepreneurs at the end of the day. That's really what they're getting at is they want to have that financial freedom to do what they want to do with their time and not have somebody, a boss immediately overwhelm it. You know, you never know. You can have a really good boss at a job. And then you know, some sort of corporate restructuring happen and you end up with a different boss that maybe you don't fit with, whether or not you agree with them or not, you've got a total on and do exactly what they say when they say. If they're having a bad day, you're going to have a bad day too. So that part of it, I never loved that about corporate. I was fortunate, I had a lot of really good bosses and very few negative experiences. But I think that's something I didn't like that about corporate. I saw so many restructurings, I saw so many downsizings. I saw corporate politics. That's all things that you really didn't have a lot of control. You didn't have as much control of your destiny as you do in being an entrepreneur.

14:06

Ramesh: Yeah. Actually a things that are out of your control, not just a financial freedom that you're looking for. Yeah, I myself have gone through it and then things that you really want to do, you can do. That's good. So Michael then let's talk a little bit about the business itself. Definitely, as I said at the beginning that you do invest into the promotion aspect of it. So if you could talk about how did you grow your business, what kind of strategies that you implemented to grow your business. In the beginning you talked about after five years you learned about value investing. I know are beyond that. Like how did you get to know new properties? How did you get to know about sellers who may be buyers who may be interested in your properties? So how did you grow your business?

14:55

Michael: Okay. Yeah, it's kind of evolved. I would say if you're looking back at 2008 to 2012, 2013, it was just look on the internet and look at LoopNet or MLS listings or any of these foreclosure websites. There's so much of it that you can just reach out there and you'd find something that was selling at a good deal. Now that's not the case and everybody's into real estate. Everybody's wanting to get in to sell storage. So it's push the value of these assets up to a point once you get to pay for it and the amount of cashflow you receive for it is at a different level. So you really have to, in my experience, you have to find things off market. If you're looking to buy things to where you can get them a cashflow, this is probably where you've seen me is, you know look for that website. We do some SEO, which is search engine optimization where you're really, for instance, you know, doing this podcast here and you all probably get a backlink to my website and Google looks out and they say you know, this website here, you know, I can see there's, you know, 25 different other websites that link to it. And all of these websites linking to are good websites. They tend to have good, they tend to be well received. They're not bogus, they're not a bunch of, using a bunch of black hat methods. And they look at you and say, well you know, if a lot of these really well regarded websites are recording a link to you, sending people there, you must be okay too. And the more and more of that you get, it gives you what’s known as domain authority. So that's one way. Otherwise pay per click advertising. So like Google, you can those little ads top iand you'll look at the first three or four links up there will be paid advertisements. And then below that you'll have the organic listings. And but those, those top four you pay for them. And it just depends how popular they are for a self storage ad, that’s so many times this will be in need a self storage in Cleveland, Tennessee. You might pay $2 a click for we buy houses, Cleveland, Tennessee, $20 a click. And then like you saw, you got, you got Facebook retargeting where once somebody is on my website or, and this happens all the time, but you get a little cookie and then every time you go to Facebook or you go, you're searching a different website, you'll get re-targeted with an ad from our, for some 30 days or something.

17:25

Ramesh: Yeah. Okay. So Michael it looks like you are definitely an experienced advertiser, promoter. So do you do all these things yourself or do you rely on outsourcing to build your business?

17:36

Michael: I do. I do it all my myself as far as the implementation of it, I did take Dan Barrett with AdWords nerds as a class and I followed him for a couple of years. And then I'd say in February and March I took a class, he got like a little boot camp where he really got in explaining Facebook retargeting and also optimizing Google ads. And so I’ve taken classes as well, but I manage it on my own. But it's something that interests me. I really think you know the...

18:07

Ramesh: The digital marketing side.

18:09

Michael: Yeah. The digital marketing side. That is a major shift. You know, if you look back 15,20 years ago, you didn't, you know, you didn't have this 20 years ago, it was all yellow book. So if somebody wants a self storage unit, you had to pay the yellow book $1,000 a month to have a this page ad. And so, you know, for self storage now that's, you know, that's gone. Internet flip that on the air and kill that, you kill bad business. So it's all about, you know, if somebody types in self storage, Cleveland, Tennessee, I want to be, I want to be all over page one in Google. That's what matters. You know, we all have an ad, I’ll have several organic kids on that first page and then I’ll have a bunch of reviews on the Google maps page. And so that way people over all, they just keep seeing you over and over and over and over and well, this must be a reputable business.

That's important.

18:59

Ramesh: That's good actually. So along the way, I think you used a lot of tools. I mean, you've talked about a course. What kind of tools that you use either specifically for your real estate business or for your digital marketing side of the world.

19:15

Michael: A digital marketing primarily Google products. You know, they'd have a profound grill on it when it comes to digital marketing. They've got almost all the servers, you know, 80,90% of it. So, you know, we use Google ads. Facebook, you know, you use Facebook retargeting. So there's marketing there. On the self storage for easy storage solutions, which is our software for our storage. I keep up with all my leads from a house buying business using Podio, Podio is a free CRM system that you can kind of build. You can kind of build it. It's not perfect, but it allows you to have a free database of keeping up with all these leads. Cause there's a lot of following up. And you know, I’ve got one lead, I’ve been working for two years that I'm just, yeah I just keep staying on it. So you got to have some way to track all that information and make all your notes and when you talk to them. So those are probably big pieces of software and then I’ll use, you know normal Gmail and Google photos and stuff like that.

20:24

Ramesh: Okay, great. Great. So very quickly before I have a few more questions, but why Chandler properties? Is it a place that you live in and that's why you call it, or is it, there's another some personal attachment association with the Chandler?

20:39

Michael: I would say 20 years ago I was starting, you know, I had my first rental property. I thought, Oh you know, I’ll tell Chandler properties, Chandler's my middle name. And I made it that and I’ve got more questions about that. I think if I would have been really thinking about it, probably to call it Rogers properties. If I had it to do over, but I’ve had it for so long, I just kind of left it where it is.

21:01

Ramesh: Okay. So great. I mean, looking back at your own journey if you were to restart what kinds of things would you have done differently?

21:13

Michael: I think I would have tried to, if I could have known about value investing and the idea of, you know I think Warren Buffett's teachings, I really like him. I've been to a couple of shareholder meetings. His basic key investing points are, you know, you need to know what you know, find your circle of competence. Don't worry about it. If you don't know something, you don't fully understand it, You don't have to buying it. If everybody else is buying Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and you don't understand that, be perfectly fine. Let them make all the money they want in that, and you say fine, that's great. I'm happy for you. Don't get in to it. I was like that was something, you know, I totally don't understand. All people in the world around me are like, Oh this is great, blah blah blah. And I just said that, that's great. You know, don't worry, I don't understand it. I've got a fairly decent background in understanding investments, but I don't understand that. And, but I do understand real estate and there's some things I do understand and just stay within that circle of competence. And number two, the market, you know you don't have to do with more if marketing goes up every day. You don't have to form some opinion and find sellers who know that, if you don't want to buy something, don't buy it. If you don't understand something, don't buy it. Let it pass. And then when you find something you really do understand and it's selling at a deep discount, you know jump on it. I think that's really the key thing. I think I came to that and I was paying too much early on for probably the first four or five years in. If I could have started out and trying to find more off market deals and buying things at bigger discounts earlier on, it would have been better for me.

22:43

Ramesh: So I mean, throughout this journey I'm sure there are ups and downs where you really felt euphoric about what you're doing and then at times you felt, what the hell am I doing here? So let's talk through the downtimes because uptimes is easy to talk about, but the downtimes, how did you survive what strategies did you use? And then secondly the upcoming challenges that you're talking about. It's at the peak of the real estate like how do you, I mean, how long are you planning to set up yourself for potential real estate downside?

Michael: Yeah, I would say with the downside, you know, the things I’ve been doing is just pulling back a little bit and saying, let's have, you know, let's keep some cash on the sidelines. Let's pay down debt. You know, there's some deal I'm looking at, It's kind of a stretch that maybe I would have done four, five years ago. You know, make sure I partner up with somebody, you know, so I don't have to put up as bunch of money and because the last thing want to do, and you sell this a lot in the last recession are folks, they'd been buying lots of property and they were buying in old skinny margins. They were buying properties that were worth, you know a hundred bucks. They were buying them for $95. And then you had this drop in real estate values where they dropped 25%, and then you know what you ended up with that as you got a piece of property you pay $95 for it and it's worth you know $70. Two issues. One, you are underwater. And then when the thing comes ready to refinance, you know after 35 years, then the bank wants you to, they want you to, you're going to have to pony up some money. They want to have a loan to value of 80% or 85% or 75% or something. So now also you're having to put money into this thing and it's the worst time ever been putting money in it, cause the market's down and you know your business is probably aren't doing as well. They're not cash flowing as well cause you're the middle of a recession. And so it's kind of a spiraling issue that comes about. And so once you get, you know the joke about money as it's a lot like a cash is all like hair. It's not a big deal until you're out of it. And then when you don't have it, you know you go you know a minute or two without it. And it doesn't matter how much you've got five minutes after, once you're dead, you're dead. And so that's, I think that's an important thing for people, you know and is preparing themselves for a recession. Make sure you got plenty of cash reserves, make sure, if you got loans coming up that are going to be due in a year, go ahead and start refinancing those things. Making sure you have five years on them. That's what I’ve been doing, just to kind of prepare so that I don't get caught where I'm at, where a bank has gotten me been over where I have to get whatever they can. I try to stay ahead and then if there is a good deal comes about. I'll be in a position where I can borrow for it and take advantage and buy it at a really good price.

25:36

Ramesh: Okay. So it looks like any other business, this cashflow management piece of it is a big part and, but here it's much more so because of the financing involved in all that stuff. So Michael last question. So aspiring entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs in this area or outside of this area, what kind of advice would you have for them?

25:59

Michael: I would say, you know, for me what worked well is doing as a side hustle. You know, try something out. You don't have to quit your job, you know, do it on the side. See if you like it. Two things you find out one, you find out if it works, and two, you find out if you like doing it. And the great thing about that is, if its doesn't work out or you don't like doing it. You still got that normal W2 earning job. You can still pay for your mortgage or your, you know, take care of all those things. If it does work out, it gives you the ability you can transition into it. I even went from full time to stepping out completely in my journey. And for me that was great. And I would say the second thing would be, you know, I really encourage people to kind of follow, you know, Warren Buffett value investing. There's a ton of YouTube videos on him. You can, the essays of Warren buffet by Lawrence Cunningham and he's kind of got all this thoughts, but I think he's got some of the most sound advice on investing. You can apply it to stocks or real estate or really anything you get into.

27:01

Ramesh: Excellent. Hey, Michael, anything else that I have not covered, we have not discussed so far in the podcast?

27:06

Michael: I think you did a good job. I think you put a pretty wide ranging group of questions, so that's everything I know of.

27:14

Ramesh: Excellent. And Michael good luck with your business. Definitely you found your footing in this business, 20 years is not a small amount of time in the real estate. So best of luck. And then great talking to you.

27:26

Michael: Alright, thanks Ramesh.

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Building A Global Content Marketing Business with Alwi Suleiman – AEP #27

September 5th, 2019 by Ramesh Dontha

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Guest: Alwi Suleiman

Company / Business name: Content Market King

Alwi Suleiman is the founder of contentmarketing.com. He specializes in content marketing for small businesses and has helped many small businesses become relevant to their audiences since 2009.

Tools / Books / Resources mentioned:

Tools: Google Analytics, SEMRush

Show Notes:

01:00 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Differentiation is key especially in competitive industries.

Alwi introduces his company ContentMarketKing.Com and how it differentiates from other content agencies by making sure that his clients are relevant for their audiences.

06:05 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Getting the first customer is key. Try unique ways to snag that initial one.

Alwi explains how he got his first customers in a unique way when he started his business. Alwi searched through job boards for available jobs and applied for a few. When the first company rejected him, he proposed to them that he could work as a freelancer. And the company accepted the proposal as they were growing very fast.

11:14 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Keep chasing your dreams. They will come true.

Alwi goes over his very unique background. Born in Mombasa, Kenya, Alwi worked as a cement mixer when he was 15, got that job full time at 21, bought a second hand car, bought a mud house and rented for extra cash. After a brief stopover in Dubai, Alwi ended up in Netherlands, went to college, and got a job to get started again.

16:10 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Extend your reach by networking.

Alwi talks about how he runs a global company by networking with other freelancers across the globe. He also gives a glimpse of some tools he uses. Google Analytics and SEMRush. But more importantly Alwi teaches his clients how to be smart about the content and its objective.

21:22 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Pricing is an art. Keep iterating to find the right price for your business.

Alwi explains how he prices his services. He starts by comparing to competition. Based on the additional value he is delivering, Alwi prices his services 10 to 15% higher and makes sure that exceptional value is delivered.

24:52 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Start your business by doing adequate research.

Alwi gives 3 pieces of advice to aspiring entrepreneurs. 1. Do your research. 2. Make sure that your vision and mission are aligned to your operations. 3. Learn operations like bookkeeping.

Episode Transcript

00:03

Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to the Agile Entrepreneur podcast. This is your host Ramesh Dontha. This podcast is about starting and building your own business with purpose, passion, perseverance, and possibilities. Today we have a guest who has traveled across the continent currently based in Netherlands, Alwi Suleiman. Alwi is the founder and CEO of content market king. Content market king is a company that focuses on content and content marketing and helps small businesses. So Alwi has been running this company for the last 10 years. Hey, Alwi welcome.

00:48

Alwi: Hi everybody. I'm really happy to be here. Really honored.

00:53

Ramesh: Hey, Alwi in your own words? Can you explain what your business is about?

01:00

Ramesh: My business is about helping small businesses become relevant to their target audience. The thing that I have noticed for the past years is a lot of content is being created by these businesses that is not being seen by the target audience. So it becomes a problem, because it's a safe that do not exist. And some of them have some really good products and services. But if a target audience doesn't see you, well, you become basically irrelevant to them. And what we do is make sure that this companies as they create a proper content that resonates with their target audience. And the second part of it is that content becomes visible so it can help their clients and customers and that they can show that they have value, that the customer thinks you know what it's worth paying this company for what they're doing.

02:13

Ramesh: Oh, excellent. So Alwi how did you get into the content marketing? So what inspiration, motivation or experience or what did you have that made you think that I should start a content marketing company?

02:28

Ramesh: Well, it all started with me coming to the Netherlands put myself through college and the Netherlands. And back then, actually when you were in college, there was no such thing as a digital marketing degree. It was just marketing. But when I started working, I worked for [02:57 inaudible] importer here in the Netherlands and they were getting smashed by really big companies. So as the marketer, then I researched how we could you know, create a level playing field. And I discovered that online was quite cheap back then and it went through a straight through to our target audience. So I started teaching myself, search engine optimization and a Google analytics. And actually I became a digital marketer for a while. So that's what makes me also quite strong because I have a SEO background and an analytical background. So I know what works in content and what doesn't work. So then I realized that everything I do has to do with content, whether it's search engine optimization or whether it's paid advertisement, all of it has to do with the copy, if the copy isn't good. It will be seen, and it will be ignored. So I started delving deeper into content marketing and I realized that I was quite good at it. So much so that when working with other companies and later on I set a seeing that I exceeded the expectations time and time again, like for example getting 16,000 subscribers for [04:36 inaudible] within a seven to eight months without paid ads purely on content marketing, purely on the content itself. So I realized, you know, what if I can do this, why do this just for my boss, you know, I want to do, I want to use my superpowers for good. You know, I want to do it for more companies, but I can only do that if I stop working for my boss and start working for myself. And one would ask why small businesses? Well basically, it's because I love small businesses because most of the business, I work with family owned and people are close knit together. So you feel like you're working for human beings, you know, you're connecting with human beings, unlike with the large corporations where everybody is a basically like a piece of the puzzle. I don't know, like a robot working effect more or less, that kind of feeling I get when I enter a really huge company. So I really loved that. I really loved the human aspect of small businesses.

05:50

Ramesh: So, that's interesting. So you worked for somebody and then you really realized your strengths and you said, okay, I want to go ahead and start my own. So when you switched them, so how did you get your first customers?

06:05

Ramesh: Basically my first customers I got them through, you know, networking. But the very, very, very first customer was actually through a job listing. And what I did is I looked at the jobs and I researched the company and realized that you know, this company's a good fit. You know so I basically applied for the job and I did, when I applied, I actually kept an option open, you know, for you know for a freelancer. And funny enough, you know with my first client, I got rejected for the job. So I sent back an email and I said, hey, because they said, you know, we really like your resume and everything, but you know, we had another candidate who lives close by here in Great Britain and you are in the Netherlands and so on. So I said, okay, you know, I sent back an email and said, hey, listen you know, you guys have got really good potential and we are a really good fit and I think we could work together. So, you know in case you have some extra hours, or you need a helping hand, you can also find me ready to work for you as a freelancer. And low and behold, after a few weeks or so, the guys call me and they say, you know, we really need your help because things are getting overwhelming here. And that's how I got my first client.

07:52

Ramesh: Alwi, I really found that very, very interesting is when they started exchanging emails with you. So what attracted me is that you had a very unique way of getting your first customer. So you basically use the job listings and then when you are rejected for the job, then you said, hey, let me do freelancer. I think that's a very unique way. And then that could help out many other people as well, right. If they're starting on their business, especially as a side hustle or something you know, go through the job listings and then apply and say, hey, I can be a freelancer. That's very good.

08:26

Ramesh: Yeah. Yeah. And I think if you're starting a business, you should put yourself out there. You shouldn't be scared. You shouldn't be shy, and you should think out of the box. And what you really need to do is, you know, say, hey I’ve got nothing to lose here. If it works out, you know, then that's a customer. That's not only money coming in, but that's me building my reputation, you know, so just do it, you know, don't be afraid and don't worry about rejection. You know, rejection is a good thing. Because then you learn from it. If you are totally rejected, even say, you know, we don't want a freelancer you know, just learn from that. Simply ask them, you know, what do you think could have improved my application or what could have improved my you know, proposal for being a freelancer working for you. So, you know, you just have to be yourself and have to be brave and just do it. And if it's gone, if you miss out on one chance. There are a million other chances.

09:32

Ramesh: Excellent. Excellent advice. So Alwi so now you got your first customer. How long did it take for you to build a customer pipeline and then feel comfortable about your business?

09:44

Alwi: Well, basically I believe that you shouldn't, you should never feel, how would I put it? I mean, yeah, you can feel comfortable, but you should never have complacency and think, you know, now I’ve done it. Now I’ve made it. You've never made it. You've seen those YouTube videos, right? Where the guy is running a hundred meters and he thinks he wins, and he starts celebrating and he gets overtaken by the second place guy. So you should, you should never feel like, you know, I’ve reached where I wanted to reach. You should always work harder to build your business. And that doesn't mean that you should neglect your family and you know go crazy, but always remember what got you there and what got you there was hard work. So for me, basically I feel like I do have stability, but if I stop running, you know, it's like a treadmill. If I stop running, I might fall down, so I'm always on my toes.

10:57

Ramesh: Okay. So let's talk a little bit about Alwi you as a person and your journey. Right? So I think based on your story that I know you started somewhere else and you landed in Netherlands. Can you talk about your journey?

11:14

Ramesh: Well, it's kind of a crazy one. Because I was born in Mombasa and by the age of 15, I got my first job as a cement mixer. Now that was as men was cement mixing. So it's not like with the cement mixer machine and at 15 I was doing that just to survive so I can put food on the table for my siblings and my mom, you know it wasn't to by j Jordan's or new the PlayStation. So, but it was a satisfactory feeling. I really felt satisfied when I'm learning that money and you know, we live there like in a very macho world in Kenya, so then you really start feeling like a man. So it was a good feeling. And by the age of 21 actually I had, I had gotten a job, a full-time job with zero off days, so working all the way from Monday to Sunday. So the money was good, and I was able to, you know, to buy a second hand car. I remember it was a Toyota and a four-bedroom mud house, you know, and I rented that out for extra cash. So that was my first encounter with the being an entrepreneur, you know. And a few years later, four, five years later, I left and the first I went to Dubai. Because we have some relatives there. But I didn't like the culture, you know it's not progressive for me. Then I came here in the Netherlands, so as I said, put myself through college and once I finished, I started working. But again, it was okay, but you know, again, I started feeling like I wanted to do more. You know, I didn't want my talents to be wasted on a just making another guy reach basically my boss you know? And I am not talking about me becoming rich, but being able to help several companies, you know, come in front of the target audience and be relevant to them. Relevance is very important. That's why copy, and content is very, very, very important.

13:44

Ramesh: Very good. So Alwi now you're focusing on content. So can you talk a little bit about your business operations? How many customers you work at you know same time? And then do you have more employees? Just a little bit, talk about your operations.

14:05

Alwi: So basically I work with other freelancers. We help each other out basically graphic designers and some copywriters and some SEO and they're spread out from different parts of the world, you know, but I am the face of the company and I'm the one who gets the clients and the account. And I usually, I have one client who's semi permanent, so it's long time, you know, so I know I have like two or three years with them, but then we have smaller clients who are there for like six months, four, depending on the project, depending on what they want, you know? And it's quite good really, because when you get to work with people from different parts of the world, like the Peruvian who does graphic design, you know, he is excellent, and you get to work with somebody from Peru. I mean, that's just, you know amazing. It's amazing. And I want to keep it like this. I want to work with freelances for the long haul you know. Because at least here in the Netherlands and in Europe, in fact, what's happening, a lot of companies doing the 50-50. So they have a marketing team of maybe 12 people, and six freelancers who they work with. So actually this market, freelance market is growing in Europe. So I think we're headed in the right direction with that.

15:53

Ramesh: Excellent Alwi. So now a little bit digging more into running the company what kinds of tools do you use in your operations? Can you talk a little bit? If I'm an entrepreneur, I want to know how you run your business, what tools help you?

16:10

Alwi: There are a lot of tools that help. Because we are a content marketing company. We want to show people, we want to show our customers that what we are doing is working, you know, and this is where I'm in conflict with many digital marketing agencies. They just show, you know, they just show the clients I call them vanity metrics, because they show them something out of Google analytics and they're like, look your posts had 20 shares and 10 likes and your website has 200 visitors, you know? Okay, what can I do with that? There's basically nothing you can do with that except, put a smile in your face and be happy about it, I guess. So what we do, we work with the tools like SEMrush and mentioned and several others, you know, depending on what we are doing for the client, whether it's social media or whether it's blogging, it all depends.

But basically the tools that we work with actually show whether or not the content is working. And if your content is about lead generation that you are not going to look at shares. But the problem is that many digital marketing agencies, do not really sit down and talk about what really works. And what happens is that they show them reports and demand money for bigger campaigns which lead to more vanity metrics. Now I'm really passionate about it. That's why I keep going on about it, because I really think people should be, should be honest and sincere to their clients. And like me, you know I'm ready to lose a lot of money, but be sincere. Because otherwise I can't sleep at night, You know? And I think the industry is sometimes, at least here where I'm at in the Netherlands, the industry can be a bit corrupt where, especially with small businesses and that's not fair, especially with small business. Because sometimes you have people in there who do not know much you know about content marketing. I've worked with companies who had maybe three owners and no employees or maybe a total of 10 employees, you know. So basically I use tools to make sure that I can, you know, I can show them, hey, this is working and this is not working. And basically the other thing I use, maybe this is not a tool, but it is part of what I do is, you know I teach them fishing Ramesh.

19:12

Ramesh: Oh, okay. So basically you're not just doing the work for them, but you are training them. You're teaching them to do the work for themselves going forward.

19:20

Alwi: Exactly. I teach them to fish, you know the saying, right. If you give a man fish, he'll eat for one day, and if you teach them how to fish, they will eat for a lifetime, right? So I teach them content marketing and that is part of the package because, you know one might say, okay but that will make you redundant. You know, I don't mind the risk. What is important for me is that they understand what I'm talking about you know. I want to be able to talk with them at the highest level possible when it comes to content marketing. And I think that's only fair.

19:59

Ramesh: No, I understand that. So Alwi let me talk a little bit about the pricing aspect of it. So many entrepreneurs struggle with how to price the products. So where did you start about the pricing and how did you evolve in a sense you priced your products low and you realize that you're delivering more value and as a result you increase the prices. Can you talk a little bit about the pricing of your services?

20:27

Alwi: The pricing of my services is based on how the clients see the value , look in the mirror and be sincere and truthful. What value are you giving the customers or the clients? And based on that of course you're going do research and see what people are charging for your services. But most importantly, do not ever make yourself a cheap prices of cheap so that you can get clients, and then later on, at least that's my feeling.

21:09

Ramesh: Let me ask you, so how do you know whether you're pricing is cheap, I mean, do you compare with respect to competition? How do you know whether your pricing is cheaper? Or Expensive?

21:22

Alwi: Okay. So you look at the industry, right? And let's say its 80 euros or $80 per hour, right? That is average right? And then you look at the people who are offering that services, right? Most of them let's say are, have experience around four to five years. A lot of younger people have come into content marketing now, so they're basically around their four to five years. Right? Even if you search in LinkedIn content marketers who are in house, you will see they have a experience around that time. Then you look at yourself. If I look at myself over 10 years of content marketing and digital marketing as a whole, you know and the results that I have given the clients, that's where, I must be above average. So then you look at the bigger guys who are in the industry, who have been in the industry for like 10 years, how much they are charging. And you basically want to be, you basically want to be just maybe I don't know, 15%, 10% below them, you know? And that's why you put yourself. So that's my personal way of looking at things.

22:51

Ramesh: Okay. So actually that gives us I think, a lot of insight into how you do it. So last two questions Alwi. So one is, how do you market your services? How do you keep building your customer pipeline?

23:05

Alwi: Well, the interesting thing again is that I use content marketing itself. You know, I do not use a paid advertisement or anything of that. I just, I just look at where my target audience is. I look at, how my target audience speaks, and I create content for them that is worthy to them, that gives them value. You know, if I was, if basically I think this would be a good example. Basically if I was a plumber, I would give them information they need so that they do not need a plumber. You know then of cause that, you know, it's about time. Do they have time to fix the plumbing themselves? Do they have the confidence to fix the plumbing themselves? If not, they will hire me. So basically everything I know, everything I know about content marketing, I want to teach my target audience and because of that, because I'm completely sincere. It reflects back on my brand. And that's how I get, you know they say, you know what, this guy has something of value that is worth paying for, you know?

24:28

Ramesh: Yup. So I, I think that's a very good long-term strategy. I agree with that one. The last question Alwi anything that I have not covered so far that you want to share from your experience, from your background for people either who want to start businesses or people who are already started it. But they want to scale their business

24:52

Alwi: For people who want to start their businesses. Well, here's the thing. If you want to start a business, if you want to start your business, there are three things that that you have to do. If you are a one person starting as a freelance or just the two of you, number one is know what you're getting into, you know,. Research, research, and for heaven's sake, research your target market. You know, it's very important. Make sure there is demand for what you're offering. Don't just take your hobby and turn it into a business because it's something you like. I mean, if you are not worried about revenue, that's fine, but if you want to do it for a living, make sure that you do that. You research. And for those who are in the business already, I say, you know, every morning when you wake up, look in the mirror and just say, you know, just say this words you know, I'm doing this, you know, to bring value to my customers or to bring value to my clients and if what you are going to do that day in the office, it does not match with what you just said, then you need to go back to your vision and your mission and see how to get back on track. That's very important. Because a lot of us when we start out, you know, we really want to do something and then because we realize we need money and money's tight, we start forgetting that and start doing everything that everybody else does. You know, just for the sake of revenue. And the third one is, I think is not talked about a lot, but I think it's a really good strategy to learn bookkeeping and know and teach yourself about tax, you know. It's going to save you a lot of money and a lot of headache, you know. Because bookkeeping is quite simple, you know and of course you can hire a bookkeeper. But you need to know what's going on with the books you know. I've had a lot of acquaintances and even friends, who are running businesses and they have bookkeepers and sometimes you know they're late or something happens, you know just a mistake, a small mistake for a small mistake for your taxes, you could be almost destroyed here in the Netherlands. So I think it's good to know the basics of taxing and bookkeeping.

27:41

Ramesh: Hey, Alwi I'm glad you pointed out the bookkeeping aspect of it. It's very, very important to manage the cash flow and make sure you know, you're optimizing your taxes. Excellent. Alwi this has been a fantastic podcast. Thank you very much. You have a very interesting and fascinating journey. Good luck with your business.

28:01

Alwi: Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. It was a quite an honor and I hope that for those who are listening, that they, you know found something that could help them in their journey. And all I want to say, you know, if you want to start your business, you know, come on, just get out of the couch and you know don't watch that football match that's going to take 180 minutes. You know, it's not really going to help you know, with your life material wise or even less life satisfactory wise. So what you can do is work hard, walk your face off so that you know, you will be able to afford the front row seats for that game instead of your couch. It's hard work. It's sometimes it's lonely working nights away from your family, but it's really worth it. So get on it right now.

28:57

Ramesh: Thanks Alwi. Thank you very much. With those parting thoughts, we'll end the podcast. Thank you.

29:02

Alwi: Okay, thank you, Ramesh.

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Starting a Digital Marketing Agency from Scratch with Serial Entrepreneur Dan Salganik – AEP #26

September 5th, 2019 by Ramesh Dontha

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Guest: Dan Salganik

Company / Business name: VisualFizz and Commoot

Dan Salganik has been a serial entrepreneur since his sophomore year in college. He is currently the co-founder at VisualFizz, a digital marketing agency, and Commoot, a new billboard, and data company. He has managed hundreds of team members and run over 8 figures in marketing campaigns. Some notable campaigns include stakeholders such as former President Obama, Yoko Ono, and the Emperor of Japan. Dan has worked on a diverse set of projects/clients ranging from half million dollar web builds to helping mentor start-up founders that need a voice.

Show Notes:

01:30 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Differentiation is key especially in competitive industries.

Dan introduces his company Visual Fizz, a digital marketing agency, and how it differentiates from other companies by establishing a relationship business from get go and conveys emotions in their campaigns.

06:30 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: With right network, getting first paying customers may not be that difficult.

Dan talks about how he started VisualFizz after getting laid off from his previous company and he decided to chart his own path. He met his co-founder at a coffee shop and decided to work together. They started the company in less than $50, had first paying customer in 2 weeks and profitable in less than a month.

10:02 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Balance cash flow with internal operations for initial survival.

Dan explains how they built their company by hiring people who wanted the flexibility but also challenging work and how they operated by paying the employees with their initial clients payments. Secondly, Dan also talked about his second company Commut which is a truck advertising platform based on data analytics.

14:50 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Marquee projects will help get eyeballs and name recognition.

Dan goes into details on his favorite project where his work involved President Obama, Yoko Ono, and emperor of Japan. This involved New Age Phoenix Pavilion in Chicago which was meant to embody the US- Japan partnership. Dan’s work involved creating extensive video campaigns to be used for fundraising etc.

22:35 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: When you have co-founders, focus on complimentary roles to grow the business.

Dan talks about his co-founder and how they work together. With complimentary skills, Dan and Marissa focus on different areas of the business with Dan on Program management and strategy and Marissa on operations.

25:46 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Start slowly and do your home work before starting a business.

Dan gives advice to other would be entrepreneurs. Do your home work. Don’t quit your job right away. Be authentic. Enjoy what you plan to do. Take time off regularly to rebalance your life.

Episode Transcript

00:03

Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to the Agile Entrepreneur Podcast. This is your host Ramesh Dontha. This podcast is about starting and building your own business with purpose, passion, perseverance and possibilities. Today I'm excited to introduce a guest with a very fascinating background. His name is Dan Salganik. So Dan has been a serial entrepreneur since his sophomore year in college. He's currently the co-founder of visual fizz, a digital marketing agency and another company Commut, a new billboard on data company. He has managed hundreds of team members and run over eight figures in marketing campaigns. Some of the notable campaigns that he managed are for President Obama, Yoko Ono, and the emperor of Japan. I know what you guys are thinking, so we'll get into that later. So Dan has worked on a diverse set of projects and clients ranging from half a million-dollar web biz as well as people who are just starting their own business and mentoring them. Hi Dan, Welcome.

01:17

Dan: Thanks for having me.

01:18

Ramesh: I don't know where to get started, but I will give the mike to you. So tell us a little bit about visual Fiz, the digital marketing agency. The company that you're managing right now.

01:30

Dan: Yeah definitely. So Visual Fiz is a full-service digital marketing agency which I have built with my co-founder over the past two and a half or so years. And the goal was always to build a lean digital marketing agency that can provide you know similar or better services than the large agencies out there. Based on just being flexible, being kind of communicative throughout the whole process, being transparent and hiring people who have 10 to 20 plus years of experience, minimizing the amount of overhead through crazy office space and having to hire every single person full time and finding that happy medium. So we can hire better people who enjoy the flexibility let's say of working from home or cafés or you know traveling once in a while as well. So it's been a know so far great journey and we're excited for the future.

02:30

Ramesh: So Dan the digital marketing industry I find it pretty competitive right. And you started about two and a half years ago. So what has been your experience with respect to finding your own niche and then competing in this what seems to be a very competitive industry.

02:48

Dan: The digital marketing space is incredibly competitive. And the thing is that I think where the leaders are going to end up are the small to mid-sized agencies. Because I think a lot of the large companies that have been hiring some of the major corporate digital marketing companies are finding that they could do so in a leaner manner and they're moving on to smaller agencies. So even though it is quite competitive. The nice thing about the landscape is that there are so many companies that constantly need reinforcements from the digital side that there are companies to allow them to kind of grow and partner with them. What we've done as we've just tried to create a very relationship-based type of business model where we get to know the clients on a personal level. A couple of the kind of a niche service offerings that we do have is one, we like to think of all the projects is let's say three dimensional. Where it's not just paper click advertising, it's not just social media. It's not just one piece of kind of a funnel. It's all of the pieces. And how do we integrate that into the story. And actually one of the points of differentiation are how do we create an emotional experience out of what we're doing. That's the tricky part is how do we convey an emotion and get a response that is also emotional from a potential customer or client when working with them.

04:16

Ramesh: So Dan you've been a serial entrepreneur since your college days. So is this the first company you started, or you worked somewhere else. Can you talk a little bit about your background?

04:27

Dan: Yeah definitely. So I have actually, I think the first projects where I actually had a you know a profit and built a small business was actually back in high school my junior year. That one I won't consider a business. That was actually just selling T-shirts like any kind of kid does. In college I did start my first web-based business that was actually in the crowdfunding space focusing on communities. So it was significantly I think closer scale and kind of close to home let's call it versus like a Kickstarter or Indiegogo at the time. I went part time in school during that build and unfortunately, I would say it wasn't as successful as I would have hoped. Which I think happens quite often for you know entry level founders or founders were just starting out and basically spent my next year or so catching up in college. Because I wanted to graduate at the same time. And started working in the digital marketing space. And since then I worked for some of the small agencies like your mom and pop style where you wear 10 different hats and I have also worked for the major companies where there's so many people that you're really only doing kind of one thing and one vertical and [05:48 inaudible] and happy place in the medium sized agencies. You know somewhere between 30 and 80 individuals where you do have your kind of your own vertical, but at the same time you're able to provide your own insight and your own ideas. But eventually I decided to break away from that space after seeing some of the, I don't know want to call issues but some of the inefficiencies in the digital marketing space to other you know through other companies I’ve worked for and I had to start my own which was visual Fiz just two and a half years ago.

06:21

Ramesh: Okay so then you decided that you wanted to study your own because of the inefficiencies that you really wanted to close. And then how did that transition happen.

06:32

Dan: That's an interesting story. Yes. So that company actually laid off a good portion of employees due to some of the inefficiencies. Yeah. And so by seeing that and being one of the actually one of the employees that was laid off, because I was a project manager and generally, we're not as profitable as some other team members. I decided to work no contract and just do some of my own stuff while building the name and the idea and I met my co-founder, I believe it was probably October of 2017 if I'm not mistaken, maybe 2016 actually. And I remember for the first time at a coffee shop on a Friday afternoon had a great conversation. I told her, hey if things work out you know let's try to become co-founders. She said okay sounds good. And then I dropped the ball and said, I'm actually leaving to Southeast Asia for three and a half months but let's do this thing. And she's like okay let's do it. You know I was going to travel. Basically I had an open-ended ticket so I don't know it could have been longer, but that was the beginning of Visual Fiz being remote for three and a half months traveling all across Southeast Asia.

07:45

Ramesh: Wow. And then you started the company during that time, and you've been managing at that time?

07:51

Dan: Yeah. So we started the company probably from that point and then we had our first paying client in two weeks. And so basically, we started the company at fifty dollars. And we were profitable in 15 days.

08:06

Ramesh: So can you talk a little bit about how did you nab that first paying customer.

08:13

Dan: Yeah. That's a good question. So I used to be a contract contractor on Upwork or some of those other platforms before I started this. I had a couple of individuals come to me; they ran a business actually out of Kuwait. Two women, very smart, had an e-commerce Web site which was also partially their cafe and restaurant where they featured a lot of their unique products. It was kind of like a modern more Millennial driven like e-commerce boutique, what's called a little bit of a hybrid. Really cool items and they came to me and they needed some help for SEO among other things. And so I said hey you know I can do this for you. But what if you start working with my agency and I can kind of give you the full scope of things right. A singular freelancer. They jumped on board. I was able to charge you know; it was not you know expensive by agency. We were able to charge an agency price. And by doing so it's able to start reinvesting that money into building the website and starting to get new team members and kind of hiring you know as I mentioned earlier individuals who were going to stick with us for that for those projects.

09:35

Ramesh: So Dan I'm kind of intrigued right now. Because you are trying to hire people with 10 to 12 years of experience and then at the same time signing up the clients. But how did you manage the finances like you have to pay these people that you're hiring a pretty decent amount of money and then you said you started with the 50-daughter kind of step. So how did you navigate these financing and hiring and managing people.

10:02

Dan: Yeah. So that's actually been I think a big, it just been a big thing for us from the beginning where we are just very smart about where we're putting our dollars. And until more recently every dollar that we earned basically was or rather every dollar that we paid out towards our team members was a dollar we earned from a client. So it's kind of like a one to one. We went on that margin. As I mentioned these are a lot of our team members until a certain point or contracts and still are. Because we can still hire these really great people who do want to build their own lives, we work on you know a pricing kind of model where we're still hitting our margin. We're very transparent throughout the process. We tell our clients kind of where we're at. We tell our team members where we're at you know what we're charging. So everybody knows, you know there's no smoke and mirrors. And most clients unless they are kind of a little bit more conservative don't mind the fact that we have team members that aren't in the office every day. The way that things are tracking anyway and like I said our client was International also. So it truly didn't matter if I was in Asia and someone else was somewhere else. Because we all had kind of this medium like a slack or something to work off of. Yeah it was just being smart about it. And then once we had enough to start to reinvest, then we started getting into working on internal things, you know purchasing tools and things like that. But a lot of it was bootstrapped and you know just not taking dollars out for a little while and just reinvesting.

11:38

Ramesh: So that's good. It's a good transition. Before I get into your interesting clientele later on, I want to understand a little bit about this www.Commut.com. So can you talk a little bit about this other company Commut.

11:53

Dan: Absolutely. So Commut is definitely still in its infancy, but it's a very interesting company and with visual Fiz growing, it's actually allowed me to bring someone on full time and manage some of what I'm doing from day to day, so that I can start working on Commut as well and what Commut is basically, it's a new version of the billboard company utilizing the sides and backs of truck trailers and basically getting people closer on the road than billboards can. And so that concept basically came from me having to drive to and from downtown Chicago every day. I used to live in the suburbs, now I live in the city, so I don't have the same issue. But I used to drive down every day, sit in traffic and then as I'm sitting there bored out of my mind, because I absolutely hate driving. All I can see in front of me are white billboards or rather white trucks that could be billboards. That was kind of the beginning phase of what we're doing. As we started talking about it and I brought on new co-founders and new partners on the team, it's actually going to become, it has already becoming a data company wrapped around a truck advertising platform. So we're able to understand who's on the road, when they're on the road, the types of cars, the speeds, you know the demographics of every single route that we're taking. You know there's probably from one drive you can we can probably plot tens or hundreds of thousands of data points and create something that's basically like the ways of you know our space. And so I'm pretty excited for the launch of, we're kind of in our pilot stage right now.

13:40

Ramesh: I'm excited because I'm at heart a data guy. So I do a lot of data strategy and data analytics. So essentially what you are trying to do here is a context where advertising kind of stuff.

13:52

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. It's essentially like that and then also just being able to prove out our model by saying in the out-of-home space, which is basically physical ads, billboards, bus ads etc. There's something called dwell time and dwell time is basically your impression time. How long is somebody looking at your ad. In this sense because the cars and individuals that are behind the truck are literally stuck behind a truck in many cases, our dwell time can be exponentially higher than most other outdoor advertising platforms, because there's nowhere to go. There's nowhere to look to the sides because there's one thing when you look at peripherals there's the other one the truck is right in front of you. And so we're going to have that data as we continue building the company. I wish I could provide some data stats, but I do know based on my own personal experimentation that our dwell time is and will be higher.

14:50

Ramesh: That's really nice. Actually I always wondered why people are not using the Commute time to do more ads. Excellent. So good luck with that one Dan. So I'm going into a different area. When I introduce you, I threw some names? President Obama. Yoko Ono, emperor of Japan. Okay so tell us the story behind this client. What did you do for them? How did you work with them?

15:19

Dan: Yeah that was one of my favorite projects. Just based on you know everything going on. It was, so like I mentioned I live in Chicago and they are in the south side in the parks in Jackson Park they are in the process of I believe fundraising and building and it's been a little bit of time since I’ve been on a project. Obviously, it's a different agency. But were helping the individuals who are in charge with the parks and the Obama library etc. Build what's called the Phoenix pavilion. If anyone doesn't know what that is, basically during the World's Fair in Chicago back you know over a century ago essentially, there was a gift that was gifted by the Japanese government, which was the Phoenix pavilion and unfortunately I believe it fell into disrepair or burnt down and was no longer functional, so they demolished it and been around for 100 years. The goal now I believe about 3 4 years ago was to rebuild kind of a modern New Age Phoenix Pavilion to talk about the Japanese American relationship and to become a pavilion for concerts and events in an area which you know would definitely prosper with additional tourism. The south side near the lake, beautiful park absolutely gorgeous. And so my projects with these stakeholders, though unfortunately I did not get to meet the individuals who were named. I worked with people who basically did finalize a lot of the things that we created and a lot of, let me go back one step. What we did is we created the website. We created multiple very extensive video campaigns which we are going to be sent over to Major funders and donors and individuals for fundraising etc. Vary in that and I mean each video took about a month to create, utilizing the very intricate etc. And I loved it. I mean I loved it. I got that whole kind of project as it related to fundraising and building awareness. But though I didn't get to like I mentioned meet these people, individuals like Yoko Ono and Obama and his administration etc. During that time we're all individuals who have personally seen these videos and have been on the website and knew about this project because they're building the Obama library. Because Yoko Ono had her statue will what's going to be in this space. And like I said I don't have the full updates anymore, but overall, it’s just such a unique project and those are the ones I just get excited about.

18:05

Ramesh: I know. Just curious on that topic, how did you snag this project?

18:11

Dan: This was actually as I mentioned a past agency, so it wasn't one that I, I wish I could say it was a Visual Fiz project. But this was just in the prior agency actually. We had some really great clients of Visual Fiz too. But you know we probably can't say Obama and Yoko Ono have been a part of it. Regardless I find every project to be unique and interesting just based on the fact that every business is so different. And I had a conversation just that day and that's why we don't ever do like packaged pricing you know because you don't know anything about the company until we have those conversations and you know it just doesn't make sense for package pricing or one size fits all. Because as you can see these projects range so heavily.

18:58

Ramesh: Excellent. So Dan now I just want to Segway into the running and operating of your business right. And then it looks like you have a healthy pipeline and the business seems to be stable. But were there times during last two and half years where there were lean times or where you thought maybe I should not do this business, I should go back to other times like that, how did you manage them.

19:27

Dan: Yeah definitely. So there has been some times where it was definitely slow. For example we launched one of our largest projects to date towards December of last year and we had a very healthy pipeline. We were expecting basically estimating that from the beginning of the year that we were going to double our business revenue than the prior year already and you know by January. In terms of new business coming in and signed contracts. Though we were able to grow, and you know by January, February we were able to basically successfully close a couple of good deals. A couple of those large projects did not come through and we did not win them. You know the client didn't go through with that. I think there was some dollars that they were promised, and they never received. Whatever this story maybe we just didn't get it. So that was a bit of a blow. I think it's something that you just have to prepare for as a business. And like I mentioned in the beginning we’re very conservative, even though obviously we're not. Because we're an agency and entrepreneurs. But from financing standpoint I try to be very conservative so that we have a good amount of runway. I mean at least six months plus in runway, maybe over a year in runway. But with that being said there have been those times where things are slow. But we usually utilize those times as reinvestment hours right. So when we don't have clients that are kind of jamming our pipeline and our hours, we started rebuilding the website and we started updating all of our content and creating new blogs and you know putting a lot of effort into some of those internally created videos for us. So it's definitely a cyclical process. You know some months I will get 20 inquiries of new business or 10, other months I won't get anything. And I think that's just the nature of it, like summer last year was really slow. It is a little worrisome and then it was fine. But what we're actually doing now is actually answering a question you had prior is we are even though we are agnostic company in terms of the clients that we've brought on. We are actually going to start creating our own vertical based on just the successes we've had with the specific type of clients. And I think that's going to differentiate our growth and I think I believe and I'm hoping that it's going to bring on a number of new clients because of the verticalization of our Brand.

22:10

Ramesh: That is very good. So Dan you have a co-founder. I just don't understand Dan as a person. What kind of a person you are and then how? What are your strengths you think and then how do you complement you know yours with your co-founder? So if you could talk a little bit about your personalities, your personality and then how did you augment or supplement that video co-founders.

22:35

Dan: It's a good question. That's actually something we mentioned every single pitch that we have is how we got started and why it worked. And as I mentioned earlier, I come from a project management background. That was my space. So I am good with numbers. I'm pretty good with, I like to think so at least with you know account management and compliance. I run the new business. I make sure that everything is, basically all the admin stuff is paid for, all the legal stuff is accounted for, the accounting and the strategy itself. I see myself as a high-level person. Sometimes it's good, sometimes isn't. But in any case, it just works for us where I can come in, you know bring a client, get all the funding from them, work through the whole process, come up with a strategy. And then my co-founder starts right. And my co-founder, her role is having been very much kind of in the weeds. So she has a background in PPC, paid social content you know more of the things that are really the marketing side. So I bring it normally to her to kind of complete that conversation in that circle until we bring it to our team members who are really kind of, they have just their one you know one or two strengths like they're just the PPC, they're just SEO, they are just content etc. So it works really well because I can start the conversation. She can kind of close it and then we can bring it to our team members to implement and we do monitor the whole process really closely where you know she'll make sure from a quality control standpoint everything is done properly and I’ll finalize and I’ll make sure it's fitting in with a greater strategy. The client's happy, it makes sense and it's just worked out really well, because we almost never step on each other's toes or get in each other's way because of the fact that she doesn't really do what I do, and I don't do what she does.

24:29

Ramesh: That is very ideal partnership. I'm always dreadful about partnerships, but I'm glad this thing is really working out for you guys.

24:36

Dan: Yeah and considering we'd never even knew each other until you know until that one meeting and I was asked this recently about co-founders and it's such a difficult task. Co-founder and one that you can trust. And the thing that I answered is you know in order to have a co-founder who is not you know like a family member or your best friend from grade school, you have to be able to trust the other person and their judgments because besides your family and your significant other and maybe your closest friends you're going to spend the most time with that person. So you better like them and you better trust them.

25:20

Ramesh: I'm with your 100 percent on that. I think the trust and being aware of what vulnerabilities is very important. So Dan the last question for the podcast is based on your entrepreneurial journey, if somebody is sitting at home and wanting to either start a business, they started a business, but they want to grow it. What kind of advice would you like to give them?

25:46

Dan: A few things probably. I'd say one, do your homework. You know I think a lot of people jump into entrepreneurship thinking you know if I build it, they'll come and I'm kind of a little happy that that cliché has slowly been dissipating. Because they don't come. You know there are so many entrepreneurs out there and I'm not saying in a way to have people you know not start their businesses. But do your homework, get your clients ahead of time and don't quit your job until you have a customer until you could support yourself. Because thankfully for me when I started my business for one, you know I'm a I'm a fairly young guy. So I was able to live with my family for a year and a half when building my company. I brought my expenses way down and I was able to support myself with very little money towards the first and even the second year of growing the business. Because a lot of it was going into reinvestment. So I'd say just be conservative, you know don't pretend to you know live or be beyond your means and that's going back to the overhead issues or don't have a sexy office. Just have a good team. And aside from that you know I think just be authentic and enjoy what you're doing because you know being burnt out is a truly real thing. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs go through that. It happens to me at least a few times a year, where sometimes where I'm just like I don't want you know I don't want to, I can't do this right now. And what I recommend is take regular time off. This is the same thing for my team member, know they have a limited vacation travel. Just like if it's not traveling, like spend time on the beach during the weekend or just do something, take walks. Because you have to have to be in a good mental state to constantly you know go through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship.

27:47

Ramesh: I mean I second every one of the things that you mentioned. I mean we are all in different phases of our life. I think based on your affairs I think that's excellent excellent advice. Dan thank you very much. So very very fascinating background. So good luck with everything that you're doing.

28:06

Dan: Thank you so much and thanks for having me on the show.

28:10

Ramesh: Thank you. All right.

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Building a Digital Marketing Agency Business and a Digital Nomad Life with Ali Saif – AEP #25

August 27th, 2019 by Ramesh Dontha

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Guest: Ali Saif

Company / Business name: HighClickz

Ali Saif is a lifestyle entrepreneurial and digital nomad. He runs a digital marketing agency called Highclicks.com and helps businesses struggling with online sales and growth to reach their full potential by optimizing their conversions and revenue.

Tools: Google Analytics, Click Funnels, Thrive Themes, Mailchimp, Qucikbooks

Books: The 4 hour work-week by Tim Ferris

Show Notes:

01:30 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Have a dream. Keep working on that dream.

Ali explains digital nomad life that he is after and talks about how his business High Clickz, started in 2008 with a focus on getting traffic via paid advertising, is results and conversion focused. With Google’s help, his company also flourished.

04:58 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Be passionate. Your passion will open the doors to a desired life.

Ali discusses his journey prior to his latest venture. His interest in computers and programming at a very early age led him into a freelancing career at the age of 17 taking care of billing and SW. Later on he branched out into gaming and supporting online gamers.

09:59 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Freelance sites like Freelancer.com, Upwork.com can be excellent to get started.

Ali explains how he got his first paying customer for HighClikz. On freelancer.com, Ali saw a job posting for a sales page for a customer in customer who developed an e-book on how to talk to dogs. He thought it was interesting and worked with the customer to design the sales page and work with Clickbank to get him sales. And the first customer led him to more sales.

17:20 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Be Keep defining your ideal customer and become an expert on their needs.

Ali talks about building a customer pipeline and his focus is on authors and coaches who want to establish personal brand and be an authority. Most of his business is through referrals from his existing customers.

19:43 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Expand your horizons to either technologist or business depending on where you started from.

Ali talks about his growth from a pure technologist into a businessman. Initially, it started with knowing how much money he needs to survive and sustain his business. Later, he was influenced by people like Tim Ferris (and the 4 hour work week book) and began outsourcing more to grow his business without sacrificing his lifestyle.

22:00 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Pricing is an important element of the business. Be on top of it.

Ali discusses his pricing strategies. Ali also has a product side of the business where he sells some products on Amazon. For products, his strategy is cost-plus pricing where he adds margin to his costs. For services, he prices based on the value he is delivering. The value is defined by customers.

23:47 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Focus on the most important tools for your business and not go overboard with them.

Ali goes over some of the tools used in his business. Google Analytics to analyze traffic, Click funnels for creating funnels, Quickbooks for accounting and various email marketing products like mailchimp.

26:00 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Get started with your business and evolve as you learn.

Ali closes the podcast by talking about trends which are mostly mobile consumption and applications. His advice for aspiring business owners is to not wait but get started. Outsource where you can and grow your business.

Episode Transcript

00:01

Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to the agile Entrepreneur Podcast. This is your host Ramesh Dontha. This podcast is about starting and building your own business with purpose, passion, perseverance and possibilities. Today I have a guest from an industry or area where every business needs some help. And that is the digital marketing. And the guest name is Ali Saif. Ali is somebody that I have known for quite some time. He's been my partner on this journey of ideal entrepreneurship. So Ali Saif is a lifestyle entrepreneurial and digital nomad. He runs a digital marketing agency called High clicks dot com and helps businesses struggling with online sales and growth to reach their full potential by optimizing their conversions and revenue. I mean Ali is somebody that I really trust, and I don't think I'd be here with the agile Entrepreneur Podcast without his help. Hey Ali welcome.

01:08

Ali: Yeah. Thank you, Ramesh. Thank you for your kind words And I'm really excited to be here so.

01:14

Ramesh: Ali, first thing is there are a few words here that I don't know if everybody knows. You talked about digital nomad. So you to talk about optimizing conversions. Maybe in a layman's language just tell us what you do and what your business is about.

01:32

Ali: Sure. So basically a digital nomad is somebody who is not depending on a particular location. He can work from multiple like he can do remote works staying in different places at different time. But still have like clients and businesses running for him. So he can sustain his business and his livelihood. So that's the digital nomad. And for the conversion and the conversion is basically in digital marketing. You know people have upsides and they have online businesses, but they need customers, they need products to be sold online. So for that they need to bring traffic and those traffic needs to be converted or they need to be become paid customers, for that they need a digital marketing agency that can basically develop a model for them or a system for them that can help them do that conversion.

02:31

Ramesh: Okay. So if I understand correctly, you're just not a website builder, website designer. You are very focused on helping your customers using their Web site to actually drive sales by having the visitors getting converted into a customer.

02:48

Ali: Yes that's the major difference. So basically a normal marketing agency, the difference between us and them is that our focus is on results based. It's more on focused on results rather than on traditional marketing things like Web sites or doing e-mails and running graphics or stuff like that. Our focus is more on generating measurable results for them. So that they can see how much they're spending and how much sales that they're getting from their website.

03:29

Ramesh: So when did you actually start this journey?

03:32

Ali: So my journey basically started, this company HiClix we started this company in 2008. In 2008 was the time when the general public and all basically the businesses around they started warming up with the online advertisement things. They started taking it seriously. Before that people used to just run some banner ads on Web sites and that was something that not many businesses knew about. And after Google and Facebook came in, the online advertising world really grew. So at that time we decided that there needs to be a business, there needs to be. Because before that I was running a different business. It was more focused on design work, Web site development and brochures and all those type of stuff. So in 2000 8 we shifted our business model more towards digital marketing and specifically started working with paid advertisement, rather than SEO and other stuff. Our core business model was to help customers bring traffic using paid advertising.

04:44

Ramesh: Okay. So Ali before you started your company in 2008 did you work somewhere or was this like you started off with a business itself first? If you could just talk a little bit about your own personal journey.

04:58

Ali: Yeah. So my personal journey is basically is somewhat interesting. I feel that. It's basically that from a very young age I was interested in these computers and inside my house my uncle used to work on Pascal. It was a language. That was like eighty-nine, nineties. And at that time I was really interested in computers and he used to take me to these exhibitions and all. So from there on I got this germ I guess for learning about this thing and I used to spend a lot of time in tinkering with the different languages and all. So basically from there on I decided that I would work on this field, in the computer field and from there on I used to make plans for like which kind of business I would go in. Luckily there was a company that started an ISP, like Internet service provider and they wanted their Web site and they basically were looking for somebody who can develop something for them where they can run their billing system online for the customer. So I got that project as a freelancer first time and I was like 17 years old at that time. So from there on basically I interacted with other developers and developed this thing for learning and starting your own business from there on and then from there on I started this software company where we started selling software to ISP for managing their accounts and all those things and then later on that business ran from till 2001, from 1997 to 2001 and then I shifted towards online gaming industry. Like we develop company which was, basically it was like a shop where people was coming in and there was like, what do you say it's like a gaming center where people use the games. So I developed, I’ve made that business and we went on to, we created different teams for the gaming championship counterstrike and Warcraft and all those stuffs. And we represented those teams to different tournaments as well. So that was also my passion for gaming and that's why I converted it into this business as well.

07:38

Ramesh: So you evolved. Like you went from ISP to gaming to the extent looks like you were riding the trends.

07:46

Ali: Yes. So basically at that time I was not, because I started really young. So it was more focused on my own choices. Because I had the knowledge at that time of programming, and I knew how to create these products. So that's why at that young age I only followed my passion. For example on the programming side for the ISP and then on the gaming side when I was playing games myself as well. But it was later on that I decided that this thing, the only for following your passion is not going to work. You need to actually plan everything properly and execute it properly in a business way. And then at that time we basically build this company. HiClix.

08:36

Ramesh: Okay. So then you went from gaming towards this digital marketing in 2008.

08:40

Ali: Yes.

08:42

Ramesh: Okay so looks like you have an interesting background where you're not one of those guys like you worked in the corporate world for some time. And I say man I'm fed up with it. I want to go start a business. You started off as a freelancer. And you kept building the business one after another.

08:57

Ali: Yeah that's right. So that's why it's a bit interesting, because at a very young age I started directly doing my own work and till now, I'm in my late 30s now and still I haven't built my CV yet. Because I have never applied for any job and only work for myself. And yeah so that's how basically the journey went.

09:24

Ramesh: OK. Ali I can tell you having worked in the corporate world, you're unemployable. Nobody will hire you. And I don't think you will survive in one single year in the corporate world.

09:35

Ali: That's right. That's what I’ve heard that now there's a term called unemployable. And that's where I fit in, I guess.

09:44

Ramesh: Exactly. So you're based out of New York and then you are a nomad in the sense like whether you're New York or wherever that it is, it really doesn't matter. So tell me who was your first paying customer and how did you get your first paying customer?

09:59

Ali: Sure. So this in 2008 when I started this company there was not many people who were interested in running paid advertising and I also didn't know how I will get a customer. So my first customer was a guy in Hawaii. So he basically had, he created. He wrote a copy, because he had developed something where he made an e-book which guided people how to talk to dogs. That was really funny and really interesting for me because I didn't know people could talk to dogs as well at that time. But then he was looking for somebody and I was also my company was there and I was looking for customers. And at that time there were these freelancing websites like freelancer grew that were popping up and, in the start, I thought that let's go and see if there are any genuine customers over there. Because they also started their businesses at that time back in 2007, 2008. So there I found my first customer who the guy who wanted a sale page for his e-book that was about, that basically had a product that talked to dog. So I thought that I don't know if this thing can really sell and there will be any customer for this guy. But I knew how to build the sales pitch for him. Because I knew the sales pages because you know in traditionally you do get those sales pages in mail. So I knew how to basically develop those. So I just took his sales space and made that long sales page and we uploaded it on click banks and to his surprise and surprise as well, His product really went great. It started selling immediately because there was a market there who was looking for like he targeted for the dogs and click banks also helped him because that company was also new at that time, I think. And then so from there on I got this thing for helping people who were coming up with their e-books.

12:15

Ramesh: So you advertise yourself on the www.freelancer.com and then he found you or he advertise a job.

12:23

Ali: No, he advertised. Yeah, He advertised a job and I saw that on that Web site and I definitely contacted him and talked to him about it.

12:30

Ramesh: OK so then through this first customer afterwards did you build a reference through him. And is that how you got other customers?

12:39

Ali: Yeah. So basically from there on I got to know about these different things that people were doing. Because traditionally we thought that only products could be sold online. We didn't know that there is a huge market for learning, e-books and horses and people are now coming on to Internet. And the majority of people are there to learn something. And people who are in this economy who can teach them or give them some knowledge are going to make a lot of money at that time. So I specifically target those people who wanted to sell on click banks who wanted to, who wanted to create an e-book and then sell it on click banks. So for that I ran my own ads on Google ads and people were searching for that there was really a lot of independent on Google's side as well. You can target any keyword that you wanted and if you specifically targeted Click Bank you can get traffic as well. So I got a lot of customers and I helped a lot of people go on click bank and make a lot of sales. And from there on after that Click Bank, I got another company which came to me and they wanted to basically sell real courses. They were not interested in selling e-books. They were basically selling university courses where people can come in and they can do like nursing courses, they can join the army courses and stuff like. You know nowadays University of Phoenix and all those universities are really popular. At that time they were just coming up with all those courses and universities were really coming up with online courses. So there was a big company who specifically deal with those customers and they approached me that if I could help them come up with those landing pages and help them generate their leads and all those things and from there on I did a lot of work with that and help a lot of online university courses.

14:51

Ramesh: So let me ask you this, you've evolved since your, the first ISP Kind of a business. Were there any down times where you said this digital nomad kind of stuff is not working out for me, I need to go and get a real job kind of situation.

15:09

Ali: Well since I was doing it from really a very start and at that time the main motive was not really to get a lot of money, but to create products, help customers getting a high on getting recognition by having good work and then later on when I had started this company, then I had to decide that no everything needs to be properly setup. We need monthly income coming in, a subscription model stuff like that. We need to develop accounts and all those things. And then at that time I basically sat down and made a proper business plan so that I don't have to go back and do some kind of a job. Obviously in the start there was a time where I do think that I should go and basically join some company as a developer and stuff like that. But then you know in 2008 there was a big crash as well and people were still laying off and I could see that since the economy was doing really bad, but the economy on the Internet was doing really well like Google ads were making a lot of money at that time. And all those stuffs. So even then I haven’t even thought, the financial crisis gives me another motive that no I have to basically do this business for myself.

16:41

Ramesh: Actually I think at that time also people are getting laid off and they are doing, started doing freelancing and then I think the Internet side of the world was taking off in that time.

16:49

Ali: Taking off, that’s correct.

16:52

Ramesh: All right. So in some ways I think you're experimenting on your own business with the paid advertising at the same time helping your own customers with paid advertising. So it looks like it worked out very well from a business perspective. Let me ask you a question, your customer pipeline. I mean like how do you build your customer pipeline and how do you manage the customer pipeline.

17:20

Ali: Yeah. So right now the majority of customer that I get is through referrals. Because I specifically have developed a system where I specifically target people who are ready for becoming an author or who are doing coaching who basically want to sell their courses, or they have any products. So only I choose to work only with those type of people, because they are the kind of customers who basically have an idea. Who also know how the internet works a little bit and then we can help them get the resources that we can help them with? So I don't really work with like a plumbing company or maybe some other company that's running, like a B2B something. I specifically choose to work with authors, coaches and people who basically sell their own products on the Internet, on Amazon or on their own websites.

18:20

Ramesh: Excellent. So you have defined a customer profile, the ideal customer profile and then you kept targeting to get that kind of customers and then so then becomes a repeatable business.

18:36

Ali: Yeah that's correct. And those are the people who basically also refer me as well, because they also know other coaches and people who are authors and who are selling products online or who wants to sell products online. Because you know if somebody is doing really well on Amazon people around them do ask them that how are you doing this and how are you selling. So then they refer those people to me, and I not only help them in coming up with their sales funnel, I can also help them with the kind of product that they can sell as well.

19:09

Ramesh: Excellent. I mean that is how I honestly, I think you're being a true, not just a technology partner and also a business partner. I think that is the ideal mix that you seem to have. So the other questions that I want to ask you Ali is about you are a technologist in the sense that you started led with technology. But you built a business. So how did you learn about the business aspects of it. Was it tough? Did you get a mentor? How did it go about?

19:43

Ali: Yeah. So it's really funny that how I ran about the business thing. The way I learn about business was that I knew I was good at the technology and creating products and programming and on stuff. But I was not really built for the business world. So my main thing that taught me about business was that I needed to decide on a basis that how much money that I need to make right in this starting. So for example if I decided that I need to make X amount of money, I needed to come up with a product that sell to X amount of customers at an X amount of dollars right. So that's how I started learning about selling things and making money and profit and how it all works basically. And then after that obviously I had to go through the books, which talk to you about business. Tim Ferriss was really instrumental in that. His book, the four-hour work week was really, so that really something, because I was living the four-hour work week life. So when somebody came up and told me that this is possible, I thought that yeah that's how I was living right now. And then I can really increase and grow my business using these tactics as well. Because I was doing the biggest mistake that I was making at that time. I was doing a lot of work myself and not doing a lot of outsourcing. Because once you know different things about the business or technologies you tend to do it yourself. And that's a very bad habit. And since then I developed this thing that I need to outsource as much as I can. And then I develop my own team with designers’ developers all around the world. People who deal in customers code and accounts and all those things. So these things really helped me learn the business side.

21:43

Ramesh: So let me just dig a little bit more into that pricing right. So how do you know your pricing your services and products right. I mean how long did it take for you to find the right pricing and even then, now how do you know that your price is right?

22:00

Ali: Yeah. So basically what happens is that if I'm selling, because I not only sell the digital marketing services. I also sell products on Amazon as well. So one of the products that we sell is a cream, moisturizing cream that we sell.

And the way that we price it is based on the cost that we get from the manufacturer. Then we add on the cost that we need to pay to Amazon and then the cost that we need to do for advertising, after that cost we add in our own profit. So for that product based or the product base pricing it's rather easy. But the service-based pricing is a little bit difficult. Because it depends on the kind of services that the customer needs. For example if they don't have any copy and they need a copywriter, for them the price is always different, and we charge based on the amount of copy that they need. If they y already have a website and they just need to make it more conversion optimize, based on that we charge on their website that they're running. So on the service side I’ve kept it so that it's totally based on the customer and how much services that they need. So that's how we do it.

23:26

Ramesh: So basically product, I would call it a cost-plus pricing. The service side it's a mode of value-based pricing model.

23:32

Ali: Yes that's right.

23:33

Ramesh: Excellent. Okay so let's switch gears a little bit into the operational aspects of the business. What kinds of tools do you use to run and manage a business?

This is more for other entrepreneurs to learn from.

23:47

Ali: Yeah. So basically my business relies on Google Analytics a lot. That's the tool that we use a lot for measuring stuff. Then we use click funnels to create funnels for my customers. We use five teams to create these different paths and these tools are really great. If you want to start. Selling your products or you want to sell something. So you can use click funnels or drive teams to make these things. WordPress is also another tool that we use a lot in this.

And then for accounting we use Quick Books for running accounts and these are the basic tools that we use day to day for our customers and for email.

Yeah for email we use mail gun or MailChimp. These are the e-mails services that we use.

24:45

Ramesh: So excellent. That's good. And then let's say if you want to start out your business now. Going back to other any things that you would do differently?

24:57

Ali: Yeah. So like I said the first thing that I would do is that not only rely on myself, I’ll immediately start and outsource most of the work and start finding people who can help me. Secondly, I will not, I mean I wasted a lot of time in planning that I’ll do this and that and I’ve learned that it's much more easier to start the business first and then work on your product and services as you go along. Especially in this Internet marketing. So these two things I think I’ll work more better if I start now.

25:38

Ramesh: Okay so what are your future plans. I mean what are the trends that you're seeing. Because I mean it looks like a you are a trend rider. So you went from ISP to gaming to in 2008 to high clix paid advertising and stuff. So what kinds of trends are you seeing now that you want to position yourself on your business for?

26:00

Ali: Yeah so, the trend is now mostly based on, because people are now moving more towards the mobile and application side of things. They are moving the Web sites, even the convergence. If you see the trend is more happening on the mobile. People are buying products on the phone. So traditional browsing is on the lower end now if you're selling products and stuff like that. So that's why websites which are more geared towards selling on mobile users are really doing well. For example there's this t shirt company which sells T-shirts, their most of their sales is happening on the mobile phone and people are going through Facebook. Because most of the people use Instagram or Facebook on their phones and from there they click on an ad and they immediately go to the product page. So my focus is now mostly on the mobile aspect of the conversion and how to attract those people who are the mobile users to convert more using these technologies.

27:10

Ramesh: Excellent. So Ali anything else that you want to tell our listeners. Things that I have not covered.

27:18

Ali: Yeah. So to your listeners I would like to say that if you want to start a business please go ahead. This is the right time to start a business. You have all the tools available. You have all. You can be a self-publisher, you can have your own marketing agency, you can get customers to spending money on ads. So doing business nowadays is, this is the right time if you want to. But you need to basically plan everything properly and then go and start your business start your business. It’s not that I just have a passion for creating something or designing or stuff like that. You actually need a business plan for yourself and then go ahead and start the business.

28:05

Ramesh: Excellent advice Ali. I mean, I cannot agree with you more. Start right away but start with some kind of a preliminary basic plan. This passion itself will not get you the money on the table.

28:17

Ali: Yes that's right.

28:18

Ramesh: Excellent. Thank you, Ali.

28:20

Ali: Thank you Ramesh.

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How To Organize Your Business, Home, and Life With Melisa Celikel – AEP #24

August 21st, 2019 by Ramesh Dontha

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Guest: Melisa Celikel

Company / Business name: Make SHT Happen LLC

Melisa Celikel is the founder and CEO of a business and a business organization consultant of Let’s get you organized. She has helped over 250 clients create amazing transformations in their homes, lives and businesses.

Show Notes:

01:42 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Start somewhere but the most important thing is to start a business. You can evolve later.

Melisa shares her background and how she worked with Fortune 100/200/500 companies in Bio-pharma industry for HR/Sales/Recruiting. She decided to start her own business journey and started with home organization which evolved into online courses and later expanded into business organization.

03:33 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Focus on your strengths. What may be a disorder may actually be a talent.

Melisa stalks about focusing on one’s strengths and not their weaknesses to find out what they should do. In Melisa’s case, she was diagnosed to have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and decided to monetize that talent and started a home organization company.

05:04 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: You don’t need a fancy website to get your first customer. Start somewhere and expand.

Melisa talks about how she had put together a web site over a weekend, launched her social media profiles and was in business in few days. She advertised on Craigslist and got her first customer within a month. She used Yelp, Craigslist, Instagram, and Facebook to build her customer pipeline.

11:22 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Action trumps fear So Act.

Melisa shares her experience of working with various entrepreneurs and individuals and the key characteristics that she believes are important for success. (1) Avoid analysis paralysis. (2) Action trumps fear so act (3) Perfectionism leads to paralysis so don’t try to be perfect.

13:53 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Productized service is the holy grail. Find ways to productize your services.

Melisa talks about how she adjusted her business model to make it a more productized service business. She hired organizers and trained them to manage the home organization business. Instead she focused on training and coaching to make it a productized service business. This way she can work from anywhere and enjoy the passive income stream.

18:16 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Focus on yourself and the path you believe is the right for you.

Melisa talks about how she had to work hard to break the expectations that her parents had for her and she had to work hard to quiet the doubters and prove to them that the path she has taken with home organization and later the business organization is the right path for her. She also talks about hiring outside help sooner in her journey.

22:19 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Start somewhere but the most important thing is to start a business. You can evolve later.

Melisa advises would be entrepreneurs to get off the fence. Start taking action. Don’t worry if it’s perfect. Be organized and prioritize your actions. Some of the tools she uses are: Quickbooks, Project management system, CRM system.

Episode Transcript

00:01

Ramesh: Hello everyone. Welcome to the agile Entrepreneur Podcast. This is your host Ramesh Dontha. This podcast is about starting and building your own business with purpose, passion, perseverance and possibilities. Today I have a guest from an industry or area where every business needs some help. And that is the digital marketing. And the guest name is Ali Saif. Ali is somebody that I have known for quite some time. He's been my partner on this journey of ideal entrepreneurship. So Ali Saif is a lifestyle entrepreneurial and digital nomad. He runs a digital marketing agency called High clicks dot com and helps businesses struggling with online sales and growth to reach their full potential by optimizing their conversions and revenue. I mean Ali is somebody that I really trust, and I don't think I'd be here with the agile Entrepreneur Podcast without his help. Hey Ali welcome.

01:08

Ali: Yeah. Thank you, Ramesh. Thank you for your kind words And I'm really excited to be here so.

01:14

Ramesh: Ali, first thing is there are a few words here that I don't know if everybody knows. You talked about digital nomad. So you to talk about optimizing conversions. Maybe in a layman's language just tell us what you do and what your business is about.

01:32

Ali: Sure. So basically a digital nomad is somebody who is not depending on a particular location. He can work from multiple like he can do remote works staying in different places at different time. But still have like clients and businesses running for him. So he can sustain his business and his livelihood. So that's the digital nomad. And for the conversion and the conversion is basically in digital marketing. You know people have upsides and they have online businesses, but they need customers, they need products to be sold online. So for that they need to bring traffic and those traffic needs to be converted or they need to be become paid customers, for that they need a digital marketing agency that can basically develop a model for them or a system for them that can help them do that conversion.

02:31

Ramesh: Okay. So if I understand correctly, you're just not a website builder, website designer. You are very focused on helping your customers using their Web site to actually drive sales by having the visitors getting converted into a customer.

02:48

Ali: Yes that's the major difference. So basically a normal marketing agency, the difference between us and them is that our focus is on results based. It's more on focused on results rather than on traditional marketing things like Web sites or doing e-mails and running graphics or stuff like that. Our focus is more on generating measurable results for them. So that they can see how much they're spending and how much sales that they're getting from their website.

03:29

Ramesh: So when did you actually start this journey?

03:32

Ali: So my journey basically started, this company HiClix we started this company in 2008. In 2008 was the time when the general public and all basically the businesses around they started warming up with the online advertisement things. They started taking it seriously. Before that people used to just run some banner ads on Web sites and that was something that not many businesses knew about. And after Google and Facebook came in, the online advertising world really grew. So at that time we decided that there needs to be a business, there needs to be. Because before that I was running a different business. It was more focused on design work, Web site development and brochures and all those type of stuff. So in 2000 8 we shifted our business model more towards digital marketing and specifically started working with paid advertisement, rather than SEO and other stuff. Our core business model was to help customers bring traffic using paid advertising.

04:44

Ramesh: Okay. So Ali before you started your company in 2008 did you work somewhere or was this like you started off with a business itself first? If you could just talk a little bit about your own personal journey.

04:58

Ali: Yeah. So my personal journey is basically is somewhat interesting. I feel that. It's basically that from a very young age I was interested in these computers and inside my house my uncle used to work on Pascal. It was a language. That was like eighty-nine, nineties. And at that time I was really interested in computers and he used to take me to these exhibitions and all. So from there on I got this germ I guess for learning about this thing and I used to spend a lot of time in tinkering with the different languages and all. So basically from there on I decided that I would work on this field, in the computer field and from there on I used to make plans for like which kind of business I would go in. Luckily there was a company that started an ISP, like Internet service provider and they wanted their Web site and they basically were looking for somebody who can develop something for them where they can run their billing system online for the customer. So I got that project as a freelancer first time and I was like 17 years old at that time. So from there on basically I interacted with other developers and developed this thing for learning and starting your own business from there on and then from there on I started this software company where we started selling software to ISP for managing their accounts and all those things and then later on that business ran from till 2001, from 1997 to 2001 and then I shifted towards online gaming industry. Like we develop company which was, basically it was like a shop where people was coming in and there was like, what do you say it's like a gaming center where people use the games. So I developed, I’ve made that business and we went on to, we created different teams for the gaming championship counterstrike and Warcraft and all those stuffs. And we represented those teams to different tournaments as well. So that was also my passion for gaming and that's why I converted it into this business as well.

07:38

Ramesh: So you evolved. Like you went from ISP to gaming to the extent looks like you were riding the trends.

07:46

Ali: Yes. So basically at that time I was not, because I started really young. So it was more focused on my own choices. Because I had the knowledge at that time of programming, and I knew how to create these products. So that's why at that young age I only followed my passion. For example on the programming side for the ISP and then on the gaming side when I was playing games myself as well. But it was later on that I decided that this thing, the only for following your passion is not going to work. You need to actually plan everything properly and execute it properly in a business way. And then at that time we basically build this company. HiClix.

08:36

Ramesh: Okay. So then you went from gaming towards this digital marketing in 2008.

08:40

Ali: Yes.

08:42

Ramesh: Okay so looks like you have an interesting background where you're not one of those guys like you worked in the corporate world for some time. And I say man I'm fed up with it. I want to go start a business. You started off as a freelancer. And you kept building the business one after another.

08:57

Ali: Yeah that's right. So that's why it's a bit interesting, because at a very young age I started directly doing my own work and till now, I'm in my late 30s now and still I haven't built my CV yet. Because I have never applied for any job and only work for myself. And yeah so that's how basically the journey went.

09:24

Ramesh: OK. Ali I can tell you having worked in the corporate world, you're unemployable. Nobody will hire you. And I don't think you will survive in one single year in the corporate world.

09:35

Ali: That's right. That's what I’ve heard that now there's a term called unemployable. And that's where I fit in, I guess.

09:44

Ramesh: Exactly. So you're based out of New York and then you are a nomad in the sense like whether you're New York or wherever that it is, it really doesn't matter. So tell me who was your first paying customer and how did you get your first paying customer?

09:59

Ali: Sure. So this in 2008 when I started this company there was not many people who were interested in running paid advertising and I also didn't know how I will get a customer. So my first customer was a guy in Hawaii. So he basically had, he created. He wrote a copy, because he had developed something where he made an e-book which guided people how to talk to dogs. That was really funny and really interesting for me because I didn't know people could talk to dogs as well at that time. But then he was looking for somebody and I was also my company was there and I was looking for customers. And at that time there were these freelancing websites like freelancer grew that were popping up and, in the start, I thought that let's go and see if there are any genuine customers over there. Because they also started their businesses at that time back in 2007, 2008. So there I found my first customer who the guy who wanted a sale page for his e-book that was about, that basically had a product that talked to dog. So I thought that I don't know if this thing can really sell and there will be any customer for this guy. But I knew how to build the sales pitch for him. Because I knew the sales pages because you know in traditionally you do get those sales pages in mail. So I knew how to basically develop those. So I just took his sales space and made that long sales page and we uploaded it on click banks and to his surprise and surprise as well, His product really went great. It started selling immediately because there was a market there who was looking for like he targeted for the dogs and click banks also helped him because that company was also new at that time, I think. And then so from there on I got this thing for helping people who were coming up with their e-books.

12:15

Ramesh: So you advertise yourself on the www.freelancer.com and then he found you or he advertise a job.

12:23

Ali: No, he advertised. Yeah, He advertised a job and I saw that on that Web site and I definitely contacted him and talked to him about it.

12:30

Ramesh: OK so then through this first customer afterwards did you build a reference through him. And is that how you got other customers?

12:39

Ali: Yeah. So basically from there on I got to know about these different things that people were doing. Because traditionally we thought that only products could be sold online. We didn't know that there is a huge market for learning, e-books and horses and people are now coming on to Internet. And the majority of people are there to learn something. And people who are in this economy who can teach them or give them some knowledge are going to make a lot of money at that time. So I specifically target those people who wanted to sell on click banks who wanted to, who wanted to create an e-book and then sell it on click banks. So for that I ran my own ads on Google ads and people were searching for that there was really a lot of independent on Google's side as well. You can target any keyword that you wanted and if you specifically targeted Click Bank you can get traffic as well. So I got a lot of customers and I helped a lot of people go on click bank and make a lot of sales. And from there on after that Click Bank, I got another company which came to me and they wanted to basically sell real courses. They were not interested in selling e-books. They were basically selling university courses where people can come in and they can do like nursing courses, they can join the army courses and stuff like. You know nowadays University of Phoenix and all those universities are really popular. At that time they were just coming up with all those courses and universities were really coming up with online courses. So there was a big company who specifically deal with those customers and they approached me that if I could help them come up with those landing pages and help them generate their leads and all those things and from there on I did a lot of work with that and help a lot of online university courses.

14:51

Ramesh: So let me ask you this, you've evolved since your, the first ISP Kind of a business. Were there any down times where you said this digital nomad kind of stuff is not working out for me, I need to go and get a real job kind of situation.

15:09

Ali: Well since I was doing it from really a very start and at that time the main motive was not really to get a lot of money, but to create products, help customers getting a high on getting recognition by having good work and then later on when I had started this company, then I had to decide that no everything needs to be properly setup. We need monthly income coming in, a subscription model stuff like that. We need to develop accounts and all those things. And then at that time I basically sat down and made a proper business plan so that I don't have to go back and do some kind of a job. Obviously in the start there was a time where I do think that I should go and basically join some company as a developer and stuff like that. But then you know in 2008 there was a big crash as well and people were still laying off and I could see that since the economy was doing really bad, but the economy on the Internet was doing really well like Google ads were making a lot of money at that time. And all those stuffs. So even then I haven’t even thought, the financial crisis gives me another motive that no I have to basically do this business for myself.

16:41

Ramesh: Actually I think at that time also people are getting laid off and they are doing, started doing freelancing and then I think the Internet side of the world was taking off in that time.

16:49

Ali: Taking off, that’s correct.

16:52

Ramesh: All right. So in some ways I think you're experimenting on your own business with the paid advertising at the same time helping your own customers with paid advertising. So it looks like it worked out very well from a business perspective. Let me ask you a question, your customer pipeline. I mean like how do you build your customer pipeline and how do you manage the customer pipeline.

17:20

Ali: Yeah. So right now the majority of customer that I get is through referrals. Because I specifically have developed a system where I specifically target people who are ready for becoming an author or who are doing coaching who basically want to sell their courses, or they have any products. So only I choose to work only with those type of people, because they are the kind of customers who basically have an idea. Who also know how the internet works a little bit and then we can help them get the resources that we can help them with? So I don't really work with like a plumbing company or maybe some other company that's running, like a B2B something. I specifically choose to work with authors, coaches and people who basically sell their own products on the Internet, on Amazon or on their own websites.

18:20

Ramesh: Excellent. So you have defined a customer profile, the ideal customer profile and then you kept targeting to get that kind of customers and then so then becomes a repeatable business.

18:36

Ali: Yeah that's correct. And those are the people who basically also refer me as well, because they also know other coaches and people who are authors and who are selling products online or who wants to sell products online. Because you know if somebody is doing really well on Amazon people around them do ask them that how are you doing this and how are you selling. So then they refer those people to me, and I not only help them in coming up with their sales funnel, I can also help them with the kind of product that they can sell as well.

19:09

Ramesh: Excellent. I mean that is how I honestly, I think you're being a true, not just a technology partner and also a business partner. I think that is the ideal mix that you seem to have. So the other questions that I want to ask you Ali is about you are a technologist in the sense that you started led with technology. But you built a business. So how did you learn about the business aspects of it. Was it tough? Did you get a mentor? How did it go about?

19:43

Ali: Yeah. So it's really funny that how I ran about the business thing. The way I learn about business was that I knew I was good at the technology and creating products and programming and on stuff. But I was not really built for the business world. So my main thing that taught me about business was that I needed to decide on a basis that how much money that I need to make right in this starting. So for example if I decided that I need to make X amount of money, I needed to come up with a product that sell to X amount of customers at an X amount of dollars right. So that's how I started learning about selling things and making money and profit and how it all works basically. And then after that obviously I had to go through the books, which talk to you about business. Tim Ferriss was really instrumental in that. His book, the four-hour work week was really, so that really something, because I was living the four-hour work week life. So when somebody came up and told me that this is possible, I thought that yeah that's how I was living right now. And then I can really increase and grow my business using these tactics as well. Because I was doing the biggest mistake that I was making at that time. I was doing a lot of work myself and not doing a lot of outsourcing. Because once you know different things about the business or technologies you tend to do it yourself. And that's a very bad habit. And since then I developed this thing that I need to outsource as much as I can. And then I develop my own team with designers’ developers all around the world. People who deal in customers code and accounts and all those things. So these things really helped me learn the business side.

21:43

Ramesh: So let me just dig a little bit more into that pricing right. So how do you know your pricing your services and products right. I mean how long did it take for you to find the right pricing and even then, now how do you know that your price is right?

22:00

Ali: Yeah. So basically what happens is that if I'm selling, because I not only sell the digital marketing services. I also sell products on Amazon as well. So one of the products that we sell is a cream, moisturizing cream that we sell.

And the way that we price it is based on the cost that we get from the manufacturer. Then we add on the cost that we need to pay to Amazon and then the cost that we need to do for advertising, after that cost we add in our own profit. So for that product based or the product base pricing it's rather easy. But the service-based pricing is a little bit difficult. Because it depends on the kind of services that the customer needs. For example if they don't have any copy and they need a copywriter, for them the price is always different, and we charge based on the amount of copy that they need. If they y already have a website and they just need to make it more conversion optimize, based on that we charge on their website that they're running. So on the service side I’ve kept it so that it's totally based on the customer and how much services that they need. So that's how we do it.

23:26

Ramesh: So basically product, I would call it a cost-plus pricing. The service side it's a mode of value-based pricing model.

23:32

Ali: Yes that's right.

23:33

Ramesh: Excellent. Okay so let's switch gears a little bit into the operational aspects of the business. What kinds of tools do you use to run and manage a business?

This is more for other entrepreneurs to learn from.

23:47

Ali: Yeah. So basically my business relies on Google Analytics a lot. That's the tool that we use a lot for measuring stuff. Then we use click funnels to create funnels for my customers. We use five teams to create these different paths and these tools are really great. If you want to start. Selling your products or you want to sell something. So you can use click funnels or drive teams to make these things. WordPress is also another tool that we use a lot in this.

And then for accounting we use Quick Books for running accounts and these are the basic tools that we use day to day for our customers and for email.

Yeah for email we use mail gun or MailChimp. These are the e-mails services that we use.

24:45

Ramesh: So excellent. That's good. And then let's say if you want to start out your business now. Going back to other any things that you would do differently?

24:57

Ali: Yeah. So like I said the first thing that I would do is that not only rely on myself, I’ll immediately start and outsource most of the work and start finding people who can help me. Secondly, I will not, I mean I wasted a lot of time in planning that I’ll do this and that and I’ve learned that it's much more easier to start the business first and then work on your product and services as you go along. Especially in this Internet marketing. So these two things I think I’ll work more better if I start now.

25:38

Ramesh: Okay so what are your future plans. I mean what are the trends that you're seeing. Because I mean it looks like a you are a trend rider. So you went from ISP to gaming to in 2008 to high clix paid advertising and stuff. So what kinds of trends are you seeing now that you want to position yourself on your business for?

26:00

Ali: Yeah so, the trend is now mostly based on, because people are now moving more towards the mobile and application side of things. They are moving the Web sites, even the convergence. If you see the trend is more happening on the mobile. People are buying products on the phone. So traditional browsing is on the lower end now if you're selling products and stuff like that. So that's why websites which are more geared towards selling on mobile users are really doing well. For example there's this t shirt company which sells T-shirts, their most of their sales is happening on the mobile phone and people are going through Facebook. Because most of the people use Instagram or Facebook on their phones and from there they click on an ad and they immediately go to the product page. So my focus is now mostly on the mobile aspect of the conversion and how to attract those people who are the mobile users to convert more using these technologies.

27:10

Ramesh: Excellent. So Ali anything else that you want to tell our listeners. Things that I have not covered.

27:18

Ali: Yeah. So to your listeners I would like to say that if you want to start a business please go ahead. This is the right time to start a business. You have all the tools available. You have all. You can be a self-publisher, you can have your own marketing agency, you can get customers to spending money on ads. So doing business nowadays is, this is the right time if you want to. But you need to basically plan everything properly and then go and start your business start your business. It’s not that I just have a passion for creating something or designing or stuff like that. You actually need a business plan for yourself and then go ahead and start the business.

28:05

Ramesh: Excellent advice Ali. I mean, I cannot agree with you more. Start right away but start with some kind of a preliminary basic plan. This passion itself will not get you the money on the table.

28:17

Ali: Yes that's right.

28:18

Ramesh: Excellent. Thank you, Ali.

28:20

Ali: Thank you Ramesh.

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Building A Children’s Fitness Business for All Ages With Michelle Miller – AEP #23

August 21st, 2019 by Ramesh Dontha

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Guest: Michelle Miller

Company / Business name: MM FITNESS LLC

Michelle Miller is the founder and CEO of MyFirstWorkout.Com (MM Fitness LLC) and has been a personal trainer and group exercise instructor in Tallahassee Florida for 20 years working with people of all different ages and fitness levels. She is a wife and mother of two boys ages 6 and 20 and my passion is children’s fitness.

Show Notes:

01:19 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: The gaps that you see in your own life could be the springboard for your own business.

Michelle talks about her business which is about connecting children with their parents and caregivers with fitness via MyFrstWorkout.Com. She got the idea for her business while she was spending time with her fiver year old and when she checkout out competition, she couldn’t find any fitness products for children which are meaningful.

04:49 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Your passion can show you different ways to build your business quickly.

Michelle talks about how she was able to design, procure, and brand her business from concept to launch in 6 months. Given that her business is about physical products, it has taken little longer but she was still able to do in a relatively short timeframe. Her launch and promotion went very well.

07:52 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Expand your business into adjacent markets as opposed to finding totally new markets.

Michelle explains how she expanded her business to be mobile where she takes the fitness (equipment and all) to her clients workplaces, homes 9if needed), and how that expanded her business. She also caters to special population, pregnant women, and people with surgeries etc.

12:52 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: If you believe in your idea, give your 100% so you don’t regret later.

Michelle talks about how she used equity from their home to build her business. She also explains how she found her vendors in China. Michelle was serious about her business and invested $3,000 in getting the right domain and researched extensively on getting the right vendors.

17:39 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Keep learning from your mistakes and make it a deliberate habit to journal so you can look back.

Michelle talks about some of the challenges she faced. First is the additional cost she incurred in warehousing her products much earlier than needed. Second is that there is some stigma associated with kids and weight training and Michelle needed to help overcome some of that resistance by educating.

21:29 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Pricing is a very important aspect of the business. Keep iterating.

Michelle talks about the challenge of pricing her products right. She explains how she came up with a price based on how much competition is charging and how much more value her products are delivering over competition. She is still tweaking her pricing.

23:18 minute mark:

Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Keep learning from people who have gone ahead of you.

Michelle gives advice based on her entrepreneurial experience. (1) Be patient (2) Networking is key (3) Surround yourself with who believe in you

Episode Transcript

00:04

Ramesh: Hello everyone, welcome to the agile entrepreneur podcast. This is your host Ramesh Dontha. This podcast is about starting and building your own business with purpose, passion, perseverance and possibilities. Today our guest is Michelle Miller, who has a very unique business. So Michelle Miller is a personal trainer and group exercise instructor in Tallahassee Florida and then she's been operating, she's been doing that for last 20 years or so working with the people of all different ages and the different levels. She's a wife and a mother of two boys and her passion is children's fitness. So you will soon know how this passion translated into her business and her business name is www.myfirstworkout.com, operates under the company name MM Fitness LLC. Hi Michelle welcome.

01:05

Michelle: Hello Ramesh. I'm so thrilled to be here today with you and your listeners.

01:10

Ramesh: Thank you, thank you and so you have a very unique business, www.myfirstworkout.com. If you could tell us what this business is about.

01:19

Michelle: So my business is about connecting children with their parents, their caregivers, whoever is that adult in their life that is one of the most influential people in their lives and my first workout is about connecting them with those people and also with Fitness, which is just a huge part of life. It affects everything in your life. Your health and how you care for your body. Affects everything from you know children and their social relationships, how they feel about their body, academically in school and then later in life you know as they go on in their profession and just their quality life and my goal for these families is just better quality of life for them and that's what my first workout is about.

02:10

Ramesh: So when did you start your business?

02:10

Michelle: So I had the idea on March 18th of 2018. I was laying there with my six, he was five at the time my five-year-old son and my I do have a 20 year old and the time went so fast and I was such a young mother with my older son and I just wanted to do better and really be present and so the relationship I have with my six-year-old is just so special and we were laying there. It was a Sunday and we don't you know have a lot of family time. So I was just soaking up the minutes with him and my mind began to wander. You know I just was thinking about him and he's such a happy child, we're so connected. You know he can go out and do anything. He's just physically fit and I just started thinking of other families for some reason and other children in this world and I just was like you know what do those parents have? You know I am a fitness trainer; I know how to you know help him to be to be healthy and strong and this wonderful activity has joined us together. It's given us something that we can do to connect us. What do other people have if they're great at their jobs. They might be great you know doctors or lawyers or teachers or you know English, you know what do they have? And so I started on, I really started thinking about it and so much that I got out of bed and went to the internet and started googling. I went on Amazon and Walmart and Academy and I was shocked to find absolutely nothing that was pure quality physical training for children. It was such fluff and dumbed down exercise equipment and just programming bed was very belittling to these kids and so I just made it my mission, literally my brain just took off and I just was like I'm going to create a step by step program that will teach anybody of any skill level, you can have zero skill or you can actually be you know in Fitness and just not know what to do with your kids and I'm going to break it down and I'm going to make it so easy for them that they can do it together. And my first workout of all it came to be.

04:38

Ramesh: Okay so you started in 2018 and how long did it take for you to fully implement your program and then start the company?

04:49

Michelle: So unbelievably by December of that year I had my product fully put together sailing across the ocean and it hit Jacksonville in time for the Christmas holiday and so from March 18th to December, it was about December 18th we had logoed branded, we had custom-made pieces put in my kit. I had shot 12 posters; my program is 12 different programs. So I had children shoot 123 different exercises. We shot five videos or because my kit comes with the equipment and it comes with a programming to teach the parents and the children in both poster and video format. So we had done all that. We had events. We did Zulily, two events in Zulily by that time. We were in magazines, I went to Vegas in October and basically launched. This was a total hidden project up until October and went out to Vegas and just BAM! There I was and had an amazing response there from people just like wow! This is, we've never seen anything like this, and it was what? Nine months then, nine months.

06:19

Ramesh: Okay so is your program you sell these kids, or can you explain how this program works out? Let's say I have a six-year-old, what do I do?

06:30

Michelle: So www.myfirstworkout.com has the kits. I've got four different kits and they're divided into age groups. So age five seven I’ve got two different color versions. Kind of like boy, girl, but whatever it doesn't matter whatever colors you like, and it just comes with lighter weight. So I’ve got two- and three-pound dumbbells in there and a four-pound sand ball and then I’ve got two kids for the age eight to ten kids and that just comes with heavier weight. That's the only difference. The programming is the same. So you'd go on my website and you would if you have a six-year-old, you'd want the five to seven kit and say you've got also an eight-year-old and a ten-year-old, you wouldn't necessarily want to buy three kits. Because the programming is what makes the initial kid more expensive, you would just want to buy some extra weights. So I’ve got a store on there that you could buy next you know so for your eight-year-old you might want to buy them some three- and four-pound weights or something and we also are selling on Amazon right now. I've got all my 19 pieces; I’ve got four kits and then all the items you can buy individually on Amazon.

07:37

Ramesh: Excellent. So let's talk about you on your journey, right. So in March or so you got this idea. Prior to that did you have any business background.

07:52

Michelle: In 2007 I started MM fitness and LLC and that is my mobile personal training business and one day I was at the gym and three or four my clients didn't show up and I said I can't help these people if they don't come and get their workout in. What can I do to help these people? I want so much for them to get the full benefit. I don't want their money. I want them to be fit and so I said what can I do? And I said you know what I'm going to show up on their doorstep and then with everything they need and then they don't have an excuse. So that's what I did, and I started Michelle’s’ Mobile fitness, that's what MM stands for; Michelle 's mobile fitness and well economy was struggling. You know people value their body and their fitness. Particularly my age group, I train special populations. Which means everybody coming to fitness that has a little bit of an extra need. So whether that's children, you need to modify or pregnancy, women that are pre-pregnancy, going through pregnancy, after pregnancy, everybody surgeries. Whether it's back surgery, knee surgery, heart surgery, very deconditioned. Maybe you said maybe you exercise as a 20-year-old college kid and then you sat for the next 30 years and now you're 50, your blood works come back, and your cholesterol is up, your blood pressure and the doctor says you better start exercising. Well those people need to come to the gym. But they need to ease into it. You can't just start bench-pressing 300 pounds again. You know so I train special populations and I break down Fitness and I make fitness just easy for everybody and whether no matter what your issue is, you know everybody can do fitness and I just help them to learn you know where their body is and so I started the MM Fitness 2007 and it's been wonderful and I go to people.

09:57

Ramesh: So Michelle, so it looks like that's a pretty interesting. So what you've done is with the fitness, the MM Fitness First so you specialized it in a way you have your own very unique value proposition. One is, its mobile that you go to people's places. Number two, you also specialize with respect to, you customize your fitness to your customers depending on their situation. So is that how you build MM fitness to be uniquely differentiated by being mobile and then by customizing your fitness?

10:27

Michelle: Yes, no one was doing mobile fitness and there was a true need in the economy. We've moved as a, you know people are coming indoors and people are wanting the convenience and so at a time when trainers were struggling and the economy was struggling, I did very well. You know looking at what the need was and the same thing that is carried over into my first workout, because I’ve seen what Fitness does for people of all ages and it just inspires me to get the attention of these children so young and help them out by starting this habit early. Because you know what I hear from all my people that I train and in fact at eleven o'clock I'm going to train a group at Florida, Florida blue and they're all seniors and you know what they call me, Michelle I wish I had this when I was young and it just inspires me to keep advocating for children's fitness. Because I hear this from my clients and their condition of their bodies when they have not trained them, and they've neglected them their entire life. Every single one of them says to me, Michelle I just wish I had had this earlier; I wish I had known you earlier. And so it's carried over into this extreme vision and just passion I have to just go out there and just get the tension of these kids and their parents and just saying let's offset, everybody's going to struggle with something someday. Our bodies are not perfect, our environments are not perfect. But we can make this better for you. We can offset a lot of these different things just by good fitness. I'm not talking marathons and every day you know hitting it, I'm talking just good fitness. Let's just meet the fitness standards and that's my goal for these kids.

12:22

Ramesh: Michelle your passion definitely comes through very clearly, that's good. So let's talk a little bit about my first workout. So 10 months or so is a long time in starting a business to tell you the truth. I mean in in the sense the people go through lots of ups and downs, let me put it that way. All right so how was the 10-month journey? First let me start with financing, how did you finance your second business, my first workout?

12:52

Michelle: We had some a good amount of equity in her home and we were also planning on putting in a pool and a bunch of different renovations. So when I told my husband, he's been incredibly supportive, and you need a good support system. You can't do something like I’ve done, tried to build a major brand with no support and so he said, let's do this. And we took all that money that we had you know the equity in our home and the money we had set aside for renovations, in addition to our credit being extremely good, we used all that money to invest in a marketing company to really give us a great, you know we basically berthed, it was an idea. We had no tangible anything and so they gave us an amazing logo, branding. We've got all the materials to go out and to be able to show people what we have. That included ordering all the equipment, ordering the molds from China. I had an amazing man in China that I wound up you know after researching. How to deal with China, met him and so you know we got, I got all my product and so it was just you know being set up financial a little bit beforehand not knowing this was going to be in the works, but that's what it went. We had the money for that.

14:24

Ramesh: Okay, excellent. Actually it's fascinating this journey. So let me keep following through this. So now you financed it and then afterwards you said you researched and found these people in China you know they're not local. So I mean marketing I can understand. So you could find the local company and then you could research. But how did you go about finding a company that would manufacture these things for you and how were you able to bypass the trust factor?

14:54

Michelle: Yes, that was huge right in the beginning. You know some of the big decisions I had to make right in the beginning, one was my domain name for my first work out. Its $3,000 and prior to that everything I dealt with was like in the ten-dollar range. So it was kind of like are we in this or not?

15:12

Ramesh: I am sorry, why was it three thousand dollars? Did you buy it from somebody else

15:18

Michelle: I did, I had to buy it. It was already taken. So it was three, you know and so that was a big, that was one of my first decisions like how serious I about this am and so my first thing I just got done paying it off. They let me pay it off in installments of $250 over the year. So that was kind of cool. So I own that now but that was my first big decision. My second one was how do I go about getting my product. How do I get these materials, this kit and I of course started in the United States first and I always, I never thought I would be someone that would ever sell something? But if I did, in my back in my head I wanted it to be USA. But what I learned I can't even buy a dumbbell in the United States. These people that sell them in huge quantities, they still buy them from China. So it forced me to look overseas and so that was scary. Because I'm just a personal trainer. I don't a business, I don't have an MBA. I've never dealt with; you know I’ve been the only place I’ve been out of the country is Canada. You know because we live in New York. It was an hour you know away and so I researched, and I read blog after blog after blog and I put together a framework of what successful people, what the common denominators were. So I dealt with my person, he had those and the biggest thing that he had was he got back to me every, I am like that. When someone wants something for me, I get back to him right away and he, every single email you know, and we tell every single day. I actually miss him. Because I haven't, you know we used to talk every single day. We put this, built this kit and everything and I can't wait to be able to place my next order with him you know. But it was just the research and looking at what other people's successes were, and I made sure that my person had all those and he's been amazing and I'm so thankful for him.

17:25

Ramesh: Excellent. So far things are going well. You are able to finance it and you found the right manufacturing partner. So anything that you could think of that did not go well the way you expected it during this journey

17:39

Michelle: I would say you know it's hard to look back and regret. Because you just, you don't know at the time you have to do the best you have with what you have at the time. You know fast forwarding where I am when I went to Vegas, one of my biggest concerns was how am I going to do everything. I don't have the money right now to pay for a staff. So I'm doing a lot of them and wearing a lot of the hats and so I was most nervous about the kidding process and getting those out. I wanted to be a top of the line. When my customers order, I wanted them to get a kit and I wanted to be efficient and I wanted to be able to log everything. I ordered 2500 units right from the start and I was just nervous about how am I going to manage all that and so I met a face to face fulfillment company when I was in Vegas and they really you know talked a big talk and they're great guys you know. But I do regret at this point getting the warehouse so soon and I would not have done that again. But at the time I didn't know how quickly kits were going to be going out and again I want my customer, customer service is the most important thing to me and if anybody has any issues with anything, not happy, I want to be there and make it right or give them their money back whatever. So I do wish I had not done the warehouse so soon and I hired a really top-of-the-line marketing company, because I wanted these kids to have top-of-the-line. These kids don't have in my opinion they don't have a fitness company that is just focusing on kids. In my opinion kids are an afterthought. We'll throw some clothes out to you, we'll give you some cute little you know cute little exercises to do. But the kids are more than cute Ramesh. Kids, you would not believe the kids, they have done my entire program. Every hundred and twenty-three exercises. So it starts from my program one comes in the kit, it's 13 exercises and by the time you get to program 12 Ramesh, you're pretty much an advanced weight, you've learned weight training. You will walk into any class in any gym and know the exercises and if these kids weren't capable of doing it, then I wouldn't have my videos and my posters that are shot. They're young, these kids were amazing, and I last Wednesday went to an elementary school here in Tallahassee and I exercised 608 kids. Kids kindergarten through fifth grade every eight minutes. These kids from the minute big and small and happy kids and unhappy kids, you could see it all and I'm telling you, the minute we started that exercise, these kids’ faces lit up and they loved it and we just have to capture them early and that's the key and that's why I went with this marketing company. Because I wanted these kids to know that's how serious I am. We are going to bring you the best programming and the best exercise equipment, no more fluff. You all can do it and we just need to let your parents know it's that you can do it you know. Because there's a stigma around kids and weight training and that's some of the difficulty I’ve had as well is you know teaching people that children can absolutely do this.

21:12

Ramesh: Wow this is interesting. So now you've done the product, you've done the packaging and then to some extent you started the promotional aspects of it. How about the price? How did you end up deciding and what the right price is for your product?

21:29

Michelle: And that's something I still continue to struggle with. What I did was I went to Amazon and Walmart and I looked at the equipment they had comparable to what I had, and I put myself right in the middle, a little bit closer to Walmart. Higher than Walmart, but less than Amazon. And I added it all up and then I put a value on my programming. I said one, nobody else has programming like this, that is step they can go into the home. Well it's progressive, everybody else you've got, they might have a video, but that's it. Once you don't get videos, it doesn't take those moves and keep tweaking them make you better and better and better and so I just you know and I only have 2500 units and so I put it all together and I came up with my 109 and 119 and you know I still struggle is that too much. You know I don't want to make; I want my product to be for every child and so that's my goal is to get my prices to the point where you know it's accessible for everyone.

22:31

Ramesh: Okay so you're trying to balance between a profit and the value that you want to deliver to customers? Yeah that's yeah, I'm sure you'll find out as you progress. So that's good. As we come towards the tail end of the podcast, so let's talk about Michelle, I mean definitely you have a lot of Drive that comes through you know through this discussion and then you have a lot of passion. So you've been in the fitness industry for quite some time. So based on your journey, anything that you can share with the listeners. You’re is a product business as opposed to like an online business or something like that. So you have a very unique, you know a lot of unique things that you could share. What are the things that you could share with would-be entrepreneurs?

23:18

Michelle: You have to have an extreme amount of patience. I've had to learn patience and there's so many people that you're dealing with and I think when you're an entrepreneur you're pretty much usually a go-getter and you're right on top of things and not everybody's like that. There's so many people and so you know there's just, in life is life and I do feel like there's a bigger plan happening and timing is everything and so I’ve had to learn patience and when things don't go my way to just sit back and you know I’ve done the best I can and I'm just going to you know, but things happen when they're supposed to happen and so patience is key. A network of people is key. The support that I’ve had you know and I know some people I’ve realized you know I know other people that have started this journey, you know they've still been super successful and they don't have the support and I commend them. Because that's one thing no matter who I tell Ramesh, they just fall in love with my product, with my vision. They get goose bumps; they immediately go and start calling people and you know I feel blessed. Because that encourages me and you know, but I’ve had it pretty easy as far as the support and so I commend those people that, if you've got something that not everybody is jumping up and down, you know they may just not see it right now. And so you know you know you've got to have that gut feeling that and you got to believe and so people that encourage you affirms your belief. But also even if people don't, you know you still have to have that core belief that I know I'm on to something. I know you know. So those have been my two biggest things, patience and support and I guess just the faith aspect of it. You know just believing that there's you know when you're doing something good, that you're trying to help the world that you know that's going to come back around on you and you're going to get some help there and so I hope that helps somebody.

25:27

Ramesh: Definitely and in your case, I think I also see that you've already, because you're a fitness instructor you've been observing your market for quite some time. So you know your market and then the market viability aspect, is it a viable market or not? I think you're figuring it out as you go along. So that's something also is very very important. But excellent Michelle. I mean you're definitely I know very very passionate about what you're doing. I you know wish you the best of luck and yeah and Michelle thank you very much for coming. Michelle Miller with www.myfirstworkout.com.

26:03

Michelle: Thank you Ramesh, I appreciate your time so much.

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Yes you can and it takes just one hour a day. I’m Ramesh Dontha, a serial entrepreneur, host of the highly rated Agile Entrepreneurship Podcast, and award-winning & best selling author. My books in the 60 Minute Startup series give aspiring entrepreneurs all the tools and steps they need to start profitable, money-making ventures in just one hour per day.

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