I took classes to learn about business in college. Pretty much all I learned was actually working in the field from selling cars, to Kirby Vaccums door-to-door. School is important but they can’t teach you common sense there. Either you got it or you don’t.

My grandfather had his own business and my Father was an Engineering Consultant so I guess wanting to be my own boss was in my own blood. Also, after doctors check out my case of ADD, they said I was the worst case they ever tested and won’t amount to anything in life. This drove me to prove the haters wrong and to be my own boss. Pretty much every job I had I got fired from because I saw idiots doing the job wrong in my eyes. They have different motives than I did I guess and wasn’t scared to speak up. I have always told people “how it is.” Sorry, but I’m honest and tell it how I see it. Some people can handle that, most can’t.

In this industry I couldn’t tell you, it’s all about taste. I think Wheels Boutique is modeled by my personal style and look of cars. As you can see, our cars are not over done with exaggerated body kits,  color changing paint jobs, and so many mods that you don’t even know what car it is. Why destroy the lines of a car? For that start with a different platform.

I started in the wheel industry as a salesman in 1994 and ended up managing a large wheel mail order company. Within weeks I out sold everyone and just loved it. It wasn’t a necessity, rather more for experience and to learn the industry, you have to start somewhere.

I hated selling off the shelf cheap wheels since I already had clientele interested in custom wheels since I was building custom spec wheels that no one else could. This started with custom HRE wheels in 1997 at the company I was working. I couldn’t really service my high end clients so, I decided I need to do this for myself. In 1999, I opened Wheels Boutique.

Well Wheels Boutique started in a 500 sq ft location in 1999 only doing mail order. Now we have 2 built locations with 3rd one in the works. Main warehouse now is 15000 sq ft and our retail location is 3500 sq ft. Employees including myself and my partner Carlos bring the total up to 21 total now.

My partner Carlos was brought on in the beginning for help. Carlos ran Wheels Boutique and all the accounting from day 1 and he is Vice President and now a brother to me.  You need someone you can really trust.

Well in 1999 there weren’t any three piece companies like there is now. Back then you had HRE, Racing Hart and Lowenhart who really ran the game. There weren’t forums like now and everything was magazine ads. We got rolling by offering wheels to high end cars in which no one else knew the fitments/specs to which got me my nick name ‘wheel god’. We know specs enough to push wheels to the limits.

Honestly, I wish it was like back then where you don’t have everyone just slapping a name on no name brand wheels and saying it’s the best. They’re just over whelming the market and honestly customers end up with junk.

That’s why at Wheels Boutique we don’t sell no name brands. People just don’t understand why companies like HRE have been around forever and the engineering that goes into building wheels. I won’t name names but you have to see how many wheels we see that fail and honestly put a customer’s life at risk. This is why we don’t sell those brands. So if brands aren’t listed by us, do your research because we did.

In 2003 we became HRE’s largest dealer in the world and have never looked back since. We also have been the largest dealer for a lot of other brands but most recently when we acquired ADV1 as a new brand, we also became their largest dealer overnight.

Well depends which location. Obviously our retail store mostly does walk-ins, while our main warehouse does everything but most sales are phone orders.  We service people all over the world who can’t get the look they want until they call Wheels Boutique.

Honestly what recession? I’m very proud to say that. We have seen some dips in our market but really never affected us! Either we’re that good or god really likes us. I’ll take either one.

The most important aspect is fitment. Anyone can bolt on a wheel but will it be right?  Wheels with a perfect lip, not so cambered that the wheels look like they face the sky but ‘hella flush’ style, making it fit so perfect that it looks like the wheel and car just flow perfect.

We don’t like to make cars look like rainbows and incorporate 5 different colors into wheels, especially if they aren’t part of the original car color. The most popular finish is two tone brushed with polished windows.

I believe the main brands we carry have the perfect style to fit every taste and gap in the wheels industry. I guess that can be easily proven as we’re the world’s largest dealer for what most people believe to be the hottest brand in the wheels game: HRE and ADV1!

Main trends in 2011 was concave or conical design as some manufactures use different terms. But still the hottest to date is forged monoblock 1 piece design. People really like the durability and style of a forged 1 piece design. As for something new I have seen a few things in the works that will change the wheel game again.

Buy mine cause I won’t do this again lol. It’s a very very hard industry. I have seen countless stores in every avenue open and close in my last 12 years doing this. It’s not easy and it’s not about how much money you have. Selling is all about reputation, style, and image.

I’m not a dreamer in that way but I hope to have a larger operation and more involved in wholesale as were expanding that department as we speak. A few more retail store wouldn’t hurt either.

Success to me is being content with what you have, although I do consider myself content but I always want more for me and my company and strive for it daily. As of today I feel very successful. Especially after doing what others have tried to do and failed, I guess makes anyone feel good.

I really don’t know what to say without sounding cliché — but if you truly believe and want something bad enough you will accomplish it.

I used to live in Miami, for 18 years to be exact. Back in 1996 my wife Mei, brother Gene and I started messing around with cars. My first car was an Eagle Vision. I was the first guy in my high-school with 17″ wheels (when 17’s were huge). After the Vision, I moved on to my first import – an Acura Legend that I also put aftermarket wheels on.

A few months later I got an Acura 3.2 TL, which along with a pair of Bomex Accords (one owned by my wife and one by my brother), were the cars that really set things in motion for us. My Acura 3.2 TL, was the first “complete” car we ever designed and built. This was in the late 90’s, so things were quite a bit different than they are now. It had a custom Dupont paint job, custom Ground Control coilovers (we had to fly to San Francisco to have them made), custom interior, a custom roll cage, custom exhaust, custom brakes, and the first set of VeilSide Andrew Racing Mesh wheels in the US.

My Acura was one of the first cars out of Florida to be featured in Super Street Magazine, and in less then a year we were able to get more than a dozen features, which was a huge deal at the time. My wife’s Accord also made the cover of Honda Tuning, and things continued to snowball from there.

In 1996, my brother Gene and I started our own wholesale company in Miami, FL called Star Performance. We were the official distributor for companies like Ground Control and Team Dynamics. After Star Performance I ran a couple retail automotive stores in Miami, and in 2001 I went to work for Toucan Industries. I started in their sales department and over time moved into marketing and building their display cars for Toucan and Circuit City. While working at Toucan, my wife, brother and good friend Emilio, worked for NIRA and NDRA, as their technical support team. This job allowed us to travel the country to various races, and opened a lot of doors for us while we were still living in South Florida. In July of 2003 I became the Executive Editor of HCI and B/Scene magazines. Now I own Tjin Edition, which builds and designs cars for OEM vehicle manufacturers, endorses products for some of the most amazing brands in the industry, and (of course) we have the Tjin Edition RoadShow, a national tour that goes to more than 30 automotive events each year.

I have been very fortunate and am truly blessed to be in the position that I am currently in, and all of the above mentioned jobs and companies I have worked for have helped me and my company get to where we are today.

When I moved here in 2003 I scheduled a meeting with the Scion marketing director. We had designed and built plenty of cars before in Miami, but never a car for a OEM manufacture. She asked me to present them with a my concept for the Scion tC. We pitched them our idea for a new Scion tC, and a few weeks later I got the call that they wanted me to build them a wide body Scion tC. I had just moved to Cali so I still didn’t really have any connections here, so I sent the tC back to Miami to be built with my team at E&V Motorsports. As a side bonus, the Tjin Edition tC was used in all the Scion advertising in 2004, including more then 500 billboards across the US, and they also asked me to do a Scion radio commercial, which was an awesome experience.

I own Tjin Edition and the Tjin Edition RoadShow. Those are my babies, those are my passion. They are my tools to continue growing in this industry and help our partners take their companies and products to the next level.

After the 2011 SEMA Show, I became the Automotive Marketing Director position for the Air Power Group, which includes the Vortech, Paxton, and Lysholm Supercharger brands, and I absolutely love it. I have been working with Vortech since 2005, when I had a supercharged Infiniti G35 coupe. Since then, we have owned and built multiple supercharged vehicles, including a Vortech supercharged Pontiac G8 GT, a pair of Chevy Camaro SS’s, a Lysholm supercharged Camaro SS, a Vortech supercharged Ford Mustang GT and a Paxton supercharged Mustang GT. Plus Vortech, Paxton and Lysholm have been part of the Tjin Edition RoadShow for the last three years, so taking the position was a no-brainer for me, as I live the products and I love nothing more than marketing great products.

Between designing and building cars for our OEM partners, the Tjin Edition RoadShow, and being a marketing director, I am busy 24-7, 365 days a year and I wouldn’t want it any other way (I am sure my wife has a different opinion though).

Gene Tjin is my younger brother, and we have been working together since day 1. Gene is 18 months younger than me, but he isn’t just my brother, he is my closest and best friend. We have always designed cars together, and after my wife and I moved to SoCal in July of 2003, Gene followed later that year. Gene has built his fair share of high profile vehicles including a Honda Accord, Scion xB, Infiniti G35 and G37, Volvo S40 and V50, and OEM projects for Honda and GM including a 2009 Honda Fit and 2011 Chevy Camaro.

My wife, Mei Tjin, has been along this automotive journey with me since 1995 when we met. She was my high school sweetheart and she saw my passion for cars from the first day we met. Mei’s first car was a fully decked out Honda Accord with a H22a Prelude motor, Advan wheels, big brakes, custom paint job, full interior and Bomex body kit. Here car was on the cover of Honda Tuning back in 2003. Since then we have started a family and now she drives the Ford Explorer that we built for Ford Motor Company for last years SEMA show.

Nothing that I do would be possible without the support and backing of my wife, she believes in me and that gives me the confidence to think outside the box and push the envelope!

There are two things that instantly come to mind. The first thing is moving from Miami to SoCal and second is working for myself. I have always been driven to succeed, and working for myself allows me the freedom to push the envelope and to think outside the box. I am a true believer that life experiences make you a better owner and business man. I have worked retail, sales, marketing and for such a huge variety of bosses since I was 16, that now I know what I want and how to make sure the job gets done. I believe that you have to be a boss that people want to work with and associate with, but also have to understand when to put your foot down and make sure that things get done in a professional and proper manner.

I am a stronger believer that everything happens for a reason, and I also believe that you have to put yourself out there and take risks for things to happen. Things didn’t just happen for us, we invested a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get to where we are today, and we continue to do that year in and year out. I worked 24-7 to grow my company, and to figure out how to continue bettering our RoadShow and our relationship with our partners. On the other hand, being out there and staying connected with as many people as possible, does allow things to happen for you when you least expect them to. Being in California definitely opened a lot of doors for us back in 2003, and it was our job to take advantage of those opportunities that happened during that time frame.

Very little sleep, work 24-7, determination, and most importantly a great supporting cast. I am very driven and passionate, but I understand there is only so much one person can do. Without the support of my wife, brother and the team that we have established over the last 7 years there is no way that I would be able to handle so many different projects at once. Having a team like we do, and being able to trust our team on the road like Ben and our staff is huge. Being able to have a shop like Unique Fabrication and LR Autobody here in Socal is an incredible bonus, as I know I can always count on them to get our cars done in a timely fashion, and more importantly done correct. Being able to rely on guys like Josh from Gurnade Design Firm really makes my job easier and fun at the same time. This isn’t a one man show, this a collective effort from a bunch of driven and passionate individuals, and even though I over see everything, I have enough trust in my team to make things happen.

We are all about simple is better, function and form. Back in 2003 I built a over the top “show car” a Nissan 240sx that won Best of Show at HIN’s and got all the glory, that car got over 33 magazine features and covers world wide. That was then and this is now, we have grown with the times and we have always been more about performance compared to bling. In 2005, I built a Nissan Skyline R34 Sedan with over 800hp and from there things really changed for us. Since we moved to Cali we have really broadened our approach to building cars, and we payed close attention to the street rod and hot rod scenes. Some people think our builds are too simple, but if you pay close attention to our builds you will see all the attention to details that go into our builds. Most of the OEM manufacturers are pretty good at letting us run with our creative designs, but every once in a while they will give their feedback. Usually it is about color, as sometimes you have to show them your vision and it takes some convincing to have them step outside the box.

Yeah, SEMA builds have a very tight deadline. Last year we had less then six weeks to completely transform a stock Chevy Sonic into a complete track / show car. The car wasn’t even out yet, so every single part had to be fabricated from scratch, and it went down to the wire. I am proud to say that our builds have never missed a deadline, and we always try to over deliver for our OEM partners and our clients.

Since 1996, we have built and designed close to a hundred cars, and about a third or so were personal builds. I can’t just choose one particular build, as I really enjoyed by Vortech Supercharged Pontiac G8 and Camaro SS and my Ford Explorer. I get the most out of my Explorer, as it is the first SUV we have ever designed and built, and I drive it everyday.

It is great and perfect for my two little ones. The Explorer was built in conjunction with Ford Motor Company, it debuted in their booth at SEMA last year, and won one of their Design Awards, which is always a huge honor.

My garage and drive way always change, as we rotate between our RoadShow cars and the cars I keep in SoCal. Currently I have my 757hp Vortech Supercharged Chevy Camaro SS, my 2012 Honda Civic Si Sedan, my Audio A4 Avant, and my 2012 Ford Explorer.

As I mentioned before I have a great partnership with Ford, GM and Honda. I am really looking forward to the opportunity to design the 2013 Ford Taurus SHO, Cadillac CTS-V Wagon, and the new Honda Accord.

To find out more information on Neil Tjin and the Tjin Edition Roadshow visit:

Of course, I think we all fall for get rich quick schemes. One tiny classified ad, no-money down real estate, tax-lein certificates, you name it. Ultimately, I wised up and realized that the only people getting rich on the “get rich program” was the program creator themselves, not the plan being sold. A lot of savvy Fastlaners recognize that there is more money in selling information on making money than the actual “making money” plan itself. Once you have, what I call, “Fastlane goggles”, spotting these contradictions becomes easy. And yes, while I’ve made millions in my own business, selling the wisdom and experience that I’ve learned along the way has the potential to make me more millions by virtue of Fastlane mathematics.

Countless failures. I lost count. However, in these failures I started to notice patterns. I was always buying into someone else’s dream, or Fastlane plan. I had to learn HOW to STOP being a swab of paint in someone else’s big picture. When you join an MLM company, you’re electing to be a swab of paint in a Fastlaners’ grand plan. When you join an affiliate program, you’re electing to be a cog in the wheel of a Fastlaner’s marketing plan. My failures always stemmed from being a guppy in a shark tank. Fastlane success comes from being the shark in the aquarium whereas everyone else takes the easy road and signs-on to be the guppy. I’d give up on ideas when the market clearly indicated that what I had to offer wasn’t needed, or wanted. I learned that the marketplace was the ultimate judge-n-jury — not my personal convictions, needs, wants, or desires. Frankly put, the market doesn’t give a crap about what you or I want. If you have something the market wants, the market gives you money.

All my business failures were the result of trying to start businesses that the market didn’t need. I was simply following the advice of gurus who said I should do what I love, or do what I know. I started a vitamin business. A car audio business. The list is pretty long. Unfortunately, what I loved, and what I knew — the market didn’t need. And if the market doesn’t need what you offer? You have to sell your soul for the cheapest price and/or spend a fortune on marketing. I soon realized that if you give the market something it needs in terms of value, money follows. In my first days of entrepreneurship, I was chasing money instead of chasing needs and utilizing a cracked foundation.

Well I hate to shatter the misconception of my haters, but I didn’t buy it at a domain registrar for 15 bucks. I bought it in the “aftermarket” — after I noticed the website for sale on a “domains for sale” website, I contacted the gentleman who owned it and made an offer. Needless to say, the 5-figure price tag at that time of my life, was the biggest purchase of my life — I financed most of it on my credit cards.

My initial vision was just to be a better, interactive alternative to the Yellow Pages (a flat-fee directory service) but by listening to customer feedback, I was able to morph it into so much more. We started as a directory service but soon learned that there was a better value proposition by offering a “pay-for-performance” model to advertisers where you only paid for the lead opportunities you received. Then we allowed advertisers to join for FREE to eliminate the risk proposition. To put it frankly, many businesses were tired of gambling on “upfront” advertising fees and then later learning that they paid $1000s for nothing in return. We put that risk to bed.

While driving a client to the airport, he asked me if I could recommend any limo companies in New York. I couldn’t. But I realized at that moment that if this gentleman had this issue, thousands of other people would too. Of course this was just the birth of the idea that led to many other problem-solving, value-adding ideas. For example, I also structured my business to be a risk-free advertising proposition for people and allowed services to join for free and only pay for the leads they received. If they received nothing, they paid nothing. At the time, nothing like this existed. If you paid to advertise thousands in any venue and received no business in return, you just lost a lot of money. This risk was troublesome to many businesses and I sought to solve it.

My current business which is a publishing company that controls the rights to my book, The Millionaire Fastlane as well as any other book projects I might oversee. Examined within the NECST commandments , it is a strong Fastlane candidate.

NEED: I thought that the market NEEDED to hear what I wrote in The Millionaire Fastlane. It is the book I wish I had when I was 20.

ENTRY: Not everyone can both write and publish a book.(Not print-on-demand, but actually own the company and all rights.)

CONTROL: I own the full rights to the book and currently, I am selling translation licenses to other publishing companies in other countries. (Another principle of Fastlaners; we should be net sellers/producers, not buyers/consumers.) After I sell rights, I earn royalties on sales in other countries.

SCALE: A book that has value and an audience can scale to tens of thousands of readers, if not millions.

TIME: The income producing asset is the book and it is on sale 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I make money while I sleep, just like I did with my internet company.

The essence of the Fastlane is a business that meets all 5 NECST commandments, or most of them.

The spaceship doors that open skyward as opposed to outward. When you’re 13 years old and you see that in person, your jaw just hits the ground. I never was into Ferrari’s although I think they too are visually stunning. To me, if Ferrari was a color it’d be white while Lamborghini would be black. My favorite color is black. When a Ferrari owner moves to the Lambo brand, many of us in the Lamborghini community often express the phrase “welcome to the Darkside” — an implication that Lambo guys hang with the likes of Darth Vadar. =)

I think I was 36. The Diablo was 34. The feeling is awesome, but fleeting — it’s great to accomplish your dreams but people don’t realize the hard work and effort required to get there. The person who you have to become to reach your dreams is more important that the rush of buying something tangible.

I live in Arizona – one of the few places in America where a top is not necessary. Anyone that knows cars, knows the M-Roadsters have that goofy toupee top. I can proudly admit that my Murcielago Roadster top has NEVER been on the car and has been stashed away in a closet for years. I stepped up to an Murcielago over a Diablo because my Diablo was always needing some type of service. My Murci, on the other hand, has been as reliable as my Toyota which is why I’ve owned it for a few years. I never was moved by the G.

My life story starts with my parents, who were born in the slums of Hong Kong and China. Before they met, they both came to the United States with just the shirts on their backs. My father told me that he was so poor that he resorted to sleeping at a YMCA. Both of them were too poor to afford a decent education when they grew up. So my mother got by by sewing clothes in a sweatshop in NYC’s Chinatown. Meanwhile, my father taught himself how to administer herbal medicine, and treated sick patients in Chinatown. Eventually my father and mother met through mutual friends and got married and had my older brother and me.

Like my brother, I went through the public school system and studied hard. I did not want to disappoint my parents, because they worked hard to give me this opportunity. It would have been foolish and irresponsible if I wasted it. Although my father worked from 8 AM to 9 PM, he still spent the night either studying his medical books, teaching me important life lessons, or challenging me at chess. My mother always made sure that we got to school on time, signed us up for extracurricular activities, and limited the amount of TV we watched. Because of this great parenting, I was able to attend a top college in California majoring in computer science and computer engineering. I spent my spare time in college creating and selling computer programs as well as developing websites for different businesses. After I graduated from college, I started my career at a big tech company.

However, a few months after I had started work, my father passed away unnaturally. My mother suffered from severe depression because of this, so I moved back to NYC to be with her and started working at Columbia University. This was around the time when the iPhone app store started accepting new apps. At the job, I asked them if they could give me a MacBook as my work computer, because you needed an Apple computer to code and submit apps at the time. As soon as I got my MacBook, I learned how to code in Objective-C on my own by reading books and playing with the code. Ever since I was young, I had a fascination with learning new skills and using those skills to help people or create things that helped people. My father was the same way, and as you can see, he was a great role model for me.

I chose computer science, because I had already been making websites and coding C++ and Java programs in high school. I created my first website in junior high school and learned how to build my own computer even before that. As a child, I was always curious about how things worked, so I would take things apart and put them back together. That is how I learned to build my own computer, and why I also majored in computer engineering. I was also one of the first people on the internet back when I was still in elementary school and one of the first people in my school to have his own website. Because our family used to be so poor, my brother and I used to go around the neighborhood during trash day and pick up computers that people had thrown away. We would salvage parts from the computer and either use them as spare parts or add it to our existing computers. I did not even get to buy my own computer until high school. To this day, I still build my own computers and try to stay on the cutting edge of technology by learning and adopting new technologies on my own.

My college and several other companies hired me to be a web developer while I was attending college there. They were all part-time jobs that paid well. Before then, I learned how to code HTML, CSS, and Javascript while I was in middle school. By the beginning of high school, I was already making animated and interactive websites using Flash. This was my first crack at beautiful user-friendly interfaces for users. I eventually taught myself other advanced languages, such as PHP and SQL, to further develop my web developing skills.

My two college majors did not focus much on web development. They focused on C++, which was a programming language. Since I was a major gamer, I used to code programs for games like World of Warcraft. During my freshmen year, I was selling these programs and making more than what my father was making. By the second half of my freshmen year, I was starting to pay off my own college tuition.

My first app was a browser that removed the toolbars, did not save your browsing history, and allowed you to view websites while offline. It was a great alternative to Safari. One of my first successful apps was called News Feed Elite, which was the #1 news app back in 2009. Using the technologies I developed from my browser app, I made an app that made it easy to view various news sites. It was successful, because it allowed you to scroll through websites by tilting your phone, save news articles to be read at a later time (even offline), block ads, share sites to Twitter/Facebook, and other things. It basically paved the way for the other popular news apps you see today. All of my apps were paid apps, so I made money from satisfied customers who used my apps.

5-0 Radio is currently and has been the #1 police scanner app for the iPhone since it was created in 2009. To date, it has been downloaded by at least 10 million people. It currently is the #1 news app, and at its peak, it was in the top 10 paid apps in various countries. People had many uses for this app from monitoring crime in their neighborhood to getting live alerts about hazards in the region to keeping in touch with family members who were in the force. People have used this app to get early tornado warnings, hurricane warnings, flood warnings, and other news before the radio and TV broadcast them. It made it to the top charts after I added internet radio stations to the app and created a free ad-supported version of the app. Other copycat apps have since popped up and saturated the market. However, my 5-0 Radio app is still a top seller and is the among the top 100 most downloaded app in 2010 and 2011 according to Apple’s end-of-the-year report.

It was never about luck. Apps have to click with the users. The litmus test is to see if even you will use the app yourself. That is the test I do whenever I code a new app. If I am not using the app myself, then I think it is a failure. At that point, I’d either scrap the idea or keep improving the app until it got to the point where I liked using it.

News Feed Elite was one of those apps that I put a lot of time and effort into. I’d listen to user feedback and implement the changes they wanted. I’d use the app everyday and implement the changes that I’d like to see myself. By making an app that people want to use, the app promotes and markets itself, because users will tell their friends and family to download the app.

I grew up in New York City, where an emergency vehicle blares its sirens every few hours. There was a curiosity as to what was going on, so I did my research on police scanners. That’s when I realized that it would be great if I could have the police scanner technology on the iPhone, so that I could listen to it even if I’m not home.

Since then, I coded several other successful apps, such as Drudge Report, HiDef Radio, and Razzi Photo Editor. I’ve also recently released an alternative version of the 5-0 Radio app called, Police Scanner+ under my new company, Rego Apps. Currently, it is the #2 police scanner app for the iPhone/iPad and is quickly catching up to 5-0 Radio. Its focus is on a cool futuristic user interface with more emphasis on the music stations that are available in the app.

I also recently published a game for Fancy Pencil LLC called, “Slash It!” Fancy Pencil LLC consists of established software developers and designers, and I am only responsible for coming up with the game ideas and marketing them. The company does all of the game coding and graphics. “Slash It!” was released on March 9th, 2012, and was the first iOS game I ever published. If my marketing strategies still work and people see how fun this game is, this game will be a big hit.

We linked up because we had a mutual friend. He and I both knew the president of the Lamborghini club of America for the northeast region. He recommended us to meet because we both had a lime green Gallardo, moved to Orlando, and made our fortunes from websites. So Robert and I exchanged emails and met in June of 2011. We realized that we shared many similarities and became close friends quickly. A few weeks later, I attended his final presentation for college, which was about Razzi. We both agreed that the missing ingredient to Razzi was a powerful app. Since I pretty much was finished with my 5-0 Radio project and had spare time, I decided to take on the Razzi project in exchange for a share of the company. So, by Fall of 2011, we released the first version of the Razzi app. The app was well received, and the reviews have been very positive. Some very big YouTube Celebrities, such as Charles Trippy and Toby Turner (Tobuscus), have been uploading pics through the app on a daily basis and earning high ad revenue via our Google Adsense revenue sharing program.

My next project for my company, Fancy Pencil, is on making video games for the iPhone. We recently released a game for the iPhone and iPad called Slash It! We already have more games in the pipeline. As for my own personal coding projects, you’ll just have to wait and see. One of the ways of being successful in the app business is by being the first to do something new with an app.

Spend a lot of time on the icon and screenshots. Those two things are probably the first two things that customers look at. Customers tend to judge apps by the quality of the icons and whether the screenshots look interesting. Even the description of the app is rarely read. My next major advice is to address the negative feedback that you receive. Do not take constructive criticism personally. Instead, try to fix your bugs and add the features that users are requesting. If your app’s reviews are not constantly averaging with 4.5 stars or higher, then you need to either fix your app or come up with a new app.

The build date for the car is June 2012. It will be one of the first 2013 models to hit the shores of the U.S. The wait period was over a year. Currently, I have all the options available for the car. I also chipped in for the Ad Personam program, which is only available in the newer 2013 models and not available to the first models. I have plans for a rare never-before-seen body color for the car.

The body will be in red carbon fiber, the trims will be in black carbon fiber, the rims will be a matte graphite, and the brakes calipers will be in red. This will be the only Aventador in this color scheme, unless someone copies me in the future. I will post pictures of it on my Razzi account when I get it.

As for mods, I have plans for adding a twin turbo on it if it doesn’t become my daily driver. If it does become my new DD, then I might mod the LP560-4 instead.

Rego Apps

Smartest Apps

Razzi

Amy Sangster (AS): I grew up as the youngest of 3 children in Brisbane, Australia. My mother was a primary school teacher, and my father the manager of a government organization. We all lived together, until I was 15 and my parents divorced. The effect this had on me, coupled with the fact that I was a perfectionist and very into sport, saw me become anorexic and depressed. I began to get better when my mother, brother and I moved out, and was back to being myself again after about a year. This was the first experience I remember that showed me the massive part mindset plays in life. Most people are saddened when they hear that kind of thing, but I wouldn’t be the person I am today without these experiences, so I’m actually glad my story began that way.

AS: After graduating I was a flight attendant for a little under a year while I decided what I really wanted to do. All I knew was that I didn’t want a regular 9-5 office job. I graduated with grades that allowed me entry to basically any university course I chose, but given I wasn’t sure what I wanted from it, I thought I may as well see as much of the world as possible while I made some decisions. Although it wasn’t the “glamorous” job as it’s sometimes depicted to be, I’m a big believer that everything happens for a reason. My time flying certainly confirmed that.

AS: During the time I met Richard Branson, is when I decided I wanted to do more with my life. This led me to study finance at Queensland University of Technology, which after studying for a year and a half, taught me purely how to work for a company rather than build my own.

I knew after attending the first class that it wasn’t for me, but decided to persist and try work my way through, as initially I didn’t have any alternate plans in mind.

AS: My good friend Lewis Mocker introduced me to Forex trading. I always knew of Lewis as we went to high school together, however, we only really began talking when a mutual friend of ours properly introduced us to one another. He has been trading or learning about trading basically all his life, as his father (a trader of almost 30 years) opened his first brokerage account for him at age 8.

I am always interested in learning new things and when I saw his flashing monitors that looked impossible to decipher, I knew I wanted to understand and conquer it! Lewis pointed me in the direction of a few websites that explained the basics and I was hooked. I realized the flashing numbers were not as intimidating as I first thought, and that if I could succeed at that, it could provide an alternative to the university or job options I so greatly despised.

AS: I was fortunate enough to be taught correctly the first time, therefore I learned the theory behind it over a one to two month period. There’s mountains of information online which is impossible to sift through if you don’t know where to start and who to trust. That’s why I’m extremely grateful I had someone to help me get started and teach me the mindset necessary right from day one.

Although it sounds cliche, mindset in trading is the difference between winners and losers, not strategy. Sure, you do require a profitable strategy, but the reason so many people are unsuccessful over the long term is because their mindset renders them unable to implement their strategies. I traded a practice account for about 4 months, as I wanted to become emotionally detached from the market, while proving to myself that A) the strategy was profitable and B) I could be consistent. As I had been taught correctly I found the transition from theory to practice to be an easy one, and I haven’t looked back since.

AS: I would NEVER recommend using a trading bot. While strategies can be taught, I definitely believe there is an aspect of human thought required to correctly execute them. The bots may perform exceptionally well for a short period of time, but what about when the markets change? What if there is another event like the earthquake in Japan or a government intervention that has a massive effect on the market? A bot is not going to react and respond to this the same as a human. It is easy for people who are unfamiliar with trading to get suckered into these systems that require no effort and promise exponential returns.

We will be offering 3 tiers of membership initially which are priced as follows:

> FREE

> Silver – $399 (one time payment)

> Gold – $599 (one time payment)

We’ve kept prices as low as possible so that everyone has the opportunity to get involved. Most trading education is typically presented through seminars, which pushes the prices out to approximately $5,000. We believe online courses are much more convenient and cost effective. Full details on what each membership includes will be available on the website.

Our thinking around the free membership was that Lewis and I personally wouldn’t purchase anything, especially education, without getting a feel for what’s contained in the rest of the course and the teaching style used first. Our free members get to check out our first lesson and understand the basics of FX, before jumping into a paid membership. The Silver and Gold course allows members access to our full set of lessons, the main differences being the one on one support and journaling software included in the Gold package.

AS: Unless you’re extremely lucky, there will always be times where things don’t go as planned or your motivation plateaus. I think one of the biggest things I had to deal with was the negativity received from others. Given I don’t exactly fit the mold of someone you’d typically expect to work in my industry; people have strong opinions about what I do and how I do it. At first, it affected me a fair bit and my motivation suffered. I’ve learnt now that it would be the same regardless of who I am and what I’m doing. The fact is that if you’re doing something different, you need to be prepared to face opposition- the best thing you can do is use it to fuel your fire.

AS: After experiencing traditional education, my aim is to make alternates to this more widely known and easily accessible. I am disgusted by the education system, and the way it suppresses creativity in lifestyle. From the first day we attend school, we are taught to achieve good grades so we can apply for the best jobs, and ultimately work in them until we retire at 50 or 60.

At no time did my teachers ever promote entrepreneurship or an alternate way of life. My goal is to provide information on how to create a more prosperous lifestyle and ensure it is readily available to people from all walks of life. I was fortunate enough to be introduced to currency trading early on, which is why I launched Infinite Prosperity with my business partner Lewis Mocker, so others can follow suit.

AS: Sure is. Because of Visa laws I had to leave the states for a couple of months and was initially looking to sell my car. The car’s being worked on as we speak by Covert Tuning Dynamics, and should be complete by the time I’m back in the states (a few months).

AS: New opportunities present themselves everyday, so it’s hard to say exactly what I’ll be up to next. One thing I am certain of is that each day I’ll set aside 20 minutes to trade, and that I’ll spend the other 23 hours and 40 minutes doing something I love!

I grew up like a regular middle class child. I certainly wasn’t born into money but I’ve always been very entrepreneurial-minded.  I remember I was really into drawing in grade school.  I remember selling drawings and then got into mowing yards, basically anything that allowed me to earn money.  I liked the idea of being able to work for yourself and capitalized on that.

I went to Georgia Tech for Mechanical Engineering.  I have always been very interested in the mechanics of how things work.  I like to be the jack of all trades, the master of none.  I want to know how everything works, know a little about a lot. Being interested about things in that manner growing up made mechanical engineering very fitting to go into.  Having said that, I never did graduate, but I’m actually still kind of frozen in my senior year at Tech. I had dropped out in good academic standings.  I can go back at any point and finish it if I wanted to.  At this point, I don’t need to jump through hoops to get a piece of paper that’s not going to benefit myself.

I worked with a group of friends at a company involving drag racing engines.  I didn’t have any vested interest in this. I didn’t have any ownership in the business but for several years, I helped grow the business.  We kind of collectively worked together as a group of four guys that just didn’t want to have a boss telling us what to do and grew this business that became eventually, over just for a short amount of time, a multi-million dollar business that is huge in drag racing and has since ventured into a number of other things.

That was a very valuable opportunity because it allowed me to be able to try a few things, suggest a few things, and see them go into action without having anything of my own.  It wasn’t my own company.  I wanted to see it succeed for the benefit that the more the company made, then the more money that would be available for payroll.  We could all make more money at the same time, and I did not sweat it because it wasn’t my finances or my time that were at stake here.

Through advertising in a number of places, starting with advertising on eBay.  We also bought ad space on racingjunk.com, which was a huge site in drag racing so there are a lot of guys who are looking for car haulers there.  You’ve got to have a little bit of budget for advertising to get something to get going.

I learned a lot through SEO (search engine optimization).  Uniquely enough, in the trailer industry, a lot of the business is still very old school.  Nobody makes use of social media.  They don’t understand the importance of search engine optimization.  These are websites that were built in 1996.  They are not using a content management platform.  Half the links are dead links when you try to click on them.  They don’t understand that our generation, the people that are becoming the buying power of all these respective companies, we go online to find anything. I didn’t know a lot about specifically how search engine optimization worked, I just knew that it’s very important.

For example, you would see an ad for a Netflix offer where you can get a free month of Netflix. On our site, you would you earn points towards this offer.  So, if you want to do a free one month trial of Netflix, you’re going to earn 800 points to do it.  Well, 800 points is worth about $8 so you can do anything from cash out that money through PayPal, redeem it for an Amazon gift card, Hollister, or different clothing companies, etc.  Simply put, you can get gift cards or cash for doing offers.  Even smaller things like simple surveys.  There is a huge opportunity out there to be able to earn money so it’s great for the younger demographic.

It was about eight months of revenue.  I learned that 8-10 months of revenue is about what you will pay for a site.  If you have a site that can earn, say, $10,000 a month, you would expect to pay about $80,000-$100,000 for it. If you keep it doing the same thing in 8-10 months’ time, you’ve now got something that has paid for itself and you just have $10,000 a month to blow on whatever you want.

It had laid dormant so a lot of the users had left and weren’t really interested in it anymore so it wasn’t doing very much money. It’s the first time that I’ve actually taken an established business, purchased it, and tried to get it rolling again.  That is something I’m heavily involved in right now.  I’m really excited about it.  It’s fun because I like a challenge. I enjoy the entrepreneurial style of starting something from scratch and breathing life into it. Silent Rewards is fun because it’s my first venture into the whole affiliate marketing scene.  Somebody else has already done big things with it but is not doing it right now.  It’s fun because it’s an opportunity and definitely a challenge.

The main thing that we do is we build after market clutches for Lamborghini and Ferrari. We use Kevlar for the actual clutch material, the same material used in bulletproof vests. We offer a dual friction set up which is going to be a Kevlar and ceramic.  Basically, the benefits of these things as many people know in the exotic car industry, the stock clutch in the cars does not last long.  It’s for a number of reasons.

Let’s take Lamborghini for example. The Gallardo is one of the highest produced exotic cars of all time. The Gallardo uses a ten and a half inch twin disc clutch while they are trying to keep a low center of gravity, keep a small rotational weight, they made the clutch very small.  The material they used, it just wears really fast. In many instances, the clutches last at 6,000-8,000 miles with 13,000-15,000 miles being about the average.  The use of it wasn’t a problem because it would take somebody a long time to put 13,000-15,000 miles on an exotic car.  Now, Audi owns Lamborghini and the cars have Audi technology so everything about the car from the engine to the brakes to any other area could easily be a 100,000+ mile car and that’s becoming much more mainstream knowledge so people are actually starting to daily drive their exotic.  So you’re seeing a lot of Gallardos out there now at 70,000-80,000 miles on them.  There’s no reason the engine can’t go longer than any other part.  The only weak point in these cars and the only significant expense in ownership is just the clutch itself.

You’re going to pay around $7,000-$8,000 for parts and labor, and you’re going to be doing that around about every 10,000 miles or so.  It also depends on location, how hilly the area is, or driving style, how you drive the car, you may be seeing only about 10,000 miles.  It’s not unheard of at all.  In 30,000 miles, you paid three times for parts and labor.

Let’s say you’re at $7,000, during your ownership, you spent $21,000 to drive the car 30,000 miles not counting all the other expenses for brakes and what not.  The biggest expense for ownership is the clutches.  We built something that will last about 300% longer so you’re going to have three times the life.  You’re going to buy one clutch for every three.  You’re going to pay the installation one time for every three, and then there are other benefits too.  The clutches will withstand most power and torques if you’re wanting to do more modifications.  We’ve had one of our clutches behind a twin turbo Lamborghini Gallardo that’s making 1,000 horse power to the wheels and still has not slipped.  It has no problem withholding that and again, it’s not in the back of the guy’s mind every time he goes to drive it wondering how much more worn his clutch is before he has to spend another $7,000.

We do installs here as well as we have a number of dealers and then there are number of independent shops that carry our product.  You’re talking about $2,000 to install it and around $3,500 depending on which clutch you’re getting so you’re going to spend roughly $5,000. You’ll spend less at one time than you would have the one time for the stock one and only going to do it one third as often.  It sells itself.

For me I knew that a dealership is not going to install an after market clutch so I didn’t want to reach people that they take their cars to the dealership for maintenance.  My money would be best spent reaching do it yourself folks. I realized the best place to advertise is going to be Lamborghini Talk, it’s a forum and I had been a member on the site for a while and noticed that there were a huge group of do it yourselfers on there.  A lot of guys change their own clutches and if they didn’t, they would most certainly save money by going to an independent shop and they understood that these guys are just as competent to work on the cars as the dealership was.  Because of that, it was a great place to advertise. We bought a banner.  We were given names on there where we are a supporting vendor and we could advertise on there and tell people about our products.  I realized that was a great place.  So that was where we started.  I would try and answer tech questions on there because being a supporting vendor, we are able to have a big signature banner and things like that and so as I’m answering tech questions, we’re constantly advertising as well.  That was the first area where I started advertising.

I have a Lamborghini Gallardo and when I take that car out anywhere, one of the first questions I get asked every time is what advice could you give me?  What can I do to replicate that?  I feel like I don’t consider myself as somebody that has made it.  I feel like there are a lot of things I want to do and I’m nowhere near having done those things, but I do feel that I know a little bit at this point.   The one thing that I recommend is don’t get caught up in that rat race.  In America, everybody is keeping up with the Joneses.  I would say 90% of households are paycheck to paycheck.  When you do that, you totally kill the opportunity to take an opportunity that could be that one big thing and can run with it.  You don’t have that opportunity because you don’t the ability to harness that. If you don’t live paycheck to paycheck and you live within your means, I feel like that’s the biggest piece of advice I could have because that provides the opportunity for you to be able to grab that moment, take it, and run with it. Everybody knows that it takes money to make money.  That’s how capitalism works and so in America, we have a lot of opportunities at our fingertips that pass people by because they are paycheck to paycheck.  They don’t have the ability to be able to capitalize when they need to.

Let’s say for example you saw a huge business opportunity become available and you could grab that up for $30,000, take it, and run with it.  $30,000 really, if we’re honest, is not a lot of money.  That’s what a lot of people that don’t make much money will spend on a car.  The only difference is they are financing it and trying to pay for it every several years and all that. I’ve seen people where if they were given a raise $500 a month, they will go out and buy a vehicle that they finance that cost $475 a month as their car now.  Now, you’re back to square one.  You’re driving a nicer car in the meantime but you’re driving a depreciating asset and kissing away your bonus that you would have had every month as just extra money to do whatever you wanted.  I think that’s the biggest thing I’ve learned.  Living within your means provides the opportunity to capitalize on the moment that you need to get a lot going.

I feel like I haven’t done anything that anybody else couldn’t do.  I’d like to think I’m an intelligent person but there are a lot of intelligent people out there.  They just are okay with not doing anything more than just the bare minimum or they don’t realize how easy it is to do something more.  I guess I would like to just encourage everybody to challenge themselves.  If it seems like it’s a big opportunity, don’t be afraid to fail.  If you do it right, you probably won’t fail anyways, but if you do, you’re no worse off than when you started.

In regards to image and perception, you are what you are perceived to be and that’s the one thing that the internet has provided an insane opportunity for.  You can put out a vibe.  I’m not saying lie about your business. I’m saying you can establish yourself as a big player in the industry before having necessarily solidified that spot. While still just being a rising star, you can already be seen as the go-to business in that industry. People are more willing to buy if you come across as professional and knowledgeable — it gives you an automatic head start.

I guess the other advice is do something that you’re passionate about.  If you’re passionate about it, it’s not work.  I work seven days a week but to me it doesn’t seem like it because it’s not working.  It’s almost like this is my new project.  This is not a new business.  This is the newest project and for me, it’s like it’s here and I want to get it to here.  I’m not looking to necessarily make more money.  It’s just that I’m looking to grow the brand and I want to grow our customer base, and get more people using our product just because I think ours is better. I’m passionate about all the things I do.  They all came about for different reason but if you’re excited about it then it’s not something that you have to grind through.

If I truly believe mine is better then it’s going to be the drive there to get more people to use it just off the fact that I think I’m helping them because I’m an automotive enthusiast.  I’ve been into cars as long as I’ve been alive and can remember.  I don’t just want to make a ton of money.  Making money is like the secondary objective here.  It’s like getting people to use our product because I feel that we offer something better than everybody else and we offer it at a better price point.  That alone is a huge thing.

The ability to identify the fundamental pieces that will ultimately be the path to success and then breathe life into them, that’s the hard part. So it’s easy to see, the real talent comes in the execution. Sometimes all it takes is the ability to better implement a design or more effectively reach a demographic.

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Nobody ever dreams being a penny stock trader. When I was 13, my parents gave me $12,415 for my Bar Mitzvah, which sat in a savings account. I was a great tennis player in my teenage years and practiced every day for nearly 10 years. I went to college basically for that as well. However, at age 18 I was injured and I had surgery on both my arms which prevented me from playing anymore. All this was happening in 1999 when the stock market was going just ballistic. I took the $12,415 and in my senior year of high school, made over $100,000. Freshman year of college I made about $710,000 in profits. I’m from middle class so this was a lot of money. I was just blown away and I decided to only focused on penny stocks.

With regular stocks you have CNBC, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, a million websites; everybody covers them. It’s very efficiently priced. For example, if Google reports earnings, you’ll know within seconds because 3,000 people are reading the same press release and 30 people have already commented on it.

With Penny Stocks, it’s very inefficient. The news doesn’t get out very quickly. For example, Liquid Metal (LQMT), is just one of the Penny Stocks that I follow because they now have a deal with Apple. This occurred back several months ago but nobody picked up the press release if there even was one. It could have been an SEC filing because companies have legal filings.

For two days no one noticed and then all the press started coming in. It’s very delayed so you had two days to buy the stock, which I did. I bought it at 55 cents, a day later to 80 cents a share when people are just recognizing it, and then when the press hits it, it was up to $1.70.

You could triple your money within roughly three days. Whereas with Google, even if you’re dead on with guessing where earnings are, you might make 5% on your money. I’m not good at math but if you can triple your money in a few days, that’s fantastic. Then it’s a question of finding the right pattern in trying to see when that kind of extreme volatility will hit.

I started looking for stocks that were moving and penny stocks, stocks that are traded below $5 a share, are very volatile. On the other hand regular stocks like Google barely move. It might move 33 points a day but that’s only about a 5% move. The value of the company is moving up or down 2% or 3% per day.

With penny stocks, they issue one press release and once they get enough momentum, the value of the company can double or triple in a day. I love that volatility.

I trade Penny Stocks because there is no competition. There’s very little competition with Penny Stocks. That’s what it comes down to. I’m training with people who are investing in these things and they are looking at them like lotto tickets. They don’t Google. They don’t research. They are not meticulous so those are the people who I’m taking money from. It’s low hanging fruit but it’s not scalable. It’s only a few million maximum per year instead of other stuff.

My first four stocks were Supercuts, Viacom, Boston Celtics, and Business Objects. These are real companies worth billions and they just wouldn’t move. I had a small account at first and was checking the stocks everyday.

On my first trade I made like $6,000. My account increased by 50%. If you’re an investor or a trader and you can increase your account by 50% over the course of a year, that’s fantastic. However, I did it in about a day and then 10 times my money in the first year. I’m just using these scams, for lack of a better word, and these volatile companies, and betting on them going up or down. You can go both ways.

Different industries and different sectors perform better at different times. When oil is high you may see these promotional mailers about a ‘national oil crisis’ where a company has just found a billion worth of oil and crude. When gold is high, they may say they just found a giant lot in Colombia. With biotech, if there’s a salmonella poisoning somewhere in America, they will use that. It pretty much depends on world events and just the trend, but all of it is bullshit, every single thing.

That’s the beautiful thing, if you see something being promoted about this amazing oil find, it’s bullshit. If you see an amazing gold find, it’s bullshit. There are a lot of people who are very scientific. They show maps. They buy oil fields for like $20,000 that are next to the oil fields worth a billion and they say, “Look, we’re right next to the billion dollar oil field that is owned by X’s son. This one could be also.” They play and they prey on the ignorance of suckers. There are new suckers born every day.

Biotech is very hot. It’s very difficult though with biotech because you can dress up medicine and say this is amazing and only the FDA can really comment and smack it and say, “You know what, this actually killed all the mice in the study.” I try not to do biotech because it’s very unpredictable. Every now and then, some of these companies that are promoted actually make it.

The technology, the oil, the gold, that’s all BS, but biotech, every now and then, they hit a home run and you’re betting against the stock at $2 and it goes to like $20. That happens once out of 100 times but it’s still happening versus the other one.

If you look at, probably I have 6,000 blog posts, probably about 1,000 of them are exposes. Out of those 1,000, 998 of them have failed. The only two that haven’t failed are in the process of failing. I’m not wrong. It’s not a debate whether it’s a scam or not. It’s just a question of when it’s going to get busted.

Remember I turned the $12,415 into $1.65 million pretax within four years during my senior year of high school and college. Then I started a hedge fund my senior year of college where I basically had $1 million post tax and then I raised $1 million from friends and family.

I became the #1 ranked short leader out of roughly 2,000 total hedge funds by Barclay for three years. But I never really made a lot of money. I tried investing and I invested in a friends father’s company. It was the first print at home ticketing company. They won the contract with Six Flags. If you still go to Six Flags, you still use this ticketing from a company called Cygnus. They later went bankrupt but still kept all their contracts. It’s actually a pretty sleek move that happens sometimes with good technologies. You can’t relate good companies to good technology. I was right about print at home ticketing but I was wrong about this company.

I eventually lost a third of my money in this company. Losing a third of your company as a hedge fund basically kills all of your credibility. So over four years of my hedge fund, I was up 20% per year before this investment. Afterwards, I finished up 2% per year, which isn’t that good.

Luckily, on the fourth year of my hedge fund, I got into Trader Monthly magazine’s “Top 30 Under 30′. Most traders are weird and introverted. I had the big mouth, so they put me on CNBC. I was nervous to be on CNBC so I took five tequila shots before I went on. That made me rather fun and luckily, while I was on CNBC, the producer of this TV show called ‘Wall Street Warriors’ was looking for basically a reality show for Wall Street professionals. Since most Wall Street professionals are very weird and they don’t talk about the money that they make, in the CNBC interview, Bill Griffith asked me like how much money have you lost in a day? I was like, “One day, I lost $180,000 but the next day, I made $220,000 true story.”

The other guy was like, “I lost a lot, not that much” and wouldn’t talk about it. So my big mouth got me on this TV show. I ended up going from one episode to starring in five of the series episodes which is now in 20+ countries. I’m actually working right now with two different TV producers on potential shows.

That helped me decide to close my hedge fund because I started getting 20, 30, 50, 100 emails a day from people saying, “Hey I saw you on TV. I want to learn how to trade. I want to turn a few thousand into a few million too.”

I lost $180,000 before. There was this company Taylor Devices (TAYD). It’s still in business. The stock went from $1 to $6 back in 2004 in a day roughly because the Asian Tsunami, and this company makes earthquake absorption equipments so everyone was speculating on message boards that this company was negotiating with Asian governments to put their earthquake absorption equipments on all these buildings. This was total bullshit because the company was near bankruptcy and I exposed it. I talked about it but the stock kept going.

I shorted 100,000 shares at roughly $6. The next day, the stock was at $8 and I cut my losses. It was good because it went up to $9 the next day, but I stuck with it and then the stock crashed from $9 to $6 and I made back $220,000. It was the worst $40,000 I’ve ever made. Then it went down to $2. I was too early in the pump and dump pattern on that one but conceptually, I was right. Most of the time, you’ll find that I’m right. It’s just a matter of timing and that’s why it’s not an exact science. It’s more of an art.

At that point, I was already a millionaire. I’ve been a millionaire since age 22. So I’ve been a millionaire for a decade. That’s nice but at the time I was barely a millionaire and when you lose 10% of your net worth in a day or 15%, it makes you conservative. So now, I’m much more conservative.

Those were my crazy days. Now, I make about $30,000 in a day but I don’t bet that big anymore because now I’m focused on teaching.

The good news is that for trading, you need money to make more money. I’m making money but I’m also paying a ton of taxes so I’m keeping the money in the account. It was very good for me that I wasn’t able to spend a lot. My biggest splurge when I made my first $100,000 in one weekend was taking my entire college dorm out to dinner. It was only like $800 because no one could afford alcohol. We’re all freshmen. I was at the right place at the right time.

When I made my second million, I splurged a little more. I actually just got into watches and had a Rolex. I’m passionate as you can tell so during one of my speeches at my conference in Vegas, I was like, “Do you think I give a shit about this?” I chucked my Rolex across the room. It just went in the wall and it exploded. I just got a Lambo. I got this $5 million mansion. After a decade of being a millionaire, I’m finally enjoying the toys and basically the spoils of what I’ve been working so hard for. But in the beginning, I couldn’t spend because I was using it to trade. Now, I make money trading. I still make roughly $300,000 a year trading but I make roughly $3 million a year from teaching so my business has shifted, which I think is much better.

Covestor was a website that basically taps into your brokerage account and verifies all your trades. As a teacher who is trying to say, “Look at my strategy, look at me,” it’s a very good tool to validate yourself if you’re good. After two years, there were 60,000 traders who signed up. I was number 1 because I went back to $12,000 to show that I could do it again in 2007, and that $12,000 had grown into $200,000. Just the fact that I could go from $12,000 to $200,000 in roughly three years again, showing every trade where students could follow it in real time, see videos, and see the blog posts; that made me number 1 and that gave me crucial, crucial validity and credibility. At one point I was like, “Look at my ranking. Don’t take my word for it. Look at Covestor. Compare me to everybody else.”

It’s just about transparency. That’s why my business succeeds. Covestor was the first stop but I’m all over Facebook, Twitter everywhere showing free picks, showing premium picks, and most of the time, I hit.

I’ve never seen an autotrader millionaire, I’ll tell you that. A lot of people have claimed to have made millions but I have never met anybody who has made millions off autotrading somebody elses strategy. I’m a big believer that it’s also not just about the money. It’s also the self sufficiency. I want my students to learn. I have over a dozen students who have made over $100,000 with my strategy but they are all self sufficient. After what they have learned in a year or two, they don’t need me. I’m just their training wheels. I think that’s infinitely more valuable than if they just autotraded and have made $100,000. They still would have no idea what to do. Now they can go off on their own.

One of my top students has made $600,000. I haven’t created a millionaire yet but he has made $600,000. He didn’t even come to my conference because he is off playing golf. That‘s fine. It’s kind of disrespectful but I’m disrespectful so I appreciate that.

Profit.ly is my version of Covestor. When Covester started getting into autotrading instead of just focusing on tracking as many different bloggers and traders as possible, I was like, I still want to track. So we created Profit.ly. Obviously it’s biased because it’s my website but you could see all my trades. I upload them and the beautiful thing is that instead of just tapping into one of my accounts like Covester did, you see all of my trades across all my accounts. We integrated my newsletter, my chatroom, and everybody else’s chatrooms so now there are 21,000 members in just a over two years. We’re competing against to see who is best and it’s not based on percentage.

It’s based on money because I was number one on Covestor because I turned $12,000 into $200,000. That’s great but I’m not number one in Profit.ly because I only make $200,000-$300,000 a year. There are some traders in there who make $1 million, $2 million a year. It’s based on dollars, which I think is more valuable. When was the last time you paid rent with your 10% earnings? You pay rent with $10,000 not percentages.

We changed that. We integrated it with the newsletters and the chatrooms, and now we basically have this crowd sourcing newsletter movement where out of 20,000+ traders, we pick the best. I think we have 15 newsletters now of the best traders and they also teach. You can see their trades. They have their own chatroom. They do video lessons. Some of them do webinars.

For example one trader has made $1.5 million over the past two years so now if you go to Profit.ly/iu, and you can get into his chatroom. He does webinars and video lessons, and you can learn. It’s not just my strategy. It’s others, and next year, who knows, we’ll have 100 top traders so we’re just growing. I’m not a one-man operation and that’s why a lot of my Profit.ly employees are down here in Florida.

That’s a good question. I actually had my third loss in a row in the past week. I lost roughly $8,000 but this was after me going two months without a loss and making roughly $25,000. If you look at the last two months of my trades, I’m still up roughly $20,000 or $18,000. I don’t know the exact number but I’m still solidly up. But pretend I didn’t have any gains and I just had three losses in a row. How do I recuperate? How do I recover? I’ve had losses before. I’ve had $180,000 losses. So $8,000 in losses doesn’t really matter. My number one rule in all my DVDs, video lessons, blog posts: cut losses quickly.

I lost $ 1,000 today. Did I want to take it? No. I hate losing $1,000 but the stock wasn’t going in the direction that I wanted. I’m betting against the scam and it keeps going higher. I don’t know how long or how much higher it can go. The $7,000 that I lost last week, I was one day off from busting the scam and dropped 50% the day after I took my $7,000 in losses. It would have been about a $30,000 profit. I was on the right track so for anybody who experiences losses, make sure that you are on the right track. There are a lot of close calls in life where you’re so close. You’re like, “Oh just one more day” if this had happened.” But you can start to see a trend over a few weeks, over a few months if you’re on the right track and you’re close, sometimes, you’re going to nail it. You can’t get discouraged.

Every single loss that I take encourages me. Not only because I do a video lesson which helps my students but because when you do something wrong, now you know what not to do. You’ve learned. If I can go back in time, I would have held that scam one more day and made $30,000, but I can’t go back in time. All I can do is learn from it and teach from it. When you’re on the right path, that’s fine. If you keep having losses endlessly for five years, okay, maybe you shouldn’t do that. Maybe you should get on something that’s more successful. But I would encourage people to try everything. Try different strategies, try different industries. I didn’t know that I would make a lot of money getting into teaching. I was running a hedge fund. I was depressed because of my friend’s father’s company which had lost 30%. I was still a millionaire but barely and my credibility was shot.

The TV show reinvigorated me because people started emailing me and I said, “You know what, let me adapt my business motto.” I’m still going to trade. I’m still going to do the exact same thing I’ve always done but because I know that there’s demand, let me try and sell this, which I have, and guess what, I’m making 10 times as much than in trading. That’s just the start. I think I can do better. Maybe when we do an interview in two years, I’ll be making 100 times, when I have software and more. I’m not just a one-man show. There are other newsletters and other gurus. Try everything.

People are very afraid to lose. People are very afraid to fail. I’ve failed rather spectacularly. If you Google “Party’s Over for Hedge Fund King” that was a New York Post article when I got in a fight with that magazine editor and I didn’t know how to deal with the press. He thought that I was losing my money because the success of the TV show had gone to my head. He failed to read the complementary book that I had sent him so he didn’t even know my hedge fund was failing before my TV show even aired. I just put on a happy face for the TV show because I knew that it wasn’t my core trading strategy that made me lose. It was veering away from it.

I’m a very good trader. I’m a very shitty investor. This is what I’ve learned.

I’ve been a developer for a good part of my professional life, almost 9-10 years. Right out of school I was writing web apps for startups before the dot com bust. Growing up in the the DC area, one of the things you’re supposed to do after college is get a good job that’s secure. So that’s what I did.

I was a Management Information Systems major but I took one class in C++ during my last summer semester. I wasn’t actually a Computer Science major. It wasn’t even CS but one of the classes was C ++. I ended up doing really well in the class. So while I didn’t go to school for programming, everything I did right after school was all related to programming. I was actually a finance major for about two and a half years.

My real school was Barnes & Noble. Again, I only had one class in school dedicated to programming , so I didn’t have the academics behind theory and all that. I wasn’t great at math or anything either. However, I went to Barnes & Noble and got every single book I could afford related to programming. Eventually, I started writing my own apps and programs after going through tutorials. That helped me get my foot in the door as a programmer at my first job. I really had no business being a programmer with my background. I was actually lucky that the guy interviewing me knew less about programming than I did.

That kind of set the stage for using Barnes & Noble as a way to educate myself on how to build things. Instead of thinking “Oh, I got to go to school for this”, I just told myself I could learn it on my own.

My first startup was a website called Screameleons.com. I had a pet chameleon and paid $350 for him. I spent about 10 minutes every morning taking care of him, but the redundancy of daily care made me wonder if I could monetize my time. I figured there’s got to be more guys like me that would spend $350 on a chameleon. Each chameleon laid 20 eggs 3-5 times a year. So 20 times $350 times 3 was a lot of dough for me at the time. Nobody was really doing it on the internet. Everybody kind of went to the expos to buy, which is how I bought mine.

I was thinking that if I could rank number one on Google for keywords like “buy chameleon” I’d definitely make a sale if they landed on my homepage. Where everybody was selling at these expos, I built a site just to sell chameleons that was SEO’d out to the max for every keyword combination related to chameleons.

I remember the routines were get up at 5 AM, work, workout, go to work, as soon as you get home, eat, get back to work, eat. It was straight eat, sleep, workout and work routine. Saturdays and Sundays, I’d see all my friends going out to party, watch movies or play new video games. I didn’t care about any of that. I was focused on building something.

The one thing you have to be is a great employee. When you’re starting your new venture and you’re still a fulltime employee, you have to be the absolute best employee for your boss. This means you don’t half-ass your job. Don’t act like your side project is more important than your job. Obviously your side-project is more important. It’s ok to think like that. But don’t act like that. The bottom-line is that you have to be fair. That means delivering quality work and delivering on-time. Don’t give them any excuses.

In my case, I’ve always been able to deliver. Whatever they needed I always delivered it on time. If you are a great employee, you may even gain the support of your boss. I remember my boss saying “I wish I did something like this when I was your age.” So I kind of got support from them, but at the same time I was always delivering as an employee. I was never late. Also keep in mind that most people waste time at work browsing Facebook or websites. If you’ve got time to kill on Facebook and websites, kill it on building something meaningful.

I was lucky to have a supportive group of people around me, but at the same time I was really good at what I did and I finished my job.

To me, I always thought that a fulltime job was almost poison because it was just too comfortable. A guaranteed pay check affects the way you think, act and how you make decisions. You collect a paycheck and money is one of the few things you don’t have to worry about. I definitely got used to it, and there was definitely some complacency in my life. With a steady paycheck, I could choose to do business the next day, or I could choose to take it easy.

However, the day that I was 100% on my own I saw a dramatic shift in my personality. My entire decision making process changed. When I knew that the only way I was going to get paid was if I hustled, something just clicked. Nobody was going to pay me, and more importantly nobody was going to pay for the roof over my head. My level of determination and drive shot up tenfold.

With a job and paycheck, I’d be in bed by 10PM because I knew I had to be at work the next morning. Today, I’ll work until 3 in the morning without hesitation. During the job days, I would never do that. I would never be up until 3 in the morning writing code. That is the kind of complacency a paycheck will buy you.

I had just gotten out of school so you got to understand that I didn’t have the programming experience needed to build anything. That’s one of the reasons why I relied on Barnes & Noble. I got a book to learn the basics about building a web application. Also, one of the first things I did was leverage what was already built. I did not build everything from scratch. I found a content management system and built on top of that. It was pretty much like Wordpress, but much older. It was free, open source, and written in C#. So I knew what language I needed to learn to build my own reptile shop.

Regarding marketing, the main marketing tool for me was Google AdWords. Back then, it was still pretty knew and nobody was using it to sell chameleons. So I didn’t have much competition. When I first started the site I was a nobody so paying for ads was not an option. I went to the bookstore and bought a book called “The Ultimate Guide To Adwords.” People weren’t really buying pets online so there wasn’t any roadmap to follow. I just started to figure out how to drive traffic to my site using what I had learned in the Adwords book. Eventually customers started trickling in and people were posting their chameleon photos on web. When anyone asked where they got it, they’d tell them Screameleons.com. That led to a lot of organic marketing, which helped us dominate the chameleon business online. Long story short, I didn’t build from scratch. Instead, I leveraged what was available to me. Today, this is even easier because there are tons of tools to help entrepreneurs get started.

We actually produce in house and work with partners. I spent six months searching for a house to run a chameleon business in. When I first started, I was running it out of my cousin’s basement and my friend’s garage. I needed more room to expand so after six months, I found the perfect house and built everything from the ground up to pump out chameleons. It was like a fulltime thing for me at that point. We spent the first four years producing a lot. Then we gradually started to work with partners that were producing the same, if not better, quality as us. Now we’re starting to shift our focus to working with more quality partners. Many of whom are also past customers.

Coming up with the right pricing is a result of testing different price points. With a digital product like Mhelpdesk, the incremental cost to service each additional customer is very low. That gives us the flexibility to set virtually any price we want. We don’t have any tangible cost of goods sold per se, so most of our pricing factors revolve around the cost of customer service, new development, and infrastructure. With a rockstar team, even these costs can be low.

We have three levels of memberships. We have Bronze, Silver, and Gold as of today. Our Bronze plan is $39 a month and our Gold Plan is $149 per month. Our goal was to offer a price point that would scale with different sizes of businesses. But our pricing changes to reflect testing.

A few months ago, we didn’t even have a Bronze plan. It was $19 a month plan called the Starter Plan. We were closing a lot of sales at that price point, but the churn rate was high. We figured that at $19, we were probably attracting a lot of tire-kickers or businesses that were very early in the startup phase. So we doubled our prices to see what type of customers we’d attract. Our entry level plan went from $19 to $39. We noticed that we closed a slightly smaller number of sales per month, but the churn rate was near 0%. Overall, we were making more and keeping more per month. We figured that at a $39 entry point, we were attracting businesses that were more established and had a more pressing need for our app.

To date, we are still testing different price points and packages. The key is measuring the results over a 30 day to 90 day period. Get hard numbers when you measure. Don’t sit on a price too long if it’s not working. Don’t be afraid to test different price levels. Don’t look at a competitors price and follow. Our pricing has always been about staying profitable, having enough resources for new development, and scaling our infrastructure.

Right now, we have over 951 paying subscribers and over 5850 freemium users. By the time you read this the numbers will have grown significantly. The cool thing about our recurring revenue model is that we’re building a predictable stream of income. All the customers we acquired last month will continue to pay their subscription fees. Any customers we acquire this month will add revenue on top of that with little to no extra work. The life-time value of each customer is significant. Again, the incremental cost to service each additional customers is very low with electronic products. Combine that with the recurring revenue model and you got a winner. I recommend this model to anyone trying to start a business. It’s much more appealing than selling a product once and never seeing that customer again.

Most people will probably say focus on one niche. If you try to be everything to everyone you’ll end up being nothing or something to that effect. I’m still not convinced that you have to focus on any one single niche. We’re attacking several verticals in the service business. It’s arguable we should focus on the computer repair industry. However, if you look at the workflow of a computer repair tech and someone who repairs home appliances, the workflow is near identical. We’ve built our app to be highly customizable yet easy to use. That has allowed us to enter different markets. In fact, our current customer base isn’t any one vertical. It’s several.

Right now, most apps out there are focused on the IT industry. If you Google service management software you’ll see that the bulk cater to IT industry. The underserved market are all the little guys that don’t have companies making apps for them like the pool service guy, the plumber, the electrician, the guy that does oil changes, mobile windshield repairs, iPhone screen repair, etc. Those are the verticals that we have in Mhelpdesk. We’re not after the IT market. We’re after everyone that’s being ignored by all the software development companies.

We’ve been focusing on creating a business that sells automatically. For example, this morning I checked out the numbers, and out of the 94 signups we had in the last five days, seven of them purchased without ever picking up the phone or emailing us. This means they went to Google, searched for “service tracking software” and landed on our home page. They hit the green “Try now” button, signed up for a demo, and eventually purchased a monthly subscription. This happened without a single human intervening to sell them on Mhelpdesk. Can you sell software without a sales team? So far we’ve proven that it’s possible. Is it ideal? Probably not. Could we triple our revenue by setting up an outbound sales call team? Probably. You can automate a lot of the sales, but I’m learning that we’re leaving a lot of money on the table by not using the traditional channels like a sales team.

We also have auto responders that automatically send out email tutorials. We also have this whole tutorial interface where you log-in and get walked through the basics. Users learn how to use Mhelpdesk without a human being holding their hand. That’s the kind of system that we’ve been working on for the last several months. Again, we’re still leaving a lot of money on the table because the majority of users do desire human interaction. But we automate what we can.

We’ve got a ton of positive reviews online. We maintain a 5 star review on Capterra. If you just Google the phrase “Mhelpdesk Reviews” you’ll see a ton of 4-5 star reviews about us. If you go on forums you’ll see a lot of praise about Mhelpdesk. There is this one website with over 30 detailed reviews submitted by real-world Mhelpdesk users. Social proof is one way to build confidence.

One other thing that builds confidence is your guarantees and policies. We don’t have any long-term contracts or hidden fees. If you don’t like Mhelpdesk you don’t pay for it. If you buy Mhelpdesk and later want to stop you can simply cancel it. Our policies all revolve around providing zero risk to try and buy. Put yourself in the shoes of your potential client and create policies that you yourself would be comfortable with.

The bottom line is you need to create a product that exceeds expectations. You need to make sure your product delivers and does what you say it will do. When users try your app for the first time they should be like “Wow. This actually works.” How you design your app and its usability is a key part of building confidence. If this isn’t happening with your product, don’t lock them in. Let them leave gracefully and learn from your mistakes.

First, I’m hyper-focused on Mhelpdesk right now. We aren’t going to stop until we knock this thing out of the park. We’ve grown our team from two to eight. We’ve brought on a new COO to focus on capturing revenue from channels we haven’t even explored yet. We’ve got a ton of new stuff on the roadmap. We are going to disrupt the space with better technology and a better user-experience. My team and I are gunning for global domination.

When we are taking a break, Khoa and I like to solve puzzles. Right now we are trying to figure out how to build an app without lifting a finger to write code. We are investing some money into an app called MeemStream. MeemStream is going to revolutionize the way we entertain each other. If Twitter and Instagram had a baby it would look like MeemStream. But other than that, I’m just enjoying life right now.

Code to Riches – Vincent’s Personal Blog
Mhelpdesk – Service Management Software
Screameleons – Live Chameleons for Sale

I initially created a service on a search engine optimization forum because a friend gave me the idea of selling pre-made AdSense websites. The entire process was automated with staff, except the keyword research component, which had to be done by me. I needed a tool to automate it and there was nothing on the market so I created Keyword Scout.

Customers would order a package of 1, 3, 5, 10, or 25 websites and could say what niche they wanted but usually, they didn’t so I would just do keyword research, make a basic html site, add five articles, zip it up into a folder, and send it to them. They would just buy the domain I suggested and upload the files. For example, a five-article website was about $50 so the profit margins weren’t that big at all, maybe 20%.

I started doing it myself and I started with nothing, really. I didn’t put any money into it. The first investment I had was when my mom gave me 99 cents on her credit card to buy an ad on eBay and I ended up getting scammed. The ad was for one of the forums I was trying to start. I continued freelancing when I started the service basically and wrote articles myself. After I had enough money, I started hiring others to start doing it and then sales just picked up. I didn’t want to write anymore so I let someone else do it.

You meet people in the industry. They give you a small word of advice and it changes everything. An example may be when a friend informed me of the importance of affiliates on a product like mine. I didn’t even know what an affiliate was when I started. One of the big guys who I’ve got to give a thanks to is Thomas. He’s a big mentor I would say. He’s a broker. He helps with a lot of things. He knows a little bit about everything, as he’s sold almost every type of internet business. When I started, I actually added a number of people I met on forums, on Skype. From what I remember, not many would put up with a 14-year-old that knew next to nothing about internet marketing, and just wanted to ask questions. Thomas and I still talk to this day. I talk to him almost every day about new ideas. He always has a lot to offer.

Affiliate marketing is too risky. I would rather have a reliable income. Right now, I’m focusing on monthly recurring software. I’m trying to get something reliable so I can say I’m making $10,000 a month or $15,000 a month instead of earnings that sky rocket and drop to almost nothing, every couple of months. I want to be constantly growing. I don’t want to have any slow times.

The only time when I got close to affiliate marketing was when I sold Adsense sites, which could have easily been sold as Amazon, Clickbank or any other sort of affiliate-earning website. I did have a run at Adsense when I started marketing and one of the things that I understood well was how to get a high click through rate (CTR) which was about 10%-13% click through rates at times and by showing proof of that CTR, they help me sell a lot of sites. Most people have a CTR under 3%.

No real secret actually. I have told it plenty of times; just try to make your ads blend in like it’s just a link to another page on your site. You’ve got to follow terms of service but to a certain extent, you’ve got to make it look like it’s a link to another page in your website. I have a certain template that I use and I don’t use WordPress. I haven’t had luck with Wordpress but what works for me is a simple 2-column template. It’s all white, along with one feature color. So I’d have blue filling along the left side/column, blue on the top where the title is, and directly below the title, I had a link block, the one that’s 15 pixels tall. They always click those. They look like a link to another page in your website. The key is to just match the ad colors with the blue and white on your site. It works well.

My first step to taking this to market was promoting it on a few related forums and discussion boards. Next, I decided to try another forum. This forum was known for its wealthy and strong affiliates, but to promote your product, you had to give the members a discount, so I sliced the price in half, to $97. Most product owners out there, pick out a launch date, find affiliates, have everything prepared and make a big buzz about it. I didn’t know any of this, I just listed my thread. I was told by many, that I did it all wrong.

The odd person gave a tip, and I eventually discovered that I needed affiliates to attract sales. After contacting a few, I struck luck. I had no idea who I was contacting, but I contacted some of the most powerful affiliates in the industry, and they also seen the need for my product. Everyone made money. I had affiliates take a check home from $5000 to $30,000+, and all they did was email their email list. December 2011 was my first 5 figure month. Now-a-days most customers come from the referrals of other happy customers.

I didn’t know much about what I was doing and got some advice from one of my friends and he said I should start getting some affiliates on board. I had no idea what I was doing so I just took his advice and started mass messaging a whole bunch of affiliates and ended up getting a whole bunch. That was about Christmas time and by Boxing Day, I made like $5,000 or something in a day.

There was no official launch date. It was whenever my threads got approved on the forums so whenever a program was done so I just put it up there. The first real official launch out there for Keyword Scout will be coming up probably in the next few months, for the Lite version. I will be building hype for that.

Forums and affiliates played a huge role initially. They bring in most of the sales. I had affiliates bring home over $10,000 paychecks for themselves. Other than forums and affiliates, my appearances in search engines may drive some sales but not many. I have been getting into YouTube marketing a lot lately. I have sales people commenting on keyword research videos, answering questions and helping marketing find resolutions to their keyword research problems. I’m not sure how good that’s working. I don’t think too well but it’s just another example of me putting my ideas to the test.

About six figures in sales and revenue. I’m not sure about pure profit but it should be approaching half way to 6 figures. I don’t check my books too often, unless someone’s looking to buy the company. All of my numbers are recorded in Clickbank and 2Checkout, and they’re not going anywhere. Sometimes I get people that want to potentially buy Keyword Scout from me. As you know, a website is worth roughly 12 months of profit. So I’ve had a couple of offers in the $30,000 range but I know things are just getting better from here, so as long as my other business venture don’t distract me, I’m likely looking for offers a bit higher. I almost accepted an offer around that price range, but the buyer decided to withdraw their offer because he found out that I’m 17 years old.

I remember it well. I was sitting on a patio in a restaurant in Florida and received an email from PayPal. When I saw the title, I though “Oh yeah right. This is just another spam email since my email is all over the internet.” Every time I get an email from PayPal, I just make sure it checks out. If your email is written to customer or user, it’s fake. If it starts with Josh MacDonald, it’s real and this one started with Joshua MacDonald and I was shocked. Things were bad. I could no longer process through PayPal, for an undisclosed reason which I still don’t know to this date. Every time I went to call Paypal, I only got a voice mail every time. They’ll never call you back. PayPal is just another corporation I’m not too fond of. PayPal gave me all these problems so I went to 2Checkout and I have no problems with them. I love them.

Things have really slowed down right now but that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m just trying to slow down until the Keyword Scout 2.0 is here. To buy Keyword Scout right now, it’s a heck of a deal. In two months, it’s going to be $49.99 a month or like $300 for license so basically, I’m trying to keep it on a down low. I want to bump the price up so I’m not really promoting it to anyone right now or looking for affiliates because in a month or so when we get 2.0 going, prices will go up and we’ll start promoting hard again. Really right now, I’m slowing down sales as I prepare.

Yes, so basically, we actually don’t use Google API. It’s really, really expensive so we don’t really rely on that. There are a lot of keyword research tools out there, and if anything happened, we’d just switch to another keyword provider besides Google. I do worry about how the future will have an affect on the tool. Exact match domains seem to be in less demand after recent Google changes. I’ll still keep that feature, as there is still a chunk of the market that wants it. I know that the exact match domains are getting a penalty by Google. I know that but I’m not going to argue with the customer. You want exact match domains, I’ll give it to you. If it means a sale, what the heck, I’ll give it to you.

As much as I’d like to drive or even ride in a Lamborghini Gallardo, I decided to hold out for at least another 6 months. Spending that much money will put a strain on me financially and could jeopardize the growth of my ventures. Until then, I’m going to just keep reinvesting the earnings.

Josh MacDonald – Josh’s personal website
Keyword Scout – Official website for Keyword Scout
Elite Web Enterprises – Josh’s company website

I started Computer Works when I was 16 unofficially by fixing neighbors’ computers and looking back, I was probably doing more damage to some of those computers than I was doing good but I was solving their problems. The moment I turned 18, I signed a rental for a little 500-square foot office space and had no idea how I was going to pay for it. It was $500 a month and at that time, that was huge money and I said, “You know what, I’m going to be able to do this.”

My parents got pissed. They were so pissed they wanted to kick me out of the house and I spent that night at the office space because they felt I was being reckless. They felt that it was going to end up coming back on their credit. However, the first year of business, we made $79,000 net revenue. There was myself, my brother, and one of our friends from college. We weren’t taking paychecks and it was crazy fun. Each year, it grew from there and around 2005-2006, we hit a certain number where we got much more profitable but we never actually exceeded that revenue. So that’s where my mind started wondering, “Okay, we’ve got this awesome successful business, now, I want to do more. I want to keep growing.” So that’s kind of where all the other adventures and crazy ideas kind of came around.

Yeah, so I’ve been at a community college for more than 10 years of my life and I have the equivalent of an associates, I love learning. I absolutely love it but there’s something about community college structure, that I get very antsy and get bored quickly. My thirst for knowledge is insatiable but when you sit me in a classroom for that long I start to bounce around.

Some of my mentors haven’t finished college either so I don’t know. When you and I were talking last, I actually was in an accounting class. Mind you, I’ve been running a business for 10 years but I didn’t know half the stuff in that class and ended up going, “Crap, I can actually manage my own business better.” That was a basic class and it clearly helped me and I ended up making even more money from going to school. It’s a balance, I guess.

If any story could come from the simplest beginnings to the point where I am now, it really is my story. I started by fixing neighbor’s computers and then got A+ certified. From there, I went and got a Cisco certification, and then Microsoft. I got all those certifications within that first year just by studying, reading, taking the tests, and doing well there. Some of our neighbors own businesses and those businesses would pay us $200 at most a month to take care of their computers. We built a reputation with them that lead us to take on larger enterprises. We’ve got a couple of strokes of good luck and we happen to take care of a lot of different doctors’ offices in the area. It was very organic the way we grew. Do I have education in IT? As far as experience, yes, and then necessitating me to get certifications and approvals along the way.

Yup. That company has been stable, always doing better, always growing. We’ve never had any crazy weird failures. I grew up with this business and now we have intelligent people running it so I spend maybe, four hours a week dedicated to it. It’s really a place to launch new ideas. It’s a place for me to go figure out what really fulfills me.

It’s funny, the majority of people think that I made the money while being on The Bachelorette. I should have government top secret clearance because it was a five-step process. They took my blood. They did like a saliva swab, 700 questions – psychology tests, interviews with all these different people. I literally stood in line at a mall and the moment I mentioned I owned a business, I was in. They were very interested to talk to me further.

I had been single for two years and by choice. It’s one of those things where you just got to trust your gut feeling. I was asked to go do the show and I thought, “I’ll do it but I’ll keep my integrity.” There are maybe two or three guys there like that, and everybody else is there to do whatever just to get camera time. You see people sell out and then regret it later, but I walked in there, had a blast. The girl and I didn’t even remotely have any sort of chemistry and so she sent me home the first week.

That’s an experience. There’s about three companies here in Michigan that do the staffing for car show events so if you go to any car show, any car show across the nation, the people are the same ones that you’d go and see at any other car show. You have the models, the spokespeople and a group of trained, good looking people. Somebody had known about my YouTube stuff and said, “Hey, you like cars. You like talking about cars. Do you want to do this?” With my current business, all my clients are within 15 miles of each other, I don’t travel at all for work. I want to travel and have somebody else pay for it. I do about three or four shows a year. I get to go to different car shows, talk about cars with random people and have a fun time doing it. Plus I get paid, I’m around a lot of good-looking people, and I get to keep the suits that I would never buy for myself. It has been awesome because I get to meet people that want to meet me from the YouTube channel so I guess it all kind of falls back into itself.

I’m a huge fan of trying to improve yourself but the biggest thing I think I’ve come across is doing what you love. You have to be honest with yourself and say, “What are you good at?” There are a lot of things I’m good at but I don’t love all of those things. I’m in a unique spot where I can choose what to do so I’m in a soul searching mode but I’m still trying to find my greater purpose. YouTube makes me $200 a month. I don’t know if you’re allowed to publish that but I don’t care. It makes me $200 a month which I just put towards buying new cameras and I have the most fulfillment from doing that. I don’t think that I have all the answers but I definitely think I can help people find their own answers. The people that watch my stuff there, that is the most rewarding, the most purpose-driven thing I’ve done with the time I put into it. That means the world to me. I had people come up and take pictures with me, I didn’t realize that making videos and talking about business meant the world to younger guys. It’s paying it forward.

People ask me, “Why don’t you do all like these crazy stunts? Why don’t you have all these half naked chicks on your channel?” Being in the business world, what I’m doing is building up my core, like partners, my core audience that won’t leave me if I make a bad video. I’m not just going for the sellout. All my followers are amazingly dedicated to what I do and then I’ll start upping the excitement level and doing all the crazy stuff and the stupid crap that people do to get more YouTube viewers. Until then, it’s very high integrity type of channel.

I’m a really tangible type of guy so I think my dream is to start acquiring other companies of the same caliber if the opportunity comes up, and then grow my business through multiplication, through acquisition or multiplying locations. I know small business inside and out. I might as well multiply the number of small business ventures. I see my future as a mix of both Youtube outreach and corporate growth. Both keep me fulfilled.

The first one is you have to have the right balance of being an entrepreneur but not wasting your time trying to invent something that shouldn’t be invented. Entrepreneurs are pretty stubborn bastards. They don’t like to be told no because they see it as a challenge to do what others haven’t. It’s a delicate balance because you have to be stubborn enough to do something nobody else is doing without wasting emotion and time towards an idea that was bad to begin with. That’s huge.

My second piece of advice relates to employees who deal with bookkeeping and accounting. That was the worst person in the entire company to have personal issues with. She didn’t like seeing us succeed. This was back in 2005 as well and it bothered her to see us make more than our employees. It bothered her to see us charge more for services even though I fully feel we’re worth it. We parted ways and our company profits quadrupled. Nobody, maybe other than your mom, is going to fight for you as hard as you will. It was great not having to do the books but it was horrible in not running your own company. It felt like we were working for somebody else. A huge tip I would say is definitely understand accounting and bookkeeping.

I’ve been obsessed with the Diablo since i was in second grade. I wasnt interested in the latest and greatest. I wanted to accomplish a childhood dream. I follow you guys on Facebook and you have a formula for handling depreciation on cars. I happen to have a 10-year-old Lamborghini since you can’t buy a newer version of the Diablo. It’s still worth what I paid for it so I’m not taking a huge hit on depreciation. I have the glitz and the glam of having a bright yellow attention-seeking car but if you look at my numbers, I’m being very conservative. The average person has a greater chance of buying a Lamborghini the same way i did, instead of paying cash for a brand new Aventador. I feel like it gives other people hope that it’s actually attainable.

I see these guys with multiple Lamborghini’s and I can’t even relate with them. You can’t do that as a normal person looking at your numbers and saying, “Man, if I double my money, I’ll be able to do more.” Could I buy two Lamborghini’s? Finance two, maybe, but that’s so extreme that it’s unrealistic for me and financially foolish. I feel people relate with people who are on their level because I’m 29 now, and granted my net worth has multiplied. It still has not reached billions and all that sort of craziness. I’m still at that realistic stage and then wherever I take it from here, that’s my own screw up or my own choice.

Ever since I bought that Lamborghini, that has been probably the best purchase I’ve ever made in my life. It validates my second grade dream of owning a Lamborghini because it’s going for what you want. It rubs off on other people and I’ve had two different clients at a client meeting, they were like, “We’re going with you because you own a Lamborghini so you know what you’re doing.” That has been a very rewarding experience altogether.

Some of the things I’ve been focusing on lately is when you buy a car like that, people love to relate to you but then some just want to see you fail. I have a lot of friends or acquaintances that didn’t like that big jump in my life that put myself in a different category in a lot of respects so I did actually lose quite a few friends over that one.

I’ve been an entrepreneur for about 10 years and first got started by trying to create my own website but the website failed and didn’t get much traffic. I thought if I threw up a website, I was going to get a ton of visitors and make a ton of money, but it never happened.

I hired a few marketing firms but got ripped off instead. I had to learn internet marketing myself and eventually got pretty good at it and ranked my own site on search engines like Google. I thought I was going to make a ton of money because I had a ton of traffic. However, the truth is, if you don’t know how to monetize your site, it doesn’t matter how many visitors you have, you’re not going to make any money.

I couldn’t figure out how to monetize and failed miserably but the one thing I was good at was getting traffic to sites and eventually I met a few people who were interested. One day I was in a college class and a friend was like, “I know a company you should talk to.” As a result of my internet marketing skills, I drove over 51% of their leads from the web and the company did well over $50 million a year in revenue. At that point I knew this was powerful. The owner’s son owned an ad agency and introduced me to BlueCross, Country Wide, and a few other companies at that time. That’s how I got started with the whole internet space.

My first website was Advice Monkey in early 2000. It was the replica of Monster.com that failed miserably. It never got popular even though I was still getting good traffic. I was watching this 20/20 episode one night and they were talking about mesothelioma and how people were making a killing from it and what it is. I ended up finding out that people were making $50 a click through Google Adsense so I switched Advice Monkey into a mesothelioma site and started ranking it for mesothelioma keywords to try to make some money off of it. It wasn’t a smart business and eventually got penalized from Google because I was gaming the system.

It was mostly because I was building unnatural links to the site and had a Page Rank of 8 on Google. I had webhosting companies linking to me with the keyword ‘mesothelioma’ as the anchor text. There were also free webhosting companies that people hosted sites on so I did deals with some of those free webhosting companies where they would stick a link everywhere on the site that said mesothelioma. So it added up really fast and gave me hundreds and thousands of links that said ‘mesothelioma’.

I became a consultant and I started making money from that instead. While I was doing that, I had this concept that I thought was a revolutionary idea called Rank My Site. What I wanted to do was create websites in very lucrative verticals (CD and DVD duplication for example) and rank them on Google. Once it got ranked and got a lot of traffic, I would rent it out to people who were buying a ton of pay per click traffic for those keywords.

I was making good money from that. Some of these sites were up to $10,000 a month and worked out pretty well.

I would actually do the work. I prefer working as a consultant because it paid a lot better plus I had better luck getting customers than I was building my own websites because I suck at the development part, design, conversions, etc, but I was really good at getting traffic.

I’ve had some that were penalized but only very few. Some lost rankings because with clients, you can’t really do anything shady and so we kept all our tactics clean, but some of the clients we worked for would hire us as well as three other SEO firms at the same time. Some of them would just build too many links or too rich anchor text which really screwed up everything but what could you do?

I stopped around 2008 even though we were growing more than double or triple every single year. I had a business partner who was awesome and had a third business partner who doubled all the sales and new inquiries. But I just hated doing consulting. I really enjoy just building my own product and hate working on other people’s products.

A lot of these companies will take your money, like General Motors for example. I worked with them for six months and they couldn’t even implement simple meta tag changes. Six months and you’re telling me you can’t even implement meta tag changes? Consulting blows. The companies who pay you a lot of money sometimes don’t move fast; it’s not fun. Then there are a lot of silly meetings discussing the same thing over and over again. It’s good money; don’t get me wrong, but what I really love is just building my own products. I still do some consulting for people like Tim Sykes.

Crazy Egg is a heat map technology that pretty much tells you what’s usable and what’s not usable on your website. It will actually show you how to maximize the usability of your website by improving your user experience, so you can improve your conversion rates to make more money. It is used by a lot of marketers, designers, and business owners.

For comparison, Google Analytics can’t do heat maps and stuff like that. We can even do scroll maps so when someone scrolls, we can tell you how much of your page they are scrolling down by.

It probably took a year because we had three different developers that we went through before we found one that could actually complete it. We simply didn’t know how to hire. The way I learned how to hire good developers is to hire a shitload until I found the right one. I didn’t know how to hire developers and Crazy Egg was my first big software product and was a learning experience. I think we dumped in over $200,000 before we even launched it and $500,000 invested until we probably started breaking even.

Response was good and the business grew but we were losing a ton of money at first but it grew overtime. We had a ton of press and people were even leaving comments like “Google should buy this.” A ton of good stuff happened when we ended up creating it. You can conservatively say whatever we ended up with last year, we should double this year, and we continue to double.

KISSmetrics is a tool that helps track people on your website. In other words, Google Analytics shows you what happened on your site, KISSmetrics will tell you who did it and by tracking people, you can understand things like your customer, churn, marketing attribution, coupon conversation rates, what’s causing people to convert versus what’s causing them to cancel and how can you do more of the things that help you make more money.

We’ve raised over $6 million so far. We were trying to go after the big market and slowly creep into that enterprise space with those metrics. We needed to raise money because KISSmetrics is a much bigger idea and required a ton of cash up front. We burned through millions of dollars before we actually even had a product that started bringing in revenue.

I don’t know how many but I invest in a handful every year. My success rate is about 20% but one of them probably will make me all the money I invested plus more.

I usually invest in really random companies. For example one is called Walk Score. It picks your score when you’re moving into apartments or buying a home and will tell you how close everything is. That site is really popular. Another one is Julep and they just raised $10 million. They are reinventing the nail polish business. For $20 every month, they will mail new nail polish to your house every month.

With content, we’re big believers that educating the market helps build brand awareness, gives you good karma points, and eventually, these people are going to come back and purchase from you. So that’s where we model with it and we just write loads of content. It takes a lot of time.

I get my content ideas from just browsing the web and from people asking me questions, experiences, and problems that they may have. I write stuff based on what comes to my mind but I really don’t have topics prepared. It just comes because so many people email everyday with questions and I’ll think, “Oh that’s a cool question. I’m going to make a blog post out of that.”

I’m a big believer if people write really good content, people will end up coming. You could target SEO keywords and I know you probably should but I don’t have the time and I just write. I don’t even care about any of that. I’m just like, “If I write enough good content, people want to read it, they are going to keep coming back all the time.”

When I was younger, I wasted $1 million on a hosting venture that failed and I had to pay back $1 million and even borrowed money. I had this concept where you take a lot of sites and put them on a big clustered environment. It was a similar concept before Media Temple came out with theirs. I also invested in bad people. Basically good idea, poor execution, and I just kept feeding them money, money, and money until I just lost it all after two years. It was devastating and I was like, “Should I even be an entrepreneur?” I didn’t know how to pay it all back and $1 million in debt when you’re 21 years old is a lot of cash but overall, things had worked out over the years. I did some rethinking at that point in my life.

Go out there, participate in the community, add followers, tweet at them, the basic stuff. Let’s say it’s Twitter for example. Write good content, respond to other people who need help on Twitter, tweet that to people and try to create a conversation with them, direct message people and try to get them to promote some of your stuff and you can promote some of theirs in exchange. Also, add people to follow that you think are highly relevant and that would also benefit you because some of those will follow you back. I use social media to drive a majority of our traffic to our content so if you build up your social profile, it’s the easiest way to get your content to get viral.

Quicksprout – Neil’s Personal Blog

Crazy Egg – Heat Map Tracking Analytics

KissMetrics – Conversion Tracking Analytics

I had a lot of interest in anything related to cars since I was a little kid so it was just a natural thing for me. I didn’t finish high school so I worked at a few different car shops cleaning up oil off the floor, taking out the trash, etc, but I’ve always had a lot of interest in cars and also in running my own business, whatever that may be.

Back in 1998 I was into Honda’s and street racing so I invented the FMI, the front mount intake system. I started this little business out of a tiny office and made front mount intakes with custom aluminum piping and a welded up box with the filter in the front so it mounted up like a front mount intercooler.

That was my idea back then but ran into an issue with another company who ended up making a similar product so I wasn’t able to sell or make it anymore. Either way, I was too young and I didn’t really know any better at that time. When that happened, I said, “Forget it. I’m getting out of this business” and that’s when I started doing graphic design. It was something else that I was really interested in and that’s kind of how that all started.

I’ve always had a lot of interest in not necessarily art, but graphic design. With my graphic design business, I did a lot of automobile related work. Right before 360 Forged, the business was actually doing pretty well for me so I had a little retail shop for printing and graphic design here in Miami. I eventually sold the business and around 2004-2005 started 360 Forged. It wasn’t anything that was really new to me just because I’ve been in this industry since I was a teenager for the most part. So that’s how I started and that was what I was doing before then.

To me, it was probably the same mentality that most people have when they get into any business, which is, feeling ambitious, maybe overconfident, and a little bit naive. If you remember back then, I actually launched 360 Forged with the carbon fiber overlay on top of the forged center disc wheel. It was something different. Even though there are big companies that have been around for a while, it was something that they didn’t offer and it was pretty difficult to be able to produce it so it was something cool. I had a nice car at that time and was active on the forums so I tested it out a little bit to see what people thought first. I guess I felt confident enough to do it but I had no idea what was really involved or anything until years later. It wasn’t until about 2009 before I really started to understand.

It doesn’t take much money to start this kind of company. We very much started this company with zero dollars. To me this business or even most businesses, as long as you got enough ambition, you’ll find a way to make it happen. There’s so much more to it than the wheel styles and marketing, it’s everything behind that. Once you actually start selling, that’s when it really gets difficult when you have to start managing production and dealing with bottlenecks, growth, and everything else. It’s a difficult thing so I see it all the time. It looks like it’s all fun with nice cars and pretty models, but it’s not.

To me, it didn’t really grow fast but I think it looked much bigger than it actually was. The reason for that was because we got into this business with an eye for design and knowledge in photography, design, and marketing. I think that was the difference because it’s a saturated market with a lot of the same thing. Everything looked the same and there was nothing different. I guess that was what made us stand out and started selling as opposed to everybody else. I think it just looked like it did but we were never able to produce and that was time to learn from all those mistakes. It took off pretty quick but again, if production can’t handle it or you if you don’t have a good business behind it or good staff, accounting, or anything else, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if the wheels look just absolutely amazing and are covered in gold. It makes no difference if you can’t produce them so I mean it very much needs multiple aspects of the business equal in order to make anything happen.

I don’t consider it a failure because to me, from the beginning of 360 Forged to ADV1 Wheels right now, it has been one long process, which today is a successful venture. Whether or not it will be any year from now, I don’t know, but I consider it a failure here in terms of the lifespan of that company itself. It’s just from lack of knowledge in the industry and just overall in business, but also being young and not really having the same mentality that I do now even though it has only been a few years. I’ve got two kids now, I’m married, which I didn’t have at that time, and it’s a big difference for a man’s mentality. Now you’ve got people who depend on you as opposed to just being able to pack up and go at any point.

It’s a big difference because when I started this company from scratch and fresh, it was a very much different mentality and a different type of pressure behind it. So I consider it a failure from a business end but at the same time, it’s just part of that learning process. I couldn’t have done anything else had that not happen first. If it didn’t happen first, it would just been ADV1 Wheels that went out of business.

360 Forged came out of nowhere and disrupted a lot of other businesses. The last thing that anybody wanted was for me to walk away and start up another company. So that’s where a lot of those rumors really started because if you think about it, a competing company’s only defense in that type of situation is to do exactly that. I’m just doing the right thing and making sure we’re running a good business and doing exactly what we say what we’re going to do.

It has kind of faded away and I guess most people have learned to just accept it and understand that wasn’t really the case. It really was what it was, a business that didn’t do very well, a bunch of people who ordered wheels and during that time didn’t receive them. Hopefully by now all those people have been reimbursed or orders have been filled. I spent a good two years in the beginning of this company still dealing with that and making sure that things are getting done on that end of it. I think you eliminate things like that just by proving it instead of talking about it. That’s what I’m trying to do, just run a business, doing it right, and that’s it. Everything just kind of faded away.

I know there are other companies out there that probably produce a great quality wheel as well with different or similar styles, but my primary focus with this was to try and just create very low volume, high quality wheels, with good service. I didn’t intend for it to be anything big, just like I said, real high quality, low volume, and really, really nice design. The biggest thing is the design of the wheels and the quality that can match with it. They are expensive and always have been but they are very expensive to produce in a lot of cases but it’s not anything that is intended for high volume or for everybody. When I get that question, I usually say do your own research and if you like the wheels and you want to buy them, then buy them and if not, then maybe it’s just not the right wheel. That’s okay.

So that was the focus. Luckily though, we’ve grown so much more than I ever intended or wanted. Very quickly too, but we’ve been able to maintain quality, service, and a really strong foundation and company with a really good team. Even though it has grown really fast and it’s difficult to sometimes control that, that has been what I’ve been really focused on so I think it’s still the same company that I wanted it to be.

Originally, it was just me and Miguel. I met him in one of the shops around the neighborhood. I was getting nitrous put in one of the cars and he was there doing something. We ended up going to Moroso quarter mile race track and we became really good friends. Eventually, he started working for me as one of the sales guys for 360 Forged and he did a great job. When things started going south he helped me out a lot actually. Because of that when I started this company, I told him, “Dude, come in with me and be my partner. Roll the dice with me and see what happens.” Thankfully, it worked out and I’m happy that I’ve been able to keep him comfortable and happy with everything. His role was just to handle everything sales related, all the wholesale accounts, the wholesale network, just to be that guy for me. It has remained that way for the most part. The sales end of things and the wholesale network is a pretty big portion of the business and we’ve got multiple sales reps now and well over 100 dealers, a lot of them are mostly international in other parts of the world. So that’s pretty much his role and I basically handle and oversee pretty much everything else aside from that.

I make it a point to not look or see anything else that’s going on with any other wheel companies. I just don’t want to see it. I don’t want to be influenced in any way, not even just subliminally. I don’t want to know what is in style. I try to avoid any kind of trends or anything like that and just stick to what I personally feel is going to be just a bad ass looking wheel design that I would put on my own car, bottom line. If I don’t feel that way then it’s not going to get done. That’s really all there is to it and that’s one thing I always make sure to maintain. I don’t want to follow any other trends. I just want to do what I feel is going to work and eventually, I’m sure, as I get older and older, what I feel is going to work and look good may not be the case anymore, but for right now, I guess people are with me.

Well, at the beginning, we didn’t have any money going into it so there wasn’t any marketing. Usually, when that’s the case and you can’t afford to do any print stuff in magazines or anything, the next alternative is online which we couldn’t really do because there was so much negativity and things going on. We were banned from certain internet forums and even customers couldn’t post pictures of their own cars with ADV1s on it, whether for the right reasons or not.

The only way that I could get it out there then was the quality of the design itself, the wheel design, the marketing design, the way it all looked and I just did my best to get it out as much as we could. We would do just grassroots style marketing with basically no money, and a lot of passion and drive. We would do anything. I remember back then I would create ads and ADV1 brochures for some of the dealers that were willing to push the product as it grew. So anything I could. If I couldn’t put it out there myself then maybe they could for us if they liked it and they feel comfortable with it. I would take any route that I could back then. I would send bulk mailers out, get the website out, anything that we could.

Today, not a lot has changed except for the fact that there’s much more material and positive support that the product really spreads itself naturally and all the dealers are very comfortable with us. We have great relationships with them and they are all doing their best to sell wheels whether it be ours or anybody else’s. They are promoting it and spreading the product out on the internet and all over the world in print materials as well. I think a lot of that effort and just the company itself has gotten to the point where we don’t need to do as much so we do. We had a cover of DuPont last year. We sponsor a bunch of forums. Obviously we use social media which is fun. Our Facebook is really good. That’s pretty much it. Besides that, just keeping the website up to date. It has been a huge project for me since late last year along with new brochures and all sorts of material and making sure that all the dealers agree with all that and have what they need.

It’s just the same thing that we do, nothing will change. I’m constantly working with my guys in engineering on a daily basis on new development. Even today, we just got some new wheels. That’s just another new development and it’s a constant thing. We don’t stop. It’s not like we’ll release some new styles or some new type of wheel here and there. It’s literally a constant thing and every single day we’re engineering and working on new projects. At the same time, every single day, we’re seeing completed ones pop out for the first time constantly. We’ll just keep on progressing more and more naturally just because. It’s not a planned thing. It’s just what we love to do. That’s where I get excited, in working on new stuff.

The company itself is at a point right now where it has a real strong foundation that we’ve built and really amazing team of people who treat it like it’s their own. We all depend on the company. We’ve all got families and everything else to support so the company itself is treated with a lot of respect by all of us with a lot of pride. I haven’t wanted the company to grow for years now but it’s just one of those things where we have to keep up with the demand and we have to be able to support the production and volume as sales increase more and more. Obviously, it is a good thing but last year, I pretty much spent the majority of the year planning for growth because we were really exceeding capacity in every way – from square footage for just staff to production, machine, finishing, aluminum, and everything else. It’s a huge amount of investment and additional expenses in payroll to staff and be able to support increased volume this year.

Hopefully, that planning from the growth last year and all the investment this year will be enough to support 50% or more increase in volume. Everything from the engineering and the way that all the wheels are produced, programmed, and everything else; we’ve made a huge effort to completely redo and revise for efficiency to get more output within the same amount of machinery and staff and everything else.

Hopefully, we won’t exceed that anytime too soon but if it does, then it will be the same story. We’ll keep on going. I’m not going to limit ourselves or limit the company and put a bad taste in anybody’s mouth because the lead time is six months or something ridiculous. We’ll keep doing what we have to do.

I don’t know. I don’t think about it. I’m happy and I’m comfortable more than enough where we are already. I don’t take anything for granted here at all. I don’t know how the market is going to go. Nobody does, so I don’t really think about it much to be honest. I’m happy where we are. I really am and hopefully, we can just keep up. That’s really what I’m really focused on – just making sure that we maintain good service and everything else, and quality. I don’t want it to go anywhere else.

If anybody is going to be an entrepreneur or start their own business, it’s just one of those things you just know and there’s no other choice really. It’s one or the other. If that’s the case, just to understand that it’s not going to happen quick. For me, it was 12 or 13 years maybe before I can tell you I feel comfortable like I did and don’t want to go anywhere else. That’s a long time. Most people are discouraged and kind of give up maybe within the first year. You just have to know. It’s going to be a long, long road and it’s not going to be easy. That’s just part of business. Nobody has made it anywhere without going through that first, that’s the bottom line.

I always had a dream to get away from the rat race. I grew up in Vermont, which is an amazing state but it’s also sort of secluded. I grew up in a family where everyone is blue collar and both my parents made about $35,000 a year. No one really had this type of entrepreneurial mindset. I realized a lot of problems people had in relationships was due to money. I saw divorces all over the place and I said, “I cannot live my life like this” so I had to figure out a way to actually make money and enjoy life. I went to college thinking that if I jumped into business management it would give me the tools I needed. So I started that journey by basically running an eBay business out of my dorm room and doing different random things to make money.

Eventually, I got into real estate and started flipping houses. Everyone was in real estate and making money so I said, “Okay, this is my path to freedom.” I started reading Robert Kiyosaki’s books to learn as much as I can about real estate and cash flow. That really motivated me and inspired me. I was in my early 20s so I felt like I had the whole world ahead of me.

I started flipping properties and made some really good money and I thought, “How can I take this to the next level?” That’s always been kind of the question for me, how can I take what I’m doing now to the next level no matter what level I’m at. At that time, I thought I was opening up a real estate company down in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, which was where I went to college.

In 2006 it was growing and really transient by nature so I took all the money that I had and invested it in this company. However, it was the worst possible time to invest and start a real estate company because the market was just about to crash. I watched all this money that I just made and all the effort that I put in basically go down the tubes. I was struggling to keep my team alive, keep things happy, and I was just working these crazy 18-hour days, seven days a week, and I was just consumed. I think most people were basically just giving up but I had a blue print in my mind. I was like, “I’m going to make this happen no matter what.” The problem was that I was sacrificing everything in my life – so relationships, my health, time to myself. I wasn’t really working out or doing anything because I was just completely consumed by work.

I had this moment where I was like, “Okay, I have to do something. I have to actually take some time to relax a little bit and take a breath.” The Boston Celtics, my basketball team, were playing in Charlotte, North Carolina so I invited a friend with me to go and watch the game. I met Michael Jordan who was my biggest idol growing up. I was looking around and I was like, “Gosh this is amazing.” People actually do stuff at night. They relax, they get entertained.” I was like, “Okay I have to make a major shift because what I’m doing is not working.”

I was driving home on the interstate that night around 10:30. I was just in my head thinking, “I have to make a major shift. What can I do?” It’s amazing once you are dedicated to that, the universe has an interesting way to show up and it did. A deer ran out in front of me in the interstate and I hit the deer. I ended up swerving back and forth and smashing to a tree and my truck flipped over four times. Everything changed for me in that moment, everything.

I basically woke up in the hospital and they said that I’ll never use my arm again. They were going to amputate it or I wasn’t going to have any feeling basically. With all this uncertainty of my life, everything got put into perspective because business wasn’t that important now. My health was important, relationships are important because I wasn’t connecting with people, and also, the kind of business that I was doing. I was realizing this business that I started needed me around all the time so if was out of the picture then this thing was going to go down the tubes because everyone was listing their properties with me. I was like, “Geez, I totally messed up and I don’t even know what I was going to do.” I just spent all my money making this business survive. Seeing that I had hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills was a lot to take in. I didn’t know what I was going to do.

This was in January of 2009 and I had just got an iPhone. I’m lying in my hospital bed looking to the left of me and had my clothes that were all cut up in a million pieces. I ended up getting in contact with a friend of mine who came and said, “Hey, I know you’re in a bad place and I know that things are really messed up for you right now. You have a business that’s going down the tubes.” He was like, “There’s a gold rush right now for apps.” I was like, “What the heck is an app? I’m not a developer. I’m not a coder. Why am I even wasting my time with this stuff? Look at me.”

He said, “Just think about it” and showed me this article. It was these two guys who had no tech experience at all but had started up this business and came up with a few app ideas. They made a tremendous amount of money and it was that moment that I saw and said, “Okay, well if these guys do it. I can do it too.” I can see that mobile is going to catch on. I can anticipate the change of the market. Internet is here. Online is pretty strong. It’s evidently going mobile.

As I lay in the hospital bed, it’s amazing what morphine can do because I got really creative and started drafting out this idea that I had for an app, which was based on people trying to grab my phone during the accident. I was like, “If I had all this information in my phone, I want some type of security in there so people can’t grab my pictures and stuff like that.”

I borrowed $1,800 from my step-dad. I basically said, “Look, I’m in a bad place. I don’t know if this going to work. I feel like I can make it work.” I think at that time, he didn’t have a lot of money either but he said, “You know what, I believe in you so here you go.” If I didn’t have that money to get going, I don’t know what I would have done but that was a great little jumpstart for me for sure. I started drafting the app and somehow wired money to India and hired this guy.

Long story short, I had my first app in the store two months later and it started generating revenue. It was absolutely incredible.

There were tons of obstacles. It was brand new so there’s no education. There was no book resource so most of it was just falling on my face and kind of learning how to deal with it, but it was nothing like I expected. Actually, it didn’t go as bad as it could have. I was basically stuck basically trying to get my arm to work again so I was pretty present during the process which is key for an app. You have to make sure that you’re constantly there, laying things out the right way, getting back to them, etc.

Luckily, they had done apps before but it wasn’t their very first iPhone app. I think they didn’t really understand completely how to go back and forth with the customer that had no tech experience so I had to learn how to communicate. It was somewhat of a foreign language but I always looked at it from the perspective of “I can figure this out. As long as I communicate properly and I really give them the expectations, I should figure this out somehow.”

I wasn’t really able to use computers so I sketched everything out. I tried to make it as good as I possibly could and then I faxed it to myself, turned it to PDF and I just emailed it to them. I went over how I wanted to look in sequence and stuff like that.

They started sending me three different examples. I said, “Hey, this is what I want. Send me three different examples. Let’s talk about it. Let’s tweak it if we need to.” During the whole process, I basically was there when they would do a couple of screens or make a button or program something. “Send me this immediately so I can look at it and then I’ll get back to you with my comments.”

I’ve done over probably 65 different apps so I learned a lot, worked with a lot of different teams. The first one, I was fortunate because it was an actual team that had designers and programmers but as I started doing more apps with them, I saw a hole. I saw that things were a lot more expensive. They started charging more because they had value. I also felt like talking between India was difficult because miscommunication was really easy since it wasn’t the native language. I did four or five apps with them and I moved on to a different team. I was constantly doing that – doing a few apps, learning, moving on to somebody else until I kind of found the sweet spot.

I hate the word perfect. I think that that’s probably the worst thing that people can have because nothing is ever perfect. The standards have changed for Apple so before you could basically throw a bunch of stuff out there and make quite a bit of money. Now, the user demands more and Apple actually demands more so they will reject the apps that don’t fit a certain quality. I think probably the best advice I could give is make sure you get something in the store and if it’s taking you a while, scale it back a little bit and get something in there that you’re proud of. It should be good quality as far as design, and I say good quality meaning it works and aesthetically as pleasing. Once you have kind of that base, I really believe in getting anything in the store because without that, you have nothing.

My whole theory was if you spend all this time and effort to know a target demographic, why not keep giving them information, right? A customer is usually worth seven times what they originally paid for something, and I knew that. I was like, “Okay, if they liked security apps, I’m going to build more security apps.” So I did different security functions. I did different alarms like a chimpanzee screaming, a screaming voice, or weird noises.

I basically just started creating a network where people would come in through my funnel and thought, “Hey if you liked this security app, check out this one with all these different sounds.” They would buy that app and I started really understanding that it’s about the network. It’s about being able to target a demographic, give them what they want, and constantly give them new apps so you could increase your reach.

Initially, I was emotional about it. I was like, “Getting one-star review is horrible. People are mad.” And then I just got objective. I was like, “This isn’t a way to run a business. There is a lot of value here. Some people get it, some people don’t. If the person doesn’t read the description which I actually said in there, “This is for entertainment purposes only…” It’s only 99 cents so I wasn’t feeling too bad about that.

I was cognizant of making sure that the people that did love it and were pranking other people, that I was giving them as much value as possible. They would always rate 4-5 stars and the other people who didn’t like it obviously, they would crush it, but it evened out to at least be a relatively good rating so I wasn’t hurt too bad.

My first day was about 90 downloads and then it went from 90 to 160 to 280 to 480 and it kept going up. It stayed right around I think like 500 downloads for a little while until it started coming back down and then I was really able to increase it at that point. I did a couple of things and just started growing my network. I was able to push traffic to it.

In the beginning the way I worked was basically as simple as possible. I do want the demographics to keep coming back to it. I made three app companies and sold them off, and did a bunch of apps and I could continue to do that but a few things have changed. One thing is I’m not as excited to make those apps anymore. I want to work on bigger app projects.

The other thing is that Apple is looking for different apps and different standards. Games have obviously taken off dramatically. The revenue from games has taken off too. Because the market I’ve also changed my apps a little bit.

I still like entertainment and utility apps, but I also see the value of working with some higher level games and my strategy now is rather work on a few apps and keep making them better and better than having 50 or 70 apps to manage because there’s a lot of work with keywords, updating them, etc.

I think I had probably 25 apps in one company with everything from security apps to some picture apps to a couple racing games. We were doing $50,000 to $100,000 a month. We sold that company and the new owner has taken it and he has doubled that. He has done extremely well.

You have to go free these days. You have to get them in the door. Consumers change dramatically. They realize that they don’t have to pay for a bunch of stuff. They want to get hooked first. There’s no barrier to entry with free so my strategy is give them a free app and sell them stuff once they are hooked. So give them either entertainment, fun, or value, and as soon as they get that value, give them an offer that says, “Hey you like this? Well check out this or get more coins” or give them any reason to purchase something. Again, we’re talking about pretty low transactions but you have to go free in the app space these days. That’s what the numbers tell you too.

I messed up a lot so make sure you understand that. It’s not like I nailed every single one of them. I fell on my face a tremendous amount but I just kept going. I was kind of awakened from my experience from the accident and I had an attitude where I don’t care if you put a brick wall in front of me, I was going to smash through it. I moved to San Francisco when my first fingerprint app got rejected. I didn’t even know what I was doing. I dressed up in a suit and tie in 95 degrees, hitched to Cupertino where Apple was. I tried walking into Apple saying, “Why is this thing rejected? What can I do?” I was just determined to make it work.

When I say every app has made money, it’s because it generates a certain amount of income over the course of its time so I’ve made my money back because it didn’t cost me a lot of money to actually make the app. I had an app called Harbor Madness as a competitor to Flight Control, which was at the top of the charts for a long time. I spent all this time making an app, then we launched it and it didn’t do anything. I understand marketing. I have a network. This is the best game that I have done. But I missed the mark on it. So, timing is everything and that market was already gone when I launched it. It still made money but it wasn’t at all what I thought it was.

I think it’s important to be really clear with what you want. I don’t want to be an Angry Birds and Zynga, they are way different business model and I’m actually not good at running a huge team that’s working with 50 people and managing them. I like the process of what it’s making me grow into. For apps, I see myself building an app that is similar to a brand level of Angry Birds, as a household app.

An example of this would be like a camera app that people use and get a lot of value from but doesn’t have the cost associated with Zynga or something else because that’s a lot of work and that’s a lot of people. I love making apps that I can scale but on a low resource cost and people budget because you can still use that and that’s what’s fun about it.

We’ve got a bunch of apps in the works. One is basically a dueling off game. It’s like a social fighting game that you can play with your friends on, almost like a cool 007 type of app. We’ve got other couple of social games going on. I’ve got some picture apps that we’re working on that we’re about ready to launch. I’m trying to do less apps, higher quality, and getting more revenue from that.

For Duel Off, we just did a soft launch across Australia, New Zealand but we’re going to wait on that one until we get some analytics and then we’re going to tweak and do a full scale launch. It’s English speaking and for us, soft launch is important because you don’t want to throw an app in the store fully if there could be bugs of there could be something wrong with it. We want to get some data and basically optimize it. We want to make sure that everything converts and monetizes. Once it does that, we can throw all kinds of traffic in its direction, but it’s foolish to do that before. You basically could waste your shot at really getting it up there in the charts.

Yeah, the book is called App Empire – Make Money Have a Life, and Let Technology Work for You. It has done really well. We’ve had a lot of success stories just from the book. Once I did the book, a lot of feedback was basically like, “This is amazing. I love it. I’m learning a lot,” but I also have all these questions and that made me think, “Okay, what can I do to answer these questions?”

I got into the internet marketing world last year by creating a product that really held people’s hands through the whole app process. I was helping right around 10-15 people and they all became successful, and a lot of them became very, very wealthy. I was like, “Okay, I can’t scale myself that way so how can I scale my knowledge?” I took the book to the next level and created this whole course with all these different software programs that I created that was automated for people so they could figure out what their app ideas were, pick their keywords, and have all their infrastructure set up. We’ve had some very successful students. Some were making $100,000 a month. They were making faster money than I was back then because they are just grabbing information and they are plug and playing it. It’s incredible to see.

That has been really fulfilling. It has been a process that I’ve had to work at but it has really been fulfilling to see students making that much money and it changes your life. As you know, once you get cash flow coming in, it changes your life, your family’s life, your friends’ life. It’s a completely new you because you’re not stuck to this whole survival of having to work and eat and survive. I’m very grateful for that. I’m very thankful for it for sure. It has been awesome.

Right now, in our community, we have right around like 40,000 and then as far as like full-time entrepreneurs, we have right around 2,200 people that are developing apps that are active and making money. We really have a good reach. Like anything, you have people that are working hard together so the synergy of our group I think is what’s more powerful than even some of the training.

I would say take action in some way or another. Mobile is hot like we’re saying. I feel like there are two types of people. There are either people that are going nuts at this trying to make it work one way or another or there are people who are saying the gold rush is over, mobile is dead, it’s not going anywhere. It’s obviously not dead. It’s just like any business or industry, things change so as entrepreneurs, we have to change with the times. That’s our skill, that’s why we own our own businesses. That’s why we have cash flow to travel around the world and do what we want to do but I would say get educated. You don’t have to buy my book. There are plenty of books and information out there and blogs and stuff like that to take action and get educated, and take steps, even if it’s a baby step, going to a meet up group or an interview on somebody on oDesk or Elance. Take some step into that direction because mobile isn’t going anywhere. It’s making people very wealthy so you should be one of them.

App Empire – Chad’s Official Website
Twitter – Chad’s Twitter
Facebook – App Empire’s Facebook
App Empire Book – Buy Chad’s Book on Amazon

I’ve always been a computer guy dating back to middle school around when AOL, Prodigy, and all these internet service providers came out. I started doing internet marketing and email marketing for different clients, from Fortune 500 companies, to adult sites, to “quit smoking cigarettes” companies. All kinds of stuff basically, sending out millions of emails a day. A lot of them were affiliate programs. I built a database and had signed up a bunch of other mailers underneath me and gave them a smaller percentage so I was keeping the rest, which really got me going and thinking like an entrepreneur. That was during high school times when I was probably 15 years old. I did that through all of high school and made good money off that but eventually got a job.

During my senior year of high school, you were required to have a job to be part of a program called OJT, which is on the job training. If you have a job, you can leave school early and go to that job. I had been hired by a lady to come to her office after school and do email marketing for her. It’s funny because I had friends in high school whose parents worked in her call center too. Here I am, coming from high school at 16 years old, and she’s giving me my own office, buying me a computer and what not. That was fun and I did a lot of email marketing for her and other online marketing too.

However, that business got really shady and there started to become a lot of lawsuits because of spam mailing. I knew a guy that lived locally that actually had gotten into a lawsuit over that. He had like nine computers set up at his house sending emails all day. Once I saw that happen, I moved in a different direction and didn’t want to be caught up in any of that. That’s how I really got into the whole email marketing stuff to begin with and I just had a computer background all along. I just took that knowledge and experience and moved it towards the entertainment business in 2006 when I started my company, Future Star.

I would sit in AOL chats and started seeing people advertising for different companies and it piqued my interest. I started to research it and came across a company called Bulk Barn. They are out of business now but they were basically a message board for email marketers.
I was reading what people were doing and the type of money people were making. Mailers back then for products with affiliate programs operating on a large scale were making $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 a week, if not more, depending on stuff they were doing. I’m 15 years old sitting in my room like, “If I could get a little piece of that, that would be great.” Almost all the kids I know were going to Subway after school for work so I was trying to figure out how I can make some decent money online.

I started reading forums and I started networking with people online. Different affiliates would post their programs on forums and their payouts, then I just started researching the actual act of mailing and talked with other mailers online and saw the programs they used. They had to use port 25 which was the port that you send mail through SMTP, which is a mail server. I started researching and I started getting proxies and learned the whole way of doing it. I started doing smaller mailings for companies to see how it would work and was getting a good success rate. I started coming up with innovative and creative subject lines to catch people’s attention that people weren’t using yet at that time. For example I would start a subject with “RE:” like it was a reply to an email conversation that was already going on. No one was doing it at that time so it was being creative and allows you leverage over other people.

Once I started to see a little success, $200 bucks here and there, I was like, “I could take this on a bigger scale,” so I started posting my own ads on the forum and getting other mailers to sign up under me and paying them less. Buy low, sell high theory, pay them a smaller cut, take the middle profits, and let them do most of the work. I would go on vacations and log into the internet to check my earnings and see where my money was at from other mailers working for me. That was a great feeling.

Again, I was about 17 years old at this point going on trips to the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas and eating at the Melting Pot three nights a week down here in Florida at a young age. At that point, I was making somewhere around $3,000 a week. It was short lived though because things got pretty iffy in that business and I got out of there like I had said before. But during the time that I was actually in it and rolling strong like that, at that age especially, even just to be getting a $2,000 check here and there, makes you seem like you’re on top of the world at that point.

To be honest I blew through the money quicker than I got it. At that point it’s one of those things where I didn’t really appreciate fast money. Rappers and athletes that I work with now, they throw it away on strip clubs, jewelry, cars, this and that. They blow it as fast as it comes in because they think it’s going to last forever. I was young and had that same mentality, I was trying to show off at school and have the coolest car. I put the 20” rims on the car with the low profile tires and a sound system with five TVs. I was going on trips, dinners, and stuff. I was blowing through it just as fast as I had it but my mentality was if I could make it then, I knew I could do something on a grander scale when I really got serious and grew up.

After high school I went to Tallahassee Community College for two years and then I was going to transfer to Florida State after that. Two years at college is when I decided, as an entrepreneur, you always have the mindset that you can make money doing anything that you put your mind to and commit to. I mean if there’s a will, there’s a way. If you can envision it, you can make it a reality.

I had already done a bunch of email marketing, and made some decent money so the school thing was never really for me. In high school, I never wanted to be there. I would always try and get out whenever I could or not be around. I’d rather be home on the computer researching stuff and networking, learning and programming, and coming up with different ways to make money. For me personally it was all about the power of the internet and finding ways to capitalize off it from the very, very beginning, even at a young age.

I moved up to Nashville after my second year in Tallahassee where my family lived and my brother was producing music at that time. He always had a passion for music and was producing and writing songs. I was hanging out in the studios and everyone that was in the studio saw my business sense and hustle, and the ideas I would come up with on ways that they can market themselves or brand themselves. They were like, “Oh you’d do good in the music industry you should start a company”. I’m a big fan of music and always have been so I just ran with that. Me and my brother sat there one night and tried to think of a company name or a name to do business as. He was like, “Future Star.” I did all the research. It was available. I was like, “That sounds cool. It’s catchy. It rolls off the tongue easily.” So in April 2006, I started Future Star and that’s how it was started really.

When I first started it, I looked up to all the idols and all the icons in music, and said I’m going to be the next music mogul. I want to be the next Jimmy Iovine, Clive Davis, Diddy, Jay or whoever. I wanted to be that next big thing and I said, “I’m going to be that somehow someway.” I’m still working to be that but I use my internet powers to help brand artists and to help them get music out and establish my company. I branded myself as the “online marketing company” when I saw everything starting to go digital in the music business so I got that reputation as the “go to guy” from an early point on.

It always has been, but as long as you follow proper protocol and as long as there’s an unsubscribe link that people can remove themselves from if they want, then once they remove themselves, you can’t add them again. The email servers don’t let you so you have to be spam compliant so there’s none of those issues. Most of these people I just threw in there. People would send out an email and they wouldn’t blind copy their contacts so I’d take them and copy and paste them into my list so it would grow and the more contacts I have, the broader audience I have, and the more possibility to create opportunity to get business. It’s a pretty simple approach for me but no harm was done.

If somebody didn’t want emails, they could just unsubscribe from the email and keep it moving and not have to deal with it, but it definitely played in my favor for sure. It brought me a lot of business and a lot of clients and helped me to continue to grow and expand my brand value. Most importantly, it kept the Future Star name in front of everybody’s face because every time I’d send something out, they would see Future Star, Future Star, Future Star over and over again. It was something to help me really start branding the name to the point that it is.

I wouldn’t really say there’s one specific break that I could think of. I would say it’s just consistency and persistence and determination that put me on the map. I have a “refuse to lose” mentality. I also helped blow up a couple of records that were big singles that ended up doing really well and Future Star was the first company to service them to the music industry. Back in 2006 I helped launch a lot of new songs from tons of major recording artists.

I also helped break a lot of new artists and introduce them to the world. Most recently, Juicy J’s song Bandz A Make Her Dance with Lil Wayne and 2 Chainz, is one of the biggest songs in the country. It’s almost platinum which is huge in this era and Future Star did the world premiere on that and did the email blast to all the DJs, media, and blogs to help launch that record. We also did Ray J’s new very controversial single “I Hit It First” and partnered with him on the launch of that record which charted on the Billboards. Not really one big break but just little breaks I think that all add it up into making it into one big picture.

It really is even to this day. I was doing anything I could to be honest with you. I would call offices 100 times a day. The secretaries would be like, “Such and such is not in the office anymore” and I was like, “No, he’s in the office, trust me. I saw that he replied to an email.” His reply might have been like unsubscribe me from your blast but I knew he was around because he wrote me back. I would just keep calling and calling. I would send packages. I would put envelopes together in the mail with a print out of services that my company offered and my contact information. I would physically mail them to all these offices in New York and LA. Once I figured out someone’s email at a record label, I would send them personal emails and say, “Hey George…” But a lot of it was just hustle to be honest. I would pretend like I knew people. I would say, “Hey I haven’t spoke to you in a while. I hope all is well since we last spoke.” I really just went for it like I figured I have nothing to lose. They are either going to ignore my email which if I don’t reach out to them anyway, they will never know who I am, or they might just roll with it and contact me, and then that opens the door for me to start building a relationship or at least to pursue other avenues.

Literally, 90% of the celebrities, artists, athletes and people I have relationships with today, I met by pretending I knew them or by making them think they already knew me. When you come to think of it, it’s really a great strategy. Let’s say I want to talk to Young Jeezy the rapper. I get his contact and send him an email and say, “Hey, I heard the show was crazy. We got to catch up and talk about putting this new song out everywhere. The DJs love it.” or something just to make him feel good and hyped up, acting as if he already knows me. They usually reply, “Okay, that’s cool. Let’s get the song out everywhere or whatever. Let’s talk about what we can do”.

I would just make them believe that I already had spoken with them before because like I said, there’s only two options: Either ignore me or reply to me and go with it because they might feel stupid by not answering because they are like, obviously this guy knows me if he is emailing me and he’s talking about things going on with my career so he must know me. I’ll make them feel awkward if they don’t reply. That’s really how I get it started and how I built relationships with everyone including the major record labels and a lot of the biggest artists that I still talk to, to this day frequently.

Of course and that’s a huge part of our clientele. That’s the benefit of the business. Artists in the music industry are always going to need marketing. It’s inevitable. It doesn’t matter if you’re an upcoming artist or you’re a major artist. No matter what, you’re still going to have a new song at some point, you’ll still going to put out a mixtape, you’ll still be putting out albums so no matter what, you’re going to need services and people to market them. Granted the bigger you are and with technologies these days, someone like a Chris Brown, Rihanna or Lady Gaga can go on Twitter and post a song and it’s going to start to spread organically on its own but they still need people like us and a team. These artists can’t do everything themselves so just sitting on Twitter posting a song isn’t going to make the song blow up. They still need people actively promoting it and working it behind the scenes to the industry side, the tastemakers in this business, to get things going and get the ball rolling. The clients are recurring so that’s the good thing. Although once you get them and as long as you provide great work, then you can usually retain the business.

We try not to over saturate it at all. We’ll never send more than one a day usually. We didn’t even originally send emails every day. It’s really just based off of supply and demand on virtually whenever our clients pay us and what they need because I’m not sending stuff out for free. So many artists think they are stars and you’re going to do it for free because you’re a fan or something. That means nothing to me. I’m a business. I’m trying to make money. If they are not paying, I’m not sending. We do it as needed but people aren’t bothered by the fact that we continue to send them so much because that’s what we’re known for and what we’re branded as. That’s why people are going to us because they want that new music, they want those updates, those exclusive offers and songs, the different things like press releases, etc, so they expect it from us and if they don’t like it, they can hit the unsubscribe link and they never have to hear from us again.

Future Star is the brand and there is going to be still expansion for that in several divisions. There’s Future Star Music which is a record label. There’s Future Star Marketing and Promotions which is what I use to do all the marketing stuff, the email blasts, all the consulting stuff, booking shows through, etc. There’s Future Star Management which is my management company that I just set up which I’ll be signing artists, songwriters, DJ’s, athletes and producers to and then there’s the Future Star DJs which is the DJ coalition. We currently have around 100 or so DJ’s. So, there are four subsidiaries to the Future Star brand at this time and that will constantly evolve and grow with time. I do also plan to expand into television and film within the Future Star umbrella as well in the near future. In fact, I’m working on some reality TV show concepts as we speak I’m excited about!

Earlier, this year, I created my new company, Fast New Fans, which is a social media marketing company specializing in Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram services, and I did it on a more broader scale. I figured if all the artists love these services and they are already paying me for it through my Future Star company, I will just funnel all the work through this new company for my prior clients plus reach more customers. It made it easier for me because they can order directly from the site with the shopping cart and streamline everything to one place versus them having to contact me, tell me what they need, me having to go into PayPal and send a payment request etc so I just streamlined it all to one website they can go to.

I created Fast New Fans for two reasons. One, to streamline all the work I already had coming from this from Future Star to make it easier and two, to reach a new audience of people like restaurants, car dealerships, bars, clubs, or really any kind of corporate company or brand or athlete or anybody that needs to build their online image and boost their online presence to look more credible!

For example, if I come across a restaurant in Palm Beach on Facebook, I click their fan page and they have 71 likes and I click on another restaurant fan page and they have 2,000 likes, I’m going to think that restaurant is more popular because of more likes. I started to reach a different audience and I’m branding it now to more of a broader demographic than strictly new fans for the music industry and it has been great so far. Huge names use us in the entertainment world so I figured why not expand it. It’s 100% confidential because obviously, people don’t want you knowing that they boosted their numbers on their pages so I keep those confidential but I can tell you some of the biggest celebrities that you can even think of right now, there are a few that are using me and our services as well as tons of upcoming artists because image is everything.

I could care less because they clearly don’t understand marketing or branding. Perception becomes reality. People only believe what they physically see in front of them. If you come across an artist’s page and they have 150 Twitter followers and you come across another page and they have 15,000 Twitter followers, you’re obviously going to immediately be more interested in the person with more followers because you’re going to think they have more credibility, they have a bigger buzz and following. It’s a branding aspect. So with Future Star, I was doing these services for clients and artists and I saw how popular it was so as new social network services came about, I continued to offer those. For example, when Instagram came about I started doing Instagram followers.

I just want to address the people that think it’s shady, it’s fake, etc for a minute. These are the people that just have to understand we’re not trying to scam people or fool anybody. What we’re doing is building a base and a foundation for them to grow organically and naturally from there. Using the examples like I had said, if you come across a page that has more likes or more followers or a video on YouTube that has more views, it just piques more interest so the end user and the consumers automatically are going to have a piqued interest in that profile or that video because they would think it’s already bigger than it is. Perception is everything and image is everything.

We give it a jump start is how I want to look at it. That’s what we’re doing. We’re giving it a jump start and then it’s going to grow from there on it’s own naturally. We’re helping people just have a stronger look online and a stronger foundation to build from. It’s a huge success; it really is especially in today’s times, technology, and with these social media networks, so it’s a big market. It’s just an easy service to help people out and get that superstar image that they are looking for.

What’s next for me is I’ve got several new companies that I’m working on outside of Future Star and Fast New Fans at the moment in all different areas of business actually. Majority of my stuff will always be online ventures and things within the tech space but I’m always working on different stuff and I’ve got a huge list of business ideas that I’m starting to dial in on and work on transforming them from an idea to a reality. Like I said, it’s all about the mindset. The key is just never bite off more than you can chew and a little bit of balance of everything because some people get over their head and they want to do this, this and this the next, and they never really get anything started or never really make any progress on their dream because they are all over the place and they don’t commit to it.

For me, it’s all about building the brand and then moving on to the next one. I would have never moved on to Fast New Fans if Future Star wasn’t already built and the foundation wasn’t there. Once it got to that point then I created Fast New Fans and started branding and building it which I’m still doing now. I’m also looking to invest into some other start ups and companies as well. You never want to throw all your eggs in one basket. If there’s opportunity, I’m going to go after it no matter what it is so I just keep my ears and eyes open and see what opens doors for me and go to them. That’s kind of where I’m at now but I do have some new businesses coming and like I said, they are in development now and as soon as they are ready to go, the world will know about them. I’m really, really excited about them!

- Future Star Official Website
- Brian Garrett’s Twitter
- Brian Garrett’s Facebook
- Fast New Fans Official Website

I started playing professional football when I was younger and always wanted to be a pro athlete. So after college, I made All American as a football player and a decathlete. Eventually I had to make a decision, whether I should train for the next few years as a decathlete to try and make the Olympic team or should I go and play professional football right now. I had decided I wanted to play professional football and start getting paid right away. I ended up making the Arena Football League but got injured in my first year so I never really had the chance to make it to the NFL. The goal was to play in the Arena Football League, do well in it, and then move up to the NFL after a year or two.

I broke my right wrist diving for a football under the wall so I had to have surgery. I was in a full arm cast for the next six months and slept on my sister’s couch for about a year trying to figure out how to make a living and what I was going to do next. I didn’t have a college degree at that time so I was trying to figure out if I should even get a job. However, if I didn’t get a job, I wouldn’t have been able to live on my own and pay off the debt that I had from school and the credit cards that I was living off of.

A good mentor and friend said to check out LinkedIn for jobs. So I got on LinkedIn and started to become pretty aggressive on there for about 6-8 hours a day for the next six months just connecting with people, trying to make introductions, and adding value to people in any way I could. That’s kind of how everything else started.

It already existed for a few years actually. I got on there in late 2007 and there were about 20 million people on there at that time and now there are over 200 million people. It has grown tremendously since then. It has only helped people even more since then but for me, there are a lot of people on there then that I could connect with still.

Originally, the goal was to connect with as many sports executives as possible to see if I could get back into playing football or work in sports somehow, because sports was what I really liked. I started connecting with every sports professional I could and then just started interviewing them, asking them questions like: What’s your biggest challenge? What are you really working on right now? What’s the biggest thing you’re trying to overcome?

I would always get: “I’m looking for a graphic designer. I’m looking for this type of person, a marketing person, whatever it may be,” and I was just like, “Well, I just talked to the best person in that category a few weeks ago. I would love to make an introduction.” So I made introductions to people and then I became known as kind of like the guy who knew everyone and connected people whenever they needed a challenge. I started to see a lot of dividends pay out the more I connected other people, because I didn’t have anything to offer at that time still. I didn’t have a skill and still didn’t have a job. I didn’t have a business, but I had a large network and database and I was willing to give to other people in that way.

That’s what I started out originally doing on LinkedIn, then people started to ask me, “How did you get your profile look so good? How can I make mine look this good?” I started just helping my friends optimize their LinkedIn profile to help them get a job, get more clients, or get more traffic for leads and sales, and through doing that, they were seeing tremendous results and making a lot of money.

I started charging people for LinkedIn profile optimization. I was making about $50 then $100, then up to $300 and I realized that it wasn’t fulfilling for me to do that anymore. I wanted to get my message out there for broader audience and that’s when I wrote the book on LinkedIn.

I’ve got a couple of books. I’ve got a webinar marketing book, but the LinkedIn book is called Linked Working and it’s teaches people how to generate success on LinkedIn. It’s all about real world networking principles and applying it to the online networking world of LinkedIn.

I started leveraging LinkedIn groups early on for myself to drive traffic back to the site that I created, which is a sports business website and I started to see that I was easily able to get a lot of traffic back to my site by creating my own group, cultivating a network in a tribe of people in a similar industry, and then I just started teaching other people how to do the same so they can get traffic leads and sales through LinkedIn. I became one of the top people teaching LinkedIn for businesses.

There were a couple of people who were doing it but had a very corporate feeling, it wasn’t entrepreneurial at all. I was guest posting on the right blogs, I was getting featured in the right places so I was becoming more known than the other people who started out before me. I was showing tremendous results for the clients that I was teaching and helping out. I think that’s what helped me separate myself from the other LinkedIn educators out there and also what separated me today.

The next thing was really trying to figure out how to make money because I was making a little bit of cash. I was hosting LinkedIn networking events around the country. I did about 20 events in 2009 where I was just bringing people together and helping them connect offline in the real world as opposed to just connecting on LinkedIn. I was making $2,000 in cash a month doing that but it was very time consuming. It took a lot of my energy and it wasn’t helping me really grow and it wasn’t exciting anymore.

I tried to figure out how I could monetize my information. I had already created a book but wasn’t really making a lot of sales off a $20 product. I tried to figure out how I could take this to the next level but also not work as hard, so there is passive income coming and there’s someone buying something every day. I did my first webinar and that’s what really helped me create this idea of what I wanted to do for the last few years. I did my first webinar and made $6,300 in an hour teaching LinkedIn. I thought to myself, “I could do this every day for as long as it takes.”

I pretty much just studied a lot, learned through trial and error of how to promote things, saw what was working, where was it working, etc. I followed a lot of great marketers online and just emulated what was working for them, using my personal twist. I think over time, if you do it for enough, over three or four years, you start to learn what works, what doesn’t work, and that’s what I’ve been doing.

Linked Influence is basically a complete training on how to grow your business or achieve any professional goal using LinkedIn. I talk about leads, traffic, and sales. I talk about how to get a job, talk about promoting events, how to automate traffic, all the different things you need to know about building your business on LinkedIn.

It’s all video training, transcripts, work sheets, and MP3s of the audios. It’s a membership site where you could log in and get access to all the different content. We break it down step by step behind the scenes, making it very easy for people to go to any topic they want to learn about.

It has been around for a couple of years. I’ll probably do another update this year because of some design elements that are different in LinkedIn and we have changed a few features so we would probably do a retraining on that and then launch it again.

The first thing is that you want to optimize your profile first because if your profile sucks, it doesn’t matter what you do. If people go to your profile and it looks like a crap or looks amateur, they are not going to take action on what you want them to do. They are not going to opt in, they are not going to go to your site, and they are not going to respond to your email. You got to give them the perception at least that you’re a qualified person that you have done something, that you’re interesting, that you’re creative, or that you get results which you can add. There are ways to optimize your profile. There are ways to increase your SEO in your profile so people can find you based on keywords. There are all sorts of means you can do but just go ahead and optimize your profile first.

The second thing that you should do if you’re looking to get more leads, traffic, and sales or really grow your business is to create your own targeted group on LinkedIn. Now, this group should be based around the audience that you’re trying to market to in general so if your audience is real estate agents, then you’d want to build a real estate agent group. Now if it’s local social media marketing, then you’d want to build local social media marketing group. If it’s sports professionals, you want to build that.

I’ve created a number of different groups and these groups allow you to send an email out once a week to all the members of the group. Now, one of my groups, Sports Industry Network, has over 120,000 members. It’s a free database that I don’t spend any money that I can send an email out with different links to webinars, videos, my website and sales page, whatever I want to send them to, to help me drive traffic, get more leads, and get more sales. So optimize your profile first then go right into creating a specific group that you want to target for your audience that you want to market to.

Originally, I was just connecting with sports professionals one by one on LinkedIn, reaching out to them. After I connected to them, I would say, “Hey go ahead and make sure you join my group. I’ve got an awesome group of other professionals like yourself that I love to promote you to.” I just started promoting it that way, tweeted that every now and then, posted it on Facebook and after I got to about 1,000 members, it just started to grow on its own. It grows like 4,000 people a month right now just organically because people are searching sports, for groups, and then it grows from there.

We publish experts who know the platforms who are the top in the field, Amy Porterfield for Facebook Influence and James Wedmore for Video Traffic Academy. I know a lot about those platforms but I’m not the best so we want to give our audience the best. They’ve got their own products but they didn’t have a big audience so we help sell it for them to a bigger audience. We have lots of affiliates so we can have them promoted as well and they wanted to be more well-known so we were able to do that through our channels.

Our three core products which are basically LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube where we show people how to get more leads, traffics, and sales for those three major sites. We’ve also got a webinar marketing course which teaches people, if you’ve got expertise or a passion, or something that you want to share with people, how to get your message across through webinars and then monetize those webinars. We’ve also got a membership site which is weekly content for small business owners and entrepreneurs called the Social Marketing Tribe which basically gives lessons, webinars, videos, content, to help them get more leads, traffics, and sales and there’s a membership form where they can communicate with us and ask us any questions. We have done bigger events in the past. We have coaching. We’ve got a lot of different things we’re doing.

It was a huge blessing because it gave me a different channel to really share my message more and I think what keeps me motivated is the value to help people out and really see their dreams come true. As cheesy as that sounds, I get emails every day from people who are just like, “I use your strategy. I applied this method, or I took action on what you told me to do and I made this much more money.” I feel a sense of freedom that I was finally able to figure out how to monetize my passion or my inspiration and I can step away from the stuff that I don’t like. I can have more freedom and flexibility and l can enjoy the lifestyle that I’ve always wanted to live.”

I think when I get those messages from people, that’s one of the things that really inspired me to continue creating information that helps people live that way and also, being able to create the lifestyle for myself. I’ve always been the type of guy that wants to do exactly what I want, when I want to do it and not having to rely on anyone else to live a certain way. Making sure that I can live a lifestyle I want to live inspires me to continue and also helping as many people as well live their lives that they want.

I did a three-day workshop and taught them how to grow their online business. There was a woman that had a service. She did a weekend training teaching people, experts, and business owners, how to write a bestselling book in Amazon in a weekend. She would do this weekend retreat and would charge $1,500 but it took a lot of her time and energy because there would be 15-20 people there. She’d have to rent out the space. She’d have to travel, tons of pre-work and things like that.

She wanted to figure out how to create a product from it but didn’t know how to create it. She spent two years trying to brainstorm, “What can I do? How can I teach this? What should I do with the technical aspect?” I said, “Listen, in the next 24 hours, I want you to create a webinar and I want you to not have a product. I want you to see the idea of a product that you want to have that you’re going to give them. You’re going to deliver the product live just like you would over a weekend retreat. You’re going to deliver it live but virtually on webinars.” So you will do a bestseller on a weekend for $300 as opposed to $1,500 from the comfort of your home and from your audiences’ home. You’re going to sell it to the masses as opposed to having to do a lot of one-on-one work.”

In less than 24 hours, she had promoted this to her audience. Her webinar wasn’t that great. She didn’t have a product. She was nervous. Her sales page was horrible. It was like a PayPal link and a video. Within that hour webinar, she made $22,000 and she didn’t even have a product. I think that was a fun success story recently that someone was feeling like they were holding back from their challenges and their fears. They didn’t know what to do and when they just took action and sold something before they had it; they were able to see the result.

We tried to launch a couple of websites that really we thought were going to be big hits. We tried to launch this quote website that was like thousands of different inspirational and motivational quotes from authors, experts, and leaders because everyone likes to share quotes online. They start to share quotes on Twitter, on Facebook and so we thought, “Let’s build like the ultimate quote sharing site that can help us drive a lot of traffic back and build leads that way.” We spent like 3-6 months trying to develop it and it didn’t go anywhere.

We test things all the time. We’re investing all the time and stuff. We’re trying new marketing strategies, ad campaigns, and some stuff just doesn’t work.

I think it’s just more learning – learning how to be more effective in business and I think you need to do certain things in order to learn how to make things better – so I won’t say they are necessarily mistakes but just learning how to manage people, how to build better relationships, how to deal with crisis and just how to learn how to react better with things. Nothing too major but just all the stuff you need to do.

I think the tip would be to find the exact person that you want to emulate or be like in business or in life. Find out the direction you want to be like, find out who that person is and then figure out a way to work with them so you can learn exactly how they did it and then follow your own path in getting there. The biggest thing is just to make sure you follow exactly what you like doing in life otherwise, you’re not going to be as completely fulfilled if you’re not following your passion.

Lewis Howes – The official website and blog of Lewis Howes

Lewis Howes – Lewis’ official LinkedIn.

Lewis Howes – Lewis’ official Facebook.

LinkedInfluence – Learn to get more sales, traffic, and leads via LinkedIn

School of Greatness – Lewis’s podcasts with entrepreneurs, athletes, more…