Journey To 7 Figures

Single Grain was a struggling digital marketing agency before Eric Siu took over. In this episode, he shares how he took them from unprofitable to working with clients like Uber, Amazon, and Salesforce, last year generating $2M in revenue. Topics Discussed in this Episode: [02:38] What Eric learned from his experience working at Treehouse [04:03] What kind of shape Single Grain was in when Eric first got involved with it [07:25] How things got worse for Single Grain [09:11] What they did to keep Single Grain from going out of business and turn things around [11:36] How they got their clients to stick for 12 to 18 months [12:46] What helped Single Grain the most in terms of marketing [18:06] How they figured out what actually works for SEO [20:20] How they started doing a podcast and growing it substantially [23:35] The strategies that they used to grow the Marketing School Podcast [29:40] How to set and manage client expectations   Key Takeaways: Whatever you do in your life, as long as you’re constantly t

Crowdfunding agency Enventys Partners (formerly Command Partners) has helped launch over 450 new businesses via crowdfunding campaigns. They’ve helped raise over $150M and last year generated over $10M in revenue. Roy Morejon explains how they did it. Topics Discussed in this Episode: [01:28] How Roy got started with Command Partners [09:58] How they started getting more projects and building their customer base [14:57] Building a team around each project [16:46] Setting client expectations [25:30] How Command Partners merged with Enventys [30:32] How they put systems and processes in place to gain more consistent results [32:16] How they brought in the key people to step up their business [35:37] Strategies with regards to content marketing [38:02] Strategies to get speaking opportunities Key Takeaways: There is an opportunity for any company out there to run a crowdfunding campaign, whether it be reward-based with a physical product or potentially equity-based. The unfortunate side of running a Kickstart

Michael was a special education teacher before he went on to found 3 multi-million dollar companies including one that reached $40M in annual sales with 350k customers. Learn how he did it in this episode! Topics Discussed in this Episode: [01:28] Michael’s transition from teaching special education to entrepreneurship [07:33] Copywriting and creating profitability through ads and affiliate marketing [12:44] Starting out with AdWords and working with partners to provide more value [16:24] Why you should build a team, train them and have a system in place [22:32] Michael’s journey with Hypnosis Network [26:50] How Michael started RealDose [30:42] Developing the products for RealDose and building the inventory [34:40] Media buying and getting the business going [40:12] Baby Bathwater and what it’s all about Key Takeaways: You can reverse engineer anything. You might do all right with finding some opportunity, but if you’re not really into it, you’re going to burn out fast. Don’t just look to make some cash b

LeadMD is a bootstrapped marketing agency who have helped over 3,000 high growth and enterprise clients like Forbes and eBay. Having started in 2009, they’ve implemented over half of the Marketo user base and last year they generated $5.6M in sales! Tune in as Justin Gray shares their success story and more! Topics Discussed in this Episode: [05:35] Figuring out your customer type and bridging the gap between knowing the type of customers you want to serve and actually getting them [08:00] Partnership strategies and how to get good results [10:40] How LeadMD figured out their pricing model, why they chose to put their pricing on the site, and how they engaged their customers [15:00] How to productize services [17:33] Nailing down your hiring practices and the core values to look for when hiring people [23:56] Training people to be able to deliver success for your business [26:56] LeadMD’s content marketing strategy Key Takeaways: When you’re a bootstrapped organic business, you can’t afford to spend time a

Neil Patel has built multiple seven figure businesses including an agency and marketing software Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics. He gets over 1.1M monthly reader to his website. On this episode, he dishes how he did it. In this episode you will learn: Some of the strategies they used when they first got started [07:12] How they were able to get big, major clients [08:31] How he came up with the idea for Crazy Egg [08:56] Why they started KISSmetrics [17:40] When to focus on blogging [22:18] Key Takeaways: When you go after the press to try and get covered, don’t go after the top publications right away. The way to get people to stay on your product for a longer period of time is to ask them what they want you to build and then build it. You will get to your revenue numbers quicker than any other way when you do cross promotions. You don’t need a blog to create a business under $10 million. It’s not worth it unless you want to create a business that’s bigger than that. It’s okay to make mistakes. Just learn from

Anthony Sarandrea started Pocket Your Dollars as a lead generation company for debt settlement. He spends $15,000/day on Facebook to connect as many as 5,000 people/day with settlement agencies and has scaled to over $500k/month in revenue. In this episode you will learn: How they got the idea for the business and how they were able to be so successful so quickly [01:33] How they went about finding the people that they were going to connect the leads with [03:51] How they started generating leads for their partners [06:25] Their Facebook strategy [08:01] Why they chose to acquire a site and how they went about doing it [25:13] Key Takeaways: Your partners need to be making money in order for you to be making money. Segmentation and talking to people differently plays a big part in scaling a debt settlement business profitably. You can go the route of really trying to draw in a lot of awareness and a lot of high balls and you can start to filter them down. One of the biggest game changers is understanding o

Samantha Meis started MistoBox, a coffee subscription business, while still in college. They launched in 2012 with a Kickstarter project, appeared on Shark Tank, made a deal with Mark Cuban and have gone on to generate over $2.7M in sales last year. In this episode you will learn: How they came up with the idea for MistoBox and how they got things off the ground  [01:40] How they launched a Kickstarter project for their business [03:10] How they got their first 100 customers [04:10] How they advertised and promoted their Kickstarter program [05:09] What their experience was like with Shark Tank and how it’s worked with signing up Mark Cuban [05:52] How they were able to leverage the traffic brought by Shark Tank [09:49] What were their next steps after Shark Tank [10:27] How they got customer feedback and implemented changes to their product [13:31] What were the things they did really well and the things they had to overcome to raise their revenue [16:22] How they continued to drive new sign-ups [19:01] Wha

Oli Gardner shares how Unbounce used content marketing and partnerships to grow their website traffic to 800,000 monthly visitors and how focusing on the right customer helped them grow to 14k users and $17M in revenue. In this episode you will learn: What gave them the idea to come up with Unbounce [01:34] What they did to be able to start the company [03:20] How Oli handled the marketing side of things [04:09] How they started generating awareness of their content to build an email list [07:17] What was Oli’s content strategy [09:31] How they launched the company [12:14] How they got to their first 100 customers [14:44] Unbounce’s partnership with MailChimp and how they benefited from it [15:05] How to choose the companies to partner with [16:38] How long it took Unbounce to hit seven figures and the things they had to overcome to get there  [17:52] How they got people to join their webinars [20:09] What struggles they had to overcome before hitting seven figures in 2012 [23:25] How they built their produc

Rand Fishkin shares how he started blog SEOMoz to generate consulting clients for his design agency. He’s gone on to grow that blog to over 3.2M monthly visitors, which has helped grow SEO software, Moz to $47.4M in revenue with over 36,000 customers. TOPICS: How Rand started the SEOMoz blog [01:39] Rand’s biggest struggle and the strategies he employed to initially grow traffic [05:28] How they made $440,000 in the first six months [11:58] What it is like to have a business in a new a space [13:25] Rand’s main growth strategy [14:12] What Rand would do differently now that he’s not at Moz anymore and has the chance to start over [17:05] How Rand balanced his consulting business and the software at the same time [21:50] How they figured out their three core groups of clients [24:46] How understanding their audience impacted their business [26:36] The strategies that helped grow Moz the way it has [29:14] How they were able to build a great community around Moz [33:49] What Rand did when he thought Moz would

Aaron Hinde shares the strategies he used to grow FitAid into a $21M a year business. He shares how they were able to sell in 50% of Crossfit gyms across the US and in retailers like Whole Foods, Sprouts, GMC and more! TOPICS: How did Aaron come up with his business idea? [01:35] How did he go from having this idea to actually creating a nutritional drink company? [02:47] How did they come up with the formulation of a drink that’s healthy but tastes good? [03:42] What did they do when it came to working deals and packaging their products? [05:31] Among their multiple initiatives, how did they choose what to focus on? [06:00] How did they get their sales on their first year? [07:22] How did they start acquiring these different Crossfit gyms? [07:59] What was the offer that they created for these Crossfit gyms? [08:52] How did they follow-up on those offers and figure out the follow-up sequence? [09:33] What did they find discouraging when they first got started? [10:42] How did they develop their customer li

Today on the show, Luke Ford shares not only the strategies he used to grow My Computer Works to $4.6M but also how focusing on NPS doubled the LTV of his customers, the marketing strategies he used to scale, and much more! He has a very interesting story about raising money, so listen in and enjoy! TOPICS: What inspired Luke to get into entrepreneurship and start a business? [01:34] What was one of the unique things about how Luke started My Computer Works? [02:41] What was it like trying to raise money pre-revenue and working on it for six months? [03:11] What were the steps that Luke took to put this business together and line up the investors? [02:54] What was their target customer and how did they get their first 100 clients? [04:58] What was their business plan? [07:58] What kind of bottlenecks did they run into? Did they have to change their business model? [08:52] Why did they choose to custom-build their automation technology themselves? [11:42] How far did the automation take My Computer Works in t

In today’s episode, Alex Brown shares the strategies he used to grow Dollar Beard Club to $11M in one year, sell over 1.7M boxes, generate 200M viral video views, and how he convinced Dan Bilzerian to promote their products. Tune in and learn from his journey! TOPICS: What’s the story of how The Beard Club came to be? [01:37] How many years did it take before it felt like they had some traction and success? [06:40] What was their strategy for building their email list of 15,000 people? [08:02] Why did they choose to work with influencers and how did they build relationships with them? [10:41] If someone is looking to get into influencer marketing, how should they negotiate rates? [12:55] How did Alex get connected with advisors who are really influential and how does he create relationships with them? [14:48] How did they first build their brand through video marketing? [16:48] How did they get things lined up in order to launch the brand? [19:10] How did they find the manufacturer to make their product? [25

In today’s episode, I interview Jeremy Young, who has sold multiple online businesses for 8 figures. His current business, Tanga, generates over $24M in revenue a year. Tune in as he shares his journey, and learn how he built these businesses without driving his own traffic or raising money. TOPICS: What kind of business is Tanga? [1:37] How did Jeremy come up with the idea for his first business, Virtual Servers, and how did he get started? [02:00] How did Jeremy grow Virtual Servers? [03:34] How does Jeremy go about finding good partners? [08:19] How did Jeremy sell his first company? [09:51] How did Jeremy come up with Uberplay? [10:40] How was Jeremy able to make the connections he needed to start Uberplay? [11:21] What did Jeremy do to build relationships within the board game industry? [12:35] How did Jeremy get started with Tanga? [15:50] How was Jeremy able to get traffic to sites in order to push the daily deals in Tanga? [16:11] How does Jeremy reach out to new people and how does he reach out for

In this episode, I interview Ryan Carson, who discovered the power of building a community when he started hosting meetups in a bar. The meet-ups evolved into conferences, which he used to launch Treehouse, an online education platform, and acquire his first 3,000 customers. Today, Treehouse has over 286,000 students in 190 countries and $15M annual revenue. Pick up some of the lessons that Ryan learned throughout his journey and enjoy the show! TOPICS: What did Ryan do that put him in a position to be successful with Treehouse? [01:34] Why did Ryan want to start his own company? [05:41] How did Ryan get into the conference business that led to Treehouse? [11:24] How did Ryan build a community of web designers and web developers? [14:48] What is the value of building a community? [15:59] How did Ryan scale his conference business and build Treehouse? [18:23] How did Ryan build his email list? [20:58] What were some of the steps Ryan took to grow from $1M to $15M in revenue? [23:51] How did Ryan figure out th

Have you ever been in debt and wondered how you can get out of that muck and build a business? If so, then you’ve come to the right podcast! Listen as Veronique James shares her incredible story of how she went from being up to her neck in debt to now running a $4M award-winning agency. Enjoy! TOPICS: What inspired Veronique to get into business? [01:21] How did two-and-a-half years of experience working in an agency helped Veronique start her own business? [06:16] When did Veronique start thinking about starting her own business? [08:40] How did Veronique’s personal life impact her decision to start her own business? [09:50] What did Veronique do to leverage networking groups and get her first few clients? [14:04] What was it like for Veronique to work with contractors? [21:25] What are some of the lessons that Veronique learned the hard way? [25:05] How did Veronique’s business take off to a $1M revenue? [29:53] How does Veronique build recurring revenue into her business? [37:14] How does Veronique make

We’ve got an extraordinary episode for you today as I interview my good friend Kevin Gianni who shares with us his story of how he started out as a personal trainer to becoming a health blogger, and finally launching Annmarie Skin Care, a multi-million dollar skin care line that is currently on an eight-figure run rate. It’s an episode that’s packed with some really actionable strategies, so let’s dive in! TOPICS: How did Kevin come up with the idea for Renegade Health? [02:03] What was different about what they were teaching to people as personal trainers? [03:00] What was Kevin’s goal in building an online community and an email list? [06:37] How did Kevin come up with the world summits? [07:30] How did Kevin start writing books? [11:34] How did Renegade Health start opening an online store? [11:53] How did Renegade Health generate traffic? [13:54] What did Kevin realize about operating in the information business? [16:53] What is the challenge of the information business? [17:34] What did Kevin realize ab

I’m very excited to introduce you guys to AJ Mihrzad! He has an amazing business, Online Super Coach, and today he is going to share his journey of how he turned his life around and built a $1.2 million business with 90% profit. TOPICS: What is Online Super Coach? [01:46] How did AJ Mihrzad become an entrepreneur and start running his own business? [02:23] How long did it take for AJ to become a full-time personal trainer? [05:18] How did AJ discover direct response marketing and transform his personal training business? [09:28] How did hiring a coach help AJ build his business? [11:34] What were the three things AJ learned from his coach in order to attract clients? [15:24] What kind of compelling offers did AJ put in front of people? [19:05] What helped AJ the most in order to be able to sell over the phone? [20:35] How did AJ hire and train his team of trainers? [25:48] How did AJ come up with the online personal training business? [27:59] How did AJ scale up his online personal training business? [33:42]

What do you do when your tried-and-true business model collapses? Randy Hartnell spent 17 years fishing in Alaska. When industry demands shifted and he couldn’t meet payroll, he had to make a change. He decided to start Vital Choice, shipping wild salmon by mail to consumers. Today, Vital Choice generates $20M a year. Listen and find out how you can get through challenging times and subsequently grow your business.   TOPICS:   What gave Randy the capabilities that he needed to be successful with Vital Choice? [02:20] What made Randy decide to start VitalChoice.com? [04:56] How did Randy get through the challenging and pivotal time for his business? [08:59] What were the steps that Randy took to get Vital Choice off the ground? [10:44] How did Randy tap into influencers to promote his business? [13:30] How much of a help were the influencers to Randy in getting his business to the seven-figure level? [13:59] How does the company get value from going to conferences and tradeshows? [16:22] How did the company g

What does it take to make you happy? Jayson Gaignard, built a $7M a year ticketing business, only to discover it didn’t make him happy. On the verge of bankruptcy, he took a loan from a friend to throw an event and has since turned that event into a business that generates $2.1M a year. Want to find out more? In today’s episode, Jayson shares his story about overcoming adversity and finding your happiness.  TOPICS: What is MastermindTalks? [02:16] How did Jayson Gaignard first get into business and entrepreneurship? [03:23] How did Jayson get his first couple of 100 clients for his ticketing business? [06:16] Why did Jayson get into the retail space? [08:22] What is traction and how important is it? [11:45] What were the reasons why Jayson wasn’t happy despite the success of his ticketing business? [12:51] What is one of the lessons Jayson learned when he was scaling down his ticketing business? [17:57] How did Jayson start building everything again from scratch? [20:21] What is the value of relationships an

Russ Perry built a marketing agency. His agency had many problems which ultimately led to its failure. Russ shares those lessons he learned and how he built Design Pickle, providing unlimited graphic design, resulting in $4.7M in sales.  TOPICS: What is Design Pickle all about? [02:27] How did Russ Perry get into entrepreneurship? [2:56] How did his experience working at Apple help Russ Perry start his own business? [05:33] What were the first three steps Russ Perry took when he started his agency? [05:56] Why is it important to niche down when you’re running an agency? [09:59] How did Russ Perry get back on his feet after losing his agency? [15:03] How did Russ Perry come up with Design Pickle? [16:11] What makes Design Pickle’s business model successful? [22:51] How did Design Pickle gain customers? [24:10] How does Design Pickle handle customer retention? [29:43] How does outsourcing work for Design Pickle? [31:40] “Agencies are beyond difficult, so anyone who actually can succeed with one, I really admi