Listen Now

For the final episode of Season 1, I sat down with Doug Cunnington to discuss all things Amazon Affiliate and niche sites, as well as the case study that he’s running on his site at the moment, where he’s bought an aged site and all of the work on this site is being outsourced. Sites and Resources Mentioned: Niche Site Project Doug.Show Podcast Doug’s YouTube Channel Human Proof Designs Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg jQuery(window).load(function(){ jQuery('#accordions-lazy-130').fadeOut(); jQuery('#accordions-130 .items').fadeIn(); }); @media only screen and (min-width: 1024px ){ #accordions-130 { width: 100%; } } @media only screen and ( min-width: 768px ) and ( max-width: 1023px ) { #accordions-130 { width: 100%; } } @media only screen and ( min-width: 0px ) and ( max-width: 767px ){ #accordions-130 { width: 100%; } } #accordions-130 .items {display: none;} #accordions-130 .accordions-lazy { text-align: center; position: absolute; top: 50%; left: 50%; transform: translate(-50%, -50%); } #accordions-130 { text-align: left; background:#ffffff url() repeat scroll 0 0; position: relative; } #accordions-130 .accordions-head{ background:#1e73be none repeat scroll 0 0; outline: none; } #accordions-130 .accordions-head-title{ color:#ffffff; font-size:16px; } #accordions-130 .accordions-head-title-toggle{ color:#ffffff; font-size:16px; } #accordions-130 .accordions-head:hover .accordions-head-title{ color:#ffffff; } #accordions-130 .ui-state-active{ background: #174e7f; border: none; } #accordions-130 .accordion-content{ background:#ffffff none repeat scroll 0 0; border: none; } #accordions-130 .accordion-icons{ margin:0px; } #accordions-130 .accordions-head:hover .accordion-icons span{ } Transcript Kevin Graham: Hey guys, Kevin Graham here and today on the podcast I have with me Doug Cunnington. Doug is a blogger who writes about building and operating online businesses. I first discovered him and his blog back in 2013 when he got a link from Niche Pursuits, who I was following very closely at the time when I was learning how to get started with making money online myself. So I'm super excited to have him on the show today and have a chat with him. Please welcome Doug Cunnington. Doug Cunnington: Hey Kevin, it is a pleasure to be here and I hope the coffee is going to be kicking in here pretty soon. It's a little early in the morning, but I'm pumped to talk to you. Kevin Graham: Yeah. I mean it's almost 9:00 at night here on my side. I've just had a massively long day. I've got like a whiskey and Coke and a bunch of water here, so I'm excited to just push through, get this amazing interview recorded and share it with our listeners next week. Doug Cunnington: Yeah, the whiskey and Coke sounds ... It's early enough where that doesn't even sound good to me right now. Kevin Graham: So for the listeners who might not know about you and your history and background, can you give us a brief rundown on who you are and what you do? Doug Cunnington: Sure. Right now, I have a blog, a podcast, a YouTube channel all around, Amazon affiliate marketing and some SEO. It's called Niche Site Project, if people want to check it out. And I kind of stumbled my way into making money online and internet marketing and that sort of thing. It was smart passive income. It's like the gateway drug podcast for a lot of people. Doug Cunnington: And I accidentally found smart passive income, listened to a bunch of episodes and within, I don't know, like a month I had like a couple of terrible sites launched that completely failed. But it was a good sort of like side hobby. I wasn't making any money at the time, but it was a good, interesting sort of technical thing for me to get into outside of my day job, which at the time was management consulting. Doug Cunnington: I did IT project management and it was a fine job through all external views. It's successful, but I don't know. It was one of the soul sucking sort of jobs that you hear about typical worker be, long hours, under appreciated and that sort of thing. Doug Cunnington: So this online marketing stuff was a great outlet. And then over time, I sort of figured out what worked, figured out what wasn't working so well. And in 2015, I got laid off from my job and at that point I was like, "This is a chance to really try, really put effort into this online marketing stuff. And that was four years ago. So I'm doing well now and really enjoy it. Kevin Graham: Yeah. And I was getting started around that same time of following a bunch of the stuff that Pat Flynn was talking about. He had a couple of case studies on his site as well as the stuff that Spencer from Niche Pursuits was putting out as his case studies. I had some probably equally as horrible sites. Yeah, I remember that time quite fondly. So at what point do you think it started to break through and you started to make more cash? Was that after you were laid off and went full time? Doug Cunnington: So I had, I guess, a typical story for a lot of Internet marketers back in the day. Kevin, you're probably in the same boat where in 2013, you could actually start a site and rank it pretty quickly within six weeks to three months or so and make a lot of money. Doug Cunnington: So within six months, I had a site that went from zero to like 6,000 a month. I was like, "I'm going to quit my job." I thought I was the smartest person ever and I really cracked the code. And it's a rite of passage really. My site was penalized that following month by Google, so I was practicing like gray hat activities, getting links basically that Google doesn't like and I got caught up in the frenzy. I think Spencer at Niche Pursuits did as well. Doug Cunnington: I mean back in the day, even Pat Flynn was doing essentially the same stuff. We're talking about a link pyramid and link wheels and going to Fiverr and getting content that spun and all this sort of nonsense that it doesn't work nowadays or at least in the way that we were doing it back then. But it was pretty much common practice. And these very prominent bloggers currently, that's what they were doing back in the day. That's just what was done. So I got caught up in that mess. Doug Cunnington: So that was within six months, like pretty good income and then it dropped. And I tried to relaunch and I sort of had a couple of false starts for probably a year or so. And I would launch some more sites, get penalized again. And then finally at some point, I guess it was towards the end of 2014 or maybe early 2015 I was like, "All right, I need to take a different approach here because of what I was doing isn't working so well." Doug Cunnington: So actually at the time that I got laid off, I had some online income but not nearly enough to replace like a six figure management consulting salary. However, I knew that I could do it. Like I knew all the moving pieces and I knew ... Like I had friends that were able to do it. So I was like, "If I just put the effort in and I make sure I don't screw up too bad, I should be okay." Doug Cunnington: So in 2015 when I got laid off, it probably took me six months to run through various business ideas where I would actually test them. So I had some service-based businesses. Productized services were quite popular, so I tried to launch something in that area. I had some course ideas that I had dabbled with in the past and, of course, the straight up affiliate site. Doug Cunnington: So I tried too many things at once. But eventually as I prune the things that weren't working as well or activities that I just didn't enjoy working on, that's when, I guess, I distilled down what was working well and that's sort of like what the business is now. Kevin Graham: Right. And so what's the mix today look like between your affiliate stuff and your blogging and courses and all the rest of the stuff that you do through Niche Site Project? Doug Cunnington: It's about 50-50. So funny enough, it just sort of worked out that way. When I first started back in 2013, I launched Niche Site Project with the intent of selling a product. I was like, "I'm going to sell a product and do the affiliate marketing." It seems wise when I look back. It made everything take a little bit longer because I couldn't focus on one or the other. Doug Cunnington: And I have some friends that they only do affiliate marketing. They're completely behind the scenes. You never heard of them

This week, I sat down with Dan Norris. Dan’s a serial entrepreneur from Australia’s Gold Coast and has started a number of businesses over the years. He was the founder of WP Curve, and more recently has been working on Black Hops Brewing, a craft brewery, with his two co-founders. In this chat, we talk about the ups and downs of running a brewery, and Dan’s career in entrepreneurship – starting a lot of businesses, closing a lot of them down (some, too early according to his peers), before eventually starting WP Curve. Sites and Resources Mentioned: Dan’s web site Black Hops Brewing Operation Brewery Podcast Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki This is the Answer by Dan Norris jQuery(window).load(function(){ jQuery('#accordions-lazy-124').fadeOut(); jQuery('#accordions-124 .items').fadeIn(); }); @media only screen and (min-width: 1024px ){ #accordions-124 { width: 100%; } } @media only screen and ( min-width: 768px ) and ( max-width: 1023px ) { #accordions-124 { width: 100%; } } @media only screen and ( min-width: 0px ) and ( max-width: 767px ){ #accordions-124 { width: 100%; } } #accordions-124 .items {display: none;} #accordions-124 .accordions-lazy { text-align: center; position: absolute; top: 50%; left: 50%; transform: translate(-50%, -50%); } #accordions-124 { text-align: left; background:#ffffff url() repeat scroll 0 0; position: relative; } #accordions-124 .accordions-head{ background:#1e73be none repeat scroll 0 0; outline: none; } #accordions-124 .accordions-head-title{ color:#ffffff; font-size:16px; } #accordions-124 .accordions-head-title-toggle{ color:#ffffff; font-size:16px; } #accordions-124 .accordions-head:hover .accordions-head-title{ color:#ffffff; } #accordions-124 .ui-state-active{ background: #174e7f; border: none; } #accordions-124 .accordion-content{ background:#ffffff none repeat scroll 0 0; border: none; } #accordions-124 .accordion-icons{ margin:0px; } #accordions-124 .accordions-head:hover .accordion-icons span{ } Transcript Kevin Graham: Hey guys, Kevin Graham here. And today on the podcast, I have Dan Norris with me. Dan is a serial entrepreneur who's started many businesses, including WP Curve and more recently, a craft brewery in the Gold Coast in Australia called Black Hops. But to tell you a bit more about him and his story across these multiple businesses, please welcome to the show Dan Norris. Dan Norris: Thanks for having me, mate. Kevin Graham: It's good to have you on. So for the listeners who might not know about you and your current business, can you give us a brief rundown on who you are and what you're working on today? Dan Norris: Yeah. Well, so these days I work in a brewery called Black Hops. But most of the things I've worked on, I guess from 2006 until now, I've had my own businesses and I didn't really have any ... I guess no one has any experience as an entrepreneur before they become an entrepreneur, but I just went straight from a government job to running my own businesses and just had years and years of ups and downs. I mean, that's 13 years ago now. So over the course of 13 years, probably I'd say three things have gone well and hundreds of things have not gone well. Dan Norris: But yeah, the brewery has been my full-time job and life for the last three years, and that keeps me very busy now. Before then, I was sort of into online marketing and websites and that kind of stuff, which is still what I do for the brewery. But yeah, it's turned into a whole beast of a thing. It's a big local ... not a big business, but it's a business that employs 30, 40 people and is pretty full on job. My old ways of building 35 businesses at once and working out what's going to work have sort of gone away. But yeah, I'm in a happy spot right now. Kevin Graham: Yeah. And I would imagine that for a lot of guys, starting their own brewery is one of those projects that everyone always talks about. It would be great if we could start a brewery, but you actually went and did it. So can you tell me a bit about how that process started of starting a brewery? Dan Norris: Yeah, I mean it is, it's every guy's dream. To be honest, a lot of very fortunate events followed by other fortunate events. I had a business called WP Curve, which again was successful, in some ways, successful enough to sell and do quite well with it. I got to the point with that business where we had someone who was interested in buying it and while that was happening, we'd sort of built that business, me and Alex, in a way that enabled us to do other things. It was a very good business in hindsight in that respect. It sort of let us do other things. Dan Norris: And so I was playing around with a few other projects and so was he, and one which was probably the most unlikely for me to actually focus on was a couple of mates of mine, Eddie and Govs, were playing around with home brew and we brewed a beer that Eddie invented called the eggnog stout. And this happened towards the end of 2014, but over the course of the next few years ... I think I ended up selling the business at the end of 2016 ... but over the course of those two years, things just grew and grew from this home brew. Dan Norris: I got carried away with the marketing. We came up with the name, we put some labels on the bottles. We thought, "Okay, let's put it into kegs and see if we can sell it to a bar." And then we thought, "Okay, if we can do that, can we get our own tanks and make our own brewery? Okay, let's do that. How are we going to do that? Do we do some crowd funding? Do we get investors in? Do we talk to the bank to put our own money in?" Trying to figure out how we're going to do this. And before we knew it, we're opening up the doors to a brewery. Dan Norris: Back then it was a small brewery in a 12 square meter tap room. And now we have two breweries. And that was three years ago. And now we have two breweries, 20 full-time staff, 21 full-time staff and probably 10 more casuals, two venues, just a big complicated operation compared to a few guys making home brew, and just happened very organically. Every step we were like, "Okay, should we go for this? Yeah. All right, let's do it. Should we build the brewery? Let's do it. Should we expand the brewery? Let's do it. Should we build another brewery that's 10 times as big and requires 10 times as much money? Yeah. Cool. Let's do that, figure out how to do that," and one thing led to another and all of a sudden we've got this pretty exciting thing on our hands. Kevin Graham: Yeah, and one of the other little interesting collaborations that you did with the brewery that I discovered during my research for this episode was you did a collaboration with the Call of Duty Black Ops game and released a special beer for them. Can you tell me about how that happened? Dan Norris: Yeah. Well, this was one of those very fortunate and random things that happened to us. We'd called the business Black Hops and we were home brewing and putting beers out commercially by brewing them at other breweries, but only at a very small scale, but the beers were good. They weren't massively well-known, but they were unique and interesting styles and we're starting to get a bit of attention for it. Dan Norris: I actually only just found out last week, there was a guy approached to do a beer for Call of Duty. He had marketing contacts. His name's Mark. He runs a pub in Sydney, and he suggested to them that they talk to Black Hops. And I don't think I'd even met him at that point, but we'd been there once. I'm actually surprised he'd even heard of Black Hops. And he referred them onto us. We got the email. We thought it was spam. Eventually we're like, "Oh, actually, maybe they do want to do something," and we said, "Yeah, we can do that." Even though we didn't have a brewery, we thought, "Okay, we'll figure it out," and ended up doing it and it was just one of those things we got a huge amount of attention for and we sort of used that to springboard into a crowd funding campaign, which we used to springboard into building our own brewery and our own brand and yeah, kicked off the whole thing. Kevin Graham: Right. So if we go back 13, 14 years ago, and you've mentioned before that you were working in the government before your entrepreneurial journey started, so can you tell me about how that transition went from working in the government, which was what I was doing myself before starting my entrepreneurial journey, in

On this week’s show, I sit down with Adam Anderson to talk about the 19 companies he’s started, 14 of them which have turned into what he describes as “nonprofits” (ie, companies that he lost money in). We discuss the four stages of entrepreneurship, some of the businesses he’s started in the past including a failed gaming cafe, as well as his new business, Hook Security. Sites and Resources Mentioned: Adam Anderson Adam’s Books Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss Eating the IT Elephant by Richard Hopkins Ready, Fire, Aim by Michael Masterson Built to Sell by John Warrillow jQuery(window).load(function(){ jQuery('#accordions-lazy-121').fadeOut(); jQuery('#accordions-121 .items').fadeIn(); }); @media only screen and (min-width: 1024px ){ #accordions-121 { width: 100%; } } @media only screen and ( min-width: 768px ) and ( max-width: 1023px ) { #accordions-121 { width: 100%; } } @media only screen and ( min-width: 0px ) and ( max-width: 767px ){ #accordions-121 { width: 100%; } } #accordions-121 .items {display: none;} #accordions-121 .accordions-lazy { text-align: center; position: absolute; top: 50%; left: 50%; transform: translate(-50%, -50%); } #accordions-121 { text-align: left; background:#ffffff url() repeat scroll 0 0; position: relative; } #accordions-121 .accordions-head{ background:#1e73be none repeat scroll 0 0; outline: none; } #accordions-121 .accordions-head-title{ color:#ffffff; font-size:16px; } #accordions-121 .accordions-head-title-toggle{ color:#ffffff; font-size:16px; } #accordions-121 .accordions-head:hover .accordions-head-title{ color:#ffffff; } #accordions-121 .ui-state-active{ background: #174e7f; border: none; } #accordions-121 .accordion-content{ background:#ffffff none repeat scroll 0 0; border: none; } #accordions-121 .accordion-icons{ margin:0px; } #accordions-121 .accordions-head:hover .accordion-icons span{ } Transcript Kevin Graham: Please welcome to the show, Adam Anderson. Adam Anderson: Thanks, Kevin. I'm really, really thrilled to be here. I really appreciate you giving me the opportunity to chat and share some of my stories with your community. Kevin Graham: For the listeners who might not know about you. Can you give us a brief rundown on who you are and what you've done across the years? Adam Anderson: Yeah, absolutely. So again, I'm Adam Anderson. I'm a Virgo. I like long walks on the beach. But as I'm in my 40s now, those blocks are shorter. And it's more like sitting on the beach, and having people bring me beverages. But I'm sure that's not exactly what you were talking about. The entrepreneurial journey I've taken was very unintentional. I never really planned on being one. But I always did plan on being my own boss. So I didn't know what that was when I was thinking of that. And so, I'll jump to the end of the story. At this time, I've had 19 companies, 14 of those have turned into nonprofits, meaning many failed, and I guess my primary charity I donated to were marketing people who promised me they can get me customers if only I would spend $25,000 on a marketing plan and $5,000 a month for them to launch ads for me. Adam Anderson: I feel like I single handedly supported the marketing community for the last 10 years. But the 14 companies that failed, that there are a couple more that didn't. I sold one cybersecurity company successfully, and I've taken that money and I have started a fund. So I have a fund called the [inaudible 00:01:30] Group Fund. I am basing my investments off of all the things I learned from Virgin Unite, hanging out with Richard Branson, and the President of Columbia, President Santos, Prime Minister [inaudible 00:01:44] and just how they have envisioned the future of the world is how I want to invest into my companies. And so, I felt the best way to put a dent in the world going forward is to create a fund that supports entrepreneurs who are thinking profit, people and planet. Kevin Graham: One of the things we were talking about before we hit record was that in your current selection of businesses that you're working with, rather than an owner operator model, you're doing a model where there's a CEO that's in charge of that business unit, and the CEOs report back to you. So can you tell me a bit more about that and how that all works? Adam Anderson: Yeah, so I had an executive coach that I hired, and he helped me think bigger and said, "What do you want to accomplish?" And I said, "Well, I want to be one of the guys who is responsible for space exploration. I want to build a space hotel." And he said, "Cool, how are you going to do that?" I said, "Well, I probably need to generate about a billion dollars a year." He said, "All right. How are you going to do that?" Well, in my mind, building that kind of company is really, really hard. But building a million dollar company is pretty easy for me. So what if I just built thousands of million dollar companies by coming up with a system that launches other companies. And so at this stage, what I'm doing is trying to discover how to scalably launch companies where I am not the operator, and I can put CEOs in front of them. Adam Anderson: This is not an original idea. And there's a lot of funds out there. And there's a lot of organizations that have hundreds of companies inside of them. So these are the companies that I am testing the model with. I've got a CEO who runs everything in the traditional way. I've got a president who is executing on a known business model, but isn't changing things very much. And I'm just trying an awful lot of things to find out which one of these are successful, and which one of these are repeatable. Kevin Graham: Last year you gave a talk about the four stages of entrepreneurship. Can you sum that up in a few minutes for the audience? Adam Anderson: Yeah. So when we were in Austin, I was asked, "What does it look like to progress through your entrepreneurial life?" I did some big thinking, and I came up with the four stages, which is businesses happening to you, that's you being a victim. Like something's happened, and you have to start a business. Either you've been fired, or you're just frustrated, or you have a calling you have to answer. Businesses happening to you, and you're an army of one getting started. Then it's going to be businesses happening by you. You've moved from victim to hero, and you're like, "Yes, I've got this." You begin to grow, and you're beginning to hire people now, but you're still primarily there. If you disappeared from the business, the whole thing would crash. And everyone's very, very busy. But no one really knows what's going on. But you're succeeding and you're growing. Adam Anderson: Then businesses happening through you. And that's when you step away, and you have people doing things and you're kind of like telling the boat where it needs to go. But you are not the one with your hand on the wheel, or the one who's working on the engine or working with the sales. So your company is now moving. It's made up of systems and processes. And you've moved from having superhero people doing superhero things to having elegant processes and systems where normal, wonderful people can execute those things for even better results. Adam Anderson: Then finally, you get to businesses happening for you. And that's when you are all the way out. That's when you have moved to the point where your business operates, and how you develop and generate your wealth is independent of how you spend your time. It's completely appropriate to be in any one of those and never progress to the next one. But I don't know if you remember this, Kevin. But when we were down there, that really didn't resonate with a lot of people. So, I had to use a different set of stages. And so, there's this amazing business consultant and theologian, Eric Cartman from South Park, and his four steps are basically the same. Adam Anderson: It's startup, cash and sell out, bro down. And so, I got an awful lot of joy because those are so much more clear, my stuff sucks. But they're all the same. The stages are the same. You're going to start up your company, you're going to cash in and do the hard work, then you're going to sell out and step aside. And then you're going to bro down, which means that you have complete freedom of your time away from how you are actually generating wealth. Kevin Graham: How did it feel going through that bro down phase of your previous cybersecurity com

This week, I sat down with Kerry Staite from kLite to talk about how he developed his product, a dynamo powered light and charging system for bicycles and appearing on Shark Tank Australia. In the interview, we discuss: the challenges he’s faced with producing products while running as a lean, bootstrapped company redesigning the product from being battery powered to dynamo powered because of restrictions imposed by Australia Post dealing with copycat products the reasons for his decision to keep manufacturing his product in Australia his experience with appearing on Shark Tank Australia being a self taught electrical engineer with no formal training I hope you enjoy the episode! Sites and Resources Mentioned: kLite Shark Tank Australia Silk Road Mountain Race jQuery(window).load(function(){ jQuery('#accordions-lazy-118').fadeOut(); jQuery('#accordions-118 .items').fadeIn(); }); @media only screen and (min-width: 1024px ){ #accordions-118 { width: 100%; } } @media only screen and ( min-width: 768px ) and ( max-width: 1023px ) { #accordions-118 { width: 100%; } } @media only screen and ( min-width: 0px ) and ( max-width: 767px ){ #accordions-118 { width: 100%; } } #accordions-118 .items {display: none;} #accordions-118 .accordions-lazy { text-align: center; position: absolute; top: 50%; left: 50%; transform: translate(-50%, -50%); } #accordions-118 { text-align: left; background:#ffffff url() repeat scroll 0 0; position: relative; } #accordions-118 .accordions-head{ background:#1e73be none repeat scroll 0 0; outline: none; } #accordions-118 .accordions-head-title{ color:#ffffff; font-size:16px; } #accordions-118 .accordions-head-title-toggle{ color:#ffffff; font-size:16px; } #accordions-118 .accordions-head:hover .accordions-head-title{ color:#ffffff; } #accordions-118 .ui-state-active{ background: #174e7f; border: none; } #accordions-118 .accordion-content{ background:#ffffff none repeat scroll 0 0; border: none; } #accordions-118 .accordion-icons{ margin:0px; } #accordions-118 .accordions-head:hover .accordion-icons span{ } Transcript Kevin Graham: Hey guys, Kevin Graham here, and today on the podcast I have Kerry Staite. Kerry's an inventor from Newcastle in Australia who invented the brightest dynamo powered bicycle light in the world. He appeared on the first season of Shark Tank, where he was trying to get an investment to bring this product to market. To tell you a bit more about the product and his story, please welcome Kerry Staite. Kerry Staite: Hey, I'm Kerry From K-Lite, and thank you so much Kevin for having me on. It's a pleasure to be here, and I'm really excited to tell you all about my story. Kevin Graham: Awesome. For the listeners who might not know about you and your current business, can you give us a brief rundown on who you are and what your company does? Kerry Staite: I was, for about 25 years, a professional bicycle mechanic. Part of the bicycle mechanic-ness-ship is servicing every aspect of the bike, and lot of guys ride quite far, and I got into building my own lights. Long story short, they really took off, so I started building them for friends. It got so busy I needed to start K-Lite. K-Lite got heaps busy, and I was getting so busy that I couldn't actually keep up. So I thought, hey, Shark Tank is what I should be doing. Kerry Staite: Long story short, I make dynamo lights for bicycles, and USB recharge systems now, and these guys ride across the country in big bike races, and I went onto Shark Tank to seek investment to move to the next step. It was a pretty amazing thing to do, a pretty amazing experience. But that's basically my quick story. Kevin Graham: Cool. Now, I understand what dynamo is, but maybe not all of our listeners do, so can you explain what a dynamo is and why this is an important component of this lighting and USB charging system? Kerry Staite: Sure. Correctly called a magneto, to be technically correct, a dynamo is in a car as well and it simply charges a battery as you move along, or as the motor moves. It is unfeasible to carry the amount of storage that we need to run our devices on a bicycle, and also on a car, so these dynamos or magnetos use the power of forward movement, or the power of your motor turning, to create power for the systems. In our case, we hide the dynamo or magento in the front hub of the bicycle. Most people wouldn't actually know it's there. It provides unlimited power, as long as you're moving, to run your lights and USB recharge. Kevin Graham: Right, so it's generating electricity off of the movement of the bike? Kerry Staite: Yeah, that's exactly right. It's quite green and quite efficient, and the systems will generally last about 10 to 20 years in life before they need to be serviced or have bearings replaced. Kevin Graham: Right. Now, the type of dynamo I'd only ever seen before you appeared on Shark Tank were the little ones that attach to the tire, and they really seem to suck a bunch of power out of the bike. Kerry Staite: Oh, I know, right? Yeah. I mean, we've always seen that Simpson cartoon when he's trying to peddle. Yeah, certainly, the old granddad bike and the old dynamo. Those days are gone, technology has shrunk it all down to a tiny little thing, and you cannot even feel it's there. It's really a no-brainer for people that commute, people that do long events, or really anyone that lives on a bicycle, and that was my goal. My goal was to remove the excuses for people to ride a bike so they're not there, and they jump on their bike and they've got everything they need, and then everyone's happy and the world's a better place. Kevin Graham: That whole cycling more movement is increasing movement not just in Australia but also Europe. It's increasingly popular as well. Kerry Staite: What you're finding is the governments realizing that the old age and the healthcare and the amount of money they need to spend on it is growing. We have an aging population, and what they're finding is if they build infrastructure for cycling, people are more active and more healthy into their older years, and that has amazing health benefits. Exercise is shown to be 50% as effective as chemo therapy for cancer patients. So getting fit, staying fit as you're getting older, is certainly the thing to do. Kevin Graham: You mentioned briefly about being a bicycle mechanic as a little bit of the how you got started in this. Can you explain a bit more around how you went from a bicycle mechanic to some pretty technical electrical engineer work and developing the K-Lite product? Kerry Staite: I think it's going to be easy if I start a little bit earlier. Here is me going to be a scientist, okay, so memorized every science book and was already to go, and I left a town that didn't have a high enough science faculty to another town. I was a young man, I think I was about 16, and it was tough. I moved town, I lived by myself, I had zero money and I was going to be a scientist and I was going to save the world. Okay, so here we go. I know it sounds a bit naive, but that's what I was doing. Now, on the very last year I got hit by a car and I was in hospital, and I was unable to complete the exams. I got basically bell curved, if that makes sense. All my exam results were set at the average mean normal, or the average of everyone at the school. Kerry Staite: I didn't get the university entrance that I wanted. Now, I got a small payout of a few thousand dollars and I was into cycling, so I brought a nice bike. Through buying a bike and meeting a very unique, crazy individual who was one of the best bicycle mechanics in the country in Canberra, I became a junior bicycle mechanic and was thrust into the world of bicycle racing and bicycle racing mechanics. Kevin Graham: That sounds like a pretty small niche. Mechanics for cyclists who compete in races. Kerry Staite: Yeah, so there's two sorts of things you can do, and as you said, it's very small. I can leap out of the back of a vehicle with some wheels and then give the rider a good push up the road, or they can go round and round in circles and I can be in a tent and I can service their needs at the tent. Kerry Staite: Just so happens, my understanding of electronics/bicycle mechanics was what they wanted in these big 24 hour races. I ended up working with a lot of the world's top pros, even world champions, Olympic teams, New Zealand National Team, the Australia National Team, ended up going really good and I made a little bi

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Rachel Mazza. Rachel is a copywriter who made the difficult decision in 2018 to shut down a profitable content agency that she had built, which offered a productized service that provided content designed to convert visitors into customers for affiliate sites. In this episode, Rachel discusses the importance of having rules of engagement for creative services like copywriting, the difficult decision she faced with shutting down the SEO Conversion Content agency and the problems of working with “lottery ticket clients”. Sites, Books and Resources Mentioned: RachelMazza.com Business of Writing Podcast Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks Profit First by Mike Michalowicz Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss jQuery(window).load(function(){ jQuery('#accordions-lazy-109').fadeOut(); jQuery('#accordions-109 .items').fadeIn(); }); @media only screen and (min-width: 1024px ){ #accordions-109 { width: 100%; } } @media only screen and ( min-width: 768px ) and ( max-width: 1023px ) { #accordions-109 { width: 100%; } } @media only screen and ( min-width: 0px ) and ( max-width: 767px ){ #accordions-109 { width: 100%; } } #accordions-109 .items {display: none;} #accordions-109 .accordions-lazy { text-align: center; position: absolute; top: 50%; left: 50%; transform: translate(-50%, -50%); } #accordions-109 { text-align: left; background:#ffffff url() repeat scroll 0 0; position: relative; } #accordions-109 .accordions-head{ background:#1e73be none repeat scroll 0 0; outline: none; } #accordions-109 .accordions-head-title{ color:#ffffff; font-size:16px; } #accordions-109 .accordions-head-title-toggle{ color:#ffffff; font-size:16px; } #accordions-109 .accordions-head:hover .accordions-head-title{ color:#ffffff; } #accordions-109 .ui-state-active{ background: #174e7f; border: none; } #accordions-109 .accordion-content{ background:#ffffff none repeat scroll 0 0; border: none; } #accordions-109 .accordion-icons{ margin:0px; } #accordions-109 .accordions-head:hover .accordion-icons span{ } Transcript Kevin Graham: Hey, guys. Kevin Graham here, and today, on the podcast, I have a good friend of mine, Rachel Mazza. Rachel and I first met in 2014 in Chiang Mai in Thailand. We spent a bunch of time hanging out in what she likes to describe as a mosquito-ridden dive bar with puppies, so I'm super excited to have her on the show to talk about her trajectory through running a business. Please welcome Rachel Mazza. Rachel Mazza: Thanks for having me. Kevin Graham: It's my pleasure. So for the listeners who might not know about you and the business that we're going to talk about today, can you give us a brief rundown on who you are and what your company did? Rachel Mazza: Yes, so I am a direct response copywriter, which is just a complicated way of saying that I write words that sell stuff. Direct response is pretty self-explanatory. You drive traffic to sales copy that's specifically designed to target a particular audience, and then you get to see the direct response of those readers engaging with that copy. What I do is I work with media buyers and publishers to create long-form sales pages that we drive traffic to, and then I also work with business owners and entrepreneurs to convert higher off of their cold traffic funnels. Kevin Graham: Right, so your core focus these days is online businesses and online business owners. Is that right? Rachel Mazza: Yeah, so mostly information publishers, and then I've recently started doing direct mail, which is super fun because it's like stepping back into the '60s and '70s, which is where I originally studied all the sales copy from that time. Big famous copywriters like Gary Halbert or Gary Bencivenga, they had a copy in newspapers or things that you would mail physically to someone's house, and I'm working with some publishers in the UK that do direct mail. That's very new to me, but up until probably a month ago, it's been 100% online. Kevin Graham: Right, and just as a little side note as well, you actually run a podcast about this as well, so do you want to drop a quick little pitch for that in, and then we'll continue on with the interview? Rachel Mazza: Yeah, definitely. That's called The Business of Writing Podcast, and I host that with my cohost, Laura, who is a ghost writer. She brings the craft side of things, and I bring the sales copy side of things, and we talk about how to get paid really well as a professional writer, so that's been a lot of fun too. Kevin Graham: Cool, so can you tell me about how you got started in your entrepreneurial journey? Rachel Mazza: Yeah, so I've been working for myself now for six or seven years. Actually, before we started recording, we were trying to figure out exactly how long it's been because it's been a while now, but I got started after leaving my job. At the time, I was living in Australia and taking what I thought was a vacation to Thailand before heading home to the USA, and that's where I met you, Kevin. Rachel Mazza: While living in Australia, I was selling government-funded training to business owners. I'd go into a KFC or a McDonald's franchise, and I talk to the owner and say, "Hey, did you know the government will pay you to train your employees in hospitality certification?" or something along those lines, and so when I left, I started writing textbooks and training materials for these training companies that I had sold the training for. Rachel Mazza: That's technical writing, and I was just doing it as a side hustle, but that's where I learned that you could actually get paid to be a writer, and I learned that I wanted to do more of that, and there was only one of me, so I started hiring my friends to write the stuff as well. I was terrible at making a profit, so I would just take a very tiny markup and pay my friends most of the money, but that got me known as the go-to technical writer in that market, and that experience and the lessons learned there eventually led me to start a full-time marketing agency. Rachel Mazza: That evolved over time, and I wanted to be closer and closer to the money and to the sale because I knew that would be more valuable to clients if I could point to what I wrote and say, "This copy right here just made you 60% more money," or whatever it is, and so I shifted gears a bit over time and focused exclusively on sales copy so that I could be a lot closer to the sale and have a lot bigger impact on the sale. Kevin Graham: Right, and I remember around 2015 or 2016, you started service that was focused more on that sales copy for affiliate marketers. Can you tell me a bit more about that? Rachel Mazza: Yeah, definitely. Before I had started that agency, I had this marketing agency, and part of that was we would do SEO, so search engine optimization, and so I was in the SEO community, and I noticed that a lot of my SEO friends and colleagues were having a lot of trouble converting on their websites, so when they're driving SEO copy, and so I saw that need in the market, and the agency that I started focused on providing sales copy exclusively for affiliate marketers and people driving SEO to affiliate sites, or client sites, or service-based sites. We worked a lot with keyword optimization, but it all focused back on using that buyer psychology and that sales psychology to create copy that was specifically designed to target those readers. Kevin Graham: Yeah, and I remember when you were running that business, you had a lot of high name like high-profile endorsements from big names in the affiliate marketing space. Rachel Mazza: Yeah, that was probably the main factor of why the agency was so successful so quickly. I think we hit six figures within five or six months, and that was definitely because there were big name SEO and affiliate marketer professionals that were sending us their audiences and also endorsing us, and so I would say the main success of that agency was because of having affiliates that send us business. Kevin Graham: Right, so did you have any goals when you started that specific section of that agency working on SEO content? Rachel Mazza: Yeah, so I had left a full-time consulting job where I was consulting on... as the marketing director for a SaaS company, and that ended, that contract ended, and so I needed to relaunch and do something new. I knew I didn't want to go back to technical writing, and I knew that I was real

This week, I sat down for a chat with Alex McClafferty, the co-founder of WP Curve, a subscription-based productized service that helps WordPress site owners to fix and improve their sites with unlimited 30 minute tasks, all for one low monthly fee. In 2016, GoDaddy acquired WP Curve and Alex joined GoDaddy to help them […]

In this week’s episode, I sit down for a chat with Coran Woodmass. Like me, Coran grew up in Australia before leaving it all behind for the location independent life. He’s recently relocated to Austin, Texas in order to grow his boutique mergers and acquisitions advisory firm, The FBA Broker. During the interview, we discuss a number of topics including how Coran found his passion for acquisitions and his goal to “get a piece of a billion dollar transaction” that he’s been working towards over the last few years. Sites and Resources Mentioned: The FBA Broker Truth About Exits Podcast Kevin’s Episode on Truth About Exits The Choose Yourself Guide to Wealth by James Altucher Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki I Love Capitalism! by Ken Langone Shoe Dog by Phil Knight Total Recall by Arnold Schwarzenegger The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson jQuery(window).load(function(){ jQuery('#accordions-lazy-101').fadeOut(); jQuery('#accordions-101 .items').fadeIn(); }); @media only screen and (min-width: 1024px ){ #accordions-101 { width: 100%; } } @media only screen and ( min-width: 768px ) and ( max-width: 1023px ) { #accordions-101 { width: 100%; } } @media only screen and ( min-width: 0px ) and ( max-width: 767px ){ #accordions-101 { width: 100%; } } #accordions-101 .items {display: none;} #accordions-101 .accordions-lazy { text-align: center; position: absolute; top: 50%; left: 50%; transform: translate(-50%, -50%); } #accordions-101 { text-align: left; background:#ffffff url() repeat scroll 0 0; position: relative; } #accordions-101 .accordions-head{ background:#1e73be none repeat scroll 0 0; outline: none; } #accordions-101 .accordions-head-title{ color:#ffffff; font-size:16px; } #accordions-101 .accordions-head-title-toggle{ color:#ffffff; font-size:16px; } #accordions-101 .accordions-head:hover .accordions-head-title{ color:#ffffff; } #accordions-101 .ui-state-active{ background: #174e7f; border: none; } #accordions-101 .accordion-content{ background:#ffffff none repeat scroll 0 0; border: none; } #accordions-101 .accordion-icons{ margin:0px; } #accordions-101 .accordions-head:hover .accordion-icons span{ } Transcript Kevin Graham: Hey guys, Kevin Graham here. Today on the podcast I have my good friend, Coran Woodmass. Coran and I have known each other since 2014, when we first met in Chiang Mai, Thailand. We've hung out in the number of cities around the world, including most recently in Austin, Texas. Kevin Graham: Please welcome to the podcast, Coran Woodmass. Coran Woodmass: Hey, Kev. Thanks for having me. Kevin Graham: Great to have you on the show, and it's kind of nice to be in the host seat this time instead of the guest seat. For the listeners who might not know about you and your current business, can you give us a brief rundown on who you are and what your company does today? Coran Woodmass: Sure. So my name's Coran Woodmass, Founder and Managing Partner of The FBA Broker. We are a eCommerce MNA firm, a business brokerage that focuses exclusively on eCommerce and Amazon-based businesses. So, I'm Australian as well, as you may or may not be able to tell. We've been doing this business since mid 2016. Kevin Graham: Right. Before that there were some other ventures. I remember when I first met you, you're working on similar stuff to us with a portfolio of websites that were earning advertising income. Then there was an interim period there where you are actually a FBA seller yourself. So, can you tell me a bit more about how you got started in your entrepreneurial journey? Coran Woodmass: Yeah, sure. So, about six years ago now, I was working in a cubicle in Brisbane, Australia, and I was working in digital marketing at the time. I was listening to podcasts while pretending to work, and one of our mutual friends, Dan Andrews, had a podcast back then called Lifestyle Business Podcast. I really loved the show, and all I was thinking about all day while I was doing my incredibly boring, sometimes interesting, job, was how to actually travel the world and build a business to support that. Coran Woodmass: So, my wife and I had saved up, had a decent chunk of cash, to set us up. Now our initial plan was to go travel the world for a year and see if we liked it, and we definitely did. So, it took me all of two weeks to go from being on holiday for a month minimum, to actually starting my next venture. I started looking at starting building eCommerce businesses through some training courses that were online, while we were midway through our trip through Vietnam. Coran Woodmass: So that's where I kind of started. A guy I met, at the same hotel I was learning about eComm, was running an eCommerce business in the UK. That just happened to be our next stop. So I went and met with him, started consulting on his larger eCommerce business. Also at the same time, I started looking at ways to, first off, to stay in the UK longer, because I was too old for a work visa. So I started looking at business acquisitions and buying and selling businesses, specifically. Coran Woodmass: At the time, I was looking at brick and mortar businesses in the UK. Through some research, a ton of research, because that's all I was doing, I stumbled across buying online businesses. So, like I mentioned, affiliate advertising-based websites, and I also built an eCommerce business from scratch, which we ended up later selling. So, we had a buy and build strategy, it was supposed to be buy, build and sell. It was a buy and build strategy, and then a build from scratch strategy. Coran Woodmass: So, that's pretty much when I first met you, we had that portfolio going, we got hit by Google update on a lot of those deals that we'd acquired, so that stung a little bit. But fortunately, we'd built the eCommerce business to a point where we could sell it. All through this time, I just wanted to see more and more deals. I started getting addicted to doing deals and looking at businesses for sale, and finding deals, and understanding how it deals with valued. Coran Woodmass: So essentially, I started as a broker almost for free, where people would ask me to take a look at a deal they were looking at and buy me lunch or something like that. In the beginning, I was doing it for fun, and then I saw a real need in the market for experience in the space, and a lot of people were looking to buy online assets. So that's basically where I started the brokerage side. I started working for another brokerage for a short time, and then saw the buyer demand in Amazon-based businesses, because eCommerce, with real physical products, appeals to a wider audience than just a affiliate site. Coran Woodmass: So, one of the first deals I worked on actually was acquired by a grandmother in Florida. So she was actually first time seller on Amazon, but she was a really sharp business person and she just got it. She loved the product, she also could see how she could sell that direct to her friends, and that's what really opened my eyes to this space being a thing. Coran Woodmass: Then fast forward three years of being in the FBA space specifically, the market has grown exponentially. So, we got in at a really good time. I saw the trend, got in front of it. I always expected to be in more verticals by now, but we've been too busy with this one, so it's worked out pretty well. Kevin Graham: Yeah, there's a couple of points in your story there that very much tie up with mine as well. Firstly, where you mentioned only being a couple of weeks into this big holiday before you just had this desire to start working on your next business. This is the same thing I've done so many times, as well as that keen interest in that MNA space. Which as we spoke about on your podcast, I did a bunch of acquisitions over the previous 12 months in the web hosting industry, and I really enjoyed nerding out about all those deals that were coming through at that point. Kevin Graham: So yeah, definitely a lot of parallels there for sure. So you mentioned that it was 2016 that you started your current company, The FBA Broker. What led you to decide to start the company? Coran Woodmass: I guess I never really worked well as a employee. I've always kind of done that to get from A to B, not been a career employee. So I think you either are or you aren't, an employee. So always wanted to do my own thing, just didn't know what I wa

This week, I catch up with Dom Wells to hear his story of building Human Proof Designs over the last 5 years and then selling it this year, as well as his new project, OnFolio where he’s working with investors to buy and improve profitable web sites. Sites and Resources Mentioned: Human Proof Designs OnFolio Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz jQuery(window).load(function(){ jQuery('#accordions-lazy-99').fadeOut(); jQuery('#accordions-99 .items').fadeIn(); }); @media only screen and (min-width: 1024px ){ #accordions-99 { width: 100%; } } @media only screen and ( min-width: 768px ) and ( max-width: 1023px ) { #accordions-99 { width: 100%; } } @media only screen and ( min-width: 0px ) and ( max-width: 767px ){ #accordions-99 { width: 100%; } } #accordions-99 .items {display: none;} #accordions-99 .accordions-lazy { text-align: center; position: absolute; top: 50%; left: 50%; transform: translate(-50%, -50%); } #accordions-99 { text-align: left; background:#ffffff url() repeat scroll 0 0; position: relative; } #accordions-99 .accordions-head{ background:#1e73be none repeat scroll 0 0; outline: none; } #accordions-99 .accordions-head-title{ color:#ffffff; font-size:16px; } #accordions-99 .accordions-head-title-toggle{ color:#ffffff; font-size:16px; } #accordions-99 .accordions-head:hover .accordions-head-title{ color:#ffffff; } #accordions-99 .ui-state-active{ background: #174e7f; border: none; } #accordions-99 .accordion-content{ background:#ffffff none repeat scroll 0 0; border: none; } #accordions-99 .accordion-icons{ margin:0px; } #accordions-99 .accordions-head:hover .accordion-icons span{ } Transcript Kevin Graham: Hey guys, Kevin Graham here. Today on the podcast, I have a good friend of mine, Dom Wells. Dom, you might have known from his days as the CEO and founder of Human Proof Designs. He's actually recently started a new company called OnFolio. He's here today to tell us a bit about his story and his entrepreneurial journey that he's taken over the last four or five years. But to give you a bit more of an intro than I've just given you there, please welcome Dom. Dom Wells: Hey, thanks for having me. Happy to be here. So, Human Proof Designs did actually start about four or five years ago. So you're right on the money that I've been doing affiliate marketing and online business in general since middle of 2012. I guess like a lot of people I was just looking for a way of making more money. I was teaching English in Taiwan, so I didn't have a lot of career prospects. Teaching English in Taiwan is fine, but there wasn't a lot of other things for me to move into as I got older, and I wanted to grow. Dom Wells: I discovered online business and discovered affiliate marketing. I just started building these websites that just made money by recommending products and getting commissions from the places that sold those products, for example, Amazon. Then in 2014, I started Human Proof Designs, which was or still is a business that does a lot of services for other affiliate marketers. Dom Wells: We started out just doing done for you starter websites, which is basically let's say somebody wants to get started in affiliate marketing, and they want to have maybe a website about let's say fishing and they want to review different fishing rods and fishing equipment and write articles about how to use the right bait and whatever other stuff fishing people need to know. Maybe they have all that information and have the ability to write, but they don't know anything about starting a website and creating the framework and researching the topics and stuff. That's what we offered people. Dom Wells: We would basically give them the site, and then we would give them the training that they needed to understand what to do. Because I always felt like, yeah, you can pay someone to build your website, and people tend to focus on how good is that website? Is it the cheapest website? Or is it the best website? Whereas really, I used to think of it as like a car and you could buy a cheaper car or a fast car or a kind of average car. But unless someone gave you driving lessons, it wasn't going to do much good. So, that was the training component to what we did. Dom Wells: Over the years, we just grew the business and scaled it and brought on a lot of team members, added a lot more training and a lot more services, and I guess became an industry leader and authority in the space. Kevin Graham: On that training component, that's kind of a really big thing. Because when you looked at so many of the other people that were selling starter sites either on Flipper or on other websites, they would build the site for you, and obviously do the keyword research and put the WordPress site together and have some articles on the site and everything else. But there was never really the information and training on how do I take this from here's a brand new shiny website I've been delivered, to here's a website that's ranking really well in Google and starting to get a lot of traffic and earning money. Dom Wells: Yeah, that's right. That's something I fortunately realized quite early on. The training aspect really started from a slightly different reason. It was because when I first started out selling starter sites, I was one of those Flipper sellers. A lot of the flipper sellers were basically just selling garbage websites, and people were buying them because they were being promised to become millionaires overnight. Dom Wells: I put legit sites up there, and I was like, "Hey, you're going to have to do some work, and maybe in a year you'll make a bit of money." Naturally, people weren't really excited about that. So they weren't really interested in buying the sites. So, I realized I was going to have to do a little bit of product education and explain to people why these sites were valuable, and then what they should do with them afterwards. That's when I stopped selling on Flipper. I had already registered Human Proof Designs and put a few articles on there. But it's when I really just started focusing on the HPD blog and products education. Dom Wells: Then, I think why we were able to rapidly get success is because we were sharing case studies and explaining how to make money with these sites. The vast majority of the people who read our content weren't really interested in buying a starter site, because they already had one. But they came to us because we were teaching them how to make money with their site. Kevin Graham: Yeah, definitely. The other component of all that as well, as well as showing people here's how you can do it, or here you can buy it from us. The thing that I've really noticed with the sites that you had was that they were keyword researched and the keywords that they were targeting were the sort of keywords you could get some rankings with relatively easily. Kevin Graham: It's one thing to say here's this site about payday loans or credit card offers or something that has really high value per conversion, but to actually rank in some of those niches is extremely difficult. Whereas the types of niches that you're picking for these sites were sites that people could realistically do some work on, get some backlinks to and start ranking and earning from. Dom Wells: Yeah, that is a good point as well. Yeah, it's about ... Again, that's just more incentive for me to get off Flipper because everyone on Flipper back then was selling these sites that were in these really attractive niches that they were great if you were the only person trying to go for them. It was like web hosting, payday loans. They were lots of ones that were selling social likes and stuff like that. Dom Wells: All what we tried to do was find the kind of Goldilocks niches where there's enough popularity in the niche and enough money in the niche that it's going to be worth your time, but there's not so much competition that you're never going to get there. I guess it did mean that some of the sites we sold, they weren't exactly that exciting in terms of their topics. But in my experience, some of those ones are the most lucrative niches. It really depends what your motivation is. Kevin Graham: Yeah, definitely. Because you could be super interested in writing web hosting reviews. But unless that site ranks, which it's a very competitive niche, you're not going to get traffic, which means you're not going to get visitors and no one's going to convert from your site to earn your commissions.

On today’s show, I’m joined by Justin Cooke from Empire Flippers. Justin tells his full story from running a mortgage brokerage business leading up to the financial crisis, failing at that business and going back to getting a job before re-finding his entrepreneurial spirit and starting a outsourcing company with his former employer as his first client. In this wide ranging interview, we cover his entrepreneurial journey including: having to close down his first business during the financial crisis going back to working as an employee moving to the Philippines to start his second company, an outsourcing company with his old employer as the anchor client winning new clients, while losing work from the anchor client starting to build small AdSense sites and then realising they could be sold for a multiple of earnings beginning to broker sites for other people the future of Empire Flippers including new idea to connect operators with money partners Sites and Resources Mentioned: Empire Flippers @EmpireFlippers on Twitter Empire Flippers Podcast Ace Chapman Web Equity Show Podcast “How a Russian Syndicate Scammed us for $25k” article Featured Books: The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman Built to Sell by John Warrillow Waking Up by Sam Harris jQuery(window).load(function(){ jQuery('#accordions-lazy-94').fadeOut(); jQuery('#accordions-94 .items').fadeIn(); }); @media only screen and (min-width: 1024px ){ #accordions-94 { width: 100%; } } @media only screen and ( min-width: 768px ) and ( max-width: 1023px ) { #accordions-94 { width: 100%; } } @media only screen and ( min-width: 0px ) and ( max-width: 767px ){ #accordions-94 { width: 100%; } } #accordions-94 .items {display: none;} #accordions-94 .accordions-lazy { text-align: center; position: absolute; top: 50%; left: 50%; transform: translate(-50%, -50%); } #accordions-94 { text-align: left; background:#ffffff url() repeat scroll 0 0; position: relative; } #accordions-94 .accordions-head{ background:#1e73be none repeat scroll 0 0; outline: none; } #accordions-94 .accordions-head-title{ color:#ffffff; font-size:16px; } #accordions-94 .accordions-head-title-toggle{ color:#ffffff; font-size:16px; } #accordions-94 .accordions-head:hover .accordions-head-title{ color:#ffffff; } #accordions-94 .ui-state-active{ background: #174e7f; border: none; } #accordions-94 .accordion-content{ background:#ffffff none repeat scroll 0 0; border: none; } #accordions-94 .accordion-icons{ margin:0px; } #accordions-94 .accordions-head:hover .accordion-icons span{ } Transcript Kevin Graham: Hey guys, Kevin Graham here. Today on the podcast, we have a good friend of mine, Justin Cook. Justin is the CMO of Empire Flippers which is a marketplace for businesses online but I first came to know Justin and his business back in 2013 when I was still in my day job and looking for ways to make money on the internet. I followed their podcast for a long time. I followed their business as it changed and evolved over that period and sold several businesses through their marketplace over the years. Kevin Graham: He's a really good friend of mine. I'm really excited to have him on podcast today. Justin, welcome to the show. Justin Cooke: Thanks for having me on Kevin, appreciate it buddy. Kevin Graham: For the listeners who might not know about you or your current business, can you give us a brief rundown on who you are, and what your company does today? Justin Cooke: Yeah. My business partner and I run a company called Empire Flippers where we help other people buy, sell and invest in websites and online businesses, which you're very familiar with and I'm sure your audience is pretty familiar with as well. We can do anything from affiliate websites to eCommerce to FBA businesses to even ebook, Kindle businesses. Pretty wide ranging. Anything from on the low end 20, $30,000 websites up to seven figures. Kevin Graham: And one of the interesting things about websites and online businesses as an asset class, is there multiples that they go for compared to some other businesses? Can you speak a little bit more about that? Justin Cooke: Yeah. Basically if you have a, just for an example, if you have an affiliate site or drop shipping business or whatever that makes $10,000 a month in profit, let's say it's been doing that for six to 12 months. You can sell that business for a multiple of that profit. At $10,000 a month, the multiple may range somewhere between let's say, 22X and 35X which means your business might sell anywhere from $220,000 all the way up to $350,000. You might say, "Hey, well if that's a huge range, I'd much rather sell for 350 than 220, what's the deal with that? Can you give me the bigger one?" Justin Cooke: Well that's not exactly how it works. The multiple is based on risk to the buyer. If the business is newer, maybe it's in decline it's got limited channels in terms of traffic or customers, it's going to be higher risk, which means the buyer's going to pay a lower multiple. But if it's been around longer, it's on a great growth trajectory, it's got some tenacity in terms of some multi channel and it's got lots of different ways to acquire customers, then you're likely to get the higher end of that range. Justin Cooke: From a buyer's perspective, let's say that you're buying at 24X and you're spending a $100,000 for the business, assuming nothing changes, assuming you don't grow it at all, you can completely return your money inside of two years which is pretty amazing as an asset class compared to any of the other potential investments that are out there. Justin Cooke: I know, because I've looked personally. Real estate and index funds and everything. One of the cool things about businesses is that you can actively manipulate the market and I don't mean manipulate in a bad way. I mean that because it's a business that you're running, you have some control over it. Whereas if I put my money in Vanguard Index Fund or whatever, I can't control any of that. Whereas my drop shipping business and my terms I set with my supplier, I can absolutely manipulate and change and work on better deals. Kevin Graham: Yeah. Can you tell the audience about how you got started in your entrepreneurial journey? Justin Cooke: Yeah. My business partner and I, we'd had a mortgage business back in the day. This is 2004, 2005. This is kind of our first entrepreneurial venture. We had a business. It was going okay but we were making a ton of mistakes and we didn't know much about our, the market, we were in California but in the US generally, the market started to crash 2007, 2008 and our business was shaky enough to where as soon as the market started to fold, our business folded as well. We ran into a wall effectively and had to shut our business down and go get jobs. Justin Cooke: I kind of gloss over it now but it was terrible at the time. It was a frightening, disturbing period of time. I had to go get a job and I went to go work for an SEO company that did local SEO for plumbers and electricians and would help them get ranked in Google. I started off as a mid level manager for them and they were growing like crazy. This is out of California as well. Justin Cooke: My previous business partner, Joe, I said, "Hey Joe, you got to come over here, check this company out. It's a cool company to work for." He was playing poker at the time, making a few bucks there but not really. It was a grind for him. You think that playing poker is fun but when you do it as a job, it's less fun and interesting. He came over, started working for the company as well and we started, as the business grew, we kind of got our entrepreneurial chops back. Taking a break from the failed business we'd had was really, really nice because now we're not focused on everything and responsible for everything. Now we can really kind of focus in on just our department and the needs for our department as part of the company. Justin Cooke: Anyway, we were hiring people like crazy and we ended up outsourcing some of the people to the Philippines. We had, from our mortgage business, we'd had a previous contact with this girl in the Philippines that had worked for us and we had to let her go when we closed down our business but we ended up calling her back up and saying, "Hey look, we've got this work that needs to be done. It's pretty monotonous but it's a lot cheaper and cost effective for us to get done in the Philippines, do you want to help?" Jus

Today’s guest, Travis Osborne, had never worked in the tyre industry before he started Mobile Tyre Shop after seeing it while he was on holiday in New York. He then started a Minimum Viable Product version of it, with 2 vans in Melbourne before appearing on Shark Tank Australia, looking for capital to grow the business. He’s grown the business to 33 vans and 45 full time employees across all of the major Australian capitals, and recently took on capital to grow it even larger. We get into that and a lot more in the interview. Sites and Resources Mentioned: Mobile Tyre Shop Travis Osborne on LinkedIn jQuery(window).load(function(){ jQuery('#accordions-lazy-89').fadeOut(); jQuery('#accordions-89 .items').fadeIn(); }); @media only screen and (min-width: 1024px ){ #accordions-89 { width: 100%; } } @media only screen and ( min-width: 768px ) and ( max-width: 1023px ) { #accordions-89 { width: 100%; } } @media only screen and ( min-width: 0px ) and ( max-width: 767px ){ #accordions-89 { width: 100%; } } #accordions-89 .items {display: none;} #accordions-89 .accordions-lazy { text-align: center; position: absolute; top: 50%; left: 50%; transform: translate(-50%, -50%); } #accordions-89 { text-align: left; background:#ffffff url() repeat scroll 0 0; position: relative; } #accordions-89 .accordions-head{ background:#1e73be none repeat scroll 0 0; outline: none; } #accordions-89 .accordions-head-title{ color:#ffffff; font-size:16px; } #accordions-89 .accordions-head-title-toggle{ color:#ffffff; font-size:16px; } #accordions-89 .accordions-head:hover .accordions-head-title{ color:#ffffff; } #accordions-89 .ui-state-active{ background: #174e7f; border: none; } #accordions-89 .accordion-content{ background:#ffffff none repeat scroll 0 0; border: none; } #accordions-89 .accordion-icons{ margin:0px; } #accordions-89 .accordions-head:hover .accordion-icons span{ } Transcript Kevin Graham: Hi guys, Kevin Graham here and today on the podcast, I have another one of the businesses that featured on Shark Tank Australia. He appeared in the first season of Shark Tank Australia, with his business, which at the time he was just getting started with and he's continued to grow it since then. So, please welcome to the show, Travis Osborne. Travis Osborne: Thanks very much, Kevin. Kevin Graham: For the listeners who might not know about you and your current business, can you give us a brief rundown on who you are and what mobiletyreshop.com.au does today. Travis Osborne: Mobile Tyre Shop's a very simple business. We do everything you do in the tire store, but with the convenience we do it either in your driveway or at your workplace. We sell all the major brand times and we come to you seven days a week. That garage purchase of purchasing tires is now done at your home or work. Kevin Graham: Now, this sounds like the sort of problem that people are facing the world over. Can you tell me a bit more about the competitive landscape on a global basis, and what that industry looks like? Travis Osborne: The reality is everyone is now time poor. Clearly, there's been a push for an Ecommerce platform. We see ourselves very much as the widget of tires. Where we've got all the major brand entire companies supporting us with direct accounts. You're able to go on to our website, mobiletyreshop.com.au. Choose your tires, you then select the time and date and location. We come to you. That business model has been working in Europe for about 10 years. In fact, the company we originally based our model around, they're now running 2,600 vans across Europe and there another number of examples with several hundred vans. Travis Osborne: So, the concept has been proven and very successful throughout Europe and the US. We're the first to bring that concept to Australia. We're now in a position where we've got offices in all major capital cities. Kevin Graham: How big is the fleet these days? Travis Osborne: We run 33 vans at the moment, with 45 full-time employees operating seven days a week. Kevin Graham: In which cities? Travis Osborne: We're in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. Kevin Graham: Right, so all the major capitals. Travis Osborne: All the major capital cities, which enables us to work with major fleet companies and mainly metro area in those capital cities. Kevin Graham: You don't sound like someone who's worked in the tire industry your whole life. So, can you tell me a bit more about how you got started in your entrepreneurial journey and what led up to you starting Mobile Tyre Shop? Travis Osborne: My background was very much in the property industry in retail property. I work with the likes of Westfield, the Gamble Group, and was very much retail development. In that time, I got to meet a lot of retailers, understand retail. I then was appointed National Development Manager with Gloria Jean's Coffee. At the time, we grew that business to over 500 stores. Travis Osborne: I was probably always looking for a franchising business, where you had the opportunity to one, I was looking for something with a large market. The Australian tire market's worth $5 billion. So, I was looking at something that could actually grow. When I was on holidays over in the US, I saw the original concept. At the time, with no experience in tires or the tire industry, I thought that was novel. I probably came back to Australia and wanted to be a customer. Found very quickly that the concept didn't exist in Australia and wasn't available. To be quite honest, I couldn't find a reason why it shouldn't exist because it was such a practical and simple idea. Travis Osborne: From there, obviously, we grew the business, but it was really driven from a customer's perspective that buying tires is the ultimate garage purchase. Sitting in a greasy tire store, there's the anecdote of drinking really bad coffee in a plastic cup. Nobody should really do that in this day and age. Kevin Graham: Usually I like to find out when you started the company and the reason you started it. Now, you've sort of alluded to that way. You've spoken about the size of the market, you saw it on holidays in the US, came back to Australia, tried to find. Realized that a service like this didn't exist yet, and you wanted to be a customer yourself. Can you tell us a bit more about when you started it and if there was any other reason other than wanting to be a customer yourself of a business like this, did you decide to start it? Travis Osborne: When I originally saw it overseas, that was in early 2012. From there, the company essentially launched in July 2013. At the time, I was working a second job, and it was essentially an experiment to see, is there a market for it? We talk about a lot of companies have done a lot of research and due diligence. Really, for me it was talking to two or three mates. Essentially saying, if we could buy tires for the same price, and someone came to your house and did it on the weekend, or they came to your work, would you use that concept? Through a couple of beers and a few barbecue discussions, everyone was supportive of the concept and really from there, which was mid-2012, I'd launched two vans and a very basic website. It wasn't till July 14, did I actually decide that there's actually a real business model here. It was not long after that I appeared on Shark Tank. I'd only go in full-time in that business three or four months before appearing on Shark Tank. Travis Osborne: We filmed the original episode of Shark Tank in December 14, which appeared on television in February 2015. It wasn't a long period between filming and appearing on television. Kevin Graham: Right. Before the show, you talked a little bit about building the minimum viable product version of this business. Can you explain what the MVP of Mobile Tyre Shop looked like? Travis Osborne: Okay, it was really as simple as going out, leasing two vans. I realized I needed more than one van to understand the opportunity of movements, of business and getting around. We were only in Melbourne and it was really just to see, one in the eastern suburbs and one in the western suburbs. Really, it was building a website, which we built very cheaply overseas. From there, I was one of these people, I build a website, everyone will come to it. You learn very quickly, you can have the best site in Australia. If there's no marketing around that website, or no SEO, no one's going to go to the website. Travis Osborne: We just st