The Entrepreneur Ride Along Podcast - Online Business and Niche Site Ideas for Entrepreneurs – Details, episodes & analysis

Today, I am excited to interview Chris Ronzio of Trainual.com. Chris talks through the process of validating, launching, and scaling Trainual, a software program that helps companies build out their “business playbook” to document and organize company processes, people, onboarding, training, and operations. Chris provides a blueprint breaking down how to start a SAAS company, talking through exactly what he did to start and grow Trainual.

Trainual is now a fully-developed SAAS product with over 10,000 customers, 100 employees, operating in 183 different countries, with $33 million in funding. In this episode, Chris show's us how he got there.

Chris Ronzio Case Study

Chris is featured in my new book Use Your Job to Quit Your Job. Below is the case study from the book where Chris is featured. This comes directly from the book:

Take Chris Ronzio for example. Chris started a video production business in high school at fourteen years old. Over the next decade, he grew this business to three separate offices, with 300 camera operators across the country, and netted over $3 million in revenue before selling the business in 2013. This was just the start of Chris’s entrepreneurial journey. Chris took his expertise in managing a business and founded Organize Chaos, a consulting agency focused on business efficiency. Chris worked with small and mid-sized businesses, helping the leadership team scale through the process of organizing and mapping company workflows, procedures, responsibilities, and roles. In his consulting practice, Chris noticed a trend. These small businesses did not have a tool or process in place for organizing company operations, and it was hindering the company's ability to grow. So, Chris created and launched Trainual in 2015, a software program that helps companies build out their “business playbook” to document and organize company processes, people, onboarding, training, and operations. With this tool, the owner of the business can essentially hand off their “playbook” as a manual to operate the business. Chris understood the pain point and created the solution. Now, Trainual is a fully-developed SAAS product with over 10,000 customers, 100 employees, operating in 183 different countries, with $33 million in funding. This is what you can do. This is your start, your first stepping stone. You can see, Chris took one step after another. Starting back in high school with a video production business. One business stepping stone after another, learning more and more with each step until he founded Trainual.

This Interview

This interview is part of a series of case studies that I will be publishing to The Entrepreneur Ride Along Podcast over the coming weeks as I interview successful entrepreneurs in the online business space. These interviews and case studies will be featured in my newest book Use Your Job to Quit Your Job.

Resources Mentioned

Resources mentioned in this podcast episode:

• Use Your Job to Quit Your Job (the book)
• Trainual.com
• Chrisronzio.com
• Chris's book: The Business Playbook

Today, I am excited to interview Karthik Vijayakumar of designyourthinking.com.

Karthik shows us how he used his expertise working in product marketing and product management to start his business.

Karthik Vijayakumar Case Study 

Karthik is featured in my new book Use Your Job to Quit Your Job. Below is the case study from the book where Karthik is featured. This comes directly from the book:

Karthik Vijayakumar spent 15 years working in product marketing and product management for some of the largest technology companies in the world. In 2016 Karthik quit his job and started publishing content at designyourthinking.com, a blog and podcast about product design where he discusses the product mindset and which led to eBooks, speaking gigs, and cooperate trainings before he branched out into teaching podcasting and copywriting. Karthik took the brain dump question “When people ask you for help at work, what do they need help with?” and turned it into his first business. He took his expertise in managing products and turned that into a business. Now he has once again taken his expertise, this time in podcasting and copywriting, and turned that into a business helping startups and small businesses fix their messaging and make more sales. Karthik used his day job and his expertise from 15 years of mastering that job and turned it into a business.

This Interview 

This interview is part of a series of case studies that I will be publishing to The Entrepreneur Ride Along Podcast over the coming weeks as I interview successful entrepreneurs in the online business space. These interviews and case studies will be featured in my newest book Use Your Job to Quit Your Job.

Resources Mentioned

Resources mentioned in this podcast episode:

• Use Your Job to Quit Your Job (the book)
• Karthik ’s Business: designyourthinking.com.

2021 was my best year yet, with total revenue of $167,051 for the year.

In this episode, I am providing a breakdown of my blog income report. This is a breakdown of the revenue, expenses, and profit from my niche websites. I will give you some insight behind the scenes into what I am doing with each of my niche websites, detailing what happened during the last year, and how I plan to continue scaling.

This income report is for the year 2021, my year-end 2021 income report. 

For a full list of my income reports, see my blog income reports archived here: https://theentrepreneurridealong.com/incomereports

And if this sparks some ideas for you, or encourages you to go out and start an online business for yourself, I encourage you to start today. If you just need some ideas, go ahead and download my five website ideas (the businesses I would start if I had more time): https://theentrepreneurridealong.com/nichedownload/

Enjoy!

In this episode of The Entrepreneur Ride Along Podcast, we learn how to start writing a sales page from scratch, without using any templates. This is the exact technique used by the world’s greatest copywriters.

In today’s episode, we are joined by Karthik Vijayakumar of designyourthinking.com. Karthik is a professional copywriter and solopreneur. Karthik has mastered the art of writing sales copy and creating a sales page from scratch. Today, he teaches us how to get started with five simple steps.

Karthik is a master at sales page creation. He is the copywriter that designed and wrote the copy for my sales page.

I’m excited to bring you this conversation with Karthik so you can improve your conversion and begin selling your products and services!

Be sure to download Karthik’s checklist bundle that he put together special for listeners of The Entrepreneur Ride Along podcast at: designyourthinking.com/jake

From this podcast:

• Karthik’s special download (checklist) for this episode
• Design Your Thinking
• Launch Plan Podcast
• The Entrepreneur Ride Along Membership

I just sold one of my websites for $95,000. Today, I will tell you all about how to sell a website, how I flipped my website for $95,000, and I will give you a review of Empire Flippers (the broker I used to sell my business).

The business is the "Pomsky Owners Association". A business I started in 2017 as a website to practice my SEO. The website has grown substantially over the past few years, averaging over $2,000 in monthly profit. Through Empire Flippers, I was able to get a 55x multiple of monthly earnings, which put the valuation of my business just under $95,000. 

I learned a lot along the way selling this business. I first started the process of selling this business on April 27th 2021. I didn't officially list the website for sale until July 6th 2021. I didn't sell the business until August 14th 2021, and I didn't get paid for the sale until December 28th 2021. It's a LONG process, and I messed up quite a bit along the way (which slowed up the process). I talk all about that in today's episode including what to expect when selling your business, the expenses you can expect for broker fees and taxes, and all the behind the scenes in flipping a website.

In today's episode I'm going breakdown why I sold my business, share the lessons I learned, and show you how to sell a website on Empire Flippers using my business as a case study.

Download the "how to sell a website" step-by-step case study (coming soon)

Resources Mentioned:

• "How to sell a website" step-by-step case study (coming soon)
• Entrepreneur Ride Along Intro 
• About Pomsky Owners Association (Podcast)
• Empire Flippers
• Flippa
• Motion Invest
• Step One Book
• Ask Pat 2.0 Feature

Book marketing is new to me. I'm learning a lot!

In today's episode, I share what's working, and what's not, when marketing my book Step One. 

Step One: The Surprisingly Simple Process To Research, Validate, And Choose The Perfect Online Business launched in September of 2021. The launch went great, I sold over 120 copies in the first month and hit #1 in the new release category for eCommerce.

But things have slowed down since. Sales are still coming in, but it is a lot slower without the buzz of the launch.

Today, I talk through what I am doing to keep the sales rolling in now that the launch period is over.

You can checkout Step One here: //steponebook.com/

Update time! If you listened to Episode 29 of The Entrepreneur Ride Along Podcast, you heard all about my business AssociatePI and the struggles it has faced this year.

I am turning this business around in 2022.

In today's episode I talk all about my plan, my strategies, and thoughts going into the next year to scale this business back to an $8,000 - $10,000 per month online business.

You can checkout the updates I made to my sales page below, in the quick vide recorded showing the before and after results.

For the first time EVER, I ran a Black Friday promotion on my insurance education business.

From Friday through Monday, just four days, I sold over 25 online courses and generated OVER $6,000 in revenue. 

The promotion took me less than one hour to put together. Which means I made $6,000 in revenue from one hour of work.

It was an eye opening experience for me. Now, I will be taking advantage of Black Friday every year going forward!

In today's episode, I'm going to breakdown exactly what I did to run a successful Black Friday promotion. I will take you behind the scenes to talk through my thought process, and breakdown the strategies I used to utilize email marketing to drive $6,000 in revenue in four days.

For reference, this is my sales page for my business AssociatePI where I ran this 40% off Black Friday Promotion.

This is the cadence of emails I sent for my Black Friday Promotion:

• Email #1: Thursday at 2 pm - Early sneak peek of my deal sent to the email list.
• Email #2: Friday at 12:15 am - Introduction to the Black Friday deal with a link to the sales page.
• Email #3: Friday at 7 pm - Reminder email. Reminding my subscribers to take advantage of the Black Friday deal.
• Email #4: Saturday at 7 pm - Informative email with testimonials from students that have had success with my courses.
• Email #5: Sunday at 2 pm - Informative email touching on the value proposition of my courses (pass your exams in less time with less studying).
• Email #6: Monday at 10 am - Talking savings. Letting them know they can save $170 per course, up to $1,360 if they buy all courses. And, for the fist time, mentioning that the deal is 40% off so they can buy my course for just $255 (the course is normally $425).
• Email #7: Monday at 5 pm - Reminder that the deal ends at midnight. I also send more testimonials showing the success that people have in passing their exams with my course.
• Email #8: Monday at 11 pm - Final Reminder. Deal ends in one hour. Give them a final chance to buy now and save 40%.

And that's it!

Just eight emails, that took me no longer than one hour to schedule in ConvertKit, sold 25+ courses and generated over $6,000 in revenue. 

$18,547 is a lot of money.

No one can argue that.

That is how much money I paid in legal fees to dispute a cease and desist against my business AssociatePI, my business selling online courses in the insurance industry.

It was, by far, the biggest mistake of my entrepreneurial career. 

This is a follow up episode to Episode 32 of The Entrepreneur Ride Along Podcast, where we talked about how to protect your online business from legal claims.

Today, I tell you the story behind my $18,547 mistake. How one stupid mistake, stemming from my lack of knowledge and understanding of trademarked terms, cost me $18,547 in legal fees and nearly forced me shut down my business. 

In this episode, I have a conversation with Wesley Henderson. Wesley is the founder of Draftedlegal.com, and an attorney of Henderson & Henderson Attorneys at Law, a law firm he founded with his brother . Wesley is an attorney and entrepreneur.

In today's episode, Wesley talks us through a few simple steps that we can take to legally protect our businesses. These are simple steps that you can take today to protect yourself, and your business, so you can avoid costly lawsuits (and $20,000 in legal fees like me...).

Take this episode seriously. The legal world is not as scary as it seems. Wesley makes it easy for us in today's episode, and gives us three simple task that you can complete this week, for less than $300, to protect our businesses from the bulk of legal issues. 

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Draftedlegal.com
• Wesley's steps to get started
• hhlawsc.com