One Thing Required With Will Lee

Matt Giovanisci spent his teenage years working in a pool store and learning all about swimming pool maintenance and care. He also rocked out in a band, made videos, and taught himself how to design and code websites. Then he got an idea: "Maybe I should create a website about pool care." Four years went by before a friend told him to get on with it already! Matt finally built that website, www.SwimUniversity.com, but it went through a few iterations before he figured out his formula for success. The formula was ultimately pretty simple: Provide quality content, and make it entertaining! Now this website earns him more than he was making full time in a corporate job at the pool company and he has spent NO TIME at all on the website so far in 2014...it is entirely passive income. He is now spending his time with a partner building a successful and highly entertaining website (www.ListenMoneyMatters.com) and daily podcast about personal finance. In our interview, Matt talks about: What he did wrong in buildin

John Lee Dumas loved listening to podcasts. He could download to his phone exactly what he wanted to listen to and then listen to them while he was on the go. He could pause them when he wanted, and then resume playing later without having missed a thing. The only problem was that there were not enough podcasts available to satisfy his appetite.  He'd quickly run out of shows and have to wait for something new to become available. This drove him nuts! John decided to solve the problem himself. He quit his job and created a daily (7 days per week) business podcast, the exact frequency and content that he himself wanted to hear! Others told him this was crazy, that no one needed a daily show, and that it would be near impossible to maintain that pace.   John has long since proved them wrong! The EntrepreneurOnFire podcast was launched in June 2012, won Best in iTunes 2013, and so far has been downloaded over 7.6 million times. It sure seems that a lot of other people shared John's pain and love his content! In

Mike Michalowicz is one guy every entrepreneur should listen to. Mike started three multi-million dollar businesses, one of which he sold to a co-founder and another of which was sold after only a few years to a Fortune 500 company. In addition, he has started and/or advised many startup businesses. It's not all been roses, though. Mike has experienced some pretty heart wrenching business failures, too, which he discusses in the interview. The important thing is that he learned from all his experiences, both the good and the bad, and he's bounced back stronger than ever. Now an author, Mike is following his passion. He has written three books on entrepreneurship which address the natural sequence an entrepreneur goes through when building their business. His first book, The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur: The tell-it-like-it-is guide to cleaning up in business, even if you are at the end of your roll, has 450 5-star reviews on Amazon and is considered a cult classic on Entrepreneurship. It walks us through the s

When Jim Wang graduated from college and started working as a software developer, he discovered that he needed to learn about personal finance. He needed to learn about 401k plans, saving and investing, insurance, renting and buying homes, and countless others things that most people don't yet know at that age. Jim decided that since he was learning this stuff anyway, he might as well record it on a blog. Thus was born the Bargaineering website. Since he had a full time day job, Jim worked on the site in his spare time. This was not a business to him (at first), it was just him writing about what he was learning as he did research on various topics. Imagine his surprise when traffic to the website started rapidly climbing! Seeing an opportunity, Jim then started adding elements to the website that would allow him to monetize (make money off of) this traffic. Before long, Jim was earning significantly more money from his website than from his full time job. The punchline: About five years after starting the bl

John's passion as a boy was imitating the voices and characters that he heard on the radio and on tv, and he fell in love with radio.  As an adult, however, he graduated from college and became a lobbyist.  This was a long way from his passion. After several years, he started attending night school to get the training needed to get a job at a local radio station. Fast forward several years, John achieved his goal of doing voiceover and production work at a radio station in Boston, and he's been doing it ever since.  If the story ended there, it would be inspirational.  But there is more. Recognizing that jobs cannot be counted on to be permanent, John then worked to build a business on the side. With this business, John serves a variety of other businesses using his vocal and production skills.  The two sets of work (his job plus his company) keep him fulfilled doing work that he enjoys and provide him a diversified income stream.  That's a fantastic situation! Listen to this episode and think about ways that

When Andrew Ferebee realized shortly after college that the corporate career path that he was on did not fulfill him, he started looking for alternatives. His passions were entrepreneurship and self improvement. When he did some research, he discovered that there were no good self-improvement websites for young men. And BAM, there was his future! Andrew would create a website and community for young men who were interested in exploring topics related to personal development, fulfillment, and achieving greatness on their own terms. Thus was born the Knowledge For Men podcast and website (www.knowledgeformen.com). Andrew talks about: Creating a business around your passion Becoming the go-to resource on a topic when you are not an expert in that topic Bringing fresh ideas into your business by talking to experts outside your business How writing from the heart is much more attractive to readers than generic content The importance to the entrepreneur of understanding that starting a business comes with both hig

Allen Murabayashi, Chairman and Co-Founder of PhotoShelter, is a great example of what can happen when you take action and start building a business. When Allen was fresh out of college, he joined a small staff of four software developers playing around with internet business ideas in the side office of a employment recruiting firm.  Those efforts became HotJobs, which Yahoo bought in 2002 for $445 million. A few years later, Allen and a few friends got together for dinner and decided to start a company to help professional photographers showcase and sell their work.  That company is PhotoShelter. With two big successes under his belt, Allen has a lot of great advice to offer to new entrepreneurs and to existing businesses.

Andy Biggs had a very traditional corporate career.  He earned an accounting degree in college, followed by consulting  jobs and work at a Silicon Valley startup.  But by the time the 2008 recession hit, he had gradually lost his passion for this kind of work. It was then that Andy and his wife packed everything up and took a long trip to Africa where he climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro.  It was a tough climb with lots of time to think.  When he came off the mountain, Andy had set his eye on a new career.  He had decided to become a photographer and launch an African photo safari business.  What a great decision that turned out to be! In this interview: Andy talks about the importance of identifying and understanding your target customer. He says it's important to have a good understanding of the competition so you can position your business well. Andy talks about how he is gradually changing his product offerings to allow him to travel less while maintaining his income. Andy has never spent money on advertising. He

When Debra Angilletta became a mother a few years ago, she chose to walk away from a great corporate career at a Wall Street firm.  No new job to go to, no entrepreneurial business already established.  She just quit, did some self assessment work, and then mapped out how she would build a home-based business that took advantage of her aptitudes and interests.   Now, a few years later, she has a 6-figure income business (www.anewviewllc.com) and is working far less than before, all from the comfort of home. In this interview: Deb tells us that we know more than we think we know, and it's probably enough to start a business.   She advises us to pick a niche and not try to sell to too broad of a market.   She emphasizes why time management is so critical.   She tells us that business is just a system, and that if we know how the system works, we too can build a successful business. And she summarizes all of this by explaining her Five Cornerstones approach to building a company.

One Thing Required is a podcast celebrating entrepreneurship.  I interview entrepreneurs, authors and experts to learn as much as I can from them about starting and growing businesses.  My goal: To help my audience and me get out of our own way and launch successful businesses better and faster than if we tried to figure it all out on our own. In this episode, meet me (Will Lee), your host.  I'll tell you a little about my business career and why I am qualified to interview entrepreneurs about how they started their businesses.  And I'll tell you a little about what I enjoy most in life. Once you know me a little better, I will share why I am doing this podcast and what I hope to learn, with you, from our guests.  If you aren't inspired and educated by every show, if you don't feel more confident that you too can launch your own business, then I'm doing something wrong.  Tell me and I'll fix it! Ultimately, this show is for you, my audience.  Let me know what you want to learn, and I will do my best to provid