I thought in preparation for my upcoming to talk to the Frisco YEA (Young Entrepreneurs Academy) I would go ahead and write out my presentation here on the blog for practice but also to share with everyone else who is interested in making money from Niche Marketing.
The title of my presentation is going to be “Riches in Niches.” The reason I have chosen that title is because if you were to study almost every successful company you will have seen that in their beginnings they focused in on a specific niche and once they conquered that niche they grew and moved on. Don’t worry I will explain more later but let me start off by telling you a little bit about me.
My Story
Well I wish I could stand up here and have some great story about how when I was 12 I started a baseball trading company out of my room or how I started College and dropped out to start up a high tech software company from my parent’s garage but unfortunately that is not the case. Actually I took a different route. Starting a business was the last thing on my mind when I was growing up. I was concerned with only two things: One, playing sports and two, hanging out with my friends. The only real business or entrepreneurial thoughts I had was how was I going to have money to pay for my car insurance and going out money.
Now, what was also engrained in my head was that college was not a choice but a necessity. You see, I had three siblings and none of them including my parents went to college, so from an early age my mom put it in my head that I was going to be the first one in the family to get a college degree.
So after high school off I went to the University of Florida to study sports medicine. I wanted to be an athletic trainer or physical therapist after graduating. That was not in the cards or should I say not in the grades. Now, I did not do bad in school I just focused more on hanging out with my friends and going to Gator football games then studying enough to get the grades I needed to make it into PT school.
Okay, so after I graduated I did an internship with the Cooper Aerobics Center in Dallas and met several personal trainers who were making some really good money training members of the club. Also, I saw that they had a lot of flexibility with creating their schedule and they dictated how much they made by the amount of hours they wanted to train. Those two things really appealed to me, so that is what I pursued right out of school.
Now, I am from Florida so I went back home to Orlando and worked for a guy who owned his own private PT studio. It was at this point after graduating from school that I started to get the bug for learning and business. So fast forward a little and as you can see in the picture that is my wife who at the time was living in Dallas and wanted me to move out there.
So, I packed up my stuff in my car and drove out there. I started a job as PT at a club in Dallas called the Premier Club. It was located right by SMU and Highland park. One of the best moves I ever made because my clients were successful business men and at the time the economy was booming and people were creating internet companies and selling them for a lot of money. Mark Cuban was working out there and I got to see him sell his company and become the billionaire he is today. Hanging around all these successful guys got me to thinking about creating my own success story but I felt I needed some business background, which led me to pursue an MBA from UTD.
After I graduated from UTD with my MBA a friend of mine asked me to come help start up the brand new Cooper Aerobics Center at Craig Ranch. I jumped on the opportunity because at the time the economy was doing great and this gave me a chance to work with a start up with any of my capital at risk. Well, let’s fast forward agin and five years after I had built a thriving personal training department the housing bubble burst and the club suffered. I won’t bore you with details but the project turned south and the bank and investors wanted a change at the top! That left me and the other managers out.
For the first time in my life I was unemployed and not sure what I was going to do, but after soul searching and talking it over with my wife I decided it was time I bring out that entrepreneurial spirit in me and since then I have not looked back.
I currently run two businesses. The first one is an information marketing company where I sell products to different niches, like my Working Mom Workouts site which is membership site that provides weekly fitness workouts for moms. Also, I have written a book on how to profit form blogging where I target people who are looking to make passive income from their blog. The second company I run is a local internet marketing firm where I provide marketing services for small local businesses.
That is my story which now leads me into the discussion of Niche Marketing and will be part II in this blog series.
