To be successful at landlording you must approach it as a business. No better way to be innovative than to liberally steal ideas, grabbing the best from other industries and repurposing them for ours. I also have been thinking a lot about starting an incubator for physical businesses in Milwaukee that employee people that have a hard time finding good jobs.
Good artists copy, great artists steal. — Pablo Picasso
This past Saturday John Lee Dumas, who does the podcast “Entrepreneur on Fire” was speaking at the inaugural Young Entrepreneur Convention in Des Moines. If you have heard his podcast you know how great they are. If you haven’t, go take a listen. His format is doing an interview a day with a different entrepreneur, seven days a week. He is an ex-tank commander in the Middle Eastern wars, turned successful podcaster and author.
I find such valuable insights in his stuff that I decided to go to Iowa to see him in person. I did not even look at who the other speakers were. After hearing him speak, if the Young Entrepreneur Convention been JLD alone, the trip would have been worth it.
I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of every one of the presenters.
Kevin Harrington and Carmen Ballering at the Young Entrepreneur Convention
Probably the best known was Kevin Harrington, one of the original Sharks from Shark Tank.
His interesting story: He got his start after seeing a knife pitchman at a county fair and noticing that the Discovery Channel was dark six hours a day in the early days of cable. This was the beginning of “As Seen On TV” and the entire infomercial craze.
Carmen spoke to Kevin Harrington off stage about doing a promo for the Event Decorating Academy. I think what he offered is a valid idea to try.
The other surprising presenter was Jeff Hoffman, founder of PriceLine.com, the company that brought low-cost easy travel to the masses as well as the creator of the airport ticketing kiosk. There was some irony in seeing him Saturday and then having a terrible experience with American Airlines on the way home the next day. His interesting story: He got kicked out of Yale for not having the complete tuition. He solved it by creating a B2B software company even though he could not program himself at the time.
Jeff Hoffman, founder of Priceline, with Carmen Ballering
Two big take aways from Jeff Hoffman: Create BIG goals, envision that you have achieved them and then work backward each step until you are where you are today. That is how he arrived at doing concerts with Elton John, Britney Spears, and NSYNC. He also has produced a profitable indie movie.
The other, which is a to our businesses, is to look at what is occurring outside of your industry and see what opportunities presents themselves. PriceLine.com was based on his reading articles on perishable goods, distressed inventory, and spot pricing.
As I wrote earlier, every presenter was great.
The guy that put the event together was Brandon T Adams. He had created the (3rd?) largest Kickstarter campaigns and is a 2012 Iowa State University grad.
Two of the presenters are from Madison. Megan Watt ,who just released her first book, is a leadership trainer at her company, Dream Catalyst Labs. I paged through the book after hearing her presentation and bought it. The other is Jenna Atkinson, who gave a great presentation on marketing and social media.
Center, Ken Shamrock, “The most dangerous man in the world”, Carmen Ballering, who may just be the most dangerous woman in the world, and Tim Ballering
Cactus Jack Barringer is a very entertaining marketer. Guy holds a dozen patents.
There were a bunch other presenters during break out sessions that I did not get to see. You can see the YEC 2016 speaker list here.
One that we did see that I did not see a tie into our businesses but was cool to meet as our son-in-law and his brother are both MMA fighters, in fact, Monday of last week the brother, Kevin Vazquez, had his first major UFC fight was Ken Shamrock “The World’s Most Dangerous Man”. Shamrock and his partner were pitching a project to team retiring celebrities with young entrepreneurs.
The event was so great I can’t wait for next year’s conference.
#YECDM
