Project Egg: Entrepreneurs Gathering For Growth

Learning how to get a book deal is an incredible milestone for many authors, as the culmination of years of hard work creating your masterpiece is seeing it published. In this interview, Susanna Lancaster, author of The Growing Rock, shares her origin story and discusses how to get a book deal. Susanna Lancaster grew up as a shy, nerdy kid who loved to read and write. With two librarians as parents, the love for reading and writing was an integral part of her family culture. Through high school and college, she continued to write and decided to major in creative writing. Her teachers encouraged her to develop her writing. After college, she took a year off and looked for a graduate program. She decided she wanted to focus on writing books for children and found a program at Lesley University that perfectly matched what she was looking for. It was through that program that she figured out what she cared most about writing. The Growing Rock was her thesis at this program. Writing is a great way to expr

Getting published on major media outlets is a great way to build exposure to audiences you wouldn’t have been able to reach otherwise. In this interview, Deepak Maddila, Facebook expert and writer, shares his origin story and breaks down how to get your writing published on major media publications. Deepak Maddila’s journey over the past several years has laid the groundwork for his success and getting published in major media outlets. Through his experience with sales, he learned that every entrepreneur is a salesman. He believes that sales and networking are the two key skills that every entrepreneur must learn and grow. In school, he realized that he was part of the rat race and knew he wanted out. After college, he joined the workforce and quickly realized that working for others, even in a very successful company, was not for him. He took a leap and dove into entrepreneurship head first. Deepak attributes his swift success to having a mentor. He says that having a mentor has cut his learning curve

With over 3.5 billion searches per day on Google alone, search engine optimization (SEO) is more important than ever. Leveraging organic traffic can mean a near endless supply of visitors to your site. In this interview, Tim O'Keefe, Owner of Spider Juice Technologies, shares his origin story and marketing knowledge. Here is an excerpt from Tim: "Difficult to teach in a few paragraphs. But trust is easy if you have rapport skills. I know if I am meeting someone qualified in person then the trust part is easy. Again, so long as they are qualified. You have your time in business, for me 20 years. I joke my competition was in grade school when I started my company. Then I might explain why I started the company which was I was tired of representing lousy services. If I fail at that, I can only blame the guy in the mirror. They have seen and received your proof. Proof of what you do is the real deal. Provide them with anything meaningful to them. A BBB rating to a review on Google or Yelp, to copies of testimo

Businesses, whether just opening their doors or hundreds of years old, all have at least one thing in common - they need new customers to keep growing and expanding. In this interview, Adam Holland, Owner of Adam Holland Marketing, shares his journey as an entrepreneur making millions as a lead generation expert. Adam Holland is a serial entrepreneur that has had his hands in many industries such as: small business and internet marketing consulting, internet marketing training, lead generation, affiliate marketing, and more. He is also an accomplished author and speaker. Adam Holland’s educational background was in engineering, while his initial work experience was in sales engineering. Yea, it IS weird to be able to find an engineer that can communicate. Like many other people, he found himself unemployed at the start of the recession in 2008. Instead of trying to get back into the job market, he used this opportunity to pursue his dream of owning his own business. He has since become a full time internet

Entrepreneurship is everywhere, especially in Israel, the startup nation. It has more entrepreneurs per capita than any other country on the planet, with a booming economy despite constant warfare. In this interview, David Gabay, Amazon FBA seller, shares his origin story and perspective on Israeli entrepreneurship. Before getting onto Amazon, he would just wake up, go to work, and come home to his family. While the money was "okay," David knew that there were bigger and better things out there that he wanted to tap into. David found out about Amazon in 2015, and his life was changed. Basically, he started doing some research because he wanted to start his own business. He was tired of being employed by other people. David sat down with his partner and started talking more about the business model of selling products online through Amazon FBA. Amazon FBA is fulfilment by Amazon, a service where you, as the business owner, do not have to manage or ship your goods. You can leverage Amazon's warehouses, shipp

Venture capitalism is a necessary tool for many small businesses to startup or grow and blossom into massive companies. However, most people are unaware of how to navigate them. In this interview, Joel Ivers, a venture capitalist, shares his origin story, including raising millions for biotech startups. Joel never really started out trying to pursue entrepreneurship. Back in his day, he didn't know many people trying to build companies and so naturally didn't himself. He took a straight and narrow path. He went to college and became a chemistry major, eventually working his way into a Ph.D. program for molecular biology and genetics. Joel decided that he didn't want a Ph.D., left with a masters, and became a certified high school chemistry teacher. Realizing that he would never make a ton of money as a teacher, he got in touch with a recruiter started looking for a position in technical sales. Within two weeks of looking, Joel resigned from his teaching position and was working as a salesman for Johnson &a

Influencer marketing is one of the biggest opportunity for marketers to take advantage of today. Brands who can dominate this space are going to be miles ahead of their competition. In this interview, Joe Sinkwitz, CEO of Intellifluence, shares his origin story and breaks down his influencer marketing platform. Joe is the son of a programmer, which is extraordinary because in the 1980's, his family was one of the first in their entire city to own a personal computer. He was one of the first members of generation x that had experience with computers. Most of his peers didn't get exposure to those devices until high school. This skewed Joe's outlook on technology and put him ahead of the game. His father, in his 70s, is still an active programmer and could be the oldest living programmer who still gets paid. Joe ended up being very entrepreneurial growing up with a variety of side businesses - some of which were questionable. For example, he lived near a golf course, and Joe would get golf balls that had be

Running a business is an extremely difficult endeavor in which only a few people truly succeed. One way to improve your chances is to learn more about strategic business management. In this interview, Anne-Marie De Witt, CEO of Fireside Games, shares her origin story and talks about strategic business management for her ecommerce brand. Anne-Marie started out as a speech language pathologist working in hospitals and public schools. She realized early on that she wanted to get into publishing more, and pivoted into educational publishing. She worked her way up from a position of copy editor all the way to becoming a vice president of product development. Around that time, her husband, Justin De Witt, was working in the board game industry as a production artist. The time came in 2013 when they decided to marry the business side of what she brought to the table with the industry knowledge that he was gaining and jump headfirst into Fireside Games. Fireside Games was founded in 2007 when they decided to take

Learning how to build your own entrepreneur lifestyle, regardless of the type of business you want to create, can help you gain clarity towards your goal. In this interview, Matt Thompson, entrepreneur lifestyle architect, shares his origin story of entrepreneurship and teaches how to construct the life of your dreams. Born in Bellville, but raised north of that on his grandparent's farm, Matt noticed from an early age that the two sides of his family were very opposing. His dad's side was very aggressive, where the only emotion you could show was anger. On his mom's side, it was the "most lovey dovey group of people" he had ever seen. This stark contrast led to Matt becoming a very quiet and observant child who noticed everything that was going on. Even in high school, because of the way things were with his dad, Matt mostly hung around with girls because he was better mentally equipped to handle them. That didn't work out too well for him later on, however, as he got engaged at 18 years old to an abusive

The digital nomad lifestyle is extraordinarily popular amongst young people today. Living remotely while traveling the world and working from your laptop is a dream come true. In this interview, Adil Mafhoum, Founder of Elite Accelerator, shares his story and breaks down how to be a digital nomad entrepreneur. His entrepreneurial journey started at the age of 23, when Adil started a magazine dedicated to alternative music, rock and metal. It was a huge failure that took two years to fully drain him and his sponsors of money. After that, he jumped into marketing and started a full blown agency in Morocco, where he is from. At the same time, however, he had been traveling the world. Every two or three months he moved to a new location and ran his agency remotely. In 2016, however, he decided that he didn't want to have an office or have to show up to work everyday. Adil wanted the complete freedom to be able to travel around the world whenever he felt a desire to. Like Tim Ferriss says, Adil wanted to be par

In the digital age, there are always opportunities that arise from new technology. We used to rely solely on humans to take photos and videos, but now we have unmanned aircraft - drones. In this interview, Dan Davidson, Co-Founder of Davidson Drones, shares his entrepreneurial origin story of starting a drone business. Dan's entrepreneurial story started only a couple of years ago while working at Honda R&D. A stressful job, he was very busy and had a crazy schedule where his work was his life. After reading an article about drones and their potential uses in the future, Dan dove right into a local drone business niching down into aerial photography and farm surveying. An electrical engineer by trade, Dan wanted to bring in additional help to help him build this new business. So, he recruited his brother, a computer engineer with advanced data processing skills, to join the team. Armed with an idea and the technical know how, the brothers went to an agricultural convention to find an investor to get t

Traveling around the world is a dream for most people, but a reality for only a select few who either have enough money to go anywhere or learn how to travel the world for free. In this interview, Joseph Taveras, world traveler, shares his origin story in entrepreneurship and breaks down how he travels the world for free. Starting out with entrepreneurship in high school, Joe was about 16 and in a marketing class. At that point in time, he didn't know what he wanted to do with his life. But that would all change when one of his school's guest entrepreneurship professors came down to speak to Joe's class. This professor took a very different approach from most. Instead of teaching from a book, he would give the students a task to complete out in the real world. Inspired by this teacher, Joe decided to create his own t-shirt company within the school. That first business failed, but he learned valuable lessons from it that would help him later on in his life. The next school year, the professor came back and

Entrepreneur motivation is something that every business owner needs from time to time. Whether you are just starting out and need help getting the inspiration to jumpstart your venture, or are feeling burn out at the thirty year mark, we all can benefit from motivation. In this interview, Bolton Alford, the 23 year old Co-Founder of Inersche, shares his origin story in entrepreneurship. Growing up, he always knew that he wanted to be an entrepreneur, but didn't know exactly what he wanted to do. He went to school for business management and entrepreneurship, but after doing some outside research became obsessed with the online scene. Bolton quickly learned about search engine optimization, ecommerce, affiliate marketing, and a couple of other things that led him into an "underground network" of people who were making money online. 8 months before graduation, he started his SEO company, Incersche, and today he is still working to push that venture forward, carving out a unique place in the digital marketin

Social entrepreneurship is being just as concerned with making a positive impact on the world as making money. In fact, according to Forbes, a whopping 94% of young people today want to use their skills to benefit a cause. In this interview, Travis Patterson, Founder of The Wilson Post, shares his story of becoming a social entrepreneur and online publisher. With a background in HR, Travis finds his strength in operations and project coordination. He loves helping customers find solutions for their issues, typically by finding ways to improve their systems and processes. Overall, Patterson describes himself as "a solutions specialist." His business, The Wilson Post News & Media, is a millennial driven news and media company founded in Wilson, North Carolina in 2017. TWP shares engaging Eastern NC news & media to over 13,000+ covering Food, Fashion, Technology, Entrepreneurship, Healthcare, Entertainment, Innovation & more. On the purpose of the organization, Travis had this to say: "Our missio

Selling products on Amazon is an incredible opportunity for those looking to reach the platform's hundreds of millions of users. With a buyer-centric user base, those who visit the marketplace are poised to buy with wallets in hand. Making the decision to sell on Amazon is one that Chris Jones made. When you take on the adventure of selling products on Amazon, you are embarking on a journey of marketing, sales, branding, inventory management, algorithms, and passive income, to name a few. However, the benefits of running your own business far outweigh the drawbacks. Chris Jones is a shining example of somebody who has achieved financial freedom from his business, but his journey hasn't been easy. The Origin Story of Chris Jones: "Before I founded my first ever company, I had been researching various methods to ‘make money online.' I decided to go all in on the Amazon FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon) model. I had been reading and watching endless videos on business, selling on Amazon, passive income and much mo

eBay is one of the largest online marketplaces on the planet, and is in direct competition with Amazon, Alibaba, etc. Learning how to sell on Ebay gives you access to an enormous potential customer base. In this interview with Dave Kosciusko, he shares how he generates up to $30,000 per month selling on eBay. From Warwick, Rhode Island, Dave had a rough childhood. He lost his father at 16 years old, dropped out of college a few years later, and was kicked out of his mother's house because he left school. She didn't think he was going to be successful, and so Dave went his own way. He started off selling vacuum cleaners door to door, rising to the top of the company as the top salesperson in the entire Rhode Island division within a few short years. Eventually he became the General Manager and ran the company for about 8 years. During this time Dave went out on his own a few times, failed, and went bankrupt twice before the age of 30. As he puts it, he took his "bumps and bruises" while he was in his twenti

Becoming an author is not as difficult as it used to be. In fact, anyone can do it if they know how to be a self published author. In this interview, Mikey Van Der Voort, full time self publisher, talks about his journey to financial freedom through Amazon's Kindle Self Publishing platform. Every single person on the planet, through self publishing, has the ability to become a published author. By using Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing platform, for example, you can publish a paperback or ebook for FREE. Mikey is a full time fiction publisher, choosing the path of having books ghost written for him and published under pen names while he promotes them and builds the business on the backend. Born and raised in California, he used to vacation to Mexico with his parents and eventually decided to move down there. In the beginning however, he had a job selling time shares - a very "in your face" type of business. While he did make some good money, he ended up hating it. The silver lining, however, was that he st

If you are trying to start your business - especially if you are bootstrapping your entire venture - then having access to small business capital loans is a critical component of your success, as you can provide the basic necessities for your team while you build your business and properly build your company. In this interview, small business loan expert and lender, Cass Pierce, shares his story of becoming an entrepreneur after a long road of rich experiences in business. He started off in sales as a Hewlett Packard channel partner, where he was responsible for sales of Hewlett Packard computer equipment to catalog companies across the nation. As a Value Added Reseller for HP, he worked with the software sales team to customize overall solutions for our customers. After that position, he moved closer in to the Hewlett Packard ecosystem as a customer support engineer. Here, Cass was responsible for the installation, maintenance, repairs, and support of a wide variety of high tech equipment including super

Have you ever wanted to become an international best selling author? What most people don't know is that this goal is within reach with Amazon self publishing. In this interview, Dale L. Roberts, international best selling author, shares his story of becoming a number one best seller in the fitness category. Dale is a #1 bestselling fitness author. He's a former American Council on Exercise Personal Trainer, Certified, with an ACE specialty certification in Senior Fitness. Today he is in great shape, but it hasn't always been that way. He loved to read, write, and play video games, yet secretly wished to be bigger, stronger, and leaner. Then he discovered pro-wrestling and fell in love with the sport. The good-guy versus bad-guy stories told in the ring reminded him of superhero comics from childhood. He became motivated to push himself—to be just like those superheroes. So, he immersed myself in health and fitness information and learned to build muscle, burn fat, and develop strength. Eventually, he li