Boring Businesses

Mike Beckham built Simple Modern into a $200 million/year e-commerce brand. I chat with him about how he got started, another business ventures he had (including talking his brother out of buying $1 million of Bitcoin in 2012). Mike teaches entrepreneurship and business to students and others, so watch this entire episode if you want to start a business. Mike will show you the way! 0:00 Intro 5:17 How did Mike become an entrepreneur? 9:10 Mike's entrepreneurship lessons 18:22 Entrepreneurial parenting 22:31 How to start a business 25:48 His brother's auction website ($1 billion in sales) 32:38 Almost inventing Candy Crush 35:15 Amazon suspending his account 42:06 How Simple Modern changed over the last 4 years 43:58 Treating employees well 59:04 Who does Mike look up to? 👉 Connect with Sieva Website: www.sievakozinsky.com X: twitter.com/SievaKozinsky LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/skozinsky/ Substack: www.thebusinessacademy.substack.com/ 👉 Connect with Mike X: https://x.com/mikebeckhamsm Company: https://www.simplemodern.com/

In today’s episode Boring Businesses, I’m joined by Khai Nguyen, Founder of Powers Gymnastics, the largest multi-vertical acquisition firm in U.S. youth sports, and investor in several companies like OpenSea, Kraken Digital Asset Exchange, and Ignite Tournaments. Khai shares insights from his journey from working on Wall Street to buying and operating 20+ businesses, his approach to building rapport with business owners, and how he built an empire of gymnastics studios across the United States.  Timestamps: 00:00 Khai’s journey from homeless to business owner 05:29 Going into Wall Street 08:25 Transitioning to entrepreneurship 10:30 How to build rapport with business owners 15:50 What worked and what didn’t work for Khai 20:31 How Khai came up with the idea for Powers Gymnastics 26:10 Scaling the gymnastics business 33:50 Launching the Ninja Warrior program 37:00 Biggest lessons from growing a business  👉 Connect with Sieva Website: www.sievakozinsky.com X: twitter.com/SievaKozinsky LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/skozinsky/ Substack: www.thebusinessacademy.substack.com/  👉 Connect with Khai Instagram: www.instagram.com/passportkhai/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nguyenkhai/

Ankur Nagpal sold his business, Teachable, for $250 million. Now, he's focused on making people aware of tax optimization strategies (inspired by what he wish he know when starting his business). I asked Ankur how he knew when to sell his business, how the process went, and for some tips on lowering tax bills when selling a business. 0:00 Intro 0:57 How Ankur sold Teachable 9:57 Structure of the Deal 11:40 Why he raised VC money  14:45 How he went from retired to running his next business 20:29 Carry's business model 23:05 Tax loopholes 26:40 How Ankur markets his new business 33:32 Monetization 38:40 The VC business model 41:30 QSBS 👉 Connect with Sieva Website: www.sievakozinsky.com X: twitter.com/SievaKozinsky LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/skozinsky/ Substack: www.thebusinessacademy.substack.com/

David Rodnitzky sold his agency for $65 million - and then bought it back for $5 million. And then he sold it again for way more than $65 million.  Listen to this fascinating conversation about how to scale a marketing agency, how much you can sell your agency for, and what his margins are.  0:00 Intro 3:20 How David sold and re-bought his agency 11:05 How much can you sell an agency for? 13:50 Fire yourself from jobs before you sell 18:03 Raising his prices from $5k to $25k per month 22:10 What kind of agencies would you buy? 29:56 Pitching Apple (and why they didn't hire him) 32:40 Getting a $70k/month client 33:45 Multiple for agencies 👉 Connect with Sieva Website: www.sievakozinsky.com X: twitter.com/SievaKozinsky LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/skozinsky/ Substack: www.thebusinessacademy.substack.com/

Jameson Haslam left his banking & private equity career to start a boring, home deck business in San Diego. He's already grown it to $1.5 million in annual revenue in a couple years. We talk about why he chose a boring business, how he sold his first project before he even had a business, and how he plans to scale it up. 0:00 Introduction 3:15 Airbnb Arbitrage 5:55 Picking the home deck niche 13:45 Generating leads 20:29 This year's revenue & profit 23:10 The growth playbook 27:10 Collecting cash from customers 31:45 The team & overseas hiring 36:40 How Jameson uses Instagram 👉 Connect with Sieva Website: www.sievakozinsky.com X: twitter.com/SievaKozinsky LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/skozinsky/ Substack: www.thebusinessacademy.substack.com/  👉 Connect with Jameson X: https://x.com/jamesonhaslam Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/west.coast.deck/ Website: https://www.westcoastdeck.com/ Please leave a review if you enjoyed this episode!