 All right guys, how was the first day at FICON been? Awesome awesome. Well, we've had an awesome time having you here today We're really excited about the next two presenters. We're gonna have right on stage here I want to recognize more of our FICON sponsors because as a non-profit organization FICON is made possible by the people at Foundations and individuals who support us through donations and I recognized earlier the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation and Freedom Factor They are our two top sponsors for the event. I also want to recognize bitcoin.com You probably saw their outposts there in the Pre-function area, please visit them the Atlas Network. They also have a table inside the exhibit hall Retzel market urbanism marketers urbanism is very interesting because they're applying a market-oriented philosophy To the way in which cities are built. So they're very interesting if you have a chance to go into any of their sessions They're running the urbanism track I want to also recognize praxis praxis is an awesome organization You've probably seen people wearing praxis t-shirts all throughout the space. There's one right up here. They're actually One of their people is going to be presenting here in just a little bit and I'll introduce him when it's his turn But please see people in praxis t-shirts And go visit their table and actually their co-founder Isaac Morehouse is going to be running the social Activity that we do here next. So please look forward to that The last sponsor I want to recognize is educating for success another great organization in the expo hall Please visit everybody and you know another reminder We're all here to meet different people. Don't just talk to students if you're a student Don't just talk to other adults or you know professional people if you're a professional person talk with each other Get to know each other. That's what this is all about So I have the auspicious pleasure of introducing Kevin Harrington who If you've ever seen that logo as seen on tv He is the guy who invented that he also invented the infomercial and i'm going to Stop before I say anything else because this upcoming video will explain everything. So let's queue up the video Meet Kevin Harrington with over 500 products launched and generating over five billion dollars in product sales in over 100 countries Kevin Harrington is the inventor of the infomercial as seen on tv pioneer And original shark on the emmy award-winning tv show shark tank Kevin creates massive brands by combining great products with superstar talent like kim kardashian 50 cent kathy in paris hilton christ jenner silo green george foreman montel williams jack lillain flowrida hulk hogan billy maize paula abdule and tony little My brand now is worth over three billion dollars So my advice to everybody if you even have an idea You'd want to go to kevin harry as a sought-after guest. Kevin has been featured on 2020 cnn fox business bloomberg jim kramer's the street mtv Good morning america the cbs morning news the today show cnbc squawk box Entrepreneur fox and france donny deutch big idea bethany the view and the daily double on jeffrey now back to the shark tank i'm kevin harry a renowned speaker kevin has appeared on stage for organizations like atn t microsoft united states postal service humana 3 m fedex arburn university harbert and mit kevin has authored several books Including act now how i turned ideas into million dollar products and the best seller how to become a key person of influence As a global influencer kevin has thrown out the first pitch for the tampa bay rays and produced movies with stars like kevin spacey and the father of invention kevin is a pioneer of the direct response industry And has risen to nearly iconic status over the years kevin helped to found eo the entrepreneur's organization and e r a The electronic retailing association receiving their lifetime achievement award kevin is now at the forefront of the digital marketing age As founder of quantum media a cutting-edge digital marketing agency kevin has built 20 businesses to over 100 million dollars each That's why he's the original shark from shark tank the billion dollar man kevin herrington Let's give kevin a warm welcome. Thank you First they've been great so far All right, thank you So how many entrepreneurs do we have in the room? Let me see a show of hands or future entrepreneurs? Let me see okay, but oh about two-thirds of the room. That's fantastic because that's exactly The kind of crowd i'd like to talk to those that want to be Entrepreneurs now do any of you want to maybe go on shark tank and get mr. Wonderful to get nasty no How many have seen shark tank right mr. Wonderful? Do you know why he calls himself that? Because nobody else will okay now he kisses the mirror every morning loves himself right now No, he's actually he's a great guy. He's a good friend of mine and we've had a lot of time that great times together Here we are at the The guitar convention and it's actually the national associations of music Manufacturers and we did a folding guitar together on shark tank So that's one of the projects that we did and i'm going to tell a little bit about shark tank today how i got on I'll tell you a little bit about how i got started as an entrepreneur And then i'm going to share with you four steps and some actually some tough times that i had because As an entrepreneur it's only fair for me to tell you also Some of the problems some of the challenges when they asked me to come I asked is it okay that i talk about how i had sort of a meltdown at one point in my in my career And i want to talk about that how i hit really a bottom point in my life and decided i had to do something To turn that around so If that's okay, i'm going to share that with you here today Also, so just starts real quick way back when i was young and my my father It was my first mentor and here's this is my presentation today as in tribute This is the third anniversary. He died three years ago the week of june 23rd, which is next week So um, let's give my father a round of applause for being a great service to this country He he flew 150 missions in world war two which was pretty amazing got shot down a couple times And you know he fought for our freedom and and this is a great place to be talking about freedom and economic Education so for me i got educated by my father about economics way back and one of the first things This is kind of a joke slide But i say i remember when at christmas time other kids would get regular gifts I would get the books like how the grinch stole your product idea Okay, and the cat and the hat creating another line of hats Okay, so that my dad was always teaching me and so i was very lucky to have a father that would show me I worked in his restaurants. In fact, um here I was in his herrington's irish pub way back and then he says you've got to be an entrepreneur And I started a driveway sealing business and then I had a heating and air conditioning company And I went on then to create a business brokerage company was called the small business center A one-stop center for small businesses I rented a whole floor of an office building in cincinati, ohio where i'm from and it and we had We had the business brokerage company. So we sold you the business But then you needed a legal structure. So we had a lawyer. We had an insurance agent We had an advertising agency and everything you needed on that floor to help you survive and thrive as a business owner So this was sort of like you see these we work spaces today, but it was all of the camaraderie all of us working together and Counting and graphics and you know, we did everything your books your records your brochures your ads Menus if you were in a restaurant business. So this got me really In tune to seeing lots of different businesses because as a business broker I had a couple hundred different businesses for sale Laundromats floral shops pizza parlors delicate tessins and I got the books and records of all these different companies So because we had to sell them we had to have all access to all their information So it was I call it a curiosity overload phase for me and a chance for me to really understand the inner workings of many businesses and so I used to go to a lot of trade shows and And I'm going to talk a little bit about tv because you know tv Back in the 80s and 90s and then when cable hit was different Back in the old days when there's only five channels when cable hit yet hbo movies and cnn sports But when I got to the discovery channel, I ordered a big cable package 1984 that was what was on the discovery channel Now this is how I got into the Informercial industry because this story is pretty cool and I I say that there were Three eureka moments in my life and I'm going to share each one of those with you today And the first one is coming up here in just a second because I I said to myself How I called the cable company. What's wrong with discovery channel? Why are there bars on the screen and they said oh, it's only an 18 hour a day network Six hours a day. That's what you're going to see and that's when the light bulb went off in my mind Think about this What you know, what can I put on that channel and make some money for me and discovery right six hours a day? So so here I am going to all these different, you know businesses to sell I'm going to if I'm going to sell a flower shop I go to the flower shows and I go to the restaurant shows and here I am at the home and garden show In philadelphia and there's a a crowd around this one booth and there's a man standing at barely I had to jump up look over the shoulders and he's got a knife in his hand He's cutting through a coca-cola can through a hammer head through a muffler through a pair of sneakers with this knife And I said what is that guy doing? Okay. I mean think about that He said you could get the ginsu for 14 dollars and 95 cents But for the first 10 people i'm going to give you a second one absolutely free But wait There's more right you've heard that right 10 free steak knives. Okay, so he got attacked by me I got I was one of those 10 people and we all bought that ginsu knife set right? And so that's when the light bulb went off. This is eureka moment number one I said to aren't his name was arnold morris I'm going to show you what I did with arnold because I when arnold got on break I said arnold that is the greatest pitch i've ever seen And everybody attacked you when you were done and I watched him do it a few more times the same set of words And I said i've got a great idea. I said first of all, how long you've been doing this? He said kevin I go i'm here at the philadelphia home show next week I'm in the iowa state fair that i'm off to san francisco 40 weeks a year. I sell the ginsu knife And I said arnold i've got a great idea You know, I don't know if you've been watching tv, but you know that discovery channel It's got six hours a day bars on the screen What if we filmed your presentation put it up on a discovery channel give them a little cut of the sales And instead of you having to travel 40 weeks Every single year You can sit back at home because we're just going to tape it one time and take it all over the world And here is the original clip that we did Now you Now you take a tomato the weight of the knife alone cuts that tomato Let me ask you something how many knives you have at home this sharp you could drop the tomato on top pretty sharp, right? Do you know what one young lady said can you cut them thin? I said thin one tomato will last you all week long I don't know the crowd here is a little younger than normal But how many have seen arnold morris before on television? Maybe yeah, okay great Well, guess what this went on to do over 500 million dollars in sales. Let's give arnold morris a round of applause also You like that? All right Now with if we did it because we took it all around the world because it was if it if it worked in the us And there's bars on the screen on discovery channel I wonder if there's bars on the screen in england in africa and asia and latin america So we opened up offices around the world. This became a very powerful very successful big big business And so this is now i'm talking about all the great stuff because i'm about ready to tell you what happened So we got we were doing arnold morris and then jack lillain and all these people we've had I built this big staff and infrastructure. I said wow we're rolling we're doing Actually at 500 million a year in sales We were doing 10 million dollars a week In sales and it was just going like crazy. So I said to myself we need our own media company. We need our own fulfillment center. We bought our own production studio We had 80 000 square foot worth of fulfillment And yep, we were we had all the celebrities from billy maize and the kardashians and frankie avalanke george forman 50 cent You name it. They came in. We did the deal. We made big success but Little did I know things were about to change and and and this is this is where true entrepreneurs really learn how to deal with building their business but dealing with failure because there's there's a gentleman at winston churchill that says Success is being able to deal with failure after failure without the loss of enthusiasm, right? So think about that and so So this was the turning point that I realized something was really really wrong. Here's a I said look at all these celebrities Here's a video we did and it was after this that we really learned that we were doing the wrong things and watch this quick Little video. What happened to our video there? Um, oh, sorry guys Um, okay that that video. Let me just go back to that It's up here Now you can put on your favorite music and have fun dancing all those extra inches and pounds away Presenting the one-of-a-kind low-impact calorie burning muscle toning total body exercise That's fun fast and easy the revolutionary new twister sizer from the man who got the whole world twisting chubby checker This is bad Now I highly recommend do not do a fitness product with a man named chubby. Okay? Okay, it didn't work now and because we were doing all we thought we were invincible, right? But what was happening was this there was this magazines and newspapers and tv were having huge declines all of a sudden And we're all now part of what's happening in this world today Brutal was the decline in television viewership morgan stanley did a report that said 50% fewer viewers today. This has been in the last 10 years now, and here's the worst part of that Analysis see the line straight across that's the revenue that goes to the tv station The green line is the viewership so while viewership was plummeting The stations were still getting the same amount of money And that was where guys like me couldn't I couldn't take it anymore because I needed viewership to sell product I'm paying the same amount to get half the viewers. I'm out of business And I mean it's no secret millennials were ditching their tv sets. I you know, I see it in my own family I have a 28 year old and I have a 19 year old and my 28 year old watches a little bit of tv My 19 year old when he got cable installed. I thought I was at his house. He went to college last year first day He's getting the cable guy coming to the house the apartment he was renting rather and I said what cable package did you get and to nicklist my little my 19 year old? He says, oh, he says dad I'm sorry, but I'm only getting internet. I don't watch tv And I'm like nick don't you understand? This is how it's getting paid for is the tv, right? So how can you do this to me? Right? So he's like, hey, but if you want basic, I get it. I said, well, yeah, we're getting at least basic cable Okay, so you know and so this is what was happening to me here. I have 500 employees I've got fulfillment centers and phone centers and all this stuff going on and We don't we things are plummeting and so literally this was this was a time I mean, I'm just gonna I'm going to show you the logo. We said as seen on tv What am I going to do? I said I've got a this this industry is turning tv viewership sales are dropping And and as seen on tv now you can put on your we already saw that guy here is this one right here The s this is what happened to me right at this time the as seen on tv industry right in front of my eyes Was burning to the ground Literally sales were plummeting. We owned as seen on tv.com And we used to have millions of monthly customers now it was 1.7 then it was 1.5 then it was 1.3 million Just dropping because people weren't watching as much television. So what are we going to do? What are we going to do? Well, I you know fortunately and I and I remember and this is kind of what I felt like when I came into the office because You know some campaigns that had gone through the roof They lasted for years now things if they did work they would go up and they would be down in 90 days And so we we started burning Lots of overhead said I have to change my business model I can't I don't have to own all of this and so this was now me being a resilient entrepreneur And and part of the lesson that I hope to teach today is that as as I was seeing the face of my whole Company go down. I said no, I got it. I'm going to sell the as seen a tv Business i'm going to sell the the the logo i'm going to sell the The the dot-com site and I said to myself I need to really tune in I need my father who was a great mentor to me said you've got to find some great mentors in addition to myself Kevin and get some wisdom because things are turning and so I went to a A big mastermind and has anyone heard of Richard Branson and necker island where he lives down in the down in the Caribbean beautiful island Richard hosts a handful of very select masterminds at his complex down there And there's Richard and I at at his at his necker island He it was a mastermind for digital marketing And he knew all about what I was talking about because we went there and I had private Three-day sessions with Richard and myself one-on-one hour here and hour there and hour there masterminds with some of the brightest minds in the world And they laid out a game plan for me because we said I can't just sit and allow All this big expensive overhead to consume me. I I need to get much smarter I need to do things a lot better first thing they said is go and find out by the way There's me in my sumo wrestling outfit. I'm the necker island sumo wrestling champ Okay, so that was a lot of fun. Richard said hey, we're going to have some fun while we're here too, right? So the the When I came back from from from that mastermind and again one of the things that I highly recommend you're here For education economic education, right? Well, you know, I get education every single day every single week and so You know, I he we said what do I got to do Richard? We put together a four step process for me to turn my business around and he said Kevin You have a great background in television in producing those infomercials But you need to surround yourself with a dream team of new folks that can take you to the next level So you've got to build your dream team and this dream team should be coaches and mentors and career advancement experts finance operational experts See the last one digital advertising gurus. This is what you need It says I said digital. I said what why what's what's going on? I didn't know about all the world of digital yet and this is now going back about six seven years ago So our world was just starting to get into digital. So this is what I did I wasn't Too proud of myself to do this because I was seeing 50 percent Of my sales that I had before because as television dropped half So were my sales dropping to half and by the way It was it was the first half that that provided us the break even it was the second half of our sales That where we made the money so once we had all that overhead with half of the sales It was impossible to make money. So that's why we started selling off Assets and doing the things we needed to do so so part of this process was getting the right team And then that team said okay, this is what you need to do in the world of digital You need to also step two When you're on fire You need to rewire And that's you know what happened to the as seen on tv logo. It burned up. We were on fire We were burning down Our fulfillment center was empty some weeks because we weren't shipping products and our media company wasn't buying media And so we had to rewire so we had to get curious About how to take it to the next step So when when we when I say curiosity overload taking a survey of your passions and assets and exposing yourself to as many Opportunities as possible now. How many students do we have in here? Let me see show hands. Okay almost about over half the room Right. This now applies to many of you whether you're an entrepreneur or not You have to exercise your curiosity The other day I went out front and and the FedEx guy was it was 6 45 in the morning and I was going out to pick up my newspapers out front and the FedEx guy says Oh, you must have been on vacation for a while and I said why he says well, you got five newspapers here You know probably five. I said no that's every day. Okay, so I get five newspapers every day. I'm exercising my curiosity I subscribed to trade journals. I go to trade shows. I go to 30 trade shows a year And this is what I started doing because I I said I need to rewire what I'm doing. I started going to these digital conferences sharpening my networking skills and increasing Every aspect of the digital world that I could And exploring strategic relationships and for anybody here You know internships could be very very powerful to get in on the ground floor of some great opportunities So, you know and for me this so this applies both ways students entrepreneurs and myself rewiring my own business, right and so You know I started doing I said trade shows. There's the top 100 trade show gold book There's the directory of mail order catalogs. It's got 1500 catalogs And now they all come digitally and I subscribed to 1500 catalogs on a digital basis And I get those sent to me on a monthly basis I get all the catalogs So I now have sectioned them off to have all the hardware ones the houseware ones the beauty ones the fishing The golf etc and and now when I when I'm looking at a fishing product I get to go through 35 fishing catalogs and see all the digital successes that are going on Ones that are going over and over and over so This is now again part of this curiosity overload if you don't get out there You can't just sit. You can't just go to class. You've got to have things after class that you're doing speaking networking And for me it also was Checking out all the websites. I had has anyone ever heard of a website. It's called the grommet by any chance Let me just see a show of hands anybody in a room one two three ten people out of five six hundred people I didn't even know about it either. I started seeing what they sell I'm doing about six million a year with the grommet now and it's because I was exercising my curiosity And group on qvc. Ali Baba Zulilli hsn I'm good. You know, I go to amazon every single day Not the byproducts to see what the top products are selling because this is my curiosity Overload because that's the business that I'm in is finding the greatest product. So so think about this digital disruption That's changing a lot of industries right now It's it changed the taxi industry with uber It changed the hotel industry with air b&b And you know, let's talk about this. Here's a slide that'll put it in perspective It took 50 It took 38 years for radio to get to 50 million listeners tv 13 years to 50 million viewers The internet for the ipod 3 facebook 2 But the pokemon go app got to 50 million downloads In 15 days Right, how about that now wait till you see the next slide billboard said that ed sheeran got 375 million downloads in one week That is amazing. Do you think the world's moving a little faster now? Let me hear it. Yes. Yeah, absolutely, right The world is changing so fast And to be able I mean when I started my business I started a drive way ceiling business and heating and air conditioning today Kids are they're putting apps out there two boys from auburn university started something called bell hops And it's the uber for moving and they just they were moving from one side of a dorm to another on the campus of auburn And they hired a couple students and thought wow this saved me You know $800 for the move and now they just raised 25 million dollars I don't know if you've heard of that but check it out. So, uh, you know, this digital disruption is happening I mean, here's a magazine company time Inc They've had the since 2011 a drop in sales every single year. They've got 37 magazine properties Look at all the properties. They've got entertainment people time time itself golf sports illustrated Every single year sales are going down And what did they do? Well, they finally said we have to get into this digital disruption They did something like I did when I went to Richard Branson They actually held a shark tank and they said we have to create an innovation challenge inside the company And you know why they did it because they realized the old guys that were running that business Didn't know about digital so they invited all the the young millennials in the company to come in to this challenge And teach the rest of the company About digital and now they're going to be they projected with the turning their old print assets into digital revenue streams It's going to be a billion dollars over the next Four years three years So this was just something this is by an article just about two months ago in the new york times And now let me tell you about a company that was in the magazine business. They didn't let this happen Forbes magazine and I love Steve Forbes is an amazing guy. I'm doing an event with him. How many have ever been to freedom fest by the way in las vegas? Yeah, okay about the 20 percent of the room It's coming up in july in las vegas Steve Forbes and I do something called pitch tank And I tuned into what steve was doing because forbs said it's 98 years old And they they they have 52 million monthly Readers of forbs.com While time ink was going like this Forbes was going like this. Why what did they do 1500 freelance contributors? That were contributing articles and I was one of them steve came to me and said would you write An article every week and he said yes, he said great the only condition You have to send it out to all of your followers You're you know hundreds of thousands of followers and that's what they do with 1500 freelance contributors And that's how they got 52 million monthly readers forbs.com So they went about it in a digital way very smart very very smart Highest readership in 98 years Forbes Forbes has so they didn't they didn't have the same problem that that time had time ink was 37 properties Forbes was one crushing it So this is what the smart people were doing now I'm going to talk about retail for a second because you've all heard retail is hurting all the retailers that are having a tough time, but You know sears is an example and sports authority and jimberee just filed for bankruptcy One that has not had a problem is best buy and the reason being there while all the other retailers are Literally going like this best buy just had a 23 increase in sales profits and stock price And the reason being is because they're tuning into digital They've got these these geek squad guys that are going out and giving counseling to people in the in-home situation And so if you read the last line here the stores Actually in the middle stores continue to be a great asset because they're utilizing their stores For for customer pickup and for distribution And they've got such a great footprint that they're going head to head against amazon and they and they match price So, uh, you know, they're actually they're not going to have the same challenges because they're confronting And not just surviving but thriving in the world of digital So Where are we this digital it obviously Hopefully will create some new opportunities for everybody here Also, and so that's when i'm going to move to the next the next step of this recovery for me because I got out of that conference at necker island and they said kevin You've built all these brands You you built tony little's brand you built billy maize brand you helped jack lillain george foreman All these people you know It's just amazing But did you ever build your own brand and i said no I never raised my profile really and and i said i think it's time now that i actually Build my own brand and so this was the next step for me was to to take my own brand and take it to the next step And so i started raising my profile and this was all part of a plan right now Again, I said how many entrepreneurs are there? How many want to be an entrepreneur 70 of the room? So you need a passion for taking your brand to the next step I i said to myself i need to do some podcasting and some radio interviews and speaking at the chambers of commerce and I did one chamber speech in tampa florida And she's the the tampa chamber person said you know kevin that was Great, I want to see would you be interested in getting together with all the chambers in the whole state of florida Next you know we once a year bring all 27 chambers in the state of florida And next uh month is going to be the one here in tampa florida for all 27 chambers So i got invited back to speak to that one So i put a conscious effort to start doing things start creating content Creating myself as someone that was out in the marketplace of building my own brand in fact I came out with my own book How to turn ideas into million dollar products and then i took that to radio stations and then i created another book How to become a key person of influence and then I created my own magazine a digital magazine And when you create all these brands around yourself Then you can keep customers get new customers enhance your reputation as an expert really This is about taking and putting a plan together for your business And I don't if you're in school right now That's okay when you come out of school you have the chance to do this for yourself But you got to find your niche and you find your niche by exercising your curiosity So now here I was and let me just talk about digital is anyone familiar with the digital magazines, right? I mean forbs. I said turned to digital because forbs.com. They had 1500 freelancers Well any business owner could create a digital magazine just like that and in fact here's a little clip on a digital magazine So so so time ink is doing this forbs is doing this I'm doing this entrepreneurs can do this because a digital magazine It's like collaborative marketing you get all the content from contributors It costs you nothing and it costs you nothing to send it out because it's all digital and you can actually sell ads So this is a highly recommended way to actually you can not only put information out But now you get to collaborate with the people that are giving you content to go to their list Also, then this is how forbs built the 56 million viewers So let me just talk a little bit about some of the mistakes I mentioned here that I wasn't building my brand college students You need to build your brand or you need to get out there. It's not just facebook and youtube You got to be checking out linkedin much more powerful and we put a concerted effort together to go after linkedin And we said we want to build a huge following on linkedin So what we did was we joined targeted groups and one of the groups that I joined was 900 plus thousand Entrepreneurs and I became a scheduling ninja by putting posts out in the morning in the evening And and then a lot of these people started following me and I became relevant and inquisitive And so there's every piece of the puzzle of building my brand was an execution Of coming out with books and podcasts and linkedin and yes some facebook and creating some content And so we call it digitally testing Before you invest and this I mean by the way, have anyone seen this product here the one with oliri in the toilet glow bowl Okay, is there anyone like it's a night light for your toilet bowl Okay, so if you haven't seen it you're going to see it because we're doing amazing things with this But again, we changed our strategy from the as seen on tv model To being able to now test digitally creating 30 second social media videos instead of 30 minute infomercials and then being able to test them on facebook and digital platforms instead of all over the expensive world of television and so people that have done this and just a couple examples of a couple young kids Michelle fawn And she built a 500 million dollar company for some reason her picture is not up, but How many recognize michael dubin from dollar shave club dollar shave club right he he shot a 4500 dollar video That created a billion dollar product line called Dollar shave club sold it to unilever for a billion dollars And so this was an amazing feat, but he did it digitally didn't have to run it on tv Really it was all in the internet. It was all viral. And so I said this is what I did I call it my 2.0 kevin 2.0 I said forget about all the big offices forget about fulfillment centers phone centers. I said i'm doing virtual Everything virtual phone taking virtual processing virtual shipment meaning I hired fulfillment centers I hired phone centers. I hired customer service centers. I didn't want all of these people So now we could take a product and put it out there create a 30 second digital spot test it digitally And then have it running in all these digital ways And maybe eventually on tv But the the beauty of this was that we actually in fact you're going to see wall street journal said There's this new thing called the gig economy the end of employees I mean google has equal number of outsourced sourced versus full-time employees And david cush down their former virgin america ceo says we outsource every job that we can that's not customer facing So this was the transition for me. I had the big overheads the big fulfillment centers and now i'm outsourcing All of it and when I outsource It's it's called access to assets without owning them in fact the Does anyone recognize the gentleman's face down there? He built a company snapchat and what did he do? He rented amazon's cloud when he started instead of developing his own He said to amazon you got all the money. Let's be partners He partnered with square on the finance and he built a in the beginning It was four billion dollars with only with in two years by the way With with only 20 employees Because he said I don't need hundreds and thousands of employees. I can do it all virtually And so I said to myself this these like I said I was doing drivly ceiling businesses when I was you know in my teens This guy in his 20s has created a 25 billion dollar company So the other part of that is he didn't have all the overhead and he wasn't spending all of his time Hiring and firing and dealing with human resources. He was able to scale the business and the process So so this is part of of of what I say you build your dream team Get a dream team. Don't be afraid to go for the best You know I I become part of dream teams now So here's a company a little company called Celsius. I brought in flow ride. I joined their board You can see the stock at where the star is was 10 cents a share 324 in january hit four dollars and 20 cents today And so I brought in flow ride it and russell simons and we raised money 16 million dollar celebrity investment that we brought into the company And we took this company from five million to 170 million So this is how entrepreneurs today can partner And join forces with people that can be part of the dream team part of where I started with Going down to necker island and meeting first with richard branson to put this plan together now It doesn't have to be all these fancy people though. It could be right in your backyard It could be a banker in your hometown. It could be an insurance agent You know Part of this dream team by the way is an insurance agent right in bokeh ritone florida And so we just created this massive group of people and then we said, you know what all these celebrities They want to be part of ventures. They're they're you know, you can bring in some of the From the flow ride is to the rianas to the katie parry's to the paula abduals They can be part of the future. And so my business model has changed now. It's it's we've got from Kat the ireland ventures to entertainment to horse racing apps to celcius to national business services I partner with companies without having to build all the infrastructures So it's it's taking the virtual aspect to the fullest And so now what happened along the way as I was doing things a lot smarter Finally some other big things started to happen for me And this is another one of these eureka moments one day on the other line is Mark brunette survivor and he's on the phone. He says hey kevin I want to talk to you about a new show that i'm doing and I said What's he called? He said look, i'm not going to tell you all about it over the phone I want you to come out to la i'll tell you all about it when you get out here And I said mark I said I know you you're one of the greatest tv producers does the Apprentice and Survivor and The voice now and he said I'll tell you when you get here. It's called shark tank. Just jump on a plane We'll pick up your airfare when you get here. So I got off the phone. I was all excited. I told my wife I said crystal I said you won't believe it mark brunette wants me to come out He wants me to maybe come talk to him about this new show He's doing called shark tank and and he wouldn't tell me anything about it. She said kevin She said I can't believe how stupid you are. She said do you know what he does to those people on the survivor island show You want to be on shark tank? I'm like, hmm. Wait a minute. I've what am what are they going to do to me, right? So, uh, no, he said no, it's a business show kevin. So, um, so when I I had a really loved getting involved with shark tank Here's another quick story Barbara corkman is amazing She's one of the sweetest sharks and then here's a wedding robert herchovic Now there's daemon and myself and robert and his wife kim johnson in the middle. So one day Shark tank we're producing and editing and going like crazy all all day the producers of dancing with the stars came over to um to shark tank because dancing with the stars is on abc also And they said we'd like to get one of the sharks to come on dancing with the stars Because it's cross promoting on the same network abc to abc And and who would like to do that my wife was there and robert's there We're all sitting around and robert says hey that sounds good. I'd love to do it And my wife's grabbing my hand. She says you're not going to go on that show Okay, and I'm like, well, what's why robert's going to go on why can't can I do it? She says no, she says I watched that show dancing with the stars and I see how close they get when they dance And she says I I'd be too jealous to have you on national tv dancing like that. So I said, okay Let's let robert do it. That's okay now robert by the way was married Just kind of in a rocky relationship at the time with his existing wife But this is the part of the story that gets crazy. See the girl in the middle. You know, that is kim johnson From dancing with the stars. Okay. He got married to her and I guess they did get a little close when they were dancing, right? So, you know, my wife said you're never going to be on that show now, okay So anyway that it, you know, it's it's it was it's been a great run being on shark tank We're now in 40 plus countries around the world. You know, I did 175 segments and they just keep rerunning them over and over and it's allowed me To do the things that I want to do to have freedom when I was doing a little interview out front for the camera They said, you know, why are you here and what are you going to be talking about? I said, I'm an entrepreneur and and it's this has given me the freedom as an entrepreneur to do what I want to do To build my business and by the way, I have the freedom to succeed And I have the freedom to fail too and I did You know, so you you make your own choices you set your own boundaries when you become an entrepreneur And so, you know for me it was yes developing a big business like that for shows right there And and an ability to really do whatever I wanted to do so Real quick the last step I'm going to tell you about tonight Is creating a perfect pitch because I've taken so many pitches over the years and I with all the students here You're going to be doing job interviews. You're going to be, you know Maybe you're going to write a book so you got to sell your idea to a publisher building websites There's three simple steps. This doesn't take a long time because I can do a whole day of building a perfect pitch But it's it's three simple steps tease Please and seize and those are the steps to follow when you tease you create an attention getting problem When you please you show unique benefits with supported with testimonials and when you seize you create an irresistible offer And one clip from shark tank and we're going to wrap this up and let everybody Rock and roll tonight because it's going to be a lot of fun here with this last one here. This is rebecca rascati Hi, i'm rebecca rascati founder of city kitty City kitty is seeking a hundred thousand dollars for 15 equity in our company For the 200 million cat owners around the world cleaning a litter box is a chore that we all dread litter boxes Our germ breeding grounds Kitty litter gets tracked everywhere. They stink up our homes They cost lots of money to continually fill and they cause fights and otherwise peaceful households because nobody wants to clean this thing It's disgusting and cat owners don't know there's any option But there is you can toilet train your cat with city kitty. Take a look here With city kitty the dirty litter box is gone. Your home is cleaner. You're saving money You're doing good for the environment And life at home is better for you and your cat Has anybody seen city kitty? I mean it's crazy product. It's unbelievable. By the way, we've executed all the steps Building her dream team Creating her brand taking her to trade shows. We went to the house where show and got her into wall greens And we got her in all these different talk shows. She went on good morning america the today show When the view called barbara walters said I want to see city kitty on the view and and rebecca said, you know Kevin I don't think I want to do city kitty with barbara walters. Okay, because it's a little crazy, right? So I said, okay, I'll go on the view and I did and it was amazing because first It was a lot of fun whoopie goldberg barbara walters working with those kind of folks is amazing But I got off the show And um city kitty is a training device You throw the litter box away and you put this on top of the toilet and the cat jumps on the toilet And then each week a ring comes out until there's no nothing there and the cat keeps jumping on the toilet But as I'm leaving the studio, uh whoopie says kevin before you leave. I got to just tell you City kitty I tried it now I got a bone to pick with you because I took my cat oliver and I showed oliver Hey, look throw the litter box away city kitty on top of the toilet and jump on top of the toilet oliver Oliver took one look at me one look at city kitty ran in my bedroom jumped on my bed and crapped all over my bed Okay, I said, uh, don't say that on the air ever. Please. Okay, so Uh, so that's that's my my story with with city kitty But it it's been a great run and I just I want to summarize and thank you guys for for listening today and being part of The the the fecon program I think it's amazing that I have a chance to talk about Entrepreneurship for students for existing entrepreneurs because I built as seen on tv to hundreds and 500 plus million And then had a meltdown and then had to had to get mentors and coaches to bring me from the ashes And take me to the next step and that really was was what happened for me and and it and it turned my life around So I have for for anybody that would like We we've got some free books and stuff if my irresistible offer to everyone here If you text this you can get a free digital download of six of my books for some reason three of them aren't showing up there But um, I want to thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure to be here and good luck in the next two days Uh, I hope you have a great time. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. All right Oh I I have one one final comment Shark plug guys john, would you just stand up there? Say hello shark plug if anybody has any questions? They got a booth over there products development entrepreneurship. They're the guys who're part of my team They're right here in Atlanta by the way And uh, we've got a booth a couple stores next next one. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you