John: 00:00 The time to start and go crazy is right now, is right now because the easiest time was yesterday, but the second easiest time to start is right now. If you want to be a Youtuber or if you want to be popular on Instagram, or if you want to sell a product, you need to start right now, because it’s… there’s never going to be a time like today to get your business started, to get your message out there on social media, or your product, or your idea out to people.
Intro: 00:40 From ABC News Radio, KIBT 1490 in Southern California, this is BizNinja Entrepreneur Radio, with your host, Tyler Jorgenson.
Tyler: 00:43 Hi. Welcome to BizNinja Entrepreneur Radio. I am your host Tyler Jorgenson, and today, I have the pleasure of having John Crestani on the call. A gentleman that got to start an online career back in 2012, which isn’t that long ago for some of us. It’s every once a while I have a guest like this that makes me feel super old, but thanks for coming out, John.
John: 01:04 Hey, thank you so much. Super excited to be on the show. I’m excited to share some value here. I love… love what you’re doing.
Tyler: 01:14 So, I find there’s a couple of different paths for entrepreneurs to get started and… and some of them do the… they knew from day one that… five… like for me, five years old, I was an entrepreneur. And for others, it’s not until after they dive into the corporate world, and realize, “I do not fit here.” I think that was more of your path. What was your big impetus for deciding you wanted to run your own business?
John: 01:34 Yeah, so I… I didn’t even know it was an option to tell you the truth. You know, for me, growing up, the only option was actually just, you know, you go to high school, you get good grades, you go onto… you know, you to college, you get a job. And, if you do well enough in your job, if you build up enough of a client base, maybe your clients or the business you are in, you’ll end up starting your own, after you make enough, but it’s not… it wasn’t be an entrepreneur or get a job. It was always… the path was very clear. So, what gave me the… so there was no option for me until I… you know, I was really dissatisfied in college two years in. And, I started reading a lot. I started trying to get… you know, self educate myself outside of college, and I read this book called the 4-Hour Work week. And, it was by this guy, Tim Ferriss, and I saw what this guy was doing, and I, you know, this guy, he opened up.
John: 02:32 And he’s making millions of dollars a year. He’s traveling the world in his twenties, and he has a lot of free time. And I was like, “That’s ridiculous. You can’t do that. That’s not possible.” But he goes on to list out about a hundred different stories of people who also broke the mold, and shows by intention what they did with their life and their business. And, that just rocked my world. I’d say that was the kind of like, that was the epiphany. At that point I had an epiphany where, “This is real and I have options.” And from that point forward, I said, “This is what I want to do.”
Tyler: 03:16 So, 2011, 2012 tells me that you read the second version of the book, the orange colored cover, and many of us…
John: 03:26 No. This is two thousand…
Tyler: 03:26 You read the green? Was your first edition green cover?
John: 03:30 Yeah.
Tyler: 03:31 That’s cool. So yeah, Tim… Tim has been a guest on this radio show, and is absolutely one of my digital mentors as well. That book has been huge for me, and for many of the people that have come on this show, simply for the same reason that you just said, which is that, a lot of us didn’t even know that the style of entrepreneurship that he taught us was possible. And you know, there’s the you can do it and go after kind of the muse, or even just applying those principles into your business. What was the first business that you decided, “Man, I’m going to go build this?”
John: 04:05 Sure. The first business that I started doing, you know, I remember I was… I googled all this stuff beforehand, but the first business, which I really started doing was, I started tutoring people, actually. It was really… it was really basic. I took really good notes in college of these classes. So I had all of these notes and I had all of the… in a lot of the… you know, a lot of… frankly a lot of the homeworks, you know, I had all my old homeworks. And, they had a lot of the answers for the future tests and quizzes on them, so people… you know, and those classes were the same every single year. So I said, “I’m going to tutor people. I’m going to sell my course notes, and my old homeworks.” And, I just said, “This is valuable.” Okay? Because I remember thinking, “Oh, what is something valuable people would pay money for it?”
John: 04:55 And I said, I knew in my heart and soul this was valuable. People would pay money for this. And it was unique, but I didn’t know how to get out there. So what I actually started doing was I went to the library and I started printing out these… these little like, they’re called tear tab sheets. I don’t know if you’ve seen the…, you know, just a little piece of paper, but they have a little tabs at the bottom. And, a lot of personal trainers put them up here in LA, you know, it’s like, “Hey. Get a personal training session. Call Marisel here.” And, so I put it those up, and I started.. at first I didn’t even have the tear tabs, but every day, every day, I went back and tested them. Every day I’d put up new flyers, and see if people tore the tabs or contacted the email address I had set up. And, every day I got…. you know, I was figuring out ways to get more responses from the posters I put up, and I started getting clients, and I started meeting with students on campus at the library. And, I started a business selling… selling my notes.
Tyler: 06:03 There you go.
John: 06:03 Yeah.
Tyler: 06:03 It worked out. So yeah, a lot of it… you know, Tim talked about was starting information businesses. So you kind of started in that direction. What I found is… what I have found fascinating about the people that have applied the principles of the 4-Hour Work Week is, it’s a thousand different directions they go with it. Right? Like, I started a supplement company and ran that for almost over a decade.
John: 06:24 Yeah.
Tyler: 06:24 And other people do information products. Other people become affiliate marketers. What was the big… the first big obstacle that you faced as you started to grow and have some success, and how did you overcome that?
John: 06:37 Sure. I’d say the first big obstacle, you know, there’s so many in the beginning when you’re really finding your, finding your groove. I’d say I’d say the first one that was, uh, you know, devas… you know, there are a few that were devastating for me. I, you know, I’d say getting out of, I was trying, I graduated college and you know, I wasn’t able to sell the notes anymore and you know, at campus they didn’t allow me, you know, as a non student to go on campus and put up flyers and frankly the flyers. So they only work for so long. They started, you know, saying that, you know, that’s illegal, you can’t put up flyers. And now I built, I was, I, so I figured that I needed to do, you know, I needed to build a software online business. I got this idea in my head, I was directionless. I’d say I wasted all of the money that I had made and then some building, you know, hiring developers and you know, software developers and website designers to build something that I could profitably advertise. And, you know, I… I lost my butt doing that and it really was a big setback and I lost a lot of money because I just, I had zero direction. We got a bunch of refunds because people would refund if they didn’t get an A-Plus on whatever you know, course, you know, information they were buying and they didn’t care. There was all this stuff that was going on that was just losing money left to right. I got a PayPal account shutdown, and which had a lot of money in it at the time.
John: 08:19 And, it was really, all of those failures were really disheartening because it kept feeling like I could never get ahead. And it kept feeling like, and even stuff like, so my businesses were failing. And on top of that I was feeling stupid because I was trying to learn this like programming stuff, you know, I really programmers and kind of a high regard mentally. I said, Oh, you know, they’re the ones, the money, um, the Internet businesses. But I, I just, I got this, I don’t know if you’ve ever had this like brain fog where you, where you’re, you’re trying to juggle all these different in your head, but it just doesn’t, it seems like it should be clicking, but it, it wasn’t… I didn’t know if I was stupid or unlucky or what was going on or if it wasn’t just wasn’t meant for me, but it, that was really a hard period of, of Maya career as an entrepreneur.
Tyler: 09:13 Gotcha. Yeah, that’s a, I think it’s so remarkable to me how similar a lot of the parallels are for people that started this way because they, you know, you learned a batch of principles that were able to carry you to a starting part, right? The business. But then you had to go through the learning phase of the business if a of operations and scale and delegation and how to him, you know, employees and things like that. So as you continue to evolve, right, you found greater success, I think you, you overcame that and we were able to apply principles. Right. So what was your next big shift? What was the next thing that you leaned into?
John: 09:50 Well, what I did was I, I, I’d reached rock bottom and I was definitely, you know, I was, I was sort of a black sheep amongst, uh, you know, in my, in my social circles because I had chosen this alternative route, taking a job and you know, it wasn’t working out either. You know, I was broke. I was living in a, you know, like, you know, horrible circumstances I had, you know, I seemed crazy by all means, you know, it’s like, what are you doing? Just say, and what was the word, you know? So I got a job. That’s what I did. I got a job. But this is where I was smart as, because I’d been attending all of these events like T. Harv Eker’s, you know, Millionaire… Millionaire Mind events and you know, different ups and, and uh, different, you know, like all these pitch fest.
John: 10:43 I, I went to all of these events trying to glean a piece of information, these people selling these business opportunities. And through that I created a social circle of actually a couple of people who ran internet businesses. So when I was looking for a job, I reached out to these few friends I had that I’d met through these events and I got a job at an internet company, which was the best case scenario in hindsight and Aye. Aye. Aye. I sort of unconsciously created it. But by getting a job at an internet marketing company, right. I ended up learning so much over the next two years. I ended up, I ended up managing, I became the director of paper click advertising, managing over a hundred clients. This was, this was for a fairly large company. You know, I was managing a hundred different small clients in different niches. The actual marketing of I learned marketing so fast and I got so good at advertising. Versatile.
Tyler: 11:50 Yeah, sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off. But that goes back to that principle of, of work to learn as you know and work turn right. You want to make some money while you’re doing it. But with the intent of having a job that you can actually learn resource, there are learned skills that you can deploy back into your businesses. You crushed that. So, and then it sounds like, so you’ve built, you know JohnCrestani.com but you also have, IamJetset.com and you started to build courses and a revenue stream and a business around these things that you learned. How did you kind of make that shift?
John: 12:21 Sure. So I made a lot of money marketing. I made a lot of um, I’d made millions of dollars just marketing other people’s products. Now what, what kind of happened was, it was, it was really happenstance actually, is I’d been growing and affiliate net, one of my businesses was an affiliate network, which is, you know, sort of marketing company. And I kind of became the figurehead of my company, you know, on one hand, because we were working with a lot of affiliate marketers. And on the other hand I had traveled to Morocco. I Love Kite surfing. I’m a big athlete. If you get it where, you know, I, we talked, we were talking about, you know, my soccer injury earlier because I went too hard and all that jazz. So I was kite surfing in Morocco and whenever I’m traveling around, you know, I travel around the world, I travel really low budget. You would never think that my net worth was what it is because when I’m traveling I’m dirty. I, you know, I’m just, I looked very poor. It looked like some like, you know, bum, you know, traveling bum and, but that’s just because I don’t like to dress up. I’m not, I’m not big on that stuff.
John: 13:33 My wife hates it, but, so I was talking to this guy on this bus to Marrakesh, which was in the south of Morocco and he was, he was actually a Forbes editor. He was an editor for Forbes and he was surfing and he was wondering, and I, we were talking and I, he asked me where I was staying in, I was staying at the nicest of saying it, like basically the prince’s palace in Marrakesh and he didn’t believe it. Okay. And he asked me what I did and I said, oh, I, I run a, I run a business. I have, you know, I told him a little bit and he didn’t believe, he was like, no way. And then I showed him my stuff, my affiliate. I was like, here’s what the money I earned today. I pulled out my phone and he flabbergast and he said, how many people work for you, John?
John: 14:18 And I said, zero, this is all myself. I don’t have any payroll. And he, she was just like, I’ve got to do an article on you. I just blew. I blew him. He didn’t understand. It didn’t, it didn’t make sense to him. I was just like blowing his mind. One after the other. And that article went viral. That article went, yeah, super viral. It got seen by millions of people translated into multiple different languages and you know, the rest is kind of history, you know, people want it to learn how to do it. Marketing for me. So I teaching it and that’s kind of where my business has evolved to mostly today. I’m, I’m mainly, uh, I still do a lot of marketing. I’m, you know, a Click Funnels dream car winner and all that jazz. But I, uh, I do a lot of teaching now because that’s, that’s kind of been my calling.
Tyler: 15:06 Very cool man. I love that you’ve, you’ve done that, you’ve created that pathway, right? We’re now almost like full circle. You’ve come back around to sharing what you’ve learned and helping other people on that path. What would you say is the, like the number one thing that people need to overcome, you know, mentally or whatever it is to be able to be successful? Because I know a lot of entrepreneurs are stuck in that wantrepreneur phase.
John: 15:34 Yeah. So what do people need to overcome mentally? Okay, so here’s the chicken and egg scenario. The chicken and egg scenario is there’s their self confidence. And there’s lack of focus. The biggest reason why I’ve seen it, people, I won’t call it fail, but I all say not live up to their potential, is because they don’t allow themselves long enough on a single path and that lack basically, if you will, anybody who, you know, I’m not intelligent by any means, I’m just, I’m just stubborn. I’ve stuck with it longer than most people and I figured out, you know, instead of seeing an obstacle and turning away, I see obstacles and I say, I’m just going to go at the obstacle until I figure it out because it’s not rocket science here. This is business. So I’d say the lack of focus and the reason why people have lack of focus, lack of self confidence, lack of full belief. You’ve got to believe. You’ve got to believe in your business as much as you believe in your kids. Even if your kids are having a hard time, you’ve got to believe in them. You’ve got to stick with them. You’re not going to turn your back on them. If you believe in your business as much as you believe in your kids, you will overcome any obstacle and you will be successful.
Tyler: 16:57 That’s Rad. I think, you know, I’m a father of four, so I understand that and understand like how much I believe in my, but uh, just like my kids, I tend to have a lot of businesses, right? I tend to come up with a lot of ideas and your point of really maintaining focus, right? And at least getting a project to a point, the term, I often use this to its logical idea all no, and test it to make sure, hey, the market doesn’t agree, this doesn’t, isn’t a good product or you need to completely stop. But this, so many people that I talk to are stuck in the, in between where they’ve had an idea for a decade, but they’ve never done any testing. You’ve never started it. And so they’re in this perpetual like padding on the back loop of Oh, I’m an entrepreneur, I have an idea or I’m working on something or I have this thing that’s in progress but there’s never any like gates or steps or progress. And so I really like that a lack or maybe you know, having to have focus and then believing in it and stay and being stubborn.
John: 17:53 And I’d say if you don’t start on, if people, if you don’t start on something, you know you are, you are a, you know, if you allow it to be an eye, yeah. You, you also have lack of self confidence because if you really believed that what you have is going to help people that is going to help save or change lives, then you’re going to get it out there. You’re not going to let it just be like, oh this is a cool idea and let it kind of let it kind of stroke your ego. Oh, I thought of the Internet back in 1960 you know that if you really believe in it, you’re going to go out there and do it. I mean if, if you’re listening to this and you have a, a idea that you, that’s, you know, can help people, you are going to add done it, you are going to do whatever it can to get it, turn that idea into a product or a content or a website or whatever. You just have to, you have to start, you have to do it. You have to go through the steps because going from that phase, that’s an obstacle too.
Tyler: 19:00 Absolutely. I think for a lot of us that aren’t, that are entrepreneurs, we have a hard time understanding that people can’t start because that’s not my weakness. Right. But with everyone’s weekends are different and everyone’s strengths are different and so, but some people are really good about being stubborn and some people are really good about just coming up with tons of ideas, you know? It’s a good one. Yeah. As you’ve grown and as your, your, your course has done better and better and as you started teaching more, what are some of the things that you’re finding as the internet changes, as, as the digital era continues to evolve? What are some of the trends that are happening now? That you’re seeing in the industry?
John: 19:37 Sure. So one of the trends is that, you know, these, these social, I’d say these social platforms are becoming, you know, they’re limiting your reach, you know, more and more, they’ll limit, you know, the amount of direct messages you can send or that you know, everything’s going to get harder. Everything is going to get harder moving forward. You know, Facebook’s limiting your reach. You tubes like getting me limiting you. If you want to start the time to start and go crazy is right now is right now because the easiest time, okay. It was yesterday. The second easiest time to start is right now, and if you’re not getting started, if you’re not trying to, if you, if you want to be a Youtuber or if you want to be popular on Instagram or if you want to sell a product, you need to start right now because there’s never going to be a time like today to get your business started, to get yourself to get your message out there on social media because you’re going to look back. You don’t. If you’re going to live, you’re going to look back five years from now. You’re going to look back 10 years from now and say, Oh, I should have gotten started in 2019 you could still, you know, you could still make it back then. You could still go from nothing and zoom up back then and you will live a life of regrets if you are sitting on your butt and not getting your message or your product or your idea out to people.
Tyler: 21:08 Yeah, I love that. I absolutely go crazy right now. It’s never going to get any easier. I love that. I mean, yeah,
John: 21:14 I’m going crazy on all the social, you know, I just decided this year I decided I’m going to go crazy on social media. We are, you know, we’re growing on Twitter. We’re growing on Instagram like crazy. We’re growing on YouTube like crazy. We’re growing on Facebook. Well, Facebook is a little different. A situation. I won’t, I won’t talk about that right now, but you know, everything is, you know, the, the goal is all of these things and it’s really great. It’s really easy to grow in a lot of social media. But again, I see the writing on the wall, it will get harder. So yeah, go at it.
Tyler: 21:51 I’m with Ya. I’m very good points, man. Is it required to be successful as an internet marketer to have a beard?
John: 22:01 Yeah. Well I would say, you know what I’d say when you don’t have to clock in the work and you don’t have any investors or employees breathing down your neck that you’re accountable for. I just think the beard comes naturally, man. You know, this is our natural state. So, uh, why do we have to put out, put out nights to our face for a, you know, we don’t have to put a knife to our face for some corporate PowerPointpresentation it out, let it grow.
Tyler: 22:32 Most of the pictures and things I see, it’s like the closer people get to you, the longer their beard gets and the more successful along with your balance sheet, your beard will grow. It’s great. I love it man. So you’re in southern California like myself and I think it’s really interesting atmosphere for entrepreneurs because I think there’s a belief that things are possible, but there’s also a little bit of a, of a false belief that you’ve got to go seek venture capital. You’ve got to go seek investors and raise seed capital and believer in the test and then reinvest into your own business. How do people kind of do it that way or do you agree?
John: 23:15 That’s a great, no, that’s a great question. You know what this is, this has been part of my personal, uh, I talked about lack of self confidence and lack of, you know, and going after capital has actually been, uh, it’s something that almost almost destroyed my business because I spent, you know, I had gotten my business to a point where I was making over a million dollars a year and I thought to myself, Hey, I want to be a billionaire. So I, you know, all the billionaires I see money. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna, you know, try to crowd front and then start an ICO and do all of this pit pitch angel investors and all this sort of stuff. And it destroyed me bro. It destroyed me, dude. It was, it was, uh, it, it’s stupid. If you have a business that’s making $1 million, make $2 million focus, serve more of your people.
John: 24:12 Don’t, it’s such a, it’s such a pie in the sky thing. I don’t think it’s for everybody. I’ve started, uh, it’s not necessary. If you’re listening to this and you’re thinking about startup capital, it’s not necessary. If your, if your daddy is a lawyer and you can get introductions to rich old people and you’re in your 20s go, you know, go for venture cabs, go for some startup capital. That’s a great situation. You’re daddy’s little. I had a friend whose dad was a lawyer and uh, he went to Stanford, he had a good technology idea. His Dad made him a couple introductions and now he’s a billionaire. Okay, that works great if you’re in like some of these specific situations, but it’s not for everyone.
Tyler: 24:56 Yeah. You’ve probably got dozens of examples of people who did it the other way as opposed to the wall.
John: 25:05 You know what’s funny is I’m still, I’m still a mentor at a startup accelerator and it’s just, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, uh, it’s so stupid. These people are making no money. Even after they raised $3 million, the $3 million, they have a $20 million valuation. Right. And they raised $3 million. The founders are still making nothing. They have, they have their balls hide. They can’t do anything fun. They’re working a job for investors. It’s just another way of saying you work a job, your CEO, but your bosses are the investors. It’s no different than working in job.
Tyler: 25:50 Yeah, you moved to a CEO position, but you position yourself as a board. Now with that, you’re really responding to recent reporting too,
John: 25:57 but your stock, but your stock is worth a lot of money to stock isn’t worth anything because if you own the company, you cannot sell a share of your stock until you IPO. So it’s, it’s fake money. You’re a paper tiger as it’s called. It’s fake money unless you IPO and the chances of I, it’s it’s,
Tyler: 26:19 yeah, I love it. Now you and I are both of the ill of coming from the 4-Hour Work Week, you know, school of thought, Tim Ferris University. And that life is about building the lifestyle you want and not just, you know, punching the clock. So what is, and you’ve done some amazing things. I know you’ve been to Thailand, you’d mentioned Marrakesh, you travel and you do things. What’s one major item that’s on your dream line this year?
John: 26:48 Actually learning to, learning to fly helicopters. Yeah. I uh, by goal I’ll be a pilot by the year’s end. Very cool. I’ll have my life, you know, not, not like I’m going to be flying people around, but have my helicopter lift licensed by the years.
Tyler: 27:07 All have well with you, come out near a airport, let me know and I’ll, I’ll buy you breakfast or lunch or whatever. But
John: 27:14 Yeah, that’s actually, that’s actually a good, uh, a good day trip.
Tyler: 27:18 Yeah. Great. Great Air and great little cafe here. It’s pretty cool. So I mean I may take you up on that Tyler. Actually, I meant it the next time I’m out your way. We’re going to connect for sure. But dude, really, really appreciate it. If people want to learn more about you, where do they go?
John: 27:34 Just search my name on YouTube. John Crestani. So search that in YouTube, and you know, just subscribe. I try to put out a lot of free content out there, because you know, about what I teach because you know, I really, I really believe in, um, you know, I’m a big futurist and I, I’ve all, I’ve, all these crazy rants, I won’t go on, but I have a lot of crazy beliefs, but, but I tried to get it out there and I believe everybody has something to share with the world and get it out there, whatever that idea, or products or information message you have, just start and get it out there.
Tyler: 28:25 I love it. Go check John Crestani and now it’s your turn to go out and do something.
Outro: 28:32 Thank you for listening to BizNinja Entrepreneur Radio with Tyler Jorgenson. Please make sure to subscribe so you’re first to hear new interviews and episodes. If you found this podcast to be valuable, please share it with a friend. Don’t forget to visit our online talk show at BizNinja.com to claim your reward for listening to this show.
