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Loving Life In The Fast Lane!
Hi Everyone!
My name is Ralph Quintero and I am the founder of The Great Business Project. I've been following MJs work for quite some time and his book has been quite influential in my life. So it was great when MJ agreed to don the cover of the latest issue of our iPad magazine.
So here's the 411 on me and what I'm all about…
I've been an entrepreneur for as long as I can remember. I started my first 'real' business at the age of 13 and got paid $60 bucks for my first gig as a mobile DJ (had to split that with two buddies!) Regardless, that started an entrepreneurial fire that has been burning ever since. And there is no signs of it stopping any time soon!
The DJing put me through college, got me my first car and allowed me to buy nice things….it also afforded me the opportunity to travel the world, doing gigs in nightclubs in all sorts of places.
After meeting my wife, I decided to get a "real" job and settle down. It seemed like the right thing to do. The gig was being the JBL rep in South Florida and the Caribbean. Not a bad gig! I hustled, worked hard and climbed the corporate ladder as high as I could, eventually becoming the VP of Worldwide Sales. By this time, my first son had been born, my wife was pregnant with our second and we were living in L.A. with no family and no support network…Plus I was traveling about 80% of the time… Corporate life was getting to me.
One night after a long trip, I came home to find my wife crying uncontrollably. She couldn't take it anymore. And I got it. That night we both decided to quit our six-figure gigs and move across the country back home to Miami.
With no plan in place, the entrepreneur in me came back out and I decided to leverage my corporate experience and start a consulting company that would help other audio and video companies establish themselves in Latin America (a specialty of mine). We would handle everything from setting up distribution networks, dealer networks, training, local marketing and PR, events and more. In a nutshell, a complete turn-key service. We were the best at what we did. If you wanted to do business in LatAm, we were the people to call.
What started in early 2003 with no customers or revenue eventually grew into a $35 million business that we sold at the end of 2009. That felt really good!
Since then, I have started several companies that I continue to run today. (App Development, Real Estate and Media/Publishing)
My main focus though, is The Great Business Project. This is what I want part of my legacy to be.
While building the business we sold, I learned a tremendous amount of lessons. If I would have only known what I know now, my journey would have been so much easier. That's why I started The Great Business Project blog. I started documenting tips and stories about things that worked for me so that others would have a shortcut of sorts. The following quickly grew and eventually we built a media publishing company around it.
Today we have one of the top 10 Business/Investing magazines on the Apple Newsstand for the iPad, a weekly podcast, the blog, a TV show in the works and more…. The idea is that we are the media company "By Entrepreneurs For Entrepreneurs"
I am really looking forward to participating in the forum and sharing whatever I can!
I am looking forward to meeting all of you.
Here's to your success!
Ralph
PS - If you want to read the longer version of my story...you can get my book as a PDF for free here!
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Speed+++ X 35,000,000
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch; If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run, yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Humfsis-QLI
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Loving Life In The Fast Lane!
CommonCents we totally agree! Hopefully we can change that!Originally Posted by CommonCents
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Hi Ralph. Welcome to the forum. It is exciting to hear more from people like you.
It sounds to me like the real value of the business was your and your wife's knowledge and contacts. Usually these consulting-based businesses sell for low multipliers.
How did you work out the details when selling the business so your personal value was not the main driver but actually you get paid for what you have built?
What processes or methods did you create to add value to the business, outside of your vast expertise?
Thanks in advance for any input you provide about these questions, and again, welcome to the forum.
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Welcome Ralph!
I think most forum members stopped reading your introduction reading the numbers 3-5 lol
How is life in LA / Miami?
I'm thinking exactly of moving to one of those two cities, because I'm SO fed up with german weather...
Wish you a very nice time over here and much success with your magazine venture.
PS: It's crazy how many REAL successful people join this forum the last weeks, amazing job on this
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andviv, one of the key drivers for us was the sytems that we had in place. We literally systemized every aspect of our business....well beyond your standard SOP manuals that people put together. Everything from Lead Generation, to Training, to how the phone was answered was highly systemized. It was almost like a franchise manual. We had it set up so that we could easily hire people and give them a step by step guide of what they needed to do. This also allowed us to hire remote staff very easily.
We also invested heavily in industry-standard software solutions. We used Salesforce.com, Box.net, etc... and all of these were tightly integrated into the systems we had designed.
Finally our monetization model went beyond a flat consulting fee. We also negotiated a profit share on the business we generated for our clients. So it was win-win.
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LOL TK1!Welcome Ralph!
I think most forum members stopped reading your introduction reading the numbers 3-5 lol
How is life in LA / Miami?
I'm thinking exactly of moving to one of those two cities, because I'm SO fed up with german weather...
I love LA and Miami equally! Miami is special because that is where I was born. But L.A. has a special place in my heart, especially Santa Monica. If my family and my wife's family would be willing to move across the country, we'd be there in a heart-beat. That being said, Miami has nothing to envy L.A. for. The weather is great, the food is awesome the culture is spectcular and the fact that there is no state income tax is a HUGE plus!
If you're ever around, I love to have a beer and show you around!
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