The Entrepreneur Ride Along Podcast - Online Business and Niche Site Ideas for Entrepreneurs

Today, I am excited to interview DJ Eshelman of DJeshelman.com.

In this episode, DJ teaches us about the pillars of online business, and how he is building a business in the Information Technology industry (Citrix).

This is an excellent episode, we talk a lot about the various products, services, and revenue streams that DJ is building in the Information Technology Industry. We also discuss how DJ balances his life building an online business while working as a Citrix Consultant.

DJ Eshelman Case Study

DJ is featured in chapter three of my business ideas book. Below is the case study from the book where DJ is featured. This comes directly from chapter three of the book:

Every career I have ever pursued I could turn into a corporate training business. I could sell workshops to corporations teaching their employees how to write effective stock reports, how to analyze a 10-K, or how to be an effective product analyst. I know there is a need for this because my employers used to pay thousands of dollars to send me to those exact same workshops.Any of my certifications, or qualifications, could be a business. I did this with the CPCU certification, I created my own study material to help people pass the difficult CPCU exams. I could do the same thing with my experience in Agile, I could create training guides, courses, or I could provide one-on-one training.Any of the programs that I have mastered, such as SQL Server or Tableau, could be a business. I could create training guides, courses, or provide corporate training. DJ Eshelman did this. DJ is a Citrix Consultant. He travels around the United States, going from business to business, training and teaching about Citrix. DJ took his knowledge and expertise about Citrix, built his own business, and became one of the go-to resources for Citrix training and coaching. He is now one of the most well respected, and sought-after, consultants and teachers in the Citrix industry. He has turned his expertise from his day job into a profitable business that has resulted in numerous paid speaking engagements, a prosperous coaching practice, paid mastermind groups, and a number of highly-regarded books on Information Technology including his book Be a Citrix Hero.

This Interview

This interview is part of a series of case studies that I will be publishing to The Entrepreneur Ride Along Podcast over the coming weeks as I interview successful entrepreneurs in the online business space. These interviews and case studies will be featured in my newest book "business ideation" (still available for pre-sale).

Resources Mentioned

Resources mentioned in this podcast episode:

• Business Ideas Book
• DJ's Business: DJeshelman.com.
• DJ's Book "Be a Citrix Hero"
• DJ's Book "Just Do This"

Enjoy!

Want to start an online business but don't know where to start?

Want to build and scale a business that will help you achieve your dream of financial freedom and live the entrepreneurial lifestyle full time?

Use your 9-5 day job to build your online business and become financially free so that you can live the entrepreneurial lifestyle full time. It's time to use your job to quit your job.
That's what today's episode is all about. Take the expertise accumulated over years of working 40 hours per week. Take that expertise and turn it into a business that generates recurring revenue for you for the rest of your life. (just like I did).
I'm going to show you how in today's episode of The Entrepreneur Ride Along Podcast.
The Day Job Niche
The day job is one of my absolute favorite places to find business ideas. You are an expert at whatever you do in your day job. You are literally a professional; you are paid to do what you do every day, forty hours a week, fifty-two weeks a year. That is the definition of expertise. You spend over 2,000 hours per year focused on one particular task in one specific industry. You have an immense amount of knowledge on this subject, knowledge that other people will pay to access. If you look, you will find a topic you have mastered in your day job that you can turn into your first business. I don’t care whether you are a barista at Starbucks, the retail manager of a Dicks sporting goods, a financial analyst at KPMG, an attorney for Samsung, or the CEO of Google. That job, where you spend over 40 hours per week, every single week is a breeding ground for business ideas.

If you want to start a side gig or build a business to support yourself financially so you can live life as you please (and not work), look to that monstrous time suck where you spend 40 hours per week. Use it to lose it. Use your job to build a business so you can quit your job and reap the financial rewards.

So why should your day job be your first business? Well, there are three simple reasons.

• It’s easy
• It’s the quickest path to success
• It’s profitable

I'm going to show you why I love the day job niche, and show you how to utilize this niche to start your first online business, in today's episode of The Entrepreneur Ride Along Podcast.
Get The Book
Join the pre-sale team today, be part of the first group to read my newest book and learn how to use your 9-5 job to create and scale an online business. Pick up your copy of my new book Use Your Job to Quit Your Job today!
Links mentioned:

• https://theentrepreneurridealong.com/job
• https://theentrepreneurridealong.com/membership/
• https://steponebook.com/
• https://theentrepreneurridealong.com/day-job-niche/

In this episode of The Entrepreneur Ride Along Podcast, we learn how to start writing a sales page from scratch, without using any templates. This is the exact technique used by the world’s greatest copywriters.

In today’s episode, we are joined by Karthik Vijayakumar of designyourthinking.com. Karthik is a professional copywriter and solopreneur. Karthik has mastered the art of writing sales copy and creating a sales page from scratch. Today, he teaches us how to get started with five simple steps.

Karthik is a master at sales page creation. He is the copywriter that designed and wrote the copy for my sales page.

I’m excited to bring you this conversation with Karthik so you can improve your conversion and begin selling your products and services!

Be sure to download Karthik’s checklist bundle that he put together special for listeners of The Entrepreneur Ride Along podcast at: designyourthinking.com/jake

From this podcast:

• Karthik’s special download (checklist) for this episode
• Design Your Thinking
• Launch Plan Podcast
• The Entrepreneur Ride Along Membership

For the first time EVER, I ran a Black Friday promotion on my insurance education business.

From Friday through Monday, just four days, I sold over 25 online courses and generated OVER $6,000 in revenue.

The promotion took me less than one hour to put together. Which means I made $6,000 in revenue from one hour of work.

It was an eye opening experience for me. Now, I will be taking advantage of Black Friday every year going forward!

In today's episode, I'm going to breakdown exactly what I did to run a successful Black Friday promotion. I will take you behind the scenes to talk through my thought process, and breakdown the strategies I used to utilize email marketing to drive $6,000 in revenue in four days.

For reference, this is my sales page for my business AssociatePI where I ran this 40% off Black Friday Promotion.

This is the cadence of emails I sent for my Black Friday Promotion:

• Email #1: Thursday at 2 pm - Early sneak peek of my deal sent to the email list.
• Email #2: Friday at 12:15 am - Introduction to the Black Friday deal with a link to the sales page.
• Email #3: Friday at 7 pm - Reminder email. Reminding my subscribers to take advantage of the Black Friday deal.
• Email #4: Saturday at 7 pm - Informative email with testimonials from students that have had success with my courses.
• Email #5: Sunday at 2 pm - Informative email touching on the value proposition of my courses (pass your exams in less time with less studying).
• Email #6: Monday at 10 am - Talking savings. Letting them know they can save $170 per course, up to $1,360 if they buy all courses. And, for the fist time, mentioning that the deal is 40% off so they can buy my course for just $255 (the course is normally $425).
• Email #7: Monday at 5 pm - Reminder that the deal ends at midnight. I also send more testimonials showing the success that people have in passing their exams with my course.
• Email #8: Monday at 11 pm - Final Reminder. Deal ends in one hour. Give them a final chance to buy now and save 40%.

And that's it!

Just eight emails, that took me no longer than one hour to schedule in ConvertKit, sold 25+ courses and generated over $6,000 in revenue.

Wow...this was an expensive quarter.

Total operating expenses of $6,563. What happened?!

In this episode I will breakdown my real revenue and expenses for each one of my websites. I will give you some insight behind the scenes into what I am doing with each blog, what happened during the last quarter, and how I plan to continue scaling.

In total, my business generated $17,518 in revenue which resulted in $10,982 in profit for quarter three 2021. This was a good bounce-back quarter after a few down months in quarter two.
For a full list of my income reports, see my blog income reports archived here: /incomereports