Alex Becker, a serial entrepreneur who has generated tens of millions throughout his career, began in the air force at the age of 19. He served for four years and got out when he was 23. The way he puts it, “I became an entrepreneur because I truly did not have any other option.” His desire to generate wealth superseded the status quo of working a 9-5 job, which is the path that many veterans pursued after returning home. Becker went on to create Spekter Labs, which deals with human enhancement and Market Hero, which helps businesses grow through streamlined data. He has also gone on to write several best selling books and training programs. Alex is currently running his own YouTube channel, Instagram page, and Facebook account to help boost his personal brand. He is only 30 years old, but has made a name for himself in business and social media by directing his “never give up” mentality that he used in the military into his career and passion.
One entrepreneur who made a name for himself in e-commerce and software is Hayden Bowles. At the young age of 12 years old, he began learning about business and traded stocks. In high school, all he did was sit in class on his phone and traded stocks, which his professors either allowed it or sent him to detention. By sophomore year of high school, he dropped out to pursue business. He started to pursue drop-shipping on Shopify and learned how to use Facebook and Instagram ads to leverage himself. He became so good that he generated roughly $20,000 per month just from Shopify drop-shipping alone. At the same time, Hayden worked hard to build his personal brand through his YouTube videos, Instagram page, and Snapchat following. He acquired business partners to help him manage his Shopify stores. At 17 years old, he embraced networking by meeting very prestigious people all over the country. He moved out of his parent’s house at this time in pursuit of his dream for financial independence and freedom. Hayden saw the opportunity to share his knowledge with the world by creating a buy-in mastermind course for drop-shipping where he provides exclusive strategies that he uses to build his own stores. I have personally joined this course when I built my own Shopify store and I can easily say it was worth the investment. Since then, Hayden has scaled his businesses and built new ones from the ground up. He is now projected to generate over $2 million in net income this year at the age of 18, and posts daily YouTube videos where he shares his knowledge and experiences.
As a homeschooler, Natalie and her family had to buy all of their books themselves, and as there was no curated or organized way to buy used book, they usually ended up buying these books new from publishers, which got very expensive. However, Natalie noticed that after he finished with a book, it just stayed on her bookshelf until it either was given away to a family friend or sold at a significantly reduced price at a yard sale. Natalie considered how wasteful this was, both on the buying end and the reselling end because there was no organized platform for homeschoolers to interact with each other in this manner. Out of this pain came her idea of Hoot Book Revival, which is an app and website on which homeschoolers can resell their books and buy used books from other homeschooling families at a reduced cost. This benefits both the buyer and the seller, because people looking to buy books can get them much cheaper than they can new books, and people looking to sell books can sell them for more than they could at a yard sale.
When I asked Natalie about how this business came about and what need it was filling, she said, “I suppose the core of the business idea was identifying an underrepresented group, and how their market needs weren’t being addressed, because the business pitch itself is pretty simple.” Natalie’s website allows the customer to buy and sell books, as well as collaborate with other homeschoolers on which lesson plans and books are best. Hoot Book Revival also has an option where people can post their books and let Hoot do all the work in finding people to sell them to, making the customer experience more enjoyable and less labor intensive.
