A while back, my wife Karine received an email from one of her former co-workers at Terry Redlin Elementary. The co-worker’s husband, Todd Kolb, was building an Internet business and wondered if I would be willing to meet with him to see if I had any suggestions to help grow his company. At first I thought, “Oh great, what has my wife signed me up for now?” At the time, I had no idea who Todd Kolb was or that he’s effectively the top golf instructor in the state. I agreed to meet with Todd and his business partner Tyler Prins to see if I had any suggestions that might help grow their company.
We ended up having lunch at the Diner downtown and they told me about their company, US Golf TV (T Interactive, LLC). They produce a television show (also called US Golf TV) that’s available in approximately 12 million homes nationwide. They also produce a website called US Golf TV and have produced two video training courses titled The Prairie Secret and One Less Stroke. They are also producing a third video training course on how to eliminate your slice that will be coming out later this fall. After checking out their content, it was immediately clear that they are capable of efficiently producing high-quality video and written content.
They told me that the biggest challenges they were facing were effectively marketing their products and getting their website and sales funnel in order. I asked what they were currently doing to market their products threw out a bunch of different ideas that they could try, such as testing different customer acquisition methods, re-working their opt-in methods and changing the way they do some of their email marketing. Both Todd and Tyler were very nice and generally friendly guys, so I took an hour or two and documented all of the recommendations I had for them in a Word document and sent it their way.
Todd asked if I would be willing to meet with them again the following week for lunch and I said I would. They asked whether I would have any interest in helping implement the recommendations that I provided them. I told them that I don’t do any consulting and that I would need to have an equity stake in anything that I worked on for it to be worthwhile to me. I figured that would probably the end the conversation, but they said that they would be open to talking about that and I told them I’d follow up with them that week. I sent over a bunch of due diligence questions and saw that there was a real opportunity to grow their business by reworking their sales funnel from the top down. We met again the following week and they asked if I would create a draft partnership agreement to see what a partnership might look like. We negotiated back and forth, came to terms and signed a partnership agreement last week.
So, I’m happy to announce that as of yesterday, I’m now an equity partner in T Interactive, LLC (d.b.a. US Golf TV). I will be putting in four to six hours of work each week for US Golf TV. My first major project will be overhauling their website. I plan to implement a responsive design, re-work their opt-in mechanisms and change a variety of other elements to increase user engagement, organic traffic and email sign-ups. After that project is complete, I plan on moving down the funnel and working to improve their email marketing efforts and product offerings.
Of course, the first question that I’ve been asked about this partnership is “Don’t you already run like four different businesses?” The answer is “Yes”, but that doesn’t mean I’m actually all that busy right now. I have time to play with my son in the morning, go out to lunch with friends and other business acquaintances and spend time with my family in the evenings every day. I have a lot of margin in my life because I setup all of my businesses in such a way that I have no direct responsibility in carrying out the ongoing work of the business. I automate significant chunks of my various businesses using software and bring on team members to execute on tasks that can’t be automated. I typically only focus heavily on growing one of my business ventures at a time and switch focuses every few weeks to the next business down the line. With my book now being out and my other businesses all being at a very stable place, it was a good time to add another opportunity into the mix.
The partnership is still very early on in the process, but I’m looking forward to working with Todd, Tyler and the rest of the team to create something special.
You can checkout the current US Golf TV website at www.usgolftv.com.