Episode 56 - Experience is the Best Teacher with Jordan Agolli

Productive Flourishing

Jordan Agolli is a young, but highly experienced entrepreneur who is also the host of the Teenage Entrepreneur. He started his first business when he was 14-years-old, and grew the company to 20 employees by the time he was 18-years-old. In 2014, he founded Teenage Entrepreneur, which is a platform focused on educating and inspiring the younger generation to pursue entrepreneurship. The show has listeners in 65 countries. In 2015, he was hired as the director of operations for a company that helps business owners market their business through the Internet. Jordan's primary focus and passion is fixing operational breakdowns, building and maintaining relationships with clients, and managing day-to-day operations. On top of this, he is also the president of his bowling league, has a first degree black belt in a Japanese martial art. Jordan has his hands in a lot of projects, as do many Creative Giants. Charlie is excited to have him share his journey with us!

Key Takeaways:

[02:24] Jordan shares his story on starting his own business when he was only 14-years-old.

[05:11] Growing a company by using a hyper-local directory and cheap marketing.

[09:27] A marketing strategy that leveraged being young and ambitious ‘high schoolers’

[11:01] College didn’t work for Jordan, so he worked full-time in his own business.

[13:08] What was it about college that he didn't like, wasn't for him.

[13:47] Jordan never wanted college to work for him.

[15:17] Institutions box you into a system & that was his issue with school from the get go.

[18:08] There’s a false perception that overestimates high schoolers’ understanding of the ‘online world’.

[18:17] Fizzle was the first resource to teach Jordan about the online business world.

[19:46] The Internet and social media can be leveraged to market and grow your business.

[21:16] How Teenage Entrepreneur was born

[22:32] Discovering podcasting and the online community is what brought him to where he is today

[23:58] How he got involved in managing operations and talking to sought-after CEOs

[29:28] It’s better to focus on one thing than to spread yourself thin

[30:33] Three major lessons Jordan has learned

[34:03] Putting yourself out there and the value of experience

[35:12] In order to grow and take it to the next level, he'll be going back into the entrepreneurial world

Mentioned in This Episode:

The Aha! connection

Yelp

Angie’s List

Fizle

Chase Reeves

Podcast Movement

Snap Chat

Tweeter

Instagram

Vine

John Dumas

Chris Ducker

Chase Jarvis

David France

Babson entrepreneurship forum

Global entrepreneurship program, for the United States

Suzan Scot’s Fierce Conversations

Get full access to Productive Flourishing at www.productiveflourishing.com/subscribe