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How This Woman Turned Her Passion Into A Million Dollar Business

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Photos courtesy of Madame Methven

Kaila Methven is the brains behind possibly the world’s most expensive lingerie label.

Kaila’s family once upon a time owned The Rainbow Unlimited Chicken Company (RLC), which used to supply 90 percent of KFC’s poultry. After inheriting her family’s sale of RLC shares back in 1991, Kaila decided to step away from the fried chicken business and focus instead on a much sexier line of work: a luxury lingerie company.

At just 16 years old, Kaila interned at her first Paris Fashion Show and went on to earn a Master’s Degree from the International Fashion Academy – Paris. She completed advanced training at Polymodo in Florence.

Kaila has so far been featured in Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, and Maxim and she has dressed some of today’s sexiest stars including the likes of Demi Lovato, Katherine McPhee, The Kardashians, and more. Kaila has just released her new vivacious, ultra sexy lingerie and intimate apparel line called “Lady Methven” and it was created for the everyday woman. Combining childlike innocence, erotic playfulness, and female power, Kaila dares everyone to fall in love again.

We recently sat down with Kaila to find out more about the luxury lingerie brand the whole world is currently gushing about and here’s what went down.

How were you actually ‘discovered’?

The first person who discovered me was Jean Charles de Castelbajac. I was a student at IFA, and he was visiting the school at the time. I was designing a jacket that day, he saw it and fell in love with it. After that, he gave me an internship in his company.

What do you like most about being a designer?

My most prestigious reward is to see women fall in love again wearing my lingerie. It is an honor for me when I see them feeling empowered, beautiful, sexy and confident.

What’s it like dressing some of the most famous people in the world?

It is extremely rewarding that famous people recognize my talent and want to wear my designs. However, I try to stay humble, and a client is a client. I don’t treat my clients differently because their name is well known. Each of my clients gets the best service I can provide, no matter who they are.

What first interested you in style/fashion?

I was born in LA, grew up in Paris, and graduated with my bachelor at Esmod, masters at IFA, MBA at Polymoda. I interned as a makeup artist at Paris fashion week for Dior, and when I saw all those models walking down the runway, I knew my destiny was to become a designer.

What made you decide to make it into a career?

Originally, I wanted to be an entertainment lawyer. But when my mother passed away, I moved to France, and I was immediately inspired by the fashion and the arts, so I entered in design school.

When did your career start?

I began filling my business documents to become legitimate a year and a half ago. I then started my design process and brought it to fruition during the summer of 2017. It took my team and me about six months to make the entire collection.

What do you enjoy most about style/fashion?

The most rewarding thing to me is the creativity it brings to my clients and the smiles on their faces.

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We note that you have more than 500,000 followers on Instagram- what is your secret to gaining a lot of followers?

I always have new content. I don’t want my followers to get bored. Instagram is one of the biggest social media platforms; it is important to provide new content, make stories, like other amazing influencer’s posts, etc.

What sort of marketing do you do to make your image and brand more appealing to the audience?

We do a bunch of stuff from social media, Amazon, Ads, Parties, and other PR work.

How active are you on social media?

I am extremely active on social media. I post almost every day.

What is your favorite social media platform?

Definitely Instagram.

Do you have a specific inspiration that keeps you going in your career?

There is one woman who always pushed me to accomplish my dreams, whose name I’ll keep confidential. As of today, we are still in contact, she is very proud of me, and I always turn to her for advice. Ultimately, I am impressed by many successful business women who started from the ground up.

What has been the most valuable lesson you’ve learned. This can be about the industry or about yourself. Or both!

Always believe in yourself, never give up on your dreams, and continue to work hard because hard work always pays off.

What are your plans? Inside your career or out of it.

Hopefully, I will have a store open, be an even better person, a better CEO with a very accomplished company, and have international stores.

“This is an Advertisement Feature”

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What This Millionaire CEO Can Teach You About Building A Wildly Successful Business

Timothy Trudeau’s earliest and fondest memory of getting a taste of the business world was hanging out with his father who was a successful business owner along with other successful business owners. While other kids were playing video games, Timothy was hanging around entrepreneurs and gaining powerful business tips. His first taste of success was when he sold his first beat to a Senior in his school who rapped back when he was in 9th grade. His foray into the business world started out at this early age when this Senior heard the beats he was making and decided to share an idea he had for a song. He immediately went home and used the equipment that he had collected through saving and bartering, and that’s when he first experience a real collaboration with an artist, and he officially became a producer. Eventually, his business grew, and he accumulated his wealth via his company Syntax Creative as well as rental income from the property that he owns.

We recently caught up with Timothy Trudeau and here’s what went down:

Could you please tell our readers a brief background about yourself and how you started making money?

I remember clearly listening music while riding through the South Bay neighborhood of San Diego. Sitting in the backseat of my father’s car, I was nodding my head to songs that were well beyond my years. I may not have known it then, but I was planting the seeds that would lead to my love for music and the subsequent foray into business. No one could have predicted that an unassuming kid from California like myself was quietly developing the ability to create original music and the chops to build a business around it.

How did you get started in business? When did you start? Did you ever imagine you would become this successful?

Some of my earliest and fondest memories include attempts at launching small businesses. I loved “negotiating” with the adults around me and selling products to other children based off knowing what they wanted.

My Dad was a successful business owner and socialized with other successful business owners. While other kids were trying to play outside or manipulate pixels on a screen in make-believe worlds, I would jump at any chance to go with my Dad to hang out with him and his friends.

While I doubt I fully grasped the idea of success, I knew that I would one day be an adult and that it would remain that way for the rest of my life so I wanted to acquire as much insider information into this journey as possible.

The first memorable transaction I remember, that is most closely associated with what I do now, was when I was in the 9th grade and sold my first beat to a Senior who rapped. It started out because he had heard the beats that I was making and decided to share an idea he had for a song, I went home and used the equipment that I had collected through saving and bartering. I was officially a producer and had just experienced my first real collaboration with an artist.

Though not music-related, the earliest legitimate business operation that I launched was when I was in the 10th grade. It was a business where I sold and serviced pagers along with the monthly airtime charge, as well as accessories to customize an otherwise boring world. Because I was only 15, I engaged my brother, who was 4 years older than me, as a partner who could legally register the business.

Most of my clientele were other students who I would see every day. Like any small community, the word can travel fast so it was important to keep customers happy and for them to share their happiness with others.

What is your main source of income?

My main source of income is the salary that I earn at Syntax Creative as well as rental income from the property that I own.

What are you currently doing to maintain/grow your net worth?

While some may be sitting on their equity, others are using it to purchase jet skis or other fun items that will decrease in value the moment the ink is dry on your purchase contract. I have used the equity to purchase assets that increase in value or that I can make money from. The main one being, more real estate.

While I’ve dabbled in the real estate market of other states for over a decade, I ended up cashing out and focusing on the San Diego market. This is where I am blessed to live and a market I understand very well. Like Bitcoin or the Foreign Exchange Market, if you are strategically buying and selling, you can do very well for yourself.

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What social media platforms do you usually use to increase your brand’s awareness?

Social Media is a double-edged sword. While there are definitely benefits to utilizing it well, using it well can be a full-time job. If I am regularly posting on social media to promote myself or my business and convince people to work with me, I’m probably becoming the type of person that you wouldn’t want to work with.

It’s better to use one well, than many on a mediocre level. Which is what I primarily see. For me, that one social network would be Twitter. Twitter is informative, short and sometimes funny. And as long as you can fit into that too, it’s a great place to get your message out.

The main thing for anyone to understand is that the first word in social media is social. I try to picture real live scenarios and how my engagement on those networks would play out. If you were at a party with friends and everything you were saying was a pitch, you probably wouldn’t be invited back. If you were argumentative, same.

Be polite and friendly, and as you engage with people, your message will naturally get out. No need to beat people over the head with advertisements. They get that everywhere they go, so if you are just more noise, you will be unfollowed or muted.

What is your main tactic when it comes to making more people aware your brand and engaging your customers? How did your business stand out?

My main tactic is just to treat customers the way that I would want to be treated as a customer. I really can’t stand when I work with a business, and I can tell that the business doesn’t value me or my money and could not care less if I return to spend more.

Doing business this way has led me to build an entire company off of word-of-mouth marketing. I really haven’t spent a dime to market or advertise myself or my company. Instead, I sat on all sides of a deal. I’ve been an artist signed to a label, I’ve signed artists to a label, as a label I’ve signed to a distributor, and as a distributor, I’ve signed labels. So my goal was to create the kind of company that I would have wanted to work within any one of those positions that I had firsthand experience.

In doing so, people are happy to pay our fees. Even if they are higher than our competition. The fee isn’t the be all end all in negotiating, though many negotiate as if it is.

Most of our clients came from another client, and that puts on the pressure to perform well, which is not unlike the pager business I had where my customers were my fellow students.

What is the toughest decision you had to make?

The toughest decision I’ve had to make is to kill a business or a partnership. It’s easy to get emotionally invested in something, especially if you’ve been doing it for a while. There comes a time when you have to step outside of what you are doing and take a look at it logically and see if the numbers are adding up or not.

Even businesses with a great cause may need to be shut down. You are able to do much more for a good cause with a solvent business than an insolvent one.

And if you love your friend or family member but they are contributing nothing or dragging the business into the ground, they must not love you very much back. If the relationship dies because you want to kill the partnership, there was never a relationship, to begin with.

What money mistakes have you made along the way that others can learn from (or something you’d do differently)?

I hate debt. Like, HATE it. Because I hate it, I am always trying to pay it down as fast as possible. And at times, that has strapped my cash flow in a way that was unnecessary. While loans can certainly be a millstone tied around your neck, they can also be an incredible tool if used properly. Find your balance somewhere in between the extreme of no-debt-at-all and using credit cards to pay other credits.

What new business would you love to start?

Syntax Creative has a broad reach and has me working with people all over the world. This is a lot of fun and I love it. However, for my next venture, I want to do something really localized. I want to have some kind of small business that serves food and drink. One that gets into a community and becomes a part of it. I want to take those same principles I’ve learned about having peers as customers and friends recommending friends for marketing to a local establishment. I also love growing individuals, so the thought of hiring young people to help them learn not just how to do their job well, but how to think well and do all future jobs well. How to open their own business someday.

If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were just getting started, what would you do differently?

I would immediately go back to before time machines were invented and start a time machine business.

Do you have any favorite business-related or personal development related books that you can recommend to other entrepreneurs?

The most important thing someone can learn to help his or her own business would be economics. One of my favorite recent books for this is The Poverty of Nations: A Sustainable Solution. Another fantastic book is On Writing Well: The Class Guide to Writing Nonfiction. This book has, of course, helped my writing, but it has also helped my communication. Communication is one of the main tools that I use when transacting with people. So the better that I can do that, the better the transactions will be and we are right back to word-of-mouth marketing.

What advice would you give to a newbie Entrepreneur setting up their first business?

Preparation is awesome. But over-preparation can be crippling. I coach a lot of young or new entrepreneurs and many of them have fantastic ideas. The first thing I think is, why aren’t they already doing this?

That initial plunge off of the cliff seems to be the part keeping them from doing anything other than making charts, graphs and spend time talking about starting something. There isn’t a failed business in my past that I launched that I didn’t learn something valuable from. Most successful entrepreneurs were first unsuccessful entrepeneurs.

You just have to go! Get started. You can’t possibly know everything up front and you can’t plan for all that will happen along the way. But you also can’t have a business if you don’t take that first step.

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How This Man Became A Millionaire Making Rubber Ducks (Yes, You Read Right)

 

Like most self-made millionaires, Craig Wolfe came from rather humble beginnings. His idea was to create rubber ducks that looked like celebrities. Since he was starting small, he did all his PR and sent press releases to everyone he knew. Fortunately, a newspaper on the other side of the country ran his story, and the vice-president of one of NBA’s top franchises loved the idea and had him create a duck based on their superstar. That was the big break he was looking for because, after that, people and businesses started contacting him from all over the country. Fast forward to today, his current net worth is sitting at a cool $5 million.

We recently caught up with Craig Wolfe and here’s what went down:

Could you please tell our readers a brief background about yourself and how you started making money?

I became the largest publisher of artwork from television commercials creating the first ever animation art lines for Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch, M&M/Mars, etc. I figured no one else was doing this so why not me! Eventually, I sold it all off to create CelebriDucks which was a whole new art form of celebrity rubber ducks of the most celebrated icons of film, music history, and athletics. They were voted one of the top 100 gifts by Entertainment Weekly and featured on hundreds of TV shows, magazines, and newspapers including The Tonight Show. We have sold millions of them, and we are known as the top custom duck manufacturer in the world. We do them for everyone from SeaWorld to The New York Yankees.

Then I had the idea to address the importance of bringing jobs and industries back to America by bringing the whole rubber duck industry back to America where the rubber duck was invented before the whole industry went overseas. We are now the only ones making them here and are doing them for companies and organizations such as Harley-Davidson and The Future Farmers of America. Our second US factory in Michigan is now making PVC Free rubber ducks out of food and medical grade materials which are considered the safest rubber ducks in the world for babies to teethe on.

I also just launched our new chocolate division, www.CocoaCanard.com, with our Spooning Chocolate, the only Dairy, and Gluten-free hot chocolate that can instantly mix up in a cup of hot water and you will never miss the milk. It is now the go-to product in that category and considered the purest and finest hot chocolate on the market and uses Fair Trade chocolate. I basically do things that inspire me, and fortunately, it has worked out for me.

How did you get started in business? When did you start? Did you ever imagine you would become this successful?

You know, with the ducks, I never expected it would get that big, but I did think it was a cute idea – rubber ducks that looked like celebrities. I did all my PR and sent press releases to everyone. Fortunately, a newspaper on the other side of the country ran my story and the vice-president of one the NBA’s top franchises loved the idea and had us create a duck of their superstar. When we got done with that duck, it looked more like him than he did! The promotion went great, and then people started contacting us from all over to have us create ducks for them. I eventually sold off the animation and became all ducks!

What is your primary source of income?

Funny enough, it is just making rubber ducks which proves that if you own your niche and have a decent idea, anyone can become a millionaire.

Would you be willing to tell us your current net worth? How did you accumulate your net worth?

5 million. It started with the animation company and then with the ducks, funny, whimsical characters made my money – who knew!

What are you currently doing to maintain/grow your net worth?

I keep the business fresh and innovative; I never stay complacent. I’m always bringing out new ducks and fresh products. I don’t invest in the stock market, real estate and CDs. Bottom line, I invest in myself, in my business and thus, I am debt free with no outstanding loans – plus, I own the whole company 100%.

What social media platforms do you usually use to increase your brand’s awareness?

Facebook, Twitter and Instagram…..we pretty much post on our company website regularly.

What is your experience with paid advertising, like PPC or sponsored content campaigns? Does it work?

Actually. We find running on PR does the best marketing for us and the most cost-effective. Social Media is a game changer today and anyone can do it very cost effectively. We do have a great Amazon partner who handles that for us and they do campaigns for us which do very well and people love them.

What is your main tactic when it comes to making more people aware your brand and engaging your customers? How did your business stand out?

Well, PR is key for us and of course, social media. But if you really want to stand out in the clutter, then you need to build a better mousetrap. Create a great product that is cool, fun, innovative, unique and different and then be so good at it, that you dominate your own your niche – that is the key to success. You really want to become the best in your niche and be focused like a laser in getting your message out, one you can make that happen then you can give people a reason to talk about you and tell others.

What form of marketing has worked well for your business throughout the years?

PR and social media.

What is the toughest decision you had to make in the last few months?

I decided to terminate all our Amazon re-sellers. It was tough as we had so many, but we finally chose one major company to represent and protect our brand on Amazon, and it has worked out great. Now, we can control the look of the brand on there and also the MAP pricing.

What money mistakes have you made along the way that others can learn from (or something you’d do differently)?

Control your destiny. One of the biggest mistakes people do is give creative or financial control to raise funding to get their new venture off the ground. At one point, to expand quickly and take some of the burdens off me, I had a lot of my business pass through my manufacturer who took on more of the financial burden. But I did not like my loss of control, and after a bit of a struggle, I took it back. So you should never give up any equity or control unless you absolutely have to as no-one will ever run your baby and have the passion for it as you, the company creator.

What have you learned in the process of becoming wealthy that others can learn from?

Never get complacent. And honestly, money is only as good as what you can do with it to make a difference in the lives of others. For me, the end game is about leaving it all to non-profit entities that can further be doing good in the world and helping those who have less.

What new business would you love to start?

I am actually already in the midst of that. Our chocolate company is just in phase one. We are writing a children’s book to go with it, and a whole lifestyle branding to bring the entire Cocoa Canard themed merchandising program to the market. Ducks, chocolate, children, fun licensed products, and a heart-warming message in a children’s book which is entirely different from what’s out there – what’s not to like.

If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were just getting started, what would you do differently?

Well, I think I would have been more creative in the kinds of properties I brought to market. But it’s funny, it’s like trying to be who you are now thirty years earlier. Who you are now is based on those thirty years of doing things both right AND wrong. So yes, our Costume Quacker line of celebrity parody is our best work ever. But it took us years and years of design and testing to evolve to this point. But I do wish I had thought of this a long time ago.

Do you have any favorite business-related or personal development related books that you can recommend to other entrepreneurs?

I love ALL the Trout and Reis book – Positioning, Bottom-up Marketing. They are not just brilliant, but so much fun to read and filled with so many interesting case studies.

What is the best advice you have ever been given?

“Never give up control and ownership” – Mom. She was right, well at least she was right for me. Everyone is different. But for me to feel creatively motivated and inspired, I need to have control of my baby to do whatever I have to do to bring it to life. I always said that when I wanted to return our whole industry back to the USA where it began, if I had a board of directors, I would have been fired, no doubt for ”not maximizing shareholder value in the short term!” But I always looked at the big picture. I knew if I did this we would own our niche and over time no-one could duplicate what we can do. I didn’t have to convince anyone as I owned the whole company and did just that and it really worked out in the end.

What advice would you give to a newbie Entrepreneur setting up their first business?

It’s not how much money you make; it’s how much you keep. Excessive overhead can bring down any business no matter how much you make. Lean and mean is the key to survival especially in the beginning before business gains traction.

Do not try and be all things to all people or you become nothing to anyone. Focus like a laser on your niche and be really clear on what you stand for.

Reflect your core brand ethics and quality in every marketing communication to the public.

Compete on the cheap end, and someone can always make it for less. Quality like the tortoise will ultimately win out or as I like to say, “live by the penny, die by the penny,” don’t compete on price alone. Quality is the hardest thing to knock off.