In this Business Blast podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews Jim Kukral, a ten‑time author, online‑marketing expert, and founder of AuthorMarketingClub.com. Jim shares the pivotal moment that pushed him from a corporate 20‑hour‑day grind to entrepreneurship at age 30, emphasizing the importance of building a business around the lifestyle you desire rather than the other way around. He advises focusing on a single venture instead of constantly chasing new ideas, and urges younger entrepreneurs to start early, leveraging the internet’s low barrier to entry for rapid customer acquisition. Jim defines happiness not as wealth but as the freedom to spend time with family, citing his 100% attendance at his children’s events as a metric of success. He highlights two influential books—Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think for understanding user behavior and Tim Ferriss’s The 4‑Hour Workweek for lifestyle‑business design—detailing the practical lessons he applied. His favorite quote is Wayne Gretzky’s “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take,” reflecting his belief in taking risks despite a high failure rate. The episode concludes with Jim’s online presence (jimmukral.com), his keynote deck “How to Fire Your Boss Before You Get One,” and his brand Unskippable, which helps executives build distinctive brands and attract lifelong customers.
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All right, everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. Today I have Jim Kukrow with us. He is recognized as an expert in online marketing, publishing, and branding. He delivers insightful and entertaining keynotes to growth-oriented organizations. On attention-getting marketing, creative branding, and understanding how customers think, react, and most importantly, buy. Jim is a 10-time author of books on marketing, entrepreneurship, motivation, and publishing, and he is also the founder of AuthorMarketingClub.com. So welcome to the show, man.
Hey, man, I'm glad to be here.
Glad to have you on. So, Jim, the first question we ask on this show is, what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
That's super easy. You know, I wasn't an entrepreneur from the beginning. It was only when I was about 30 years old and I was working really hard for an internet company back in the early days of the internet, working 20-hour days and just living, sleeping, breathing at the office. And my bosses, I thought I was getting a big Christmas bonus and they came and gave me this real dinky Christmas bonus. And that was the day I decided I wanted to be an entrepreneur. And over 16 years later now, I have not had a boss. And that was the one of the biggest moments that changed my life.
And then what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
Well, I think the biggest piece of information that I like to get across to people is that you need to build a business around a lifestyle and not the other way around. You know, from birth we're taught to go to school, learn, get a job we don't like, pay our taxes, and die, right? And, you know, we have it all wrong. It's really— the internet has created this opportunity where you can build a lifestyle you want and then build the business around that lifestyle. So instead of working in a job that you dislike and doing things that you don't like doing, figure out what type of lifestyle you want first. Do you want to work, you know, the famous 4-hour work week, right? Do you want to work 3 hours a day? Do you want to work 20 hours a week? And then build a business around that. And that's the best part about it, is you can, because you're an expert or passionate about something, you can teach somebody how to do something, you can create an online course. There's so many opportunities for you to be successful online today by building a business around a lifestyle.
And then what is your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily industry specific.
Yeah, focusing, right? So I'm a butterfly chaser, and, uh, I tend to find the next butterfly flying by and then chase that. It happens to me all the time, and The product of that is after over a 20-year, you know, career of building online businesses and everything is I'm good at a lot of things, right? I know a lot about a lot of things and it makes me a good teacher, right? It makes me a good consultant. It makes me a good person in that regard. However, in terms of success monetarily, focusing on that one thing and really getting down to it and just having that laser focus on that is really one of my biggest mistakes.
And then if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
Well, start earlier. So like I said, I did not realize I wanted to be an entrepreneur until I was about 30 years old. I'm 47 now. So if it was giving myself one piece of advice, it would be, boy, before you have a family, before you have bills, before you have all these things that can slow you down, just go out there and try and do a whole bunch of stupid stuff in terms of ideas, businesses, things you're passionate about. And now, partly it was, you know, back then before the internet, it was way more difficult to start a business. I mean, to build a business or a brand, would sometimes take 20, 30 years to, to build a successful brand. And today, you can literally go online today with an idea, create a, a simple webpage with, or even just a Facebook page, and put a Facebook or a PayPal link on it and say, hey, I'm selling this, that's consulting or a course or whatever, and you can literally have your first customer in less than an hour, and in some cases in 10 minutes. So it's much easier to do now. So going back, I'd say go out and try a bunch of really creative, fun things that you want to do that you're passionate about before you get weighed down by all the wonderful things. I love my family, but before you have, uh, all those things holding you back from really having success.
And then, so kind of going down a little bit of a different path now, in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
Well, it's definitely not money. You know, all the people that I look around and see who travel all the time and work all the time, you know, it's so funny because my wife and I, we live in a modest home. We don't live in a big giant mansion. I'm not retiring anytime soon. I'm a, I'm a regular guy, well, entrepreneur. I do okay. And we drive through this really big million-dollar home community on the way to the grocery store and My wife always says, how come you never see anybody out in the yard playing with their kids or mowing their grass? And I always say to her, you know why? Because they're at work. Because they gotta afford to pay for this big giant house. And they don't have time to spend time with their kids and things like that. So it's definitely not money. For me, it's living a freedom lifestyle so that I can enjoy my family. I have, This, I'm very proud of this statistic. I have a 100% attendance rate at every parent-teacher conference, kid choir concert, basketball game, baseball game, and I designed my life that way. And that's the happiness for me, is that freedom lifestyle that if I wanna leave the office at 2 o'clock and go to a movie and then go to my kid's baseball game, I can do that.
That is awesome. And then what is the best book that you've read and what's the number one thing you learned from that?
Well, this goes back way, way back. I think the book is probably almost 20 years old now. It's a book called Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug, K-R-U-G. And boy, it's an older book. I know he's got a revised edition, but if you build businesses online, if you communicate, this is way before social media. Way before, right? This is— he is talking about banner ads in the book, right? But the book is still really relevant. If you were— if you want to build a business and understand how customers think, then that book called Don't Make Me Think was really an eye-opener for me and started my career way, way, way back then. Of course, The 4-Hour Workweek, uh, is the, you know, Bible of books that really transformed the way I started to think about how to build that business around a lifestyle. First thing I did was go out and get a virtual assistant and started working smarter, not harder. So why should I be spending 6 hours a day doing all of these mundane tasks like building a graphic for a website or messing with HTML, which is all the things I did when I first started? And why couldn't I get a virtual assistant to come in and do that for me? So I'm out selling, creating content, building businesses, and all those mundane tasks are being done. And that was probably one of the best things I ever did.
And then what is your favorite quote and why?
Why, I gotta go with the cliché Gretzky quote: you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. You know, my entire career has been built off of that. I mean, I always like to say 95% of the ideas and businesses and brands and websites that I come up with, 95% of those fail, and they fail miserably. How many podcasts and websites and things have I started? But the other 5%, the other 5%, those things have kept me self-employed as an entrepreneur and have fed my family for over 16 years.
Yeah, man. Dude, thank you, uh, so much for coming on. The last one I got for you, I'm sure our audience wants to know, is where can they find you online?
Well, you can learn more about me at jimkukral.com. That's J-I-M-K-U-K-R-A-L dot com. And I'm a keynote speaker. I like to go out and speak to colleges, universities. I got a deck called How to Fire Your Boss Before You Get One. And then I also have a brand called Unskippable, where I talk to executives and entrepreneurs and business owners about how to build a brand and think differently and purposely attract lifetime customers.
Perfect, man. Thank you again for coming on.
Thank you very much for having me.
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