I Make $5M/Year With 3 Businesses

Starter Story • • 15min • #31
I Make $5M/Year With 3 Businesses
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Summary

  • Tim Stoddart

    • Grew up in a blue-collar household and worked in construction during childhood.
    • Overcame addiction, entered rehab, and got sober; a mentor gave him Success magazine with a CD interview featuring Seth Godin.
    • Started a BlogSpot blog, wrote daily, and discovered SEO by researching how people found his content.
    • Built audience and credibility through consistent writing and studying Copyblogger.
    • Transitioned blog into a lead generation business by monetizing traffic from the sober community.
    • Evolved from solo operator to multipreneur focused on a portfolio of cash-flowing assets.
    • Hired young people in recovery and built a team over 10 years, emphasizing documented processes and getting out of the way.

  • Products and Offerings

    • Stazzi Internet Marketing: SEO lead generation agency that generates leads primarily through targeted keyword content.
    • Recovery Local: Parent company owning and operating healthcare-related domains including sober.com, yourfirststep.com, detox.com, and medicallyassisted.com.
    • Copyblogger: Platform teaching internet writing, newsletter creation, SEO, and LinkedIn writing.
    • Additional investments and experiments: Moving Local, Stem Cell Authority, Kaa (AI content creation tool), Spark Loop (email list builder), Your Boulder (local Boulder newsletter), Digital Commerce (SEO for digital products), and Hey Creator (creator studio).

  • Metrics and Financials

    • Stazzi Internet Marketing projected to generate approximately $2–2.5 million in revenue.
    • Overall portfolio of businesses projected to generate approximately $5.2–5.5 million in 2024.
    • First agency client secured at $2,000 per month and scaled through SEO-driven lead generation.

  • Strategy and Growth

    • Vision is to build a portfolio of assets that work independently so the business works for the owner.
    • Primary growth engine is SEO, focusing on one keyword and one article at a time to solve specific problems.
    • Reinvested agency profits into cash-flowing private businesses and evergreen sectors.
    • Sales approach emphasizes asking questions to uncover pain points, addressing price early, and explicitly asking for the deal.

  • Tech Stack and Infrastructure

    • Slack for team communication across locations.
    • Loom for asynchronous video instructions.
    • Todoist for personal task management and ClickUp for agency-level task management.
    • HubSpot as the primary CRM for leads and network tracking.
    • Google Drive for documents and spreadsheets as foundational tools.

  • Lessons and Advice

    • Start with a single skill and execute consistently; one client can create a profitable business.
    • Focus on cash-flowing, evergreen businesses with founders you genuinely like.
    • Document processes, systematize operations, and remove yourself as a bottleneck.
    • Approach entrepreneurship one day at a time by focusing on making it to midnight rather than worrying about the distant future.
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