Chris Hodges was born in Michigan and knew early on that he wanted to be in the business world and interact with people. He was heavily inspired and influenced by his father who worked at Ford for 40 years in the marketing sector. Even though he already had it set in his mind that he wanted to become an entrepreneur, he decided to pursue a college education at Purdue to hone his skills in business. After receiving an undergraduate degree, he moved to Miami and got a job at TracFone Wireless doing market research. While in Florida, he decided to get his masters degree at University of Florida, and it was there that he met his future business partners. Chris and his cofounders realized that the growth in the economy in recent years has led to more and more job openings. Their idea was to create a mobile professional job network that connects job candidates to hiring companies called GoGig which will launch sometime this year.
Secret Entourage Academy
Secret Academy Episode – Marc Parker
Marc Parker and his brother, Shannon, gained recognition for their skills in customization and fabrication when they built the Tron light bike in real life. Marc decided to build the bike to show executives from the movie that it could indeed be built after hearing their reasoning behind using CGI in the movie versus real motorbikes. Pretty soon after, SyFy Channel approached Marc and Shannon about doing a TV show about their custom builds. At this point, they didn’t have a legitimate business; they were building bikes for fun and as a hobby. The network told them to get a shop and make it legit. So they did. Today, the Parker Brothers are building custom bikes and automobiles for clients worldwide in their 20,000+ sq ft shop and are in talks of signing to do a show with a bigger TV network.
Secret Academy Episode – Gino Gargiulo
As a child growing up in Brooklyn, Gino had a comfortable childhood thanks to his father’s successful produce company and die hard work ethic. He developed the urge for entrepreneurship and started selling fireworks at school before getting into drugs. His drug use caused a downward spiral which led him to being homeless and penniless for about a year and a half. The fear of going back to that time in his life forced Gino to work as hard as he could and never give up, even until this very day. He came up with the idea to start a mobile oil changing business and applied to many mechanic shops to try to learn how to actually do an oil change since he had no prior experience. Because no one would hire him, he decided to buy a used van and a lot of mechanics books and started going door-to-door to sell his services. Today, Oil Can Man services multiple fleets and provides much more than just oil changes. His dedication and determination led him to the success he has today along with the infamous Lamborghini speedboat which matches his Lamborghini Aventador LP720-4 Roadster Limited Edition.
Secret Academy Episode – Jake Kassan & Kramer LaPlante
Jake Kassan & Kramer LaPlante were college roommates who both had an intense passion for entrepreneurship; Kramer loved the challenges and rewards that came with starting and owning his own business while Jake was inspired by his father and other entrepreneurs like himself. After realizing that a college education was not for them, they both dropped out and started their journey into entrepreneurship together. Kramer had experience with crowdfunding as he had a previous business selling wallets, and Jake was experienced in the marketing aspect of business. They decided to combine their experiences and start a business selling high quality, yet affordable watches called MVMT Watches for young people. Utilizing Indiegogo as a crowdfunding platform, they were able to raise $300,000 in just 50 days. Within their first year, they were a million dollar business, and today they are selling watches all over the world.
Secret Academy Episode – Ted Nash
From a very young age, Ted Nash had the entrepreneurial spirit. At the tender age of twelve, he created his first business — Rediz, an online shopping portal. Other businesses he started before the age of 15 included a cloud storage platform, a travel agency, and a music site. At 17, he was the first teenager to ever reach 1 million downloads in the App Store with the app Face Rate which uses facial recognition technology. News International offered him a position as Head of Digital Product Innovation in addition to licensing his software. During his time there, he launched and managed mobile products for The Sun, The Times, and The Sunday Times. Ted was able to save up and also raise investment capital to launch a new business venture with two other entrepreneurs. Currently he is the CEO of Tapdaq, a mobile advertising exchange app in which he was able to raise $1.4 million in capital for the commercialization.
Secret Academy Episode – Ian Bell
While attending a wedding several years ago, Ian Bell struck up a conversation with another guest in the buffet line about the guest’s cell phone. As it turns out, the guy worked at Office Max and had access to all the latest gadgets before the rest of the consumers. Ian expressed his desire to create a website dedicated to reviewing the latest technological gadgets, and another wedding guest named Dan overheard this and offered up his website building skills. After the wedding, Ian kept in touch with Dan, and they would eventually form DigitalTrends.com, a product review website with over 22 million unique visitors per month and generating over $20 million in gross revenue in 2015.
Secret Academy Episode – Shawn Thomas
From a young age, Shawn Thomas knew he wanted to be an influencer, a motivator, an entertainer. He was always the type of person to be up front, center stage, and take risks in his life. In his early 20’s he decided that instead of going back to college to earn a degree, he wanted to start his own business. So Shawn moved to Memphis, TN and got a job selling insurance while also working at a restaurant to supplement his income. He did this for three years, and in 2002 he came up with an idea to provide public computers and accompanying software to hotels for their guests to use. This idea would eventually blossom into a $20+ million company called Uniguest that was later acquired, which allowed Shawn to retire much earlier than most. Today, Shawn has over 384,000 followers on Instagram as @askamillionaire motivating, inspiring, and mentoring young entrepreneurs.