For my first blog post, I'm going to share the first ever interview I did for a site called Nwsppr.co. Enjoy!
Q1. Who is Troy Ericson in real life?
That’s an excellent question, and one that I’m starting to find the answer to at this point in my life. I absolutely love to inspire people to tap into their fullest & strongest mindset. I literally believe that people can accomplish about 98% of the things they’d like to do if they just play their cards right and take the risks that they’re afraid to take. I love helping people do that. But most of all, I’m just a regular dude with a boatload of confidence and the desire to change how people see themselves. I’m humble, but I do know that I have a superpower when it comes to helping other people get their head right. I’m not quite yet the Clark Kent/Superman alter ego just yet, but let me give you some background on some things I enjoy, how I got to where I am, and how I help other people:
First off, I’m a 23 year old freelance entrepreneur from South Bend, Indiana and currently living near Dayton, Ohio. I’m the kind of guy that has very few focuses and aims to be excellent at them rather than having a ton of interests that I’m okay at. My very first focus growing up was baseball, which is where I created a VERY strong work ethic for myself, thanks to how much my dad encouraged me to be great and how much I loved (and still do to this day) the game. It taught me to embrace competition against others and, more importantly, myself. And I ended up fighting through a Tommy John surgery in high school and playing college baseball as a pitcher at Division 2 Cedarville University because of it.
Another focus of mine is music. I grew up listening to Metallica, and there’s nothing quite like the therapy of pulling out my guitar and letting my emotions go. I haven’t quite evolved that as much as I’d like to yet, but I have surprised myself with my creative capacity given that I didn’t listen to any music at all until the age of 12 and taught myself guitar in high school.
My third focus, and probably the heaviest at this time, is entrepreneurship. It’s one thing to be in business, but the blessing to call your own shots and take ownership of your failures and successes is super unique. Especially when it’s your job to sell products and services that improve peoples’ lives.
Q2. How did you first get into Entrepreneurship?
I sort of stumbled upon this whole entrepreneurial journey in a really unique way. My mom’s side of the family has a little hardware store that I visited pretty much every day after school as a kid. I didn’t think about entrepreneurship very often at that age, but being in a business environment got me to ask my mom a few questions about how business worked. On top of that, my dad is a pretty smart accountant and stock trader, so he covered that side of business. My parents never really pushed me into entrepreneurship because they value the security of a regular job. They just wanted to help me understand business to prepare me for adult life one day, which was a good start.
My real push for entrepreneurship came at the end of my first semester at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, when I had a book that I never used and sold it on Amazon and made $100+, which at the time felt unreal… So I started buying books off other students and eventually created a Facebook page that people I didn’t even know started to contact to sell me their books. It got pretty big and I made my school’s news channel as well as the local station. I pretty much became an expert at flipping stuff and had a whole system down and sold over 10K in products (mostly books) on Amazon and eBay the next semester.
At the time, I was studying business analytics, which wasn’t creative enough for me, so I transferred schools to the middle of nowhere Cedarville University in Ohio so I could study marketing, sport management, and the Bible, all while upgrading to playing D2 baseball (Loras was D3). So that was the end of my book flipping business. I wanted to start something that was 100% digital anyway, because I knew I wouldn’t have the time to continue all the logistical madness…
Then one day I happened to be watching a snapchat story of some girl that was pushing an account called ‘Young Luxury’. It sounded pretty spammy, but I was 19 and had nothing to lose, so I watched their stories non-stop because the guy running it, Grant Cooper, owned a pretty large social media marketing agency in Philadelphia called Social Vantage and was simply dropping dimes of knowledge every day that sparked new ways of thinking for me…
And I eventually got sucked into buying his course (back before courses were over-saturated) and it changed my life because I learned all about Facebook ads, Clickfunnels, etc. etc. and started freelancing on UpWork and got my first gig with a guy named Greg Berry, a serial entrepreneur of 11 years, who hired me to work on a couple of projects. I introduced him to sales funnels, which fundamentally changed the way he did business online.
Looking back, I got super lucky to meet Greg, because he’s given me every opportunity to put what I’ve learned into practice. I didn’t realize at that time how valuable that connection would be for me over the next few years. I got to do and try things that 19 year olds are normally never given a shot at. And we crushed it together on a few different projects, the biggest of which was Hustle Island, a community we built up to over 200,000 entrepreneurial-minded people.
Since then, I’ve continued to grind away at Facebook ads and funnels and have done work for some awesome people, including Grant, which was a dream come true at the time. It’s crazy how things come full circle. I’m super thankful too because it allowed me to graduate college and not have to get a “real job”.
But the most pivotal point in my career was around April of this year when I came across a guy named Ian Stanley who taught me the magic of email marketing and just how powerful it is, plus a whoooole bunch of life and business advice that’s been insanely valuable to me. I had dipped my toe in emails with Hustle Island, but Ian opened up my mind 10x more than anyone else in business ever has… I’ve become an email expert in the process and have earned the title ‘Lead Paramedic’ because of it.
Q3. Why are you called the “Lead Paramedic”?
I’m the Lead Paramedic because I revive dead leads in peoples’ businesses through email. And they make a whole lot more money each month because of it. I’ve managed small email lists of 500 people all the way up to lists of 100,000+ people. I’m a pro at improving open rates, click rates, and ultimately, writing words that make people buy things. I’ve taken some big corporate companies and literally doubled their email and sales numbers in a matter of a few weeks. It’s super fun because there’s a technical side and a creative side to it. Plus, you don’t have to spend money on ads to get started, and you can see all the numbers, so it’s easy to track success and show people how much better their business is doing because of it. Never listen to someone that says email doesn’t work, because the whole world has been checking their inbox every day since the 90s. No other digital platform can say the same.
Q4. How did you start your community of Hustlers and Entrepreneurs?
That’s a good question. Greg and I got started on Hustle Island and literally had no clue how big it was going to get. Greg always felt that entrepreneurs should wear an ‘official jersey’ and join a big community, just like fans of sports teams do. So he created a really dope ‘Hustle Shirt’ and we started giving them away for free plus shipping. And the shirt pretty much went viral in the ‘Hustle’ space on Instagram and Facebook. We shipped out 21,905 of them in our first year. After people opted in, we gave them a free trial of a paid membership to the Hustlers’ Club, where we teach people the basics of entrepreneurship. That’s probably had more than a couple thousand paid members at one time or another, and overall, we’ve collected around 200,000 leads and put up some other pretty ridiculous numbers that we never expected. We’ve also made some incredible relationships with the people we coach and have taught them some things that have helped them so much in their businesses and lives. It’s also how I met my good friend Jason Wojo, who joined the team late in our first year in business.
JASON WOJO – GREG BERRY – TROY ERICSON
Q5. How has your marketing career shaped you as an entrepreneur?
Being a marketer is huge because you can’t be an entrepreneur without it. Every time you try to persuade someone to do something, you’re selling to them, whether you’re pitching a product, service, or idea. Given that I came into entrepreneurship as a marketer, I feel unstoppable, because I can use that marketing background in any type of business that I want. Right now, that’s Lead Paramedic. In the future, it’s probably going to also be as a private pitching instructor. I’ve even worked with a really big page called @RalphTheRex, a fictional T-Rex that makes funny videos for his 1,300,000+ fans on Facebook & Instagram. I helped him sell dinosaur merch… So being a marketer has pretty much made anything possible for me and I’m just so excited to wake up every morning and think of new ways to use my skills to improve lives, whether that’s increasing a business owner’s revenue or making someone smile because they got their dinosaur merch in the mail. Plus, I’ve gotten to meet a few of the people I work with and that’s one of the coolest friendships to have since most people who meet online never meet in person. It’s extra special. Q6. Do you think an educational qualification is necessary for an entrepreneur or business?
Business is all about solving problems. If you have a skill that solves someone’s problem, whether it’s a want or a need, you can start a business. Of course you have to educate yourself to develop that skill. Just make sure you educate yourself in the right place. In a lot of professions, you need a qualification. If you want to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, etc, no one’s going to hire you or compensate you in any way without a degree. But when you’re in business, people hire you if you can solve their problem. I think I’ve been asked one time since 2016 if I had a degree, which I do now, but people in the business world are only concerned with making sure that paying you a certain amount of money will result in a greater of amount of money for them. I think my degree helped me better understand business in a general sense, and I met some awesome people in college and had incredible experiences that I wouldn’t trade for anything, but colleges do need to step their game up when it comes to business in the 21st century. So, if you want to be a profession that requires a qualification, go to college. If not, then find someone that’s doing very well at what you want to do and learn everything you can from them.
Q7. Where do you see yourself in the next few years?
I don’t know. Life takes so many weird twists that you’d never expect. All I know is that I’m having a blast right now doing my own thing. My life is pretty simple at the moment. Not easy, but simple. I wake up, get to work, go outside and throw baseballs, go to the gym, and repeat it the next day. And on Sundays, I go to church and hang with my friends.
I really do think Lead Paramedic is going to crush it because I’ve tried a few other unique concepts on my own and for clients that have failed, and I’ve learned so much from them. This idea is so great because it’s practical. Everyone has email, all businesses have dead leads, and very few of those businesses are utilizing email to its full potential. Very soon, I’m going to have my own email list that I write to and educate people every day on topics from making money in your business to having a positive outlook in your personal life. I want to change the idea that so many things are impossible for people to achieve. They’re not. You can do it if you spend your time wisely. So, a few years from now, look out for me as someone that’s changed sooo many businesses for the better and has made people’s lives more positive and enjoyable. I’m not trying to brag, I just honestly believe that’s where I’m going. And if that doesn’t happen, I don’t regret saying it here, because I’m not afraid to fail or look dumb. I’ll just learn, adjust, and move to the next thing. A lot of people never start because they don’t want to “look dumb” if their idea fails. Who cares? Q8. Is there something you’d like to say to our readers?
There are a million things I’d love to say to your readers, but to keep it brief, take a few moments to yourself and write down what you want to achieve in your life. Don’t keep it “realistic”. Go wild! And I mean it… please do this. Then write down what you’re doing right now in your life. Are the things you’re doing now preparing you to accomplish what you want to accomplish? If not, you’re going to have to make a change. And change is scary sometimes. But do it anyway. Invest in yourself. Spend money now to save years or decades of never figuring it out on your own. A lot of people think you’re weak if you don’t figure it out on your own. That’s so false. Go all out and invest in yourself and then grab every opportunity you can so you can use that time to build your empire, whatever that might be.
Lastly, no matter what happens, you are worthy. Simply the fact that you exist is an incredible gift from God that you should never take for granted. We all have our own personal journeys with successes and failures, so don’t ever think that one failure is too much to overcome. There’s so much of life that we can’t control, so only focus on what you CAN control and do your best at that. If you’re not feeling happy right now or you want to take your mind to the next level, send me an email at troy@leadparamedic.com or message me on Instagram @yosoytroy. I love connecting with new people and helping them reach their potential. I’m not here to sell you stuff, I’m here to make your life better.
Q9. Is there something you’d like to say to Nwsppr?
Thank you! Mehul – you’re the perfect example of someone who simply reached out to me, and now we’ve connected and are in each other’s circles. That’s a boss move. If more people did that, a lot more dreams would be reached over time.