Like so many in his generation, Srinivas "Srini" Rao graduated into a horrible job market. Except unlike many, he did it twice.

The first time was after college. Rao graduated from UC Berkeley, finishing up school in 2000 just as the dot-com-fueled Bay Area economy was crumbling.

The second time Rao graduated into a recession was after business school, which he graduated from in 2009. Not surprisingly, he suffered his way through a few years of working for various dot-com and startups that either failed or were acquired, leaving him out of a job.

Rao’s experiences led him to believe — quite understandably — that the corporate world would never be as secure and reliable as being an entrepreneur and finding a way to support himself based on his own skills and resources.

Today, Rao is the founder of BlogcastFM, a podcast and site which started out focused on blogging, and branched out into focusing on other areas such as entrepreneurship, personal development, public speaking, surfing (Rao’s personal passion) and writing.

This side project quickly turned into a major source of business for Rao and it has allowed him to avoid working any of the dreaded “corporate jobs” he vowed to avoid.

I’ve been listening to BlogcastFM since the early days (around 2010), and so when I saw Srini Rao was coming out with a new book (The Small Army Strategy), I thought it was a great opportunity to engage him in a longer discussion on the podcast.

Five years ago, Sean Malarkey was working in real estate in Columbus, Ohio.

Today, he presides over a 7-figure online marketing training company and spends his days playing with his kids, surfing, and hanging out around Santa Barbara, California.

Not a bad life, eh?

In between was a lot of hard work, some ups and some downs, and a lot of success.

In this interview, Sean shares it all: what he learned from surviving the real estate market meltdown (including how he saw the handwriting on the wall), the “lightbulb moment” of discovering Twitter, and why he believes in pricing his company’s products much lower than their competition.

Sean is currently the President of Inspired Marketing, a company he started with former professional athlete and LinkedIn guru Lewis Howes. Together, they provide online trainings for small business owners and professionals on how to use various social media tools.

Sean is also the host of a relatively new podcast, The Money Pillow, which you can check out on iTunes.

Enjoy!

When you look up the word "innovation" in the dictionary, there should be a picture of this week's guest.

Brian Goodell went from a career in commercial real estate to founding a very successful invention business. That's right - he was an inventor. How often do you meet someone who's business card says "inventor"?

And I thought my career history had a lot of variety.

Brian actually invented numerous different types of products, many of which ended up on the stores of some of the nation's largest retailers. His inventions included a keychain breathalizer and the DipTop, a plastic "top" that goes on the top of a soda can so that people who use chewing tobacco do not get spit all over the place.

In the interview, we discuss the innovations process: from coming up with a concept, creating a working prototype, and selling the product to retailers who have limited shelf space.

After moving on from his invention business, the next step in Brian's innovation journey was to create a new type of company that could not have even existed a few years ago.

Today, he runs a company called University of Social Commerce which is like a "Groupon Broker." This is a very simplified explanation, but basically they broker deals between companies that would like to strike a deal with one of the "daily deal" types of websites (like Groupon, or Living Social). They make sure the terms are fair to both sides.

In the interview, we also talk about how he came up with the idea for that business.