Work 1-on-1 with Jeremy Rivera
Jeremy Rivera has spent over 15 years at the intersection of digital marketing, SEO, and entrepreneurship — not just as a consultant, but as a builder. He started as a customer support rep at a web hosting company, taught himself to fix the problems he helped create, and has since built client campaigns, launched his own software product (SEO Arcade), and hosted hundreds of hours of unscripted conversations with real founders on the Unscripted Podcast.
His coaching focuses on two things: getting your digital presence to accurately represent your business, and giving you the 2–3 priorities that will actually move the needle — not 20 things you’ll never finish.
What You’ll Cover in the Foundational Meeting
- A plain-language audit of your current digital footprint — website, search visibility, and social signals
- Identifying the gap between how your business shows up online and what it’s actually worth
- Clarifying your 2–3 highest-leverage marketing moves for the next 90 days
- A direct conversation about what’s working, what’s wasted spend, and what to do first
$100/hr consulting rate — 30-minute foundational session.
10 Lessons Real Entrepreneurs Wish They’d Known at the Start
The Unscripted Podcast has logged hundreds of hours with founders, CMOs, financial experts, and builders — from a 27-year-old who went from eSports to $10M in his first year, to a farm kid from Idaho who built the world’s largest bed-building charity from a single bunk bed. These are the lessons that came up again and again, in their own words.
1. Stop Firefighting and Start Focusing
Kate Hendrickson — Strategic Consultant, The Strategy Lane
The most common failure Kate sees in small business planning is too many priorities. Business owners arrive with 20 things they’re working on, putting out fires in every direction, never able to work on the business because they’re always working in it. Her prescription: narrow to two or three non-negotiable focus areas, then build a data tracking mechanism to see if you’re actually moving toward those goals. Without data, you don’t even know if the effort is working.
She also asks every new client one question before anything else: Are you building this to sell, to pass on, or to run indefinitely as a lifestyle business? The answer changes the entire strategic roadmap. A business built toward a sale in three years optimizes very differently than one the owner plans to run for 30 years. Skip that question and you’re planning without a destination.
“If you feel like you’re constantly living in a reactive state, constantly putting out fires, and you don’t know what the end of this year is going to look like — now is the time to find that accountability partner who is going to help you find some direction.” — Kate Hendrickson
2. Cash Flow Is Queen — and It’s Also Baby
Meaghan Wall — Fractional CFO, Hot Girl CFO
Meaghan works with six- and seven-figure business owners, and she has two hills she’ll die on. First: separate your business and personal finances the day you form your LLC or S-Corp. Commingling funds legally dissolves the protection your business structure exists to provide — the moment funds mix, a lawsuit or dispute can reach your personal accounts. Second: most bookkeepers lump all revenue into a single top-line number, making it impossible to see which offer is actually profitable. Meaghan separates revenue by offer on the P&L to make visible what was previously invisible.
For businesses with irregular income — consultants, realtors, project-based shops — cash flow isn’t just tracked, it’s actively managed. She negotiates expense timing to match cash flow rhythms. If a contractor charges $2,000/month, ask if they’ll accept $500/week instead. Expenses can be restructured around revenue timing more often than people realize.
“Cash flow is queen and it’s also baby — everything you do is in the name of your cash flow.” — Meaghan Wall
3. Just Get Started
Marc Pitts — Founder, DiscountVapePen.com
Marc left university when his marketing program was still teaching billboards and TV. He built a business from eBay listings — self-taught HTML and SEO out of necessity because paid advertising was closed to his product category on every major platform. After years of writing conversationally, one deep dive into content structure (proper headers, formatting, hierarchy) changed their growth trajectory exponentially. The insight: you’re not writing for a search engine or a person — you’re writing for a system that serves a person, so structure matters even when the end reader is human.
He also built a YouTube channel to millions of views — and it was terminated overnight for a TOS violation. Rebuilt from scratch. His conclusion: you’re always playing in someone else’s garden. Build on your own turf where you can, and always know which platform can close the door on you tomorrow.
“Just get started. I know a lot more people who are still trying to start and it’s decades after graduating from university. You get stuck, you realize very quickly that you can’t learn everything from text. You have to do it.” — Marc Pitts
4. Treat It Like a Business
Cecily North — Founder, Traveling North Agency
Cecily started her travel agency in 2014 — and didn’t treat it like a business for three years. A few friends and family booking, no structure, running it as a side project. The revenue explosion came the moment she made the mental shift. She now builds this lesson into her own podcast for new agents because it’s the most common failure mode she sees: the founder treats their business like a hobby while expecting it to pay like a job.
Her other hard-won lesson: friends and family make the worst first clients. They overstep, expect discounts, assume you’re just getting perks, and rarely refer paying clients. Use them to get experience. Build your real client base through networking with strangers who will value the service and treat it professionally.
“If you really want it to be successful, you need to treat it like a business. It took me three years to figure that out. And then since then it’s just exploded.” — Cecily North
5. Your Customer Is the Hero — You’re the Guide
Bruce Ashford — Marketing Strategist, The Ashford Agency
Most businesses make the same marketing mistake: they cast themselves as the hero of their own story. The customer is the hero. Your business is the guide — brief, credible, and empathetic. This is the StoryBrand framework, and it works because it mirrors every story arc that has ever moved a human being. Hero wants something. Faces a problem too big to solve alone. Meets a guide with empathy and authority. Guide gives a simple plan. Hero acts. Hero wins. When your marketing leads with your credentials instead of your customer’s problem, you’ve already lost them.
Bruce also makes a useful distinction between vision and mission: your vision is the mountain peak — what winning looks like. Your mission is the path you’re taking to get there. Both should be 25–30 words max, zero jargon, and memorable enough to say from memory in a hallway.
“First impressions are visual. Commitments to buy are message based.” — Bruce Ashford
6. Repeatability Is Scalability
Mason MacUmber — AI Systems Builder, BuildWithMM
Mason builds AI systems for business owners, and his most important instruction to every AI tool he uses is: “Write down exactly what you did and how you got here.” Without a log of its steps, an AI that produced a perfect output can never reproduce it — the next run takes a different path and gets a different result. By forcing documentation of each step, you turn a one-off win into a repeatable workflow.
He also draws a hard line between AI and automation. If a task is mechanical and predictable — when this email arrives, forward it; when this file uploads, notify the team — use Zapier or a similar tool, not AI. AI is for tasks that require judgment or variability. Know which tool the job actually calls for.
“Repeatability is scalability. If the AI doesn’t leave a trace of how it got to the perfect output, you can never repeat it. You’re just chasing that one high you got that one time.” — Mason MacUmber
7. If It Can’t Run Without You, It’s Not a Business
Cameron Tope — Founder & CEO, Emerson Property Management
Cameron built his Houston property management company while living in San Diego — and the move was the forcing function his business needed. Before relocating, he was the business. Every decision ran through him. Moving to another city forced him to formalize every system and process. It worked. His rule: if the business requires the founder’s constant presence to function, it’s not a business — it’s a job with extra steps and more liability.
His vendor principle applies equally to hires and contractors: start small, and let tiny jobs reveal character before you trust someone with the big work. References don’t tell the truth — small initial assignments do.
“If I can’t run this thing remotely, I don’t want that type of business. If I have to be involved in every decision, we’re never going to grow.” — Cameron Tope
8. Marketing Makes the Promise — Operations Keeps It
Matt Tyner — CMO, Bone Dry Roofing
Matt’s governing principle after 15 years in home services marketing: marketing and operations must be one function, not two. Marketing creates the expectation. Operations either delivers on it or destroys it. Every marketing dollar spent building a promise gets erased when the crew shows up late, the follow-up call never comes, or the job is done halfway.
His honest confession: the home services industry addicted itself to paid digital channels after 2010 and forgot the traditional channels that built its reputation. His week-one action list for any small business: respond to every review, find a local parade and sign up, get a banner in a community outfield. Your market is your neighbors. Show up like a neighbor.
“We can acquire leads and opportunities all day long, but if we’re not able to make a promise and ultimately keep that promise throughout the entire customer journey — then everything you’re doing is garbage.” — Matt Tyner
9. Month One Loss, Month Three Seven Figures
Thiago Cordeiro — Founder, OG Group
Thiago is 27. He came from Brazil, nearly went professional in eSports, and built his first business during pandemic-era dropshipping. His nutraceutical company crossed $10M in its first full year — but month one was a $10–15K loss. He almost walked away. What kept him was noticing that the loss was teaching him something. Month two: profitable. Month three: seven-figure monthly revenue. The early loss isn’t a failure signal — it’s tuition.
His scaling principle: you cannot build past a certain point on individual skills alone. At some point, the only move is to train someone else to lead each department. And his partnership principle: find someone who is the opposite of you in skills. Two visionaries don’t build a company. A visionary and an operator do.
“You cannot rely 100% on your individual skills. The only way you can actually scale is to know how to become a leader and train other people to become leaders at their departments.” — Thiago Cordeiro
10. Get Up Off the Couch
Luke Mickelson — Founder, Sleep in Heavenly Peace
Luke was 35, comfortable, successful on paper, and restless in a way he couldn’t name. In a church meeting, he heard about a family in his small Idaho town whose children were sleeping on a hardwood floor. He had lived in that town for 29 years and didn’t know the apartment complex even existed. He built a bunk bed with his Boy Scouts, delivered it, and met a six-year-old named Haley who had never slept on a bed in her life — only in the backseat of her mother’s car. When Haley understood what they were assembling, she hugged both men, then hugged the bed, then kissed it. That single delivery built what is now the largest bed-building charity in the world — 440+ chapters, 400,000 beds, in nearly every US state.
His framework: when you stop thinking about yourself, your problems don’t disappear — they change proportion. The restlessness most founders feel before they build something real isn’t a problem to solve. It’s a direction to follow.
“I’m just a farm kid from Idaho. I’m nobody special. This started because some dad in some podunk town wanted to teach his kids something and he got up off the couch. Anybody can do that.” — Luke Mickelson
Ready to Build Something That Actually Works?
If any of these conversations resonated, the next step is a direct one. Jeremy Rivera’s consulting rate is $100/hr — book a focused 30-minute session below and leave with clarity on what to do next.