When I was starting out, being a young entrepreneur was not fashionable. Parents would ask, 'When are you going to get a real job?'

Reality TV is a totally different animal than the infomercial world.

When I was starting out, being a young entrepreneur was not fashionable. Parents would ask, 'When are you going to get a real job?'

You only stay in front by coming up with ideas your new competitors haven't thought of yet.

I understand that finance can be very complex.

I did something rather innovative that my competitors didn't like: I took out a full-page advertisement in the Yellow Pages that listed an office on the east side of Cincinnati, and another office on the west side, while every other heating/air-conditioning company had only one location and one phone number. I was the citywide company. In fact, our 'westside office' was just an answering service taking telephone message. From the start we appeared to be a big company.

One of the big problems entrepreneurs run into is they get too comfortable.