IAM2633 – CEO Builds Multi-million Dollar Online Businesses

In this throwback episode, we have Marcus Taylor, founder and CEO of Venture Harbour, a young entrepreneur who launched his digital‑innovation studio at 25 without any external funding.

Starting with a love for coding and music at age 10, he merged those passions into building websites for bands and experimenting with online marketing.

Venture Harbor does not offer consulting services; instead, it maintains a portfolio of nine highly automated online ventures that are 99 % hands‑free, allowing the small core team to concentrate on creating a new venture each year.

Website: www.ventureharbour.com

LinkedIn: marcustaylor100
Facebook: MarcusTaylor100

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Marcus Taylor Teaser 00:00
We focus quite heavily on building technology and building products that help rapidly growing businesses or very promising businesses grow faster and through that the knock-on effect of them growing faster is that that grows economies, it helps grow the people within those companies and has this like amazing knock-on effect for the communities they're in.

Intro 00:22
Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:47
Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Marcus Taylor of Venture Harbor. Marcus, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Marcus Taylor 00:59
Great to be here. Thanks for having me on the show.

Gresham Harkless 01:02
No problem. Super excited to have you on. And what I want to do is just read a little bit more about Marcus so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing.

And by the age of 25, Marcus founded and is CEO of Venture Harbor, a digital innovation studio that has built a multi-million dollar portfolio of highly automated online businesses with zero outside funding.

Marcus has developed the world's first scientifically valid method of measuring human comfort zones and has been featured in the Forbes 30 under 30.

Marcus wants to show budding entrepreneurs how they too can build a profitable business without taking investments. Marcus, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Marcus Taylor 01:40
I am ready.

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Gresham Harkless 01:41
Let's do it. So to kick everything off, I wanted to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story. What led you to start your business?

Marcus Taylor 01:48
Of course. So my story starts probably when I was about 10 years old and I started coding. Yeah, I fell in love with computers at a really young age and at the same time fell in love with music.

And when I was about 16, I kind of merged the two together and started to build websites for bands and started to become really interested and fascinated by the world of online marketing and sharing that knowledge with musicians that wanted to get their music out there.

So I did all kinds of things, starting record labels, running gigs, DJing trance music, playing drums in Scandinavian metal bands, all kinds of weird, weird stuff.

But basically, this just led me further and further down. I started to kind of dislike the music part and fall more in love with the online marketing part. And yeah, so I was just spending a lot of my time as a teenager building different online marketing experiments.

And I left school, didn't go to university. Instead, I joined a digital marketing agency. And it got to a point quite quickly where all these online marketing experiments I was running in the evenings were actually making more money than my day job was.

And so it got to a point where I was like, okay, maybe I should put these into a company. Maybe this is my thing. And yeah, from there, Venture Harbour is, so Venture Harbour is a company that unlocks growth for people, businesses and economies.

And we do that by solving the biggest problems that tomorrow's leading companies are facing. So how that works in practice is every year we, we take the same away and we build a new venture with one rule, which is, which is that it has to be more ambitious than the last.
Today we have nine of them.

Gresham Harkless 03:43
Nice. Nice. And so you mentioned that, it could be economies, it can be, businesses, it could be a lot of different types of organizations that could be, you know, looking and you're working with. Right.

Marcus Taylor 03:57
Yeah. So it's kind of, so we, we focus quite heavily on,building technology and building products that, that help, Rapidly growing businesses or very promising businesses grow faster and through that

The knock-on effect of them growing faster is that that grows economies? It helps grow the people within those companies and has this like amazing knock-on effect for the communities that are

Gresham Harkless 04:21
Nice, it kind of sounds like a dominoes for lack of a better term where you know, just because I'm lucky everything starts to fall over. Nice.
And I want to, I know you touched on it a little bit. Can you drill a little bit deeper on like venture Harbor? How exactly it works?

If somebody, I guess calls you or you get started, like how does that process work?

Marcus Taylor 04:38
Yeah. So we're, so we don't, we don't offer any services. You cannot hire Venture Harbor. Like there's no,there's no consulting angle to it.

We're very kind of, basically we're, we're a small team. The core team is very small. And we basically, there are two kind of aspects to the business. One is that we have this portfolio of ventures we've built and we grow that portfolio, through online marketing and development.

And then the other aspect is, is our kind of like innovation lab where we, every year we, we are tasked with building a new venture to add to the portfolio.

And yeah, the thing that is kind of unique and a little bit unusual about Bench Harbour is that we spend so much time thinking about and implementing innovative ways to automate these businesses.

So all nine businesses, they're all actively running, but they're completely automated or 99% automated to allow us to focus on that new venture.

Gresham Harkless 05:46
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I think that's a great example of like your secret sauce, because I think a lot of times businesses are trying to implement some type of automated automation.

So that you can not necessarily create more time, but you can be more efficient and effective in the time that you have so that you can work on other things. Like you guys have other ventures that you're starting every single year, but you're only where you're best able to do that with automation.

Marcus Taylor 06:10
Definitely.

Gresham Harkless 06:11
Yeah. Nice. And I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack.

And this might be an Apple book or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Marcus Taylor 06:24
There are two that springs to mind. One is this. This is my journal. This is called an oak journal.

They're really hard. It might be difficult to get in the UK. There's, I think they sell them at one, there's like one shop in Colorado that sells them. So I have to get them bulk bulk shipped over here, but this journal is incredible.

It's, it's almost like if you took, like the top 50 business books and personal development books and boiled it into a journal, like all the best practices around like habit formation are all in this.
And, yeah, like this, this has made a huge impact on structuring my day, and then the other thing that works in the journal.

Gresham Harkless 07:08
okay, cool.

Marcus Taylor 07:10
And the other thing that this works in tandem with is, so we've one of our latest ventures that we're working on is called Serene.

And it's an app that basically you press a button, like for me, it's Command S. And it shuts down distracting apps, blocks you from going to distracting websites, plays AI-generated focus music. I've got it set up so it turns on, like, lights, Phillip Hughes lights, so it tells everyone in the office, don't distract me.

And so the combination of being, like, having a well-planned day and this kind of technology layer that prevents distractions, that just means I can kind of, like, really focus and get a lot done.

Gresham Harkless 07:53
Yeah, it gives you the opportunity to focus and drill down. And I wish, I hope that app, or I hope you guys are working on that app, working around in real time, in real life. That would be pretty awesome as well, so that you can just zone out when you're walking around the world.

But, no, I appreciate that. And I think that the ability to be able to focus and to tap into secret sauces and nuggets from all these different books and these habits and these gurus is something great. So I appreciate the Oak journal as well.

So I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget, and this is a word of wisdom or a piece of advice, or if you can hop into a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Marcus Taylor 08:29
I would tell my younger self to really think hard about selling time. Because the biggest, our biggest leap in growth as a company was when we stopped doing things that meant we were exchanging our time for revenue or the team's time for revenue.

And when we started to focus on building products that were infinitely scalable, our growth went from say, I don't know, 15 to 20% a year up to like 300 to 700% per year.

Now, if I had, it was uncomfortable. Sure. Like, you know, we had to fire clients and stuff. You know, it was a big change, but I think I would love for someone to have like really picked me up and shook me and said, Dude, this is not how you build massively scalable companies.

Build products where there's not a human element that is blocking the growth.

Gresham Harkless 09:33
Yeah, because we have to eat and sleep and being able to do that and maximize that time is a great way to do that. Was there something that prompted you to do that in general or was it just the epiphany just kind of came one day?

Marcus Taylor 09:46 
Yeah, I had a really frustrating client.

Gresham Harkless 09:51
A lot of us did.

Marcus Taylor 09:53
I had, I had that kind of client that was the nail in the coffin, so to speak. And after that, I just decided no more clients, no more exchanging time for revenue.

And also like I've, I've always just loved the process of building stuff. Like for me, my thing is like, I love the creative process of creating ventures.

So it was kind of just a realization, like I need to do more of that and less of the client work.

Gresham Harkless 10:20
Yeah, when you start to be able to make that pivot and understand that, and that's when you really can make even more of an impact.
So you don't have that, like you mentioned, that human element that's blocking you from growth or, you know, it's capping that growth, so to speak.

So I think that makes perfect sense. And now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO.

Gresham Harkless 10:40
And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Marcus, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Marcus Taylor 10:45
I, in recent, In the last year particularly, I used to think of a CEO as this charismatic, big leader that has to be the front and the face of the company. But as we've grown, I've started to view my role as a CEO a bit differently and see it more as I'm a coach. My role is to bring out the best in my team.

And to develop them, like, like coach them. So like, I've often said to the team, like, we are not a family. We're more akin to a sports team. And my role as the CEO is like, I'm the coach, I'm the one that that is kind of at the sidelines, helping my team win.

And so that for me is right now what a CEO means.

Gresham Harkless 11:38
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And then, you know, definitely the coach understands all the different aspects of the team, the different positions where people should go, where their strengths and weaknesses are.

So kind of gives you that, that holistic view and that top level view, I guess you can say, so that you can make those decisions and understand, you know, where to take the company, where not to take the company and so on and so forth. Yeah.

Marcus Taylor 11:58
Yeah, definitely.

Gresham Harkless 12:00
Nice. Well, I definitely appreciate your time, Marcus. What I wanted to do was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know.

And then of course, how they can get ahold of you and find out about all the awesome things that you're building and growing.

Marcus Taylor 12:14
Yeah, so you can get in touch with me from the Venture Harbour website, which is Venture Harbour, Harbour spelt the British way, so V-E-N-T-U-R-E, H-A-R-B-O-U-R dot com.

There's a link on there if you want to reach out to me, I'm happy to answer any questions. And the only other thing I'd add is that we are days away from launching Serene, the app that I mentioned that helps you focus and block all these distractions.

So anyone that wants to beta test that, it's completely free of charge. And you can go to sereneapp.com and register for the beta if you're interested.

Gresham Harkless 12:57
Nice. Well, I definitely appreciate you and appreciate all the awesome things you're building and growing. And we'll have those links in the show notes as well, just so that anybody can follow up with you.

But again, thank you for, you know, making a huge impact and making that shift and that change. Cause I think you're doing awesome things in the world and I hope you have a great rest of the day.

Marcus Taylor 13:15
Thank you. Thanks for having me, Gresh.

Outro 13:17
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Want to level up your business even more? Read blogs, listen to podcasts, and watch videos at CBNation.co. Also, check out our I Am CEO Facebook group. This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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