Joining us today on Pass The Secret Sauce, Jim Kalb, the president and founder at Triad Components Group – the parent company of OptiFuse, Switch Components and Vortex Technologies.
Triad Components Group (OptiFuse) has been listed on the Inc. 5000 for the last 6 years as well as being named as one of Forbes magazine’s “25 Best Small Companies” in 2017. In 2019, TCG became an Employee-Owned company (ESOP).
Jim has a passion for helping others to grow themselves and their businesses through mentoring, professional development, and the never-ending curiosity to make people, products, and systems better.
In this episode, we discuss:
- Introduction to the episode [2:06]
- Jim’s intriguing childhood background [3:10]
- Going to San Diego State to study, getting away from his town and family [8:05]
- Working a cool job in an international firm, traveling to different countries [9:45]
- How Jim started his first company [13:45]
- Getting into huge debt; $ 4M down to $ 50K worth of stuff in 2000 [15:25]
- How many times he crashed, when did he solidified things [16:50]
- Jim shares the three types of farming analogy and the hunting analogy [17:35]
- Mentoring entrepreneurs, his advice to people wanting to get into business [20:35]
- Doing custom-stuffs that other companies will never do for their customers [25:50]
- Training people to look for opportunities to be authorized distributors [30:55]
- Things he overcame overtime of being in the business [35:05]
- Opening a program of selling his company to his employees [38:55]
- What are the future endeavors of Triad Components Group and Jim [43:15]
- [Job Announcement] How to become part of the Triad Components Group [44:05]
- Categories of people they want to engage with [49:10]
Links to sources and tools
- Connect with Jim Kalb on LinkedIn
- If you want to become a part of the TCG or want to get mentorship, inquire at:
- jimk@triadcomponentsgroup.com
- Visit the TCG website and check their services
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