Linda Teglovic’s father was a college professor who didn’t appreciate his daughter making her living showing off her body as a model, until she got paid $72,000 as one of three “butts in jeans” for a print ad.
Teglovic started modeling in New York City at 14. A leggy blonde beauty, who is 5’10, she supplemented her income at college and later after she became sales manager for Federal Express.
“The money was great, and I know how to use cornstarch to buff my legs to give the illusion of flawlessness,” she said. This led her to become a body double for actresses like Rene Russo in “The Thomas Crown Affair.” “It was more cost effective to show my leg hanging off a ladder and save Russo for the wide shots.”
But when Teglovic moved permanently to LA, she couldn’t find an agency to represent her as a leg model or body double, so, with $1,000 of her savings, she started her own agency, Body Parts Models in 2001. She put up notices of a casting call at car washes and supermarkets. When 1,000 people showed up, Teglovic knew she was onto something.
Now Body Parts Models represents 250 “parts” and books 20 jobs a month. Most are not professional models. “We have schoolteachers, firefighters, even an astronaut who is one of our hand models,” she said.
There are 14 divisions for which to audition (eyes, lips, hair, skin/neck and ears, hands, feet, hands and feet, eyes, butts, back, arms, abs, unusual parts and full body double).
Though she used to dismiss body parts that weren’t conventionally beautiful, Teglovic has become savvier. Clients need every kind of butt –big, small, even saggy. Business is good. The agency will earn $600,000 by the end of this year, a 23% increase over 2010.
It kept his forefathers alive and now it is his business. James Holt is a fourth-generation alligator wrestler.
A member of the Seminole Indian Tribe in South Florida, Holt and his younger brother Clinton, along with two other team members, host an alligator wrestling and venomous snake-handling show at the Native Village on the Seminole Reservation in Hollywood, Fla.
The show attracted 50,000 visitors last year. And, with improvements wrought to the Native Village, Holt expects 100,000 visitors in 2012. The full 45-minute show nets him $1,000. And he anticipates making $60,000 from his wrestling by year-end.
Holt has been wrestling the reptiles for seven years, learning the more dangerous deep water technique, where he dives into six feet of water and drags the 200 to 300 pound alligator out. Using a traditional technique called “bulldogging” he holds the critter’s deadly mouth closed only with his chin and chest, leaving his arms free to tie up the gator.
“During the Indian Wars of the 1800′s, our people kept getting pushed farther south into the swamp, away from deer and other livestock,” explained Holt. “We depended on capturing the gators alive to take fresh meat back to our distant camps,” said Holt.
Holt also puts his hands and even head in the gator’s mouth and, lest anyone thinks the gators are drugged or lethargic, he nearly lost a hand when the gators jaws slammed shut (luckily the gator opened his mouth to get a better grip). Also his brother suffered puncture wounds and a fractured skull when one of the monsters took a chomp on his cranium.
“It’s a calculated risk,” said Holt, who owns the 300 gators rotated in the show — all rescued from trappers. He keeps them “as wild as possible. Not only is it better for the animal, but it makes for a livelier show.”
Jon Wee and Owen Morse made great use of their respective college degrees in economics and psychology when they paired up in 1988. They became chainsaw jugglers.
This duo, known as The Passing Zone, also juggles sharp knives, flaming torches and fills garbage bags while riding Segways. They perform mostly for corporate events, focusing on themes like “juggling priorities” and “keeping lots of balls in the air.”
“We use real chainsaws straight from the hardware store and it is truly dangerous,” said Wee, who admits they have both cut themselves numerous times. “We just try not to let our audience see any blood.”
Their act has gained them appearances on “The Tonight Show,” “The Today Show,” The Miss America Pageant and many others. They’ve even performed at The White House and before Prince Charles who deemed them “clever” and expressed relief he wasn’t seated in the front row as sharp objects flew.
The team appears at more than 100 corporate events a year for such companies as Boeing, Hewlett-Packard and Mattel. They even offer a juggling workshop to attendees, as a team-building exercise.
“People begin the workshops protesting that they can’t juggle, but we teach them slowly — one small goal at a time,” said Morse. “Soon they are realizing their own success and seeing that all things are possible.”
Sound business principles mixed with juggling appear to be a winning concept. The Passing Zone’s projected revenue for 2012 is $1.2 million. “That’s a long way from where we started, passing the hat for a handful of quarters,” said Wee.
A young Cat Yronwode passed a store window with a bottle whose label showed a woman in a turban and bikini bowing to a Buddha statue. Intrigued, she went in.
“Right away I noticed I was the only white person and asked if it was okay for me to shop there,” she recalled. “It wasn’t only okay, I was welcomed.”
Thus began Yronwode’s love affair with an African-based system of spiritual practice called “Conjure” or “rootwork.” Her interpretation of that she calls “Hoodoo.” A broad definition would be the methods and rituals of many cultures using botanicals, talisman and amulets of power to influence the outcome of situation.
In 1994, Yronwode posted a web page on Hoodoo and soon was contacted by someone who wanted to buy several John the Conqueror roots. The roots are used for increasing male power and luck in gambling. Recognizing a business opportunity, Yronwode started The Lucky Mojo Curio company in 1996 with $5,000.
The company now has a dozen employees, wholesalers from Australia to Sweden, an online forum, weekly radio show, correspondence course and will bring in $1 million this year.
Both the online and the brick-and-mortar in Forestville, Calif., sell conjure, occult and magical supplies for ritual work used in a host of pagan practices and traditional religions around the world. One can find a shed snakeskin, dragon’s blood, and a statue of the Virgin Mary on the shelves.
Most customers (29,000 in the store’s database) are looking for help in the areas of court cases, spirituality, healing, obtaining blessings and money, “uncrossing” or removal of problems, protection, and revenge. But, “the number one area is always love,” said Yronwode.
Wayne Hoffman was eight years old the Christmas he got his first magic set. From that day on he never missed a David Copperfield TV special and became an after-school fixture at a dusty old magic shop in his hometown of Reading, Pa.
Other magicians who frequented the place let Hoffman learn the tricks of their trade and soon his first publicist — his mom — was getting him gigs all over town.
At age 15, he established Hoffman Entertainment with $200 for props and worked trade shows with complicated tricks, such as emptying a soda can, refilling it and even re-chilling it — magically — to lure an audience to his client’s booth.
His business took off after he began his work as a mind reader. “Magic is just a visual illusion,” Hoffman said. “Mentalism is using psychology to entertain and psychological manipulation is easy for me.”
He said he has devoted a decade to studying the way people dress, move and speak. He claims to know what is going through people’s minds at any moment.
“The average person is convinced to take certain actions 400 times a day and doesn’t even know it,” said Hoffman. He uses such psychological triggers in his show, “Mind Candy.” He once asked an audience member to draw a symbol hidden from his view. She drew a yin/yang symbol, because he had used certain words in his request, he explained. The fact that he had the same symbol tattooed on his arm also helped.
“That trick was performed live and broadcast to five million people,” said Hoffman, who has also appeared on “The Ellen DeGeneres” show and NBC’s “Phenomenon,”He added: “There was no guarantee she would draw that symbol,” he said. “It was quite a relief and a big success.” He anticipates $250,000 by the end of this year.
Whether your experience has been limited to an air guitar or a hairbrush microphone, David Fishof wants to release the inner rock star in you.
Fishof, who was road manager for such rock legends as Ringo Starr and The Eagles’ Joe Walsh, founded Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp in 2000 with $2,000. The camp features rock headliners and his old friends to be camp counselors who play alongside the campers.
These counselors have included such legends as Vince Neil of Motley Crue, Roger Daltrey of The Who and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith. Fishof tapped a vein of longing. Next year’s revenue is projected to be between $4 million and $6 million.
Camp sessions are offered six times a year in locations like Abbey Road Studios in London, Avatar Studios and The Gibson Showroom in New York City and even The Playboy Mansion in California. Prices vary by the length of stay at camp and the location.
The price for one event, featuring Warren Haynes of the Allman Brothers, Matt Sorum of Guns ‘n’ Roses, and Bruce Kulick of KISS costs between $5,499 and $7,499. It’s an additional $799 if you want to bring your own groupie.
Equipment is provided and campers get placed in “bands” according to their skill level. If a camper has never held a guitar, he or she will get handed a tambourine and encouraged to sing. If the camper is an old pro, there is a Masters Program. There is also Young Rockers, for kids 12 to 16.
Everyone can attend music or songwriting classes, and rehearse and jam with the stars. The bands even write and record an original song during their stay. Then everyone performs live at a major venue like The House Of The Blues or Whiskey A Go Go, taking home a video of their performance and as many autographs from the star counselors as they can carry.
Campers come from all walks of life from CEOs to firefighters to retirees. Wives most often send their husbands as a gift — although 35% of campers are women — and more than half come back more than once.
Take one lazy afternoon, an excess of alcohol and two old friends shooting the breeze and what do you get? A great business idea.
Such was the case with CelebriDucks, a new take on an old toy — rubber duckies with famous faces under their bills, like President Obama and Elvis Presley.
“Our most popular, even internationally, is Mr. T,” said founder Craig Wolfe. “I had no idea how much everyone loved rubber ducks.”
He started the company in 1998 with $100,000 he made from selling his precious art animation company. Since that time, CelebriDucks has sold more than one million ducks and will hit $1 million in revenue this year. With 12 to 15 new ducks to be added to the line next year, the company is projected to grow by 50% in 2012.
Not bad for a guy who is the company’s only employee. He outsources all other tasks to 25 subcontractors. He also works from his home in California’s Marin County. “I resist expansion, build organically and turn down all investor’s offers,” he said.
Wolfe negotiates licensing and pays a percentage of every sale to those celebrities or estates he selects to “duckify.” Some licenses are limited like Charlie Chaplin — and after the run, these ducks are “retired from the pond” — he said. Others, like the Jesus duck, will be with us always, he added.
Wolfe is delighted by suggestions he gets for new ducks from fans and collectors. “I keep a running list of celebrities I’d like to depict,” he said “But there are so many ducks and so little time.”
Since the Wicked Witch wrote “Surrender Dorothy” from her smoking broom in “The Wizard of Oz,” America has had a love affair with skywriting. And that suits Patrick Walsh just fine.
Walsh is the CEO of AirSign, Inc., an aerial advertising company in New York with nationwide and international reach.
In 2008, Walsh bought a regional mom-and-pop skywriting operation for $600,000 and approached banks for capital so that he could expand the business. He was turned down cold. So he convinced other aerial advertising companies across the country to agree to let him market their services as subcontractors.
In his first year as owner, AirSign grossed $1 million and, with the addition of international services, it is on track to hit $5 million in 2012.
His planes and helicopters pull banners, and his hot air balloons and blimps are customized with corporate logos. He also has squads of trained pilots to fly a five-plane formation using a computerized system to create smoke letters as large as the Empire State Building. He also has single pilot skywriters.
“It takes great skill to do skywriting well,” said Walsh, a pilot. “There are no erasers up there, so there can be no mistakes.”
Personal messages cost between $750 and $2,000. And, by far, the most popular is “Will You Marry Me?” AirSign pilots must be doing something right. “We have 100% success rate for proposals,” said Walsh. “Everyone has said ‘yes.’ ”
For anyone who saw the destruction in Joplin, Mo., last May, the thought of running towards a tornado as opposed to running from one seems downright deranged.Yet Martin Lisius’ clients sign up eagerly to do just that. Lisius is CEO of Tempest Tours, Inc., and since 2000, the company has taken guests on trips to view the rampaging funnel clouds on the portions of the Great Plans known as Tornado Alley.
A storm chaser since 1987, Lisius grew up in a part of Texas famous for having more tornadoes than any other place in the world. Fascinated with extreme weather, Lisius even assembled a homemade weather station on the roof of his house as a kid.
He grew up to be a cinematographer who formed a company, StormSock.com that provides extreme weather footage to producers. He filmed his first 3D tornado this year.
Lisius bowed to friends’ requests to accompany him on trips to see the wild weather by forming Tempest Tours. He started the company with one van, a laptop and $5,000 and projects $230,000 in revenues in 2012.
The company runs eight to nine tours each year from their bases in Oklahoma City, Arlington, Texas and Denver, Colorado with between 6 and 20 guests per tour. Each tour lasts between 4 and 10 days. Lodging is provided, and everyone gets a T-shirt.
The tour does not drive into the tornado or anywhere close enough to compromise safety. “We leave that to reality TV,” he said. “We get close enough so our guests get great photos,” he explained.
He can’t guarantee each group will see a tornado. But Lisius does guarantee each tour will encounter severe weather — be it lightning, wind, rain or hail. What you will not see are airborne cows as in the movie, “Twister,” on which Lisius served as a consultant. “The dust and debris would obscure the view of flying livestock. But Hollywood is Hollywood.”
“Earthbound” is one word that rarely applies to Shayna Swanson. The owner of Aloft Circus Arts spends most of her time in the air — suspended from ropes, hanging from strips of silk or swinging on a bar. Swanson is a trapeze artist. And should you wish to get your Cirque on, she runs a school where you can learn to be an aerial artist, too.
The Aloft Loft in Chicago is a teaching school for the aerial and circus arts. Students can take classes in Aerial Silks and Rope, Tight Wire Walking, Acrobatics, Contortion and of course, Trapeze — but not the Flying Trapeze you’ve seen in big circuses, where one flyer leaves the bar and gets caught by another flyers swinging nearby. “That’s a roller coaster thrill,” said Swanson.
“We teach Static Trapeze, which is less of an amusement park ride and more of an art form,” she explained. Mind you, that art form takes place seven feet off the floor with only a mat and a spotter below. There’s no net.
Swanson, a lifelong gymnast, had her eye set on becoming a choreographer. But after taking a class in aerial arts, she enrolled in England’s famous Bristol Circus School (while there, she performed suspended from a bridge over the River Kent. Afterwards — back home in Chicago — she got a job with a local circus.
Looking for a more stable income, Swanson started her school in 2002 with $5,000 borrowed from a friend. She began teaching three classes a week herself with 15 students. Aloft now has a staff of 20. Its 200 students attend nine-week sessions, ranging from $225 to $309 per class.
The school has proven so popular it has had to relocate four times — the latest move to an 8,000-square-foot facility. Swanson projects revenues to hit $300,000 this year.
Everyone over the age of 18 — 16, if participating with a parent — is welcome if they pass a doctor’s physical. Students range from beginners to old pros looking to keep their skills up-to-date. Even phobias prove to be no impediment, as Swanson herself can attest. “I do this for a living and still have a fear of heights.”
A dummy covered in lifelike skin that twitches and shakes and bleeds profusely when its leg is amputated sounds like a spine-tingling Halloween prop. But it is actually a tool created to save the lives of American military personnel on battlefields.
The idea started with Jamie Hyneman, host of The Discovery Channel’s “Mythbusters,” who brought it to former colleagues who were working at Kernerworks, which was owned by Eric Edmeades.
Edmeades had experience with special effects. So did his employees, some of whom helped develop the creatures in Hollywood blockbusters “Men In Black” and “Star Wars.”
Once the idea was explained to him, Edmeades opened Kernerworks in 2010, with $10,000 to take on the continued design, development and manufacture of trauma trainers. The company expects next year’s revenue to hit $2 million, and to generate even more sales through its partnership with Florida-based military contractor KGS.
Kernerworks has two main divisions — one that develops and tests prototypes and another that manufactures them.
The trauma trainer dummies are literally a life-saving product. One of the most common battlefield injuries suffered by soldiers in recent wars is leg amputation caused by stepping on an IED (improvised explosive device). The explosive often severs the femoral artery, causing the soldier to bleed out within 90 seconds — too short a space of time to call for a medic. Usually it is a fellow soldier who deals with the situation. Any panic on their part or misapplied tourniquet could spell the end for the wounded soldier.
The trauma trainer “kicks and writhes and bleeds like a real person and continues to bleed until a tourniquet is applied correctly,” said Edmeades. “This allows the responder to gain valuable practical experience that saves lives in the field.”
Correction: An earlier version of this gallery incorrectly stated that Edmeades had experience working on special effects for “Men in Black” and “Star Wars.”
The last thing Tony Simons expected when he arrived at that goal setting workshop in Milwaukee a few years ago was that he would be asked to walk on fire. Yet later that night, he and the other attendees found themselves, in their bare feet, facing a fire pit, getting ready to take the first step onto coals whose temperature exceeded 1,000 degrees.
“I was excited and curious,” said Simons, an associate professor of leadership, organizational behavior and applied psychology at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration. He stepped out on to the glowing coals reassuring himself that the conference organizers wouldn’t actually let the attendees get hurt.
He didn’t get hurt, but he felt profoundly changed. “It does something to you when you can say to yourself, ‘I walked through fire,’ ” he said.
Simons next enrolled at the Firewalking Institute of Research and Education in Texas, where he earned the designation “Certified Firewalker” and, upon his return, tried to interest his university in adding firewalking to the curriculum.
Liability issues quashed that idea and Simons formed his own business Integrity Dividend, LLC and began offering Life Courage workshops in 2010, focusing on the five actions one needs in order to accomplish any goal. They include setting intention, visualizing success, establishing trust, pushing through challenges and taking a leap of faith.
Each action is illustrated by a specific exercise. Fire walking is the last exercise, used as a metaphor for taking a leap of faith.
Cherry wood is heaped in a pit and burned down to coals, and then a smooth path is raked. Participants overcome their fear and walk, evenly and smoothly, from one side of the pit to the other in their bare feet.
No one has ever been seriously hurt. In fact, Simons has only suffered a blister and that was when he walked 111 times in one night.
Ten to 30 people attend each of the monthly three-and-a-half-hour workshops held at a spiritual retreat center in Ithaca, N.Y. At $75 per attendee, Simons has made $7,000 this year from the workshops. He expects revenue will increase in 2012 when he is running the workshop for the sales force of AmbidEnergy and then conducting a scientific survey to track any increase in their sales.
Retrieve from cnnmoney.com