Many entrepreneurs have varied professional backgrounds and Dan McComb, Co-founder of Biznik, is one of them.  Dan started his professional career as a photo journalist where he covered the end of the war in Bosnia and the extreme right-wing militia movement here in the United States.  However, he soon realized that the work he was producing actually belonged to someone else – his employer – which led him to start his first small business as a freelance photographer.  Dan learned the hard way that even though he wanted to run his own business,  early on he lacked the business skills to do so and his first business soon failed.

Dan has come a long way since then and is now a full-time filmmaker in addition to being the Co-founder of Biznik.  He has just completed a movie, Shine, profiling entrepreneurs, their challenges and what they lost and gained in their quests for success.  Dan shares the insights he’s gained as he discusses how happiness matters . . . therefore, people are following their passions – not money.

Below are the questions we asked Dan:

• (1:50) First, can you tell us about yourself and your background?
• (4:30) How is Biznik different from Linkedin, a site that a lot of business owners and operators use?
• (6:16) Can you explain how you can go to Biznik and be connected with people in your local area to network with?
• (8:14) Tell us about your survey with iStockPhoto and how this correlates to our topic today?
• (10:03) What did the survey reveal?
• (11:42) Do you think this had anything to do with the survey being conducted in part with iStockPhoto or do you think that this goes well beyond that?
• (12:43) What other things did you find through this survey?
• (17:00) You talk about the enjoyment factor.  Was that regarding older entrepreneurs, younger ones or both?
• (18:00) How did you become interested in film-making and how that happened?
• (21:10) So what are the messages that one can take away from the film?
• (23:13) What do you hope the impact of the film is for people who see it?
• (24:34) How can the film be viewed?
• (25:34) Are you displaying clips of it now online?
• (27:45) Dan, where can people find out more?

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- Listen to Dan’s full interview now by clicking the red and yellow player below -