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Turning Expertise Into Income: Lessons from Four Startups and the Rise of "Quartrly"

Tue, 27 Oct 2026 17:15:10 +0000

In an era where 🏗️ entrepreneurship is increasingly accessible yet equally unforgiving, the story of Philip Duong offers a compelling case study in resilience, monetization strategy, and human-centered innovation. In an episode of the podcast What's Your Next, hosted by franchise matchmaker Stacey Riska, Philip recounts his journey through four startups — three of which failed 😅 — and the bold birth of his latest venture, Quartrly. His story is not merely a tale of business success; it is an 📚 education in how failure, monetization thinking, and market observation converge to create meaningful opportunity.

🌱 The Entrepreneurial Mindset Starts Early

Philip's journey reveals that entrepreneurial instinct often emerges long before adulthood. While he never ran a lemonade stand 🍋, he was the child who bought candy and gum in bulk and resold individual pieces from his school locker — purchasing a pack for 25 cents and reselling each piece for the same price. This early arbitrage illustrates a foundational business truth: value is created when you identify something people want and make it conveniently available. 💰 Philip's willingness to act on opportunity, rather than simply observe it, would later define his approaches to technology and entrepreneurship.

🖥️ Startup One: Turning an iPad Into a Time Clock

Philip's first venture emerged when the iPad was first released roughly twelve to thirteen years ago. Having a background in computer tech and networking — but notably not in iOS development — he recognized a need for software that could transform an iPad into a time clock system for attendance tracking ⏰. He hired an overseas developer and completed the entire project exclusively through email 📧 because the developer refused to join phone calls. Despite this unusual constraint, the project was delivered. The lesson here is twofold: first, resourcefulness can compensate for technical gaps; second, projects can succeed even under unconventional or difficult working conditions.

💸 Startup Two: The Critical Lesson of Monetization

Philip's second startup tackled a common modern problem: meeting someone new without exchanging contact information. The software connected two people and allowed them to communicate within the app, preserving each party's privacy until they chose to share details. The venture ultimately failed — but for an instructive reason. Philip had not determined how the software would generate revenue. 😬

This failure crystallized one of the most important lessons for any aspiring software entrepreneur: you must think about monetization from the very beginning. Philip outlines three primary monetization models:

📺 Advertising, where a platform earns revenue by running ads.
🔁 Subscription models, where users pay a recurring monthly fee.
💳 Pay-per-service, where users pay for each individual use of a service.

Quartrly, notably, uses the third model — a decision directly informed by this earlier failure. The insight is simple but profound: if a venture cannot make money, it is a hobby, not a business. 🎯

🎮 Startup Three: The Expensive Reality of Game Development

Inspired by the enormous revenues of games like Clash of Clans and Angry Birds, Philip entered game development. He quickly discovered that the hardest part is not building the game itself, but acquiring users, retaining them, and monetizing them profitably. User acquisition costs are extremely high 📈, and generating sustainable returns often requires "deep pockets." When he realized the returns did not justify the investment, he made the disciplined decision to walk away — a crucial entrepreneurial skill: knowing when to stop. ✋

📅 Quartrly: A Platform for Monetizing Expertise, 15 Minutes at a Time

Quartrly is Philip's fourth (or fifth) startup, and it was funded with an audacious decision: he sold his California home 🏠 to finance it. The concept is elegantly simple. As Stacey frames it: "Uber helped people monetize their cars. Airbnb helped people monetize their homes. Philip wants to help people monetize themselves — 15 minutes at a time."

⚙️ How It Works

Quartrly is described as the world's first platform where individuals monetize themselves over a 15-minute video call 📹. Key mechanics include:

💲 User-set rates: Anyone can set their own price — ranging from a low of about $5 to a high of $999 per 15-minute call.
📊 Market-driven pricing: If rates are too low, too many people book; if too high, nobody books. The market determines value.
🔄 Full ecosystem management: Quartrly handles the video call, credit card payment, scheduling, and payouts.
🌐 Cross-platform accessibility: Unlike FaceTime, which requires iPhones on both ends, Quartrly is web-based and works on any browser and any device — laptop, Android, or iPhone.

👥 From Micro-Influencers to Universal Experts

The initial inspiration was to help micro-influencers (those with 10,000–20,000 followers) monetize their audiences through paid 15-minute calls, rather than chasing brand deals that better suit larger influencers. As development progressed, Philip realized the platform applied far more broadly — to topic experts, consultants, and virtually anyone with knowledge worth paying for. 🙌

🔧 A Practical Illustration: The Plumber

Philip offers a vivid use case. A homeowner with a plumbing issue typically faces a $100 on-site visit fee, even when the issue may be simple. With Quartrly, a homeowner could pay a plumber $40 for a 15-minute video call to diagnose the problem. This saves the homeowner money, avoids reliance on "YouTube University" 🎓, reduces the risk of a flooded house 💦, and allows the plumber to be better prepared if a site visit is ultimately required. It is a win-win demonstration of how video calls can substitute for — or enhance — traditional service calls.

🧭 Finding Your Value: Advice for the Uncertain

A key question raised by Stacey concerns professionals with two decades of corporate experience who nonetheless hesitate: "I don't consider myself an expert — how do I know what people will pay for?" Philip's answer is empowering:

🤝 Leverage your own network — for example, share on LinkedIn how many years of experience you have and offer a booking link.
📉 Let the market reveal your value — pricing will self-adjust based on demand.
💎 Recognize that everyone has expertise — someone is always asking you for guidance, and that demand signals value.

Currently, users must market themselves to their own networks. However, as Quartrly grows, a network effect is expected: users will search for expertise (e.g., "I need a business consultant for 15 minutes") and book providers organically. 🔍

🤖 Quartrly and AI: Complementary, Not Competitive

A natural objection is: "Why not just use ChatGPT?" Philip's response is nuanced. He positions AI and Quartrly in different verticals:

🧠 AI excels at returning text-based information quickly.
🗣️ Quartrly provides a live conversation with an experienced human, offering shared stories, back-and-forth dialogue, and relationship-building that AI cannot replicate.

AI will not replace a custom video conversation with a seasoned expert, and Quartrly will not replace AI. The lesson: choose the right tool for the right problem. Stacey adds a memorable philosophy — all business is H to H (human to human) ❤️ — and human interaction carries a value that no algorithm can fully substitute.

🏆 The Overarching Lesson: Redefining Failure

Perhaps the most powerful takeaway of Philip's journey is his perspective on failure. In school, an "F" signals failure and is treated as inherently bad. In business, however, failure is an unavoidable part of the process. There is no building a business without it.

Philip's framework:

✅ Accept failure as a normal component of entrepreneurship.
📝 Extract lessons from each failed venture and apply them moving forward.
📈 Recognize compounding progress — after three failed startups, Quartrly is, in his view, more valuable than all three combined.

We try to reframe failure as "lessons learned," emphasizing that the most successful people are often those with the most war stories — and the resilience to get back up and try again. 💪

🚪 Getting Started with Quartrly

For those inspired to act, Philip provides clear pathways:

🔗 Visit Quartrly.com to register (the easiest method is Google sign-in).
🎁 Use your six-character invite code when referring others — you earn 1% of the revenue the people you invite generate on the platform.
✉️ Contact Philip directly at CEO@Quartrly.com for business and partnership inquiries.

Philip Duong's story is a masterclass in several timeless principles: monetization must be intentional, failure is data, not defeat, marketplaces thrive when they help people earn, and human connection retains irreplaceable value in an increasingly automated world. Quartrly is not just a software product — it is a philosophy that each person's time and expertise have worth, and that worth can be unlocked, fifteen minutes at a time. ⏳✨

If you need assistance to help you acquire a the perfect franchise, please reach out.

What's Your Next? - Podcast

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Author Bio

I’m Stacey Riska aka “Small Business Stacey”, your franchise placement specialist. I help aspiring business owners find the PERFECT franchise so they can get to the next level in life and business.

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Gold, Bitcoin & AI: How Entrepreneurs Can Build Wealth and Thrive in an Uncertain Economy

Tue, 13 Oct 2026 14:53:23 +0000

Economic uncertainty can make entrepreneurs feel as though they need to predict what will happen next. But the central message of Tony Arterburn’s conversation is different: business owners don’t necessarily need better predictions—they need a stronger understanding of money, purchasing power, risk, and adaptability.

From financial literacy and inflation to gold, Bitcoin, AI, and entrepreneurship, the conversation explores how business owners can become more resilient in a rapidly changing economy.

💵 Money Is More Than the Number in Your Account

One of the episode’s biggest themes is the distinction between the amount of money you possess and what that money can actually buy.

Inflation matters because rising prices reduce purchasing power. A business can increase its nominal revenue while simultaneously facing higher costs for labor, energy, materials, insurance, financing, and other expenses.

Tony connects this problem to the modern fiat monetary system. He points to the United States’ departure from dollar convertibility into gold in 1971 as an important historical turning point and argues that expansion of the money supply contributes to the long-term erosion of the dollar’s purchasing power.

For entrepreneurs, the practical lesson is simple: think about inflation and purchasing power, not merely the number of dollars coming into the business.

🎓 Financial Literacy Should Be Practical

Tony argues that financial education should begin with ordinary life.

Young people can learn about money by seeing what housing, electricity, gasoline, insurance, food, taxes, and transportation actually cost. Entrepreneurs can apply the same principle to their businesses.

A business owner doesn’t need to become a monetary economist. But understanding concepts such as inflation, interest rates, credit, debt, liquidity, and purchasing power can improve decisions about pricing, borrowing, expansion, and saving.

This turns financial literacy from an academic subject into a practical decision-making tool.

🪙 Gold, Silver, Bitcoin, and the Power of Scarcity

A substantial part of the conversation focuses on assets Tony considers scarce.

He views physical gold and silver primarily as long-term stores of value rather than short-term speculative investments. Their attraction, in his framework, comes partly from the difficulty of creating additional supply compared with fiat currency.

Bitcoin enters the discussion for a similar reason. Its protocol establishes a maximum supply of 21 million bitcoins, which Tony considers an important form of digital scarcity.

He expects Bitcoin investing and ownership to become increasingly relevant to businesses and sees parallels between Bitcoin and precious metals.

However, these ideas should be distinguished from guaranteed investment outcomes. Scarcity alone does not guarantee that an asset will maintain or increase its market value, and cryptocurrencies and precious metals carry their own risks.

🏆 What Collectibles Can Teach Us About Investing

The conversation broadens from traditional assets to sports cards, Pokémon cards, rare coins, Hot Wheels, artwork, and other collectibles.

These examples introduce an important financial concept: liquidity.

An item might theoretically be worth thousands of dollars, but realizing that value requires finding someone willing to buy it at that price. A rare collectible can therefore appreciate dramatically while remaining considerably harder to sell than an asset traded in a large global market.

When considering an asset, entrepreneurs can ask four useful questions:

How scarce is it?
Can additional supply easily be created?
How strong is demand?
How easily can I convert it into cash?

That framework applies far beyond collectibles.

📊 Preparing Your Business for Economic Stress

Perhaps the most immediately applicable part of the conversation concerns business resilience.

Tony encourages entrepreneurs to understand their industries deeply and model adverse scenarios before those scenarios actually happen.

What happens if sales decline? What if financing becomes more expensive? What if inventory is delayed? What if suppliers suddenly change their payment terms?

Liquidity becomes particularly important in these situations.

Credit can also provide flexibility, although Tony cautions against excessive leverage. The objective isn't simply to borrow more money. It's to ensure that a company has options when conditions change.

This is also where AI for entrepreneurs can become particularly useful. Business owners can use AI tools to model different revenue assumptions, financing costs, inventory delays, supply-chain problems, and cash-flow scenarios—potentially identifying vulnerabilities before they become emergencies.

🤖 AI Could Make Human Relationships More Valuable

Interestingly, the discussion about artificial intelligence doesn't conclude that humans are disappearing from business.

Instead, Tony emphasizes qualities technology has difficulty reproducing completely: authentic relationships, trust, expertise, responsiveness, and personal service.

Stacey describes this concept as H-to-H: human to human.

For small businesses, that can become a competitive advantage. AI may automate administrative work, analysis, communication, and other repetitive tasks, allowing entrepreneurs to devote more attention to the parts of the customer relationship where human judgment and connection matter most.

🚀 Entrepreneurship Is Continuous Adaptation

Tony's own career illustrates another theme of the episode.

After military service and involvement in multiple businesses—including precious metals—he continues looking for new opportunities. His next project involves coffee, a product he personally enjoys and also views through the lens of commodities and entrepreneurship.

That example captures the broader philosophy of the conversation.

Financial resilience doesn't come from correctly predicting every recession, market movement, technological disruption, or monetary-policy decision.

It comes from understanding the economic forces affecting your business, maintaining flexibility, controlling risk, protecting liquidity, and continuing to adapt.

For entrepreneurs, the most useful question may therefore be the one at the heart of the show:

What is your next? 🚀

If you need assistance to help you acquire a the perfect franchise, please reach out.

What's Your Next? - Podcast

Download Easy To Read eBook Version
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Author Bio

Schedule a FREE Consultation