Let’s get Down to Business.
Dynamic entrepreneurs, investors and friends Jeremy ‘JB’ Yowell & Jamie Knight help struggling business owners with the game plan they need to secure a business-changing investment. The stakes are high as JB - a straight-shooting fiscal conservative - and Jamie - a dyed-in-the-wool liberal and eternal optimist - navigate their own personal and professional drama to help, but will it be enough to get these entrepreneurs the funding? Let’s get Down to Business.
Jeremy ‘JB’ Yowell
An investor and entrepreneur who has been at it since he started selling shoes at 17, JB takes businesses and does a deep dive, developing full-blown business models, crunching the numbers, laying out spreadsheets, and creating plans of action. His history, from shoe salesman to the Coast Guard to a business in the oil industry and owning a chain of comedy clubs, gives him a breadth of experience to call upon for his clients and partners.
It hasn’t been all rosy, but the trials he dealt with as a young man led him to a confidence in himself and a life of embracing risk. Despite market ups and downs, losing and making money, being sued, and having businesses taken from him, JB finds a way to fight back and be better than before. As his frequent partner-in-crime Jamie attests, “JB’s powers are financial, the business structure, how you can sustain something, finding where the funding is coming from.” In short, he solves problems, and makes businesses work.
Charismatic and sweet by nature, and a straightforward dealmaker in the professional world, he believes the difficulty in launching a business is not in the product, but in bringing in the business. His preferred way to help companies is to come in as a partner to help early-stage or struggling businesses to launch, renovate and grow by offering a capital injection, knowledge, and skills. As such, entrepreneurs should let experts be experts, a truth he himself learned early on by losing everything. Learning to let people in, he says, is key.
As a leader, he believes not just in setting goals, but in setting visions. It’s one thing to say, “I want to grow the business 50% over the next year” and another to picture what that looks like. Though aware of his occasional impatience, he also knows it comes from a place of passion and belief in knowing what the desired results are, and going to get them.
He’s not all business, of course. This father of three, recently divorced and now dating, is heavily involved in his kids’ lives. His oldest, a daughter who’s turning 18, will be leaving for National Guard boot camp this summer, and his video game-loving boys are growing up. JB’s morning routine is taking his black cat Keke out in her harness while he makes business calls over his oatmeal and coffee. He’s still close to the rest of his family, too, with his twin sister who works in hospice, and his Elvis Presley-impersonating older brother. His parents - mom, a big-haired Texan and Hannity-watching 73-year-old dad - still live together. And to top off his right-hand at the office is none other than Jamie’s younger sister Jill! Down To Business is truly a family affair.
Jamie Kinser
A lifelong creative and connector of people, Jamie wants to help people make their dreams come true. Raised in the theatre world, she soon branched out into booking live music, hosting a radio show, and running a successful marketing agency. In her newest endeavor, her passion is to help diagnose problems and concoct solutions. In finding ways a business might be losing money, or to help them with new product lines or ideas, she can help be a part of their success. Her collaborator and frequent business partner JB has called her “brilliant at the creative side, from company culture, to the look and interior of a business, its aesthetics.”
As a self-proclaimed people artist, Jamie has helped find jobs for her whole family at one point or another, a side effect of her constant networking. If they, or anyone, has a dream, it’s not about waiting for that dream to come true, it’s about laying out the recipe to follow step by step to make it happen. Now, she wants to help people launch and grow businesses, and give them real changes they can sustain.
While others may call her an idealist, she takes it in stride. Though in her past she may have overextended herself, it stemmed from a desire to make things happen for herself, and for others. She now wields that passion for the benefit of her career, and her clients, finding ways to always turn a ‘No’ to a ‘Yes.’
For herself, and for others, the only way to get better is to be honest about where they’re at, so for as encouraging as she may seem, and she is, she addresses her businesses situations with frank assessments and without the fear of making dramatic changes.
She’s also married and a stepmom to two, chasing her own dreams, future businesses, and supporting her theatre actor (and sports junkie!) husband’s passions to, among other things, become a broadcaster. Their house is filled - not only with three huge dogs, but also the best possible roommate: Jamie’s mom (who, incidentally, can’t stand Jamie’s biker father). Plus, her baby sister Jeana is a manager at their favorite hangout, the Silverleaf Cigar Lounge!
D2Biz INTERVIEWS:
DOWN TO BUSINESS IS: Inspiration, INTERVIEWS & INFORMATION.
Experienced and dynamic entrepreneurs Jeremy ‘JB’ Yowell aka Bryan Blue and Jamie Knight take their hard-earned business expertise and use it to uplift aspiring entrepreneurs and small business owners alike. Given that their combined professional experience includes weathering market crashes and global pandemics as well as working in oil companies, theatre productions, veterinary clinics and comedy clubs, there’s just about no business they haven’t seen, and no business they can’t help. Down to Business takes a hard look at an entrepreneur’s struggling business, and helps them retool, rehab, and rebrand to get them ready for the next level.
EPISODE 1: UFC Fighter Kevin “Trailblazer” Holland
BRYAN and Jamie didn’t come from money, but they’ve built themselves up. Despite hardships, disappointments and unexpected events, they have always kept going. Now, they’re sharing and investing in DFW entrepreneurs and small business owners from all walks of life. A rising tide lifts all boats, after all, so we’re all in this together.
Experienced and dynamic entrepreneurs Jeremy ‘JB’ Yowell aka Bryan Blue and Jamie Knight take their hard-earned business expertise and use it to uplift aspiring entrepreneurs and small business owners alike. Given that their combined professional experience includes weathering market crashes and global pandemics as well as working in oil companies, theatre productions, veterinary clinics and comedy clubs, there’s just about no business they haven’t seen, and no business they can’t help. Down to Business takes a hard look at an entrepreneur’s struggling business, and helps them retool, rehab, and rebrand to get them ready for the next level. As JB says, the number one reason businesses fail is that they’re undercapitalized, so this duo is doing everything in their power to help these entrepreneurs with the business plan they need to get investors everywhere falling over themselves to be a part of their future. While entrepreneurs tend to have trouble with the same roadblocks, like “I don’t have the money, so I can’t do it” - JB and Jamie will help them break through with a plan to bring in the money, revitalize the business, and rethink how to use the tools they do have. At the end of each episode, these reinvigorated businesses pitch a panel of investors for the chance to get an investment that’ll ignite the next phase of their business.
BE OUR GUEST.
Has business slowed? Is it time to rebrand or get your books in order? Do you want to expand but don’t have the funds?
Pitch us your company and unique situation for a chance for the ultimate business rehab show, Down To Business to catapult your company to the next level and beyond.