Meet The Disruptors: Harvey Wizard, The College Wizard On The Five Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry

Hedge your bets. Anytime you are trying something new, it’s going to be risky. It’s better to never go all-in on an idea until it’s been validated. I always assume 90% of my disruptor ideas will fail, as long as I’ve got money in the kitty, I can survive long enough for one of my ideas to take off. Testing Facebook ads is a perfect example of this. Try 20 different approaches with just $5 behind them, and see which ideas get traction.

As a part of our series about business leaders who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Harvey Wizard.

Harvey Wizard, The Guy Who Beat The SAT, has been a disruptor since he started his first photography business at age 11 — with the proceeds earned winning a national coloring contest he figured out how to beat by watching an episode of 60 Minutes.

Over the years, Harvey has proven his ability to beat complex systems, including not only the SAT (with a score high enough to gain admission to Dartmouth College in 1976) but also the Google Adwords algorithm itself, which led Harvey to become an internet multimillionaire with his story told in the NYT Bestseller, “Get Rich Click.”

Harvey is a true polymath, having proved his mettle as not only a successful serial entrepreneur, motivational speaker and social media influencer, but also a bestselling author, published songwriter, award winning photographer, philanthropist, globetrotting standup comedian and owner of Lugar de Papi Azucar, Costa Rica’s only English language comedy club, where Harvey performs as his standup comedy alter ego, Papi Azucar.