• From $0-$1M by Tracking Email Deliverability with Israa Alrawi
    2023/05/29
    Introduction Hi, e-commerce friends. Let me introduce you to Israa Alrawi, founder of The Winbox. She is sharing her remarkable journey of turning her online store into a thriving mid-6 figure business in just three months, primarily through the power of email marketing. Israa, welcome to the show.If you want to connect with Israa, we have a Facebook group. Israa will be also part of that group. And this is only for e-commerce owners so feel free to join us. Highlights https://youtu.be/P_4XmWcahj4So I would say if you're just looking into getting started into SMS, I would definitely focus on making sure you have a strong email list first. If you don't have a strong email list and a strong email channel, then it doesn't make sense to pick up another channel that requires more of your attention and more of your strategy. (8:25)Best practices, number one, focus on growing the list. Because you're only going to be as successful as you're growing the list. So when I say build your email list first and then leverage the email list to try to get them into an even deeper form of your community. So if they're already in your email list, try to get them on your SMS list as well. (13:30)So how are you acquiring leads and customers? So acquisition is the first step in the journey. And then you have conversion, how are you converting those customers? And then you have retention, how are you retaining those customers? So you have these three buckets, and the thing is that all three buckets need to be strong. There are different channels that help with each bucket. (23:15) The Beginnings Yeah, so it was in 2016, and I was just pivoting into a different role. I had my first two kids and just left my government job. I used to work for the federal government for a while, and there was just a lot of travel, and I didn't want to do it anymore. I was really interested in the online world. So I kind of just dove into e-commerce. I had a mentor. It kind of just popped, actually it's funny because it popped up on my Facebook as a Facebook ad. He knew somebody that I used to study under that was trustworthy so I was like, it has to be, you know, it can't be a scam or like that. So I actually went ahead and bought his course or bought the training, and he taught how to go from dropshipping to basically private labeling because branding is a whole other beast and you need a lot more to be a brand. So, I wanted to enter the e-commerce world, learn about it, see where my strengths were. Can I run a store? It seemed very easy in 2017. It was kind of like the gold rush of drop shippers, you know, build a store, make millions overnight, and you can be on your way. And it was just intriguing to me. So I started my own store in February of 2017. That's when I launched it. And then I was able to build it, research by July I was getting the sales I wanted and through using ads we were able to scale it to mid-six figures within two to three months. Less than three months. So it was just very interesting. I found my winning products, but that really wasn't the reason we sold so well. We focused heavily on customer service, quality of products. All the things that e-commerce stores should focus on to really build a long-lasting, you know, company or business. And then Facebook ads start crashing in early February 2018, I believe. And that's kind of when I turn to email marketing to kind of just sustain the business while things were looking really grim on Facebook. So that's kind of where I went with that. I started with email marketing and then I was introduced to a deliverability expert who works really with affiliate marketers because if you know about the affiliate scene, they have to work harder to be in the inbox. And so I kind of learned from her how to do, I learned the fundamentals of the deliverability. Like in order to get to the inbox, you need to know the tech aspect. And then there's the content aspect where, you know,
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    51 分
  • Unlocking Ultimate Profit Potential With Great Business Margins
    2023/03/29
    Introduction Hello, e-commerce friends. Today on this show, I have an old friend of mine, it's Ben McAdam, who used to be one of my first coaches in my beginnings when I just started out as an entrepreneur. Ben is the founder and owner of Profits Collective. He is a profits coach and a fractional CFO. He helps business owners to earn more profits without confusing jargon, and he has been advising a lot of other business owners in the online space across all industries for more than a decade. Ben, welcome to the show. If you want to connect with Ben, we have a Facebook group. Ben will be also part of that group. And this is only for e-commerce owners so feel free to join us. Highlights https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH0lC_wz3KUIf you have a question of, what if we invested more in marketing and bought more inventory? Are we going to go broke? Or what are the best case, worst case, most likely scenarios? You would talk to a virtual CFO or a profits coach about that. If you're thinking about acquiring another company or selling a company, or you're thinking about launching a new product and you want to crunch the numbers on it, that's the kind of advice that a virtual CFO or profits coach would do. (8:35) I call it the 80/20 of profitability. What we're talking about here is not net profit margin after all the expenses, it's the gross profit margin. We'll go into details of how to calculate it later, but basically the idea is, somebody's paying you some money for a product and then it costs you a certain amount of money to create the product and ship it around the place and fulfill the order. And if you don't get the ratio between those two right, it's not the dollar difference between them, it's the ratio, if you don't get that right, you can't grow. It slows your rate of growth, getting this wrong, and it also caps how high you can grow. Because with that gap in between, you pay for marketing, you pay for a team to help you, you pay for managers to help you manage a big team. It also helps you fund more inventory purchases. If you want to grow really fast, then you need good margins in order to self-fund the inventory, otherwise you have to go get a loan from somewhere or investors. (12:07) Being the cheapest is a nightmare. It's really, really difficult. Everything has to go right, you have to do a lot of the work yourself because you can't pay amazing people because you don't have the margins to do it. There's a lot of volume, and if something goes wrong and you can't make that volume, like there's a supplier delay or shipping challenges or your factory closes for a bit and you can't make that volume, things can suddenly be very bad in the business. So it's a very stressful position to be. (28:51) Introduction: Who Is Ben McAdam? I'm Australian, so g'day, mate. Live in Sydney, Australia with my wife and four kids, but we travel a lot, and I've got clients all over the world, mostly Americans, it turns out. Speaking about doing this stuff for over a decade, I realized the other day I've helped over 1,000 people. I'm like, wow, really? Again, feeling old, but also that feels pretty cool. It's a large sounding number. I normally help people with growth, profits, and clarity around the numbers, either profit coaching or virtual CFO, particularly online businesses, and a lot of my clients are e-commerce. And I tend to find that people in the online business world think a lot like I do in terms of, we want to write our own script, we want to travel, we want to see the world. Lifestyle is important, but also growth at the same time is important. So I love what I do. I love who I work with. DOWNLOAD THE PDF TRANSCRIPTION Online Business: The Begginings Yeah. So the online business world... When I was young, I heard about these things called jobs and careers and corporate ladders. And my dad had a job as a programmer in a fairly big business, and he'd commute by train into the middle of Sydney every day,
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    41 分
  • Leveraging SMS Marketing to grow an 8-Figure Brand
    2023/02/22
    Introduction Hi, e-commerce friends. Let me introduce you to Kerri McDonald, who was the speaker at Ad World Conference in 2022 and invited to speak there this year. Kerri dove head-first into e-commerce over four years ago, driving her first brand to eight figures status as a director of marketing in less than three years. She co-founded The Greenhouse with her partner in 2020. Centered on e-commerce, email and SMS marketing, The Greenhouse has quickly grown into an agency where clients take root and flourish, generating over 10 million in revenue for its brands and the first year. Kerri, welcome to the show.If you want to connect with Kerri, we have a Facebook group. Kerri will be also part of that group. And this is only for e-commerce owners so feel free to join us. Highlights https://youtu.be/6htxGYlQ8CQSo I would say if you're just looking into getting started into SMS, I would definitely focus on making sure you have a strong email list first. If you don't have a strong email list and a strong email channel, then it doesn't make sense to pick up another channel that requires more of your attention and more of your strategy. (8:25)Best practices, number one, focus on growing the list. Because you're only going to be as successful as you're growing the list. So when I say build your email list first and then leverage the email list to try to get them into an even deeper form of your community. So if they're already in your email list, try to get them on your SMS list as well. (13:30)So how are you acquiring leads and customers? So acquisition is the first step in the journey. And then you have conversion, how are you converting those customers? And then you have retention, how are you retaining those customers? So you have these three buckets, and the thing is that all three buckets need to be strong. There are different channels that help with each bucket. (23:15) The Beginnings I've been in the e-commerce space now for about five years. Five years ago, I was a teacher. But while I was a teacher, I realized it wasn't the right career path for me. But I was always a very creative person so, when I had time off, when I was teaching, I taught myself graphic design and I started an Etsy shop. And those skills landed me a position in graphic design at an e-commerce company.I was able to transition there. Working for an e-commerce startup, there's a lot of opportunities for growth, learning, etc. I really took that opportunity about three months in. I was designing the emails and then I started sending the emails, and then moved my way up into the company and eventually became director of marketing and the brand grew to eight figures, nine figures, pretty quickly.It was a really good experience in e-commerce, just being director of marketing for a large brand for three years, managing agencies, managing a marketing team, building the tech stack, everything like that. Getting hands-on experience with a brand was by far the best way that I was able to learn about marketing and learn about e-commerce in general, just learning what a brand goes through on the inside.After that, I was working with the company and I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit, starting my own Etsy shop even back in the day. I've just always wanted to pave my own path and I knew I had it in me. While I was working with the e-commerce company, my co-founder, who's also my boyfriend, my business and life partner, we started a clothing company and we just wanted to try that out on our own to see how it worked and what the logistics were, building it on our own. But then we were met with some challenges with COVID and the supply chain, and we couldn't get the product. We pivoted to the agency space because I knew email and SMS really well.And so we said, "All right, if e-commerce is going to be difficult right now during COVID, maybe we can pivot to a position of helping e-commerce businesses.
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    42 分
  • Growing An Ecom Empire In A Saturated Niche Market
    2022/12/22
    Hello, e-commerce friends. Today I'm with an absolute legend in the e-commerce world. His name is Ronnie Teja. Ronnie has been around for a very long while. He has been speaking at different events, which are very legendary in the e-commerce world, such as the Affiliate World. He was a speaker in Dubai and also in Barcelona. He also attended the e-commerce world global as a speaker, e-commerce summit in Africa. So he was traveling quite a bit around the globe here, and he's also an attendant and a speaker of the eCommerceFuel summit in Palm Springs. Personally I think, Ronnie, I know you already. Was it 2017 or 2018? I'm not exactly sure about the year, but it was at a Dynamite Circle event, and I remember us talking at the swimming pool and this is how we bonded a few years ago. And now I have this opportunity to finally interview you here at this podcast. So welcome to the show. Table of Contents Ronnie Teja Introduction​ Sure. So my name is Ronnie Teja, I worked in e-commerce for what people call in older terms. So I've been around in the e-commerce industry for about a decade now. So yeah, 2023. So it's a long time. So on January 1st, 2023 is when I launched my company. So I run a portfolio of 15 different websites, Branzio Watches being one of them, which is one of the primary sites that we run. And yeah, I mean collectively I have about 75 plus employees. So we've grown from what was supposed to be a dream of mine to live on a beach in Thailand to something a lot larger than we'd expected. So super happy to be here with friends and moving forward, just finished Affiliate World in Bangkok as one of the speakers. So yeah, definitely a pleasure to be here.But anyhow, when I started studying graphic design in Canada, my brothers pushed me to come to China. They told me that China's the future and I should definitely come check it out, and perhaps consider studying here. So I got here at 17 years old. I had done one semester in university in Canada, and at that point I started studying Chinese, and I excelled at that and actually was offered a job right out of school as a creative assistant for a big PR firm. That's how my professional career started, even though in the back of my mind I always wanted to get into fashion. But I was young, the money was great, it was an opportunity, so I took it.So, I worked with this company. I grew up in the ranks, working there for five years. Within the second year, I was promoted to creative director. I, by the way, taught myself everything about web design, graphic design, as well as some sales and marketing, all self-taught and grew really quickly in the company, the creative director on the second year.And within the fourth year, I became one of the managing directors for one of our departments, managing things like visuals, and so on, for some big clients we had; for example, Bacardi Group. We were working with alcohol brands, furniture brands, and so on. I was managing part of the events, the visual creation, etc. That lasted a total of five years. Towards the fifth year, I decided that that was it. I had gained enough experience, and I really wanted to start my own business in fashion.At that point, I had a friend who actually was interested in partnering up. He offered to give me equity. He had a lot of money, and he believed in the idea that I had, and wanted to give me equity. I approached my family at that point saying, "Can you guys help me to bring the product to life?" since that was their expertise. And my family spun on me and said, "Don't take money from that guy. Let's partner up, us, and let's start this business as a family business. And we'll help you out for the procurement, the supply chain, all that kind of stuff. And you can focus on design and marketing." And in the end, that's the route I took. We signed an agreement, my brothers and I.And at that point, I actually went to fashion school. I wanted to really do this the right way,
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    38 分
  • Innovative Design in the Fashion Market With Max Perez
    2022/11/24
    Hey, e-commerce friends. Today I'm very excited to have Max Perez on the show. Max basically invented a James Bond suit, literally. It has nanotechnology inside. It's a zero maintenance suit using nanotechnology. It has the benefits of being odor free, wrinkle proof and liquid proof. It requires less cleaning, There's no ironing, and a lot of more benefits. So, today I'm very pleased to talk to Max. Max is also a mentor to some of our mutual friends in our network, where he's mentoring e-commerce entrepreneurs. And Max, please allow me to be your student today. I would love to learn a little bit more about your background, your mindset and your approach to e-commerce, especially your approach to design when it comes to suits.If you want to connect with Max, we have a Facebook group. Max will be also part of that group. And this is only for e-commerce owners so feel free to join us. Max Perez: A Brief Intro So, my background. I'm originally from Canada, Montreal. I started studying graphic design before I made my way to China. My family has run a trading company in China for over 30 years. My dad saw the future of China 30 years ago, came down here, opened a company, brought my two older brothers, who are much older than me, 20 plus years, and brought them here to join the family business. I started off in garment fashion trading. My uncle has a big clothing brand in Canada, as well. This is something that our whole family has been doing for a while. My grandmother, by the way, she was a seamstress, making some luxury clothing back in the day.But anyhow, when I started studying graphic design in Canada, my brothers pushed me to come to China. They told me that China's the future and I should definitely come check it out, and perhaps consider studying here. So I got here at 17 years old. I had done one semester in university in Canada, and at that point I started studying Chinese, and I excelled at that and actually was offered a job right out of school as a creative assistant for a big PR firm. That's how my professional career started, even though in the back of my mind I always wanted to get into fashion. But I was young, the money was great, it was an opportunity, so I took it.So, I worked with this company. I grew up in the ranks, working there for five years. Within the second year, I was promoted to creative director. I, by the way, taught myself everything about web design, graphic design, as well as some sales and marketing, all self-taught and grew really quickly in the company, the creative director on the second year.And within the fourth year, I became one of the managing directors for one of our departments, managing things like visuals, and so on, for some big clients we had; for example, Bacardi Group. We were working with alcohol brands, furniture brands, and so on. I was managing part of the events, the visual creation, etc. That lasted a total of five years. Towards the fifth year, I decided that that was it. I had gained enough experience, and I really wanted to start my own business in fashion.At that point, I had a friend who actually was interested in partnering up. He offered to give me equity. He had a lot of money, and he believed in the idea that I had, and wanted to give me equity. I approached my family at that point saying, "Can you guys help me to bring the product to life?" since that was their expertise. And my family spun on me and said, "Don't take money from that guy. Let's partner up, us, and let's start this business as a family business. And we'll help you out for the procurement, the supply chain, all that kind of stuff. And you can focus on design and marketing." And in the end, that's the route I took. We signed an agreement, my brothers and I.And at that point, I actually went to fashion school. I wanted to really do this the right way, my brothers as well. So I enrolled in a school called IFA; it's a university from Paris that had a subsidiary in Shanghai.
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    47 分
  • How to Create Product Designs That Boost E-com Sales | With Ben Schwarz
    2022/10/18
    Hello, e-commerce friends. I'm very excited to introduce you to Ben Schwarz. Ben Schwarz is the design director of Manta Sleep. Manta Sleep might sound familiar. In our very first episode, we already had Manta and we had already Mark Zhang, who is also the co-founder. Mark talked more about the marketing aspects of this brand and how they were able to scale it. And today, Ben will talk about product design and product development, primarily. To give you some context, Manta Sleep Mask started in 2017 with a crowdfunding campaign or two, so to speak, one on Kickstarter and one in the Indie Global. And together on both platforms, they were able to raise more than half a million dollars, which was, I guess, seed money to get that project started. And what really sticks out about this brand is the tremendous amount of customer reviews and video testimonials that people are dropping in for them. So, they have thousands and thousands of different customers. They're all satisfied with this product. And now, I want to welcome Ben to the show. Great to have you here.If you want to connect with Ben, we have a Facebook group. Ben will be also part of that group. And this is only for e-commerce owners so feel free to join us. Episode Highlights https://youtu.be/a6XCt6ahILM We invested into a workshop in our studio, so that we can develop ideas very quickly in-house. We're usually just hacking up a bunch of mock-ups to test with the team. These are the first steps. We also have a really good manufacturing partner, so we involve them very early in the process to make sure that products can actually be manufactured. (19:35)In the end, to pitch your idea to a manufacturer is almost like you're selling your product to a client; you got to convince them somehow to work together—because good manufacturers, they have a lot of options. And if your product's not compelling or it's too difficult for them, if they need to spend too much time without any return, it's not going to work out. (25:31)It has become a lot easier to design products as a startup through agencies, even just through Upwork, or just hiring designers in-house remotely. Or just part-time. So, tools are becoming a lot more accessible and cheaper. (34:49)th DOWNLOAD THE PDF TRANSCRIPTION Ben Shwartz Beginings: From Employee to Entrepreneur My background is in industrial design. I have been designing products for pretty much 15 years, designing, developing products. That's really where my passion is, what I'm good at. I guess it's the one thing that I'm really good at and I really enjoy. And what else? I've been living in Asia for the past 11 years, which is handy when you are developing products.Being in corporate was never the goal for me. There was an opportunity that I had after I graduated from school and it was exciting to work in Asus. But the goal was always to work for a couple of years and then go back to Europe and maybe do a Master's degree or something. But then, in Singapore, I met my girlfriend, then I also met my business partner. Mark was already on your show, you were talking about it in the intro. So, we started working together on the project back in 2014. Mark is very much the entrepreneur.He has all these ideas, but he can't turn these ideas into products. And for me it's pretty much the opposite. And so, we decided to join forces as business partners and that's how it started. And I think we are really, really lucky that we found each other because it really allows us to focus on what we are really good at. I don't have to worry about selling my ideas, basically, because I can just focus on designing and Mark is taking care of the business and the marketing. I feel very privileged to be in this situation. It's been fun for the past seven, eight years that we've worked together. Manta Sleep: Idea Inception and Vision This really started as a passion project. We already did some other projects before.
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    44 分
  • Scaling a High End Mens eCom brand With Harrison Bevins
    2022/09/21
    Hello, podcast friends. Today, I'm with Harrison Bevins, the founder of Oak and Rove—a travel accessory brand. Harrison is selling a briefcase called the Alto briefcase, a travel bag, the Kennedy Weekender, and a Dopp Kit. Today, Harrison will be talking about how he started out with his product development, how he brought this product to the market. He started out with an Indiegogo campaign. He also talks about his marketing approach and how he was able to leverage media to get in front of new potential shoppers. Throughout the last two, three years, when there were struggles in the environment, he talks about how he overcame that, and what he learned throughout this process. Let’s jump in.If you want to connect with Harrison, we have a Facebook group. Harrison will be also part of that group. And this is only for e-commerce owners so feel free to join us. Harrison Bevin: A Brief Intro I am currently in Southern California. I'm in a city called Fullerton, which is funny because this is where I was born, but I didn't grow up here. I was actually raised in Utah. A little ski town called Park City. My parents were both entrepreneurs, but in a different industry. They had started a restaurant business. I think, growing up, I always had that entrepreneurial mindset, always wanted to do my own thing, but my parents very much put us on the traditional path of going to school and getting a degree, getting a nice job.That was the route that I originally took. I got a degree in finance and then went straight into the workforce as a financial analyst. I moved to New York and I was basically doing what everybody thinks is the normal thing to do. Working a normal 9–5. Well, in finance, it's more like a 8–8 or a 8–10.Crazy hours. I eventually hit my breaking point and realized that I didn't want to work in an office for the rest of my life.I could see the people in front of me, older than me, doing the same thing. And I was like, in 10 years, I don't want to be that guy. I got to do something else. And also, I was motivated by money. You think about people who are very wealthy and a lot of times, the way that they're achieving that wealth is through building their own businesses. Right?I realized, okay, by climbing the corporate ladder, it's just not going to happen as fast as I want it to, so I might as well take things into my own hands. I reached my breaking point in New York after a little over a year. I think it became apparent that it wasn't for me. I quit my job, bought a one-way ticket to China and that's where everything started.It's funny because when I was doing internships back in college, my mind was already somewhere else. I think I already knew early on, I really didn't like being in an office, and at work, I was looking up how to make money in travel. That was such a strong motivating factor for me. And I found that people were teaching English in Asia, in Thailand or China. Then, I stumbled across these guys that were building a community called Enter China. They were two young guys and they had moved to China, Guangzhou, specifically, back in 2012. And they were getting involved in business and starting their own companies. And I was like, "Oh, this is pretty interesting." These guys, they didn't have a plan, either. They just went out there, just dove right in and started figuring stuff out.I had been following their journey. And then, by the time I was ready to quit my job, I was like, "That's what I'm going to do, I'm going to go to China and do exactly what those guys are doing." Episode Highlights https://youtu.be/lqU-Y4_MKVE But I didn't give up. I went back to the drawing board, picked a new niche, got better at ads, and then that store started to work. I started getting sales consistently. (7:52)It started off with a concept to create something functional, premium. Then, it really is a process of refinement. I did a lot of research. I went onto Amazon.com. I went on Kickstarter.
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    23 分
  • ECom Email Marketing For Making $$ with Daniel Peleg
    2022/09/12
    Daniel Peleg: A Brief Intro Hey, e-commerce fans, did you know that only 2% of your traffic is actually converting into actual sales? What happened to the other 98% you might ask? So today I'm interviewing my friend, Daniel Peleg who runs Email Composed, which is an agency that is specializing in helping eCommerce businesses to get more sales by setting up and optimizing their email marketing efforts. And by doing so, they are able to actually catch upto 16% of your traffic by converting them into email marketing leads, which they then can nurture and further convert into actual sales. Today, in this episode, Daniel will be sharing how he's doing so. How he is optimizing and setting up Opt-ins, automations, email flows and he's also talking about advanced strategies to capture email leads with paid advertisement. How he's setting up abandonment flows, not only one but three, and he gives out much more golden nuggets in this podcast. If you want to connect with Daniel, we have a Facebook group. Daniel will be also part of that group. And this is only for e-commerce owners so feel free to join us. https://youtu.be/zgKw315KaDU Episode Highlights At Email Composed, we have a program where we build and implement an email marketing strategy that covers the entire customer journey. Not just the first purchase that comes from ads, but really strengthening, repeat purchases and lifetime value through email automations and campaigns. We can boost the brand's overall revenue by 25% to 40%. (7:53)If you're a new store and don't have a popup yet, then definitely get a popup up and running. That way we are able to capture anything from 8% to 16% of the visitors, as opposed to just maybe 2% who actually convert into buyers. (13:50)We also built a browse abandonment flow for people who just browse some products on the site. These three abandonment flows alone now add around 20K additional revenue for their overall 300K revenue. That's an additional 20K monthly. (19:25)We created a new popup that had a more compelling copy and offer, and that, almost overnight, doubled the amount of Facebook traffic that they captured from 3% to 7%. (25:10) Email Composed Intro I grew up in Tel Aviv, Israel, aka the startup nation. I actually did work for Israeli tech companies and startup companies for years. At one point I started my entrepreneurial journey and left the country to start a life abroad. Today, as you mentioned, I run Email Composed, which is a team of email experts that help direct to consumer e-com brands to grow and to scale using email and SMS strategies. Outside of that, I love health and fitness. I'm a foodie, trying to balance being foodie with eating healthy—pretty challenging. I’m also doing workouts at the gym, generally growing and developing. We’ve known each other for about six years now and we live in the same city, but not every day, we get to sit and deep dive into our favorite topic. So, I'm excited to get started. DOWNLOAD THE PDF TRANSCRIPTION Daniel Peleg: The Beginnings Of Content Marketing I got into email marketing by a chance encounter. About 13 years ago, I was working in a marketing department of a financial services company. We weren't actually doing much in terms of emails, more like SEO and ads. We became friends with one of our clients and he told me about this new thing—selling online courses. He knew a guy who was making millions selling those courses to his email list.Wow. Now, info products were still a new thing back then. I thought, "Hmm, that's an interesting idea, I'm open to exploring." Long story short, we ended up working together as business partners and managed to accumulate quite a huge email list. That was the basis for the business. After six years of working together, I sold my share to my business partners. Since then, I've launched a few other businesses for which email was always one of the main revenue drivers for the business.
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    42 分