High-converting Lead Generation Secrets from a Two Comma Award Winner

Feeling stuck in your journey to e-commerce success? Be prepared to be inspired as we immerse ourselves in the riveting world of Anatoliy Labinskiy, an entrepreneur, e-commerce expert, and four-time Two Comma Club award holder. With the grit and determination that saw his rise from financial loss to being the founder of GSM Growth, Anatoliy's story will inspire and motivate.

Anatoliy shares his unique journey from drop shipping to establishing his thriving agency, offering invaluable insights into lead generation techniques. Gain fresh insight from his experiences running ads on diverse platforms such as TikTok, Facebook, Google, and Snapchat for store brand owners and drop shippers on the Shopify platform. His captivating narrative extends to the development of her agency, emphasizing the power of networking and partnerships, and underlining the crucial role of perseverance in business.

Connect with Ben Smith:
Instagram: https://bit.ly/3F4hrt8
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/skipwithben/

Business Social Media Links
Website: https://www.sellercandy.com
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/SellerCandyPro
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sellercandyamz
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sellercandy

Connect  with Anatoliy Labinskiy:
Website: https://gsmgrowthagency.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anatoliylabinskiy/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ecombyanatoliy
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ecombyanatoliy
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ecombyanatoliy
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anatoliygsm

Episode link & contact info
Shareable episode link  - https://bit.ly/3SGrAEA
For content collaborations, please email us at: grei@sellercandy.com

Never Talk to Seller Support Again.

Seller Candy is the expert operations arm of your Amazon business. We provide outcome-driven support for time-consuming and challenging Seller Central issues so you Never Have to Talk to Seller Support Again! With Agency-Level security practices and an experienced team who’s been through the thick of it, we give sellers bandwidth on demand without the hassle of hiring, training, or managing.

#amazonsellercentral #amazonsupport #ecommerce #amazonpodcast

Never Talk to Seller Support Again.

Seller Candy is the expert operations arm of your Amazon business. We provide outcome-driven support for time-consuming and challenging Seller Central issues so you Never Have to Talk to Seller Support Again! With Agency-Level security practices and an experienced team who’s been through the thick of it, we give sellers bandwidth on demand without the hassle of hiring, training, or managing.

#amazonsellercentral #amazonsupport #ecommerce #amazonbusiness

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I'm gonna be handling it. I will be number one in this field. How I don't know. This is what I said to myself in 2017, when I lost all the savings, everything when I started commerce, my wife said she will divorce on me. I sit down and, like I said to myself, I don't know how and I don't know when, but I will make it work.

Speaker 2: 0:25

Alright, hello, I am your host, ben, and welcome back to season two of the Amazon Strategy Show. The show that's all strategy, with no hacks, no silver bullets and no magic pills just real, practical strategy for serious Amazon sellers. Alright, I just finished an amazing episode with our guest today, anna Tolle. This was one part e-commerce advice, and the second part, a motivational speech. I'm leaving this call or conversation actually charged up. It had really ready to go and work on building our business here at Seller Candy. So I think you're gonna walk out of this episode with a lot of insight, a lot of motivation to go and get back to work. But also it's a very wide-ranging episode. Anna Tolle has so much experience and we're gonna dig into everything from drop shipping, click funnels and his early days to real estate and what to do with the money that you actually make from building your e-commerce business, your Amazon business. What have you? So, without further ado, we're gonna dive in. If you have questions you're watching on YouTube leave us a comment down below or feel free to reach out to our team. We'll get you in touch with Anna Tolle, but let's go ahead and dive right in.

Speaker 2: 1:25

Today we've got the pleasure of being joined by the one and only the incredible Anna Tolle. Anna Tolle's got a very, very long bio and we talked about it before, so I'm gonna give the shortened version here and Anna Tolle can fill us in on some of the other stuff as we go. But Anna Tolle is an entrepreneur and e-commerce expert, a holder of four-time two comma club awards, which I wanna get into. He's the founder of GSM Growth, which is an agency that helps e-commerce entrepreneurs achieve new levels of growth. He also has an awesome product called ecomscoutio and a number of other things. I know you're doing real estate stuff, some lead generation, so a lot of cool things that we can talk about. We might need a second or even third episode, but, anna Tolle, welcome to the show. Thanks again for being here today. And, yeah, how are you and where in the world are you?

Speaker 1: 2:11

Thanks, ben. I really appreciate you to have me here, to invite me, and I'm looking forward to share some really wisdom and golden nuggets with your audience, or at least giving some kind of motivation, because this is my goal in 2023 just to be useful for people out there, because I have been back in 2017 in the place where nobody was around me and now, with the power of the podcast, we are able to share our experience with the people out there, which is could be useful for at least one person. It will already make big difference for me. Seriously, and yeah, so I'm basically Ukrainian staying in the Portugal right now. My son is going here in the private school, so I'm staying here and managing business in the United States my agency in Miami so every couple of three to five weeks, I'm traveling to US on regular basis.

Speaker 2: 3:02

Well, thanks so much for joining us here today. We definitely appreciate you coming in. The first thing I wanted to ask you about is you've got all of the two comma club awards behind you, so can you tell us a little bit about how you actually get those? I know they're from the whole ClickFunnels ecosystem, but what did you actually do to earn those things?

Speaker 1: 3:20

You're one of the first questions to ask me like this backstory of the it and it's gonna be actually awesome to speak Never shared that, but the thing is that back in 2018, so it's 17 I started commerce and back in 2018 I found out what this ClickFunnels means and I was like seeing the awards here and there somewhere in Facebook and I was like whoa, wow, like I cannot even dream about that, so I don't want to even look on it seriously, but it's so awesome, I wish to have one, and I didn't believe that ever, ever would be happened to me. My goal was that time. I remember when, 2017, I started the commerce like extra 3000 hours a month. Just, I will be wow, I will be fine, my baby is about to deliver, so I will be just okay and I will be like richest person in the world in my mind. That time. So, and like in 18, I become a bit like I start making some more than 3000 hours a month and I start looking around and like sold that ClickFunnels? I was like whoa, it's interesting, let me mess around with that.

Speaker 1: 4:22

So I was testing out for your commerce offers didn't work that well and I just did a like idea that I can just drag and drop super easy things there and like I like pushing forward myself to learn a bit more about that and still was focusing.

Speaker 1: 4:37

By the way, my main focus and specialty, it's Shopify platform. So we are running advertising TikTok, facebook ads, google ads, snapchat ads for store brand owners and for the drop shippers who are on the Shopify platform trying to like scale their results. This is what we are focusing and scaling for them, the true paid ads. So with the ClickFunnels I was trying the offers in e-commerce didn't work that well, so I decided, okay, cool, like let it be. I just left that idea and back in 2019, I started running ads for leader generation because people started asking me to mentor them, people started asking to handle their ads. I was surprised, like come on, like I'm a simple guy, that time I made couple of millions with my partner in the Shopify stores, which is like for me, it was incredible, but I was still feeling that like I'm not good enough, let's say Was that with drop shipping, by the way?

Speaker 2: 5:32

or what was the show? What were you selling back then? If you don't buy, me asking. Or what kind of store were they?

Speaker 1: 5:37

I started Shopify on the drop shipping model. From the beginning, the idea was there. After that, I failed a lot, made some money, like again, failed, again, made something. And after that, like one of my new friends from online. It's another incredible thing. Guys speak to people online. You never know who can become your best friend, your business partner, your spouse, anyone. Really, my best friend it's from online. From 2017, november. We just say each other hi in the messenger in Facebook. Now we are the best friends and we have two companies together Real Estate and EcomSkullio. It's with him Plus, like.

Speaker 1: 6:16

There was more people who I was talking and one of the guys just reached out to me hey, can you look my ads? And I just checked his ads. I said, listen, bro, like you missing a lot of things. And we just decided to go become a partner. So, like for test, and I made for him first 50,000 a month, 150 a month, 150 plus, then 250 a month and like we become 50-50 partners really great partnership. And it was all drop-shipping model. We were selling shoes and belts, watches, all that stuff with the super high margin.

Speaker 1: 6:46

After that, the health and wellness niche for the back pain problems products and like just so scaled that heart with several millions and I start mentoring people. I start my own agency and decided to put the full focus on the agency side. And then in the meantime I was testing out the leader generation and never, ever, run any ads for leads, never. And I start testing out messing around and it started like I decided to build it on the ClickPanel platform. I didn't. I like one meal, each plug, it's one million on different offers. So I was like no, like come on, this is not about the plug, let's just make here and there a couple of thousand. So basically, first year was like slow.

Speaker 1: 7:30

But the next year, which is 2021, the first plug, 2021, yeah, like we scale in the first four months to one meal, I like whoa, like it was something like from 400 a year. We scale it in four months for one meal with the one offer. And like I like wait, wait, wait, I'm able to get that plug. I like just text it to. Like ClickPanels, like hey guys, how does it work? They explain it to me. I like no freaking way. And when I got that it was a really dramatic moment for me because I was almost like crying because I got before that I have another one for seven figure awards for Shopify in 2019. And it was for my mentor. It was cool, it was nice. But when I got the ClickPanels because it's kind of big corporation, it's Russell Branson, like a big, big people I was like holding in my hands and wasn't believing that no way.

Speaker 2: 8:23

So did you actually walk across the stage and everything? Cause I know they have, don't? They have a show and I think they invite people to come up and get their awards.

Speaker 1: 8:31

They mess up with their dates. I'm kidding now. I'm just will explain what I mean. There are events always around 22nd of September, every single year. I want to go there, but my wife has 22nd of September birthday and she will never accept to celebrate that on the event. Even if I will, I push her, let's do that. She's saying, like, are you kidding me? Like, and so on. So basically I never been on the stage yet with them, but I'm planning to go there with the 10, like 3 comma club, which is 10 meals At Schumann. This is where, like my son, even excited from yesterday, he said to me pop, when you'll get the 3 comma club? I said I'm working on it. So basically, the first one I was really emotionally touched. Others it was just like, okay, fine, and it's sad because the first one was incredible feeling and the rest it wasn't that much. Which is it really makes it how people are making fine with something incredible.

Speaker 2: 9:29

Seriously, yeah, you get used to things really quickly, right? Exactly.

Speaker 1: 9:33

Like exactly, but like for me. It's a huge achievement. If number one, it was the huge achievement in my life.

Speaker 2: 9:39

So what were the big takeaways for you? Because I mean you have four of these awards now they're you know. And then you kind of got started, it sounds like, by running your own dropship, shopify store and then helping other people kind of get theirs up and running, doing some insulting for advertising, lead gen. So I guess, just to kind of telescope out a little bit, what were some of the takeaways just from those early stages for you in terms of like getting to the point where I guess now, where you are now, did you have any takeaways or lessons from earning those two comma club awards?

Speaker 1: 10:12

I'm sure there's many, but I was about to say that there is a lot. There are a lot, but like what I would say for like first of all we were able to achieve already for only for the customers as agency, over 23 million, almost 24, it's coming. And like my personal results, my students results, it's seven figure, multiple seven figures, and the thing is that the e-commerce business, it's Amazon, it is Shopify, it is the click funnels All is like has different angles, different problems, but all of them full of troubles which need to be handled. And only one thing what's bring me to first plug and after that it's when smooth to all the other plugs, and what it brings me to this kind of forks award, for this kind of top hundred United States awards with Ukrainian regions. All those awards and all it's not about even the words, it's just a gift of your approach.

Speaker 1: 11:10

So, like people who are not achieving those kind of results yet, or never in life, they're not just ready to handle the biggest problems and when the biggest problems are coming, they just quitting and looking left or right to switch their direction and changing something. Which is like when you have something what's working and it's got broken but you still see possibilities, you still see potential and like you don't need to, like you know, the wheel is moving and people usually is moving the wheel and stopping it, turn it again, moving and again. So the wheel is not getting you know movement and when you have this, momentum and movement of the wheel is going.

Speaker 1: 11:55

It could slow down for the because of the problems, but don't stop the wheel. Handle the problem as sub, find out the solution, manage that problem, bring the solution and the wheel will get even further, faster. Speed when you like, fix the breakage, whatever you have. And this is like number one quote in my company, which is we are saying to each other every single time when we have real big problems and it's happened again and again then bigger you're coming, then bigger your problems are there. Guys, seriously, you don't think that when the plugs on the walls or like millions of dollars generated, it doesn't like you saw the problems, you left everything behind. You actually just generate a huge problems of in front of you which you need to now be able to handle, to keep going, keep growing, and this is like the biggest one.

Speaker 2: 12:47

Yeah, no, I mean there's a lot of nuggets to pull out of what you were just saying and that's all I mean. I think there's this picture that I always see that pops up on Instagram, right, and it's like a wolf, a baby wolf that has like one arrow and it's like all her, and then the adult wolf is like 50 arrows. He's obviously had like more experience and like all metaphors to say exactly what you said. It's not that as you get more successful, you have less problems because you have money to throw at them. You know, the reality is you actually have more and bigger problems, but you have the experience and understanding, as you've progressed, to see, oh, I know that there's gonna be fires, it's inevitable. It's just I know how to handle these fires and I know that I'm more, my team is competent enough to do so, right? One other question I was going to ask you. So what you're kind of getting out from what you just said it sounds like something that said you apart at least was the mindset thing, and when a challenge came up, instead of saying, oh, I'm going to stop and move to the next shiny objects because this one's given me a challenge, you persisted and jumped over that and that's obviously a key thing. That's really, you know, become part of your, your success path.

Speaker 2: 13:49

Do you have, like any, I guess, kind of failures that you've had in those early years or since? I'm sure there's a number. But I guess my kind of second question to that what I'm getting to is, you know you can get challenges and choose to persist and keep going. But the flip side of that is, sometimes those challenges are also there because you're maybe working in the wrong business or doing something that is a dead end. And so have you had any instances where one you've had challenges that were actually kind of telling to you to, hey, maybe this business is not something I want to continue with, or this product.

Speaker 2: 14:21

You know, I know in the dropshipping worlds when I was, I had toyed around back in the day, whatever's in its heyday it was all about launch 10 products, test them out with ads and shut down the nine that don't work and then double down on the one that works. So he saw us that one point, the methodology. So in that vein, kind of the same question right, like when do you know when, hey, this is actually not the right path. I actually need to go back a little bit and go to the next one.

Speaker 1: 14:43

It's a great question because it's always happening all the time. I'm speaking about like failures every single morning, almost starting with some kind of fail or fire, some fire happening which we need just to handle and taking cold, taking care of. But if you to speak exactly about something like you know new directions, like you just mentioned that I have like several directions, like a couple of businesses in co, co, co, co partnership, like I have tested so many in the last couple of years and most of them never work, never. And like the thing is like I just you're supposed to be just honest to yourself is if all the effort was like just done and now you have to stop it because it's like really not what you need, because it's consumed too much of your attention, too much of your time. It doesn't make any sense according to the potential pay off later on, because you will start understanding that possibilities. But I want to give an example of the lead generation which we are running right now for insurance agents and doing that quite, quite well with one of my business partners when we started for six months, two dudes with the big experience in e-commerce and in lead generation in Canada, like five years from his and seven years from my aunt in e-commerce, like two big guys. Who knows? Actually I'm speaking big in terms of starting new direction. We are not newbies, so we know how to start that. And, like, we put all the effort and six months it was awful. It was like no, we weren't, we were barely close to deals and the problem is we didn't put enough attention to it because I'm busy with my stuff, it was several things, he's busy with his things and we just trying. We were thinking that we just with the experience, we were just like make it fine and scale fast. But at the end we realized that, okay, like there are problems, we are not closing deals. We are losing money. It's fine, we will recover by closing the couple of deals. That's okay. It's not big investment, but we are investing a lot of our energy and time and it's nothing worth.

Speaker 1: 16:50

And we, like you know, instead of like quitting, we were honest to ourselves bro, do you believe in this product, like I am? Yes, what about you? I said, man, like it's. It's something which is mind blowing because it's so easy to make, it's so high value. People will be loved, people will be getting results. Because of that, because we know that we like, achieve all the like results of lead generation from our side. We know how to do that well and like, but sales people just not doing the right job and why it's not. We're like, oh, sales guy is bad, this is bad, but systems built amazing. The thing is that you have always looking on yourself first and then we find out we are fucked up. We are not putting enough attention to the business, we are not putting enough effort to teach the sales guy to overtake XYZ objections, we are not giving enough trainings to him and I have my team already making like multiple seven figures in sales every single year. But I'm OK with that. And I forget that here is newbie people. I mean, they know the sales process, but they knew being the company newbie in terms of culture and so on. We have to build that culture. We need to invest a lot of our effort and be like oh, but we don't have enough time for that.

Speaker 1: 18:07

So we made a decision and that's why we ask each other the question are you sure we want to do that? Do you believe in this direction? Both of us answered yes and because of that we understood that there is no plan B, stop it. We don't recognize this kind of direction that we're going to be closed because potentially huge setup is there. Everything is just like we need deals and we just start.

Speaker 1: 18:30

We introduce our sales people from insurance to e-commerce training for the sales department I mean to the sales trainings for e-commerce department which we have internally. We start speaking more internally with our sales people and in the same time we just adjust the offer to make it no-brainer. I mean we put more attention to the offer and we made tweaks here and there and put a bit of effort and as well one of the smart things we done because I'm busy, patrick, my partner is busy we just offered one of our managers who was helping us to manage the stuff technically in CRM because it's SAS slash advertising product. So we're providing completely automated CRM for insurance agents with the flow of the leads. So it's like combination and we have a technical person from my company who joined it as a manager there to the startup and we decided, instead of giving him some kind of salary, we offered let's do the percentage.

Speaker 1: 19:33

You're going to be having a cut, whatever how we scale, if we scale to one million months, you're going to be getting the cut of one million months and right now nothing. So you're still working. But now you understand what is the benefits, what is the co-possibility of it. And definitely now we have not two of us only in charge, but it's three of us in charge and we have coverage. And this is from where the wheels start rolling and we start seeing the significant difference and put more effort from our side, more trainings to our manager and so on, so on, so on, and we handle the problem and we overtake and find out the solutions. But otherwise we could quit and just close that. But we put so much effort and set up. It's so great. We know that it's working because we're implementing out to the e-commerce direction exactly the same setup.

Speaker 1: 20:21

Before I didn't have that. That, like I said to myself, it's just no brainer offer. We cannot just quit on it. We have to find out the solution. We find out first issue was on us and you have to always look, not around, look on yourself.

Speaker 1: 20:37

Are you sure that you first of all doing something right?

Speaker 1: 20:41

Are you sure you put a lot of effort? Are you sure that you really want to do that? Because if you hate every single task which you are making. There is not every tasks you love. There is some hated task which has to be done, but it's some. But if you're everything what you're doing when you sit down to the laptop to do the job and you hate everything, are you sure that you want to do that Because then you'll be wasting your time? Stop it and think what's actually the direction you prefer and, more preferably, love to do. Maybe your creative person and you want to open the design agency or anything else?

Speaker 1: 21:14

So, like, just adjust yourself to the direction which is you're gonna be actually excited every single morning when you're waking up and just waking up five am just because you're so excited to get started, or going to sleep at four am Because you cannot stop. Like yesterday I went to sleep two thirty pm, two thirty am because I was so busy with different businesses and I just split the calls on the different time frame. I started 10 am in the morning, two thirty am in the morning. I finished. Do you think I'm complaining? I'm freaking excited.

Speaker 2: 21:44

No, you're so fired up. You saw that you're still so fired up. But I want to say Anatoly, I mean there's so many takeaways from that, right, because you said a couple things. One, I just like the idea of stopping and doing a gut check and saying you and your partner, you guys stopped and said hey. One, do we have a good product? Right, I feel like even you know, and most of our audiences, you know, is a lot of Amazon sellers and a lot of them are also selling on other platforms, including Shopify or Walmart or Retail, and I think a lot of times at earlier stage e-commerce or Amazon sellers, including myself, do you don't always think to actually say, hey, do I like what I'm selling? Is this a really good product? You know you're so focused on just getting your Amazon store open, getting that product from the manufacturer, just running with it. You know there's a lot of times where you kind of skip those steps. So, one, I think that's a really good takeaway, I think.

Speaker 2: 22:33

Two, you know, and something that's one of those things that's always a work in progress, at least for me, is the whole like it's always easier to blame other people than them because, you know, but just, I mean, I don't know if it's human nature or what, but the real answer in a lot of cases is to stop and first check yourself right, and that is especially if you have, like, a business partner or something that I feel like is a great way to do it. If you're a solo entrepreneur, like you, have to ask yourself those tough questions. But you know I go through that and I'm not, you know, growing a eight, nine, 10 figure Amazon brand. You know that's not what I'm doing. I've sold on Amazon, I still sell on Amazon, but I talk to a lot of those people and I also am growing with our team seller candy right.

Speaker 2: 23:12

And there's a lot of similar kind of instances where you have to stop and say have I done everything in my power to give that team member the training they need or to explain it? You know, and normally the answer is no, I haven't Before I can go and blame someone, so I just wanted to pull that out of there and say like, hey, that's a really good takeaway as well. I feel like there's a third one that I think you already touched on, so I can't remember the third one. I mean, I guess the third one is just, oh, you guys got aligned and got your team member aligned on the incentives, right, because you were saying that you brought in that third partner and aligns them with an incentive plan to actually go and grow the business and it sounds like, once that happened, as you kind of pointed out, that's where you turbo charged and really start seeing those big results. So those are just the three things I really wanted to pull out of that right. I don't know if there's any others.

Speaker 1: 23:56

I know you could go on and on about this too, but yeah, I just want to add it about that that, like all my business and all the businesses are built on the percentage base in terms of like get some kind of benefits for the job done and in different, different, different positions. Even recently we just created for our assistant or our secretary. She has her own now percentage. I was like stupid enough. I would say, after all my like conversations with Mentor and so on, do not think about that. Like I want everyone growing the company, but I wasn't like understanding how I would allow her to grow. I mean income, growing income. So and they will be becoming better professionals or having harder skills, maybe become like different direction skilled person because of that. So make them excited and feeling comfortable to work. Like in my company is working 31 person, 31 team member, and this 31 team member almost two, some of them two years, some of them already three years since we opened the company and only couple of them less than one year. And we don't have that retention because this is how I built the structure that win win. If we deliver, you are getting more, if we are not deliver, you're not getting anything. If we just deliver, okay, you'll get not good enough. So, and everyone, like at the end, working on remote, but the goal for everyone to achieve the results.

Speaker 1: 25:30

Because at the end, each individual team member, it's independent entrepreneur who is working for himself, but he has just daily tasks which is need to be filled and complete. And about the payouts, about the payment processors, about the handling customer service, about the handling growing business. It's on me, on other people. But, like at the end, like everyone has something to do, and when he closed the task, he's free. It can be in the morning, it can be at night, he can do and go to the cinema, he can enjoy his life. But making sure the task is completed and it is at the morning or night, I don't care. The most important way to handle and everyone build their schedules around that and they know that if they will be handling the schedule, they will be enjoying their life and, second thing, if the job will be done in the right way, that they will be making more and, like everyone, working for themselves and building the life under their terms. This is the best way of building the company nowadays, in my opinion, according to my personal experience.

Speaker 2: 26:33

I love that. That was a great wide range of convo right On how you got to where you are now and I know you already kind of bled it until like some of the things that you're doing now. But can we now talk about it and I just am going to ask you this question what are the main companies now that you have? I know, GSM, growth, and then you have also an AI tool which I want to hear a little bit more about. But where are you kind of spending your time these days? Can you just break it down into kind of the core companies?

Speaker 1: 26:57

Yeah, so definitely 90% of my time going to GSM. Gsm grows, since we are continuous scaling. We always have the high trainings. I'm looking for the high network connections which would be able to improve the skills of my team for different direction cells, team management, media buying and so on, to deliver better results for the customers and bring everything to the next level, the better quality of the customers to get, and so on. But the rest of the time maybe not 90% of the time it's GSM and 20% is split between the Ecom Scout, which is AI driven platform which is helping my guys advertisers in our niche to handle the ads on the right way, because it is attribution platform, which is connected to the Facebook ad accounts, tiktok ad accounts and helping to show the correct data when you're running ads, because, unfortunately, after 2021, when iOS 14 has been launched the data has been tracked on the social media platforms completely incorrect, because we are not able to read the data of the social media users anymore. So by having these third party softwares, you're able to track the data correctly and scale profitably and consistently. So this is exactly what AI platform Ecom Scoutio is doing. It's our product.

Speaker 1: 28:26

With my business partner, who is like, I met in 2017, november, in Facebook Messenger, because he's like this is another thing, guys, how you can handle several businesses. You cannot do that alone. You can do that with the business partners and what kind of business partners. You have to look on. Look, I have cash and I don't have time and I want to be in eCommerce, but I want to be in IT, but I don't know anything about IT. So I was speaking to my friend and he's actually in the forex IT business, like automation to the forex market, all through the AI platforms, all through the development, and he has developers. And he said, bro, I want to be in eCom. I said, I want to be in IT and we're like what? So maybe we will just connect our power? And it was January 2023 and we just like instantly start taking action.

Speaker 1: 29:19

I explained, we had a call, I explained to him all the ideas and he explained that to his technical department and we start implementing and we build something awesome which is like, first of all was idea for introducing to my internal needs, to my internal agency needs, to my team, but after that we realized the product is so good that we can really introduce that to the masses. So it's about the eCom scout and then another business, it's leader generation, with my business partner, patrick from Canada. He's doing really well on SaaS direction with the CRM integrations, optimizations and leader generation and I have like again like financial possibilities from my end to invest and he has no time. I have no time but he has knowledge which I need. He can teach my manager to do that things and I can put all the like company from GSM growth. I can put a lot of like workflow power into that project and make that successful.

Speaker 1: 30:19

And we made this decision. Let's give a shot at this where a lead generation started from for the insurance agent, and another one is the real estate, again with my partner from eCom scout. I was introducing him idea about the call. I'm already passive investor in the real estate business as a like just investor and just getting monthly checks and like, wow, that's awesome and I have a mentor for real estate. Like buying, like it's a burn method which is buying, doing full rehab, buying under the market price, doing the full rehab put tenants in making the refinance, getting money back which is untaxable, so it's tax deductible and pull them back again into the another project and I repeat, in the same process again and again. So I was repeating this process to my partner in eCom scout, to my friend, and he wasn't understanding what it means and why. One time I insist him to pay $4,000 for the limitless exploit in Phoenix, I said let's go with me, it's related to real estate. Just listen, is that?

Speaker 2: 31:20

the bigger pockets. Is that related to bigger pockets? Because that's how I know about the burr method or whatever.

Speaker 1: 31:25

Yeah, I forget exactly why the bigger point? You mean the name of the community.

Speaker 2: 31:33

The community. They have a podcast and I think they I don't know if they coins the burr method, but David Green and those guys, but yeah, I've heard about that space.

Speaker 1: 31:42

Yeah it, I believe it was another guys, but it was like a big X of 1300 people, participants, all of them seven, eight, nine figures makers in real estate. I was shocked. I didn't realize that, how, what kind of participants were there? And we went there because there was Robert Kiyosaki. I knew how to make a hook for my partner. I said, listen, bro, like it's real estate, I know it's not for you and I know that you're not interested, but let's go with me. There is Robert Kiyosaki, which is like we, inspired by Robert Kiyosaki since 2017. And I said let's go there, make him have conversation and, in the same time, like you, learn a bit about real estate and I make this cool hook.

Speaker 1: 32:20

And like he went here, we were there, I was asking a lot of questions, I got a lot of answers and he was listening, listening, listening. And I said listen, I'm to the guy who I was talking to, one of the organizers. I said I really want to start my own, stop being passive investor. I want to be active, like real estate entrepreneur and investing real estate from my own and build and grow everything on my own. But I don't have enough time. And my friend, like I have a lot of time, like you're not interested in. He said no, no, no, I'm interested because he was listening and all that information. He understood the process, he understood about taxes and he like said, bro, it's no brainer, let's do that later on. I was talking to him and from that moment we start real estate business and matter of six months we bought already two one duplex and the second apartment. We just about to close the deal on 13 of November, which is in five days. Oh yeah, that's coming up, that's super close.

Speaker 1: 33:21

In three months we bought duplex plus another property and we are having a few more offers for another properties and it's growing fast. It's really growing fast because of the right partnership. He has time. He's smart, due to learn. When he starts learning something, it's insane he becoming smarter than me in any kind of subject If he put it down his head. He's smart. He is not lazy, he has time and I have all the knowledge to get in and plus connections and mentor. We just combine it again our power, human power, and this is how we are. We brought one more partner. Now we are three. He brought from his lawyer. I mean, he is active real estate investor for flipping houses, but he has as well lawyer background.

Speaker 1: 34:12

X in failed player. His name is D-Beer and three of us became a powerful team. One is taking care of the legal stuff, contracts, explaining us all these kind of tiny processes, which really makes the things difficult to understand. My friend is focusing on internal technical stuff to make it done because it's time consuming. I'm just driving all the process in terms of my experience and mentor, teaching me how to make things fast and easier, and this is like how you can build the several businesses and put less time spent on it and focus still on your main cash flow business, which is generate you all the income. And plus, what I love the most, it's e-commerce.

Speaker 2: 34:59

It's my everything, to be honest, so, nathalia, two things I've noticed since the beginning of this conversation. One is that you seem to be the person that's always been able to connect the right team members. And number two, going back to your early start with kind of the dropshipping stores and then kind of some of the products you launched subsequently. The other piece I've noticed is you're very much so good about you know, it sounds like defining the right angle to leverage into making that either your product or your store different, or, in this case, getting you know, you knew not, this guy might not be interested in the real estate piece enough to go to the conference, but if you talk about the Robert Kiyosaki piece, that's your angle to kind of get him, him or her, interested in going.

Speaker 2: 35:41

And so I guess that's just one takeaway I wanted to call off for anyone who's listening or watching. But also, do you have any tips on how people can become better at those things? Because I know for you it might seem like it's second nature to pick out these angles, but for a lot of people that's not a second nature thing. Right, that's might be, and I'm sure I like to think it would get easier over time the more you do it. But do you have any kind of tips, I guess, on that piece or on the assembling the right team piece, because I think those are two really crucial parts. No matter what business industry, even if you're working in for a nine to five, you know a w two income or something like that.

Speaker 1: 36:17

It's a great question Because when you were saying all of that, I was like, oh my God, it looks like I used to do this that whole my life. But no, no, like it's a it the most painful thing to the entrepreneur at the beginning of the journey to figure it out where to get the right people, who are the right people, how to like to manage the, how to manage those right people, how do not lose the right people, how, like, how to run the business, and so on. We were growing so fast as the agency in 2020. We really like, move, all my like. We have advantage. When we said that we're gonna be opening agency, I said I'm gonna be quit on the mentorship and a lot of my students become my media buyers and some of my most successful students become our clients and like, at the end, we just started like that. We opened the door with the clients, with the team members like there was only couple, but like and I start trying to figure it out I never been a manager in my life.

Speaker 1: 37:19

I'm a waiter in Dubai. Before that, you know, I'm a sales guy in Dubai. Before that, in Ukraine, I was just like doing labor works, like here and there just to get some something and sales job. So I never handle anything in my life. So we were. We were running so fast that only after six months of running agency I realized that I'm at a CEO. I like who I am, what, what does it mean? I didn't know what to mean this world. So I start learning about team management. I start learning about the CEO means and how, what CEO has to be done and actually I become quite okay as a CEO I believe only this year because I'm a good leader. But as a CEO, I start implementing the start to implement, like doing the real duties of the CEO only in 2023, just my opinion, I don't know, just my internal opinion feeling.

Speaker 1: 38:12

So, by that being said, it's a big bottleneck of every single person. When it's a, he's building the team, someone is lucky enough and getting instantly like all cool and just here in Iranian and here is a role. But, like me, I'm not the luckiest person in general in terms of doing something, but I'm luckiest person that I'm handling everything and moving forward. So, by that being said, this is what is generated from my side. It's not available, but I'm just creating that luck. So now it looks like yeah, it's like a good networking, good, like in the communication skills, but, to be honest with you, it just coming with the experience and it's like this you see this idea about creating a comms called we were talking to each other and like complaining on our wishes I want to be in SAS, he wants to be in a comm and we're like looking on each other and how stupid it is to guys are like having two different companies. Why won't you just like combine your skills and we are knowledge other for four years, you know by that time. So like it's something which is mind blowing that people are not like.

Speaker 1: 39:20

You have to just sit down and think what's really matter for you and who you have around. That's why these words are means a lot. You are who is your inner circle. So if you are circling with the people who drinking beers, going to the bars, parties and always running credit cards and just cash out every single salary to pay the bills, you're going to be the same person. But if you're going to be handling the like gathering with the people who always hustling, who is focusing on the results or who is trying to build something, overtake the struggles and get something done, you're going to be like by itself becoming better person.

Speaker 1: 40:02

And like, sit down and think who is surrounding you. Maybe you have someone who is in construction business right now and he's struggling getting leads and you want to start your construction company and you know how to run leads. What if I will offer to him 20% share? So I will be getting only 20% of his company, but I will scale as fuck his business and he will be like just crying and saying I don't have enough time to hire people, so I will. What if I will scale his and it's? It is the perfect partnership because you bring him skills which he has he doesn't have. And it could be your neighbor, it could be your brother, it could be your sister, it could be your close friend. And you just like, was thinking about to start and you have here someone who needs something and you have it. So why won't you offer? And it could be no brainer deal for both of you. And if you have no plan B, only plan A, you have strong why you are starting that not just cash, but as big idea. Because if your why is the only cash you will lose? You'll have a plan B instantly for a few weeks of losing. But if you have only plan A and strong idea why you want to do in that, you're going to be like overtake all the obstacles and, in right partnership, you're going to be just scaling stuff fast.

Speaker 1: 41:17

One thing when I want to add it before the end of this topic, is that you should not be greedy. This is another thing which makes things different. Like, look, all these partnerships, I have to split everything what I'm losing and everything what I'm making, especially like what we are losing. We are always good to split, correct Everyone. It's a human being. But when you start making people become greedy, people become like start counting the sense and all this stuff.

Speaker 1: 41:43

For me, I believe that I'm a generous person according to how we build a team and so on and trying to bring more value to them in financial value and like.

Speaker 1: 41:55

For me, I'm okay to make less but have more like, for example, we have customers which we are managing. Why you managing those customers? Because now I'm handling over 100 clients and everywhere I'm getting cut. Why would I say no to these opportunities? Instead of handling one thing, I can handle several and getting everywhere cut and be like co-partner, for example, here we like as a agency, but still the same in the real estate, why would I handle everything and quit on my main business? If I, we can make small piece, but still bigger and faster grows together and at the end evaluation will be huge and everyone win. So like, be okay to share your profits, because you are fine when you're losing, but when you start making you becoming really like over, like it's a greedy stuff, it should say head on people and that's why people never Achieve the great results be okay, make it less, but from the bigger, from the different directions. Then your horizontal scale is completely possible. Love it.

Speaker 2: 42:56

That's amazing and it's only. I've got a couple more questions here, the first one in which I told you I was gonna ask but is the, do you eat pizza that has pineapple on it? Just pineapple belong on pizza and there's a reason I'm asking the question. Yeah, definitely, I love such kind of okay, I like that. I think that's a good answer. So the reason I'm asking this is kind of what we we like to ask every guest this. But what is a controversial or debatable take that you have that maybe other people in the space don't share? Now I'm gonna say space, I mean the e-commerce space, but you can answer however you wish.

Speaker 1: 43:28

Yeah, like controversial. There is actually a lot, but one of the things like really I Would say like when you go in, even all in, yeah, I'm the most passionate guy who I ever met in terms of I'm able to wait and and why I'm thinking that it's in controversial because people always saying like Andrew Tate, like the most known guy now, like about Motivator to several young guys and so on, like it's now, now, now, and there is like, and what wait? What kind of like you have to be patient, and so on. It's not for like, it's not for like real business building fast. I agree, but whatever yours like you're gonna be doing fast, you're gonna be still waiting. Like everything will be always going not how you wish.

Speaker 1: 44:15

And Like my thing, which is I'm doing like to compare to anyone else, I'm okay to wait. So many times I'm losing, losing, losing. And then, because I know I have a like, you know I have a feeling that it will happen, I mean I and even if I lose, you know what I'm cool, I'm a soul and this is like strange because I'm from poor family. I'm like my background, really like I started commerce just because I wasn't able to pay even for delivery of my son. So like it was my why when I started I was super poor. I was rented room in Dubai. I wasn't able to rent my own apartments. Like if my wife lose the job because of pregnancy, we won't be able even to rent the apartment. It was so like Background is all like tough, but when I'm losing like thousands, it and it didn't work for me, the thing is I'm just saying okay, fine and moving on. Even when I have financial struggles, I'm still saying fine and moving on because I take that as a Experience. I know that okay, I was passionate enough about that. It didn't work out, it's fine and even not. I won't even spending time to analyze the situation I was. I'm just switching, switching my, my mind into the something else, because done it's done, done, so moving on. So I'm not like over, like whoa, how much we spend, how much we lost home? No, no, no, done, moving on.

Speaker 1: 45:37

And this is what I believe, like most of the people who are used to see I mean Not from the successful business owners, but from the someone who's trying to start the business saying that they want to start the business they quitting on the first Fail, on the first hundred dollar loss and like this is the most controversial thing. You have just like to give a middle finger to the universe and say I don't give a fuck, I'm gonna be handling it, I'm gonna be handling it, I will be the number one. Like that I feel how I don't know. This is what I said to myself in 2017, when I lost all the savings, everything. When I started commerce.

Speaker 1: 46:12

My wife said she will divorce on me and I like sit down and I was like almost crying because I lost everything what I had. I took the loan. I lost that. I start borrowing money from my friends. Nothing is working in dropshipping for me. I just spent thousands and thousands of dollars in which I never had in my hands all of that.

Speaker 1: 46:29

It was hard for me to turn hard, bore it and I sit down and, like I said to myself, I don't know how and I don't know when, but I will make it work and I will be that one person who is succeeding from 99 people who are failing.

Speaker 1: 46:47

I will be one who gonna succeed and like that kind of mindset and that kind of approach. This is something controversial for average person. If he will understand that, he will be unstoppable, and I was able to understand only through the reading successful business owners biography, successful business owners books about the scale, about the management, about the sales, about the psychology of success. And that's build me Understanding poor guy who has no background, has no connection, has no finance, build me a just hustle muscle which is ahead. That always I was thinking it just survival mode, but after reading all the Literature is I just so I could realize one thing, like only one common stuff between successful people they never quit and they passionate about waiting for results and never stop on the fail. They just moving forward and never look behind. And this is what I believe like if people who are listening, at least someone will understand that You're gonna be out of thousand people like in the crowd, the number one person who able to change the things around you, love it and a toy.

Speaker 2: 48:07

You got me fired up. I'm sure you got other people watching or listening to this fired up, so I think this is a good place to stop, because I feel charged up and I want to go and actually do some things right now. So before we leave, though, I want to turn it around to you and just say you know, for those of those people that are watching, if you just kind of tell People where they can find you, if they're, if someone here is an Amazon seller that's looking to maybe add a Shopify store, get help with some, as in the advertising components, tell us a little bit about where, where the best place is to reach out.

Speaker 1: 48:35

Yeah, yeah, sure. So first of all, like at the number one thing where I'm answering on all the DMs, it's Ecom by Anatoli. Instagram is my nickname Ecom by Anatoli Anatoli Wabinski. Like and in Instagram you can reach out to me. I'm answering all the EMS as well. Like we providing the free content on YouTube, anatoli Wabinski. There is a lot of case studies about our clients, about the e-commerce, everything, and in the same time, like our website, just some girls agencycom, where you can come in and like, there is possibilities to arrange a free session With me of all one of my team members, where we will analyze your situation and understand if we are able to guide you through, and you'll go do it by yourself or we can help you out by working together. So it's not a sales call, it's a call where, like Well, we are trying to help you make the right business decision or where you have to go next is what you have right now. Love it.

Speaker 2: 49:35

Cool, and I just want to add to that too, two things. One, all the links, everything that you think it's only just mentioned, we'll put in the show notes or description, depending where you're watching, your listening to. And it's only. I think you should consider a new business or a new venture in being a motivational speaker or something like that, because you definitely have gone through a bunch. You've experienced a ton, you've faced challenges I know you still face them, as we discussed but you're also really good at persisting, staying positive, staying optimistic and taking action right, and so I just wanted to say that to you and yeah, anyway, I'm motivated.

Speaker 2: 50:09

I'm sure everyone else is too. But thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show, really appreciate it. I know we didn't even get to talk about really probably more than two or three percent of all the stuff that you have, so we'll definitely have to have you back on, but I just want to say thanks again for being here and, yeah, I think with that, that's kind of gonna bring us to the end of this episode. So, for those of you watching, thanks again. We really appreciate it. And if you do have questions, reach out to and it's only in this team and I think other than that, and it's only any party words.

Speaker 1: 50:38

Yeah, first of all, thank you, ben and game for having me here. I had a lot of fun because, like some questions and never answered to the public, never, ever. So like unique things is here and I really enjoyed that because I was taken out of my mind what exactly is matter to deliver to the audience and Seriously, I enjoyed and one of my goals in life it's been motivated, a motivational speaker. I'm already speaking on the stages about my e-commerce subjects, but one of the goals in my life it's been a motivational speaker, because this is, I believe, what's make the difference for for the lives out there, because sometimes people reaching out to me in the Instagram oh, my god, two years ago I watched this, this and that and it made me like black wall and I want to make this impact to the world. I appreciate for your words. That's awesome. Guys and girls take freaking action, stop crying and just take all the shit down Together. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 51:32

Love it All right. So that brings us to the end of this episode with Anatoly of GSM growth agency. First off, thanks again, dan. It's only that was an amazing episode and for those of you watching or listening, I'm sure you're walking away with at least one nugget, maybe a lot more than that, and Hopefully some motivation as well to go and grow or build your business, to take it to that next level. So, without further ado, I want to say again Thank you so much for tuning into the Amazon strategy show.

Speaker 2: 51:57

If you did find some value in today's discussion, make sure you let us know, help us out by leaving us a rating or a review or, if you're watching on YouTube, smash that thumbs up button. It does help us reach more at e-commerce entrepreneurs just like yourself. And last but not least, don't forget to follow us on our social media pages for behind the scenes updates on new content and other updates about the show in general. You can find the links to everything, including those social pages, down below in Either these show notes or in the description. But that is it for today's episode. Be sure to mark your calendars. We're gonna be back next week for another exciting discussion. Until then, I'm your host Ben, signing off and wishing you all happy selling.