What drives a man to transform his life and build a business empire from the ground up? In this episode of Shine on Success, we sit down with Anatoliy Labinskiy, a Ukrainian e-commerce expert, whose relentless determination and powerful "why" have fueled his journey from humble beginnings to the helm of GSM Growth. Anatoliy shares his raw and inspiring story, offering listeners invaluable insights into the importance of perseverance, adaptability, and continuous education in a rapidly changing market. He doesn't shy away from discussing the personal challenges he faced, including balancing business growth with family responsibilities, and the crucial lessons he's gleaned from his own podcast guests on networking and self-improvement.
The conversation also takes a deep dive into the transformative power of partnerships in business. Anatoliy opens up about his strategic collaborations in ventures like real estate and software, emphasizing the significance of trust and leveraging strengths without always holding a majority stake. Drawing inspiration from icons like Elon Musk, Anatoliy discusses effective time management across multiple enterprises, the satisfaction of sustainable growth, and the rewards of real estate investments. This episode brims with actionable wisdom and motivational stories, making it a must-listen for both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned business owners looking to take their ventures to the next level.
What drives a man to transform his life and build a business empire from the ground up? In this episode of Shine on Success, we sit down with Anatoliy Labinskiy, a Ukrainian e-commerce expert, whose relentless determination and powerful "why" have fueled his journey from humble beginnings to the helm of GSM Growth. Anatoliy shares his raw and inspiring story, offering listeners invaluable insights into the importance of perseverance, adaptability, and continuous education in a rapidly changing market. He doesn't shy away from discussing the personal challenges he faced, including balancing business growth with family responsibilities, and the crucial lessons he's gleaned from his own podcast guests on networking and self-improvement.
The conversation also takes a deep dive into the transformative power of partnerships in business. Anatoliy opens up about his strategic collaborations in ventures like real estate and software, emphasizing the significance of trust and leveraging strengths without always holding a majority stake. Drawing inspiration from icons like Elon Musk, Anatoliy discusses effective time management across multiple enterprises, the satisfaction of sustainable growth, and the rewards of real estate investments. This episode brims with actionable wisdom and motivational stories, making it a must-listen for both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned business owners looking to take their ventures to the next level.
Have you ever wondered what it takes to excel in the fast-paced world of e-commerce and turn adversities into opportunities? What would you ask a top expert who has mastered this art? Welcome back to Shine on Success. I'm your host Dionne Malush, ready to guide you through another episode filled with practical wisdom and inspiring stories. Today, we're talking with Anatoliy Labinskiy, a seasoned entrepreneur and e-commerce expert, renowned for his role in founding GSM Growth and co-founding EcomScout. io. Anatoliy is a four-time Two Comma Club award winner and a member of the Forbes Business Council. Let's explore his entrepreneurial journey and extract valuable lessons that you can apply to your own business ventures. I am so excited that you're here today, Anatoliy. I have been waiting for this, I think, for two months now, so welcome and let's start talking. Let's talk a little bit about you and tell us, tell everyone, what you do.
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
First of all, thanks, dionne. Yeah, thanks for a warm welcome and for having me here. So basically, I'm a ukrainian guy who is doing e-commerce business since 2017. Uh, made quite uh great results for myself and then created the advertising agency back in 2020. Uh, since then, we grow to 34 team members and, like scaled to multiple eight figures profitable results for our clients. We basically are running advertising for Shopify, brand owners, tiktok, facebook, sms, email marketing, google, so basically building an advertising ecosystem for the brand owners.
Dionne Malush:
It's a lot, you're doing a lot and you're young. When I see you on here and I see how young you are, I think wow, he's really accomplished a lot in his young life, so your journey is inspiring. So what motivated you to start GSM growth and what were some early wins that confirmed you were on the right path?
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
yeah sure, like, uh, I will try to be short because there is a quite long story behind. But, as I mentioned, I'm just a simple Ukrainian guy who grew up in the average poor neighborhood in Ukraine and was trying to get better things to myself, and my mom was working 15 hours a day to like help me finish like master degree in finance, and to me and my, my sister, and basically like I had a loan in university and all that stuff, since we were not able to pay for education and basically I understood that I need to change something in my life. And even with master degree in finance, I went to UAE, to Abu Dhabi. It was my first ever trip abroad as a food runner, so I was just cleaning dirty plates from the tables in the restaurant and bring to washing area and I didn't speak English. So for me it was first experience abroad.
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
Like I was the happiest guy ever because I've never seen the world and yeah, so basically this is like journey shortly started, but uh, I brought, I got married after and back in 2017, uh, nothing changed, still broke, still fighting for better life, and but here I have wife, we and we are in another country and my wife saying to me that she's pregnant, and that, basically, was the main reason that I took myself in the one part together and promised that I will be delivering financial results to my family, because my baby cannot grow up in the neighborhood as I was, and this is like what pushed me forward. It was my why, and my why was the future life of my son.
Dionne Malush:
Well, that's a pretty big why, and I am so impressed that you recognize how important that was right, and so you had no choice. So you kind of pushed yourself beyond the limits and today you have your own podcast. You're running several businesses, correct, and you're just you're doing remarkable things. So let's talk a little bit about your podcast. And you've had a lot of really incredible guests on your podcast, right? So what can you share from what you've learned from them? It's a powerful tool that our guests can implement today.
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
Oh, I learned so much from every single podcast. I learned something new because you guys are from different industries and different levels, from multiple seven figures of successful results to multiple nine figures, so it's like people who are about to have evaluation of their businesses for $1 billion, as for today. So, like those guys, all of them are my friends or people who I met on the conferences, but they are, uh, each of them, individual person. But one thing which I learned from them and from all the successful people who I know, one common thing that when you have a idea, when you have your, why you are following, following your things, doesn't matter what people would tell you, and the main thing that they, each of them they were building on the going. And that's actually related to me.
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
I remember when we opened the agency, I didn't know what is people management, time management, uh like self-management. I I really didn't know how to like manage the team, so I was trying to become a good manager, good ceo, and after that, like just a good networker. And all of them it's quite the same. Uh, that all is about the strong networking and learning every single day something new related to the business which they are managing, related to the industry, because we never, ever, ever will know everything. And plus, the market is going so fast, especially in the commerce industry, in real estate industry as well, that you have to adapt to the changes again and again, and again, and all the things. What is common between everyone?
Dionne Malush:
they are adapting fast, without excuses so, since having having your child, you've had adversities.
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
Oh yes, mean Can you?
Dionne Malush:
describe something that you've overcome to push to the other side.
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
Oh, you mean like a struggles, am I right?
Dionne Malush:
Yes.
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
Yeah, I have a second son now who is three and a half months old, and I have another circle of, I would say, business and personal struggles. We have now nanny, we have like cars, we have everything what we needed for the sweet, comfortable, like management of the business and personal life and like nanny is taking care of the baby and so on, but still like right now, for example, it's evening for me. I was with my smaller baby and my second older baby, like son, like seven year old almost. This is who was the reason of the starting business said Bob, you promised me to play chess, why are you going for the podcast? So, like I have to.
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
Sometimes I have to sacrifice of the personal life personal life and time one-on-one with my kids to go and do something for the business, but it's a small thing according that majority of the time. From another side, I'm free for them Because, like, when I'm working on the business, I could be busy in the evening, I could be busy early morning, but during the day, when it's a weekend, when it's a day or a working day, I have like flexibilities now to get couple hours and play with them and like have some fun, but definitely, uh, when you are running multiple businesses, as you mentioned, that like I have agency, I have a real estate company, I have a software company, and when you're running several stuff, like you have to be adapting to be uncomfortable in uncomfortable situations, and basically when something is related to the family and business is just crossing each other, you have to understand where is the priority. If there is a real priority in the business, you have to promise to yourself that you will take another half an hour in some other separate time from the business. You will be out to get more time with the kids. It's hard to manage but definitely we're always working on it and my wife helping me with that.
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
Because, seriously, your kids, especially seven-year-old one, he has a lot of extra curriculums, he has a lot of school work, he has a lot of things going on, plus playing time for himself that he doesn't need me like for hours. He need me like for at least one hour, but the quality one quality time with his father and then he get, like uh, distracted with other things and going and doing his own stuff. So by that I'm trying to say that if I'm taking my time out of the family, I'm trying to create that time from another part of the day and like one hour, two hours, and it's more than enough, because after that, like kids are kids, they're just busy with their own stuff.
Dionne Malush:
So what defines success to you? Is it the money?
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
No, money is the tool, money is the number. Before, when I started, my goal was my son, but financial goal, I remember, was like making $3,000 a month and I will be like quite great, feeling great myself and it's funny when I'm thinking about that. I remember it was goals for 2016. And I was thinking it will be like a top of the world income. But right now, all this like multiple businesses and so on, it's a game. I mean, I understand that I'm creator, I'm the visionary person and I cannot just stay on the same spot and I will feel bored. So I will definitely move forward, whatever it takes, for some new directions. And it's not about income, it's about who I am.
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
I love to create something. I love to manage challenges and according to what's actually success to me, it's exactly the possibilities of combining the personal life with the business. For example, we are traveling with family to New York for a couple of weeks. I'm in the middle of the business but at the same time, I'm having great fun during the week with my kids in the Central Park, playing football and so on, and at the same time, on the phone, I'm just answering two messages, which is going to be the main factors for the decision-making for the next couple of months in particular, direction in the business, the same. Like we are traveling to Dubai, we are enjoying somewhere on the middle of desert and again I can take out the laptop and fast do a couple of things and close it and done and like I'm still somewhere in the business. But mostly I always have time for my family.
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
My son doesn't know any other schedule for me, so I can't just imagine that I will go now to do the work nine to five. He most probably won't understand that. So, like from the beginning, obviously, I'm just saying that for me the success is the flexible lifestyle which has allowed you to create and generate quite good income for the family and giving possibilities to the team members who are working for me do the same, because we don't have schedule at work. Nobody working nine to five or something like that. All of them on remote, 30 plus people traveling around the world and just doing the work through the laptop.
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
Someone in thailand today. Tomorrow he's in dubai, tomorrow he he's somewhere in the los, los angeles. It's all about, uh, like their wish. The most important the job has to be done and the task has to be done in the good way, I mean, with the best possible results for the clients. So we're generating better income for the clients and changing lives for my team members and for myself as well, by having flexibilities and flexibilities. It's what people needed, because time is everything.
Dionne Malush:
I agree with you. And running a business here. We have 200 real estate agents in our company, so it's a lot of people. And then I also know it's a human business real estate.
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
It's a human-based business. It's hard.
Dionne Malush:
It's really hard and you get to get all the emotions that go with it and the ups and the downs. And I don't have kids but I feel like I have 200 kids right that need me in a different way that I've never been needed before. So you know we have rental properties. You know we have a lot going on too. So how do you manage multiple businesses? It's always been a question I've had as an entrepreneur, like how do you have multiple things going at the same time?
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
that's actually a great question because, like I was asking that question to myself I remember first time when I asked that seriously, it was 2021, november, if I'm not mistaken one event, one guy came on the stage and he like hey, in the last two years, we opened 17 country, 17 companies and created 25 products in one of those companies and other 10 products in another company. Like what is going on? Like who is that dude? How is that possible? Like what's happening with his head? Yeah, and he was like for me, like kind of you know light, like I have to pull, like what's how he is managing what he is doing.
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
And actually, after the event, I started asking Some of my friends, successful entrepreneurs just doing similar stuff, a couple of companies, a couple of companies and I'm like what's this point? How, how are you doing that? Like it's not possible, like you are not the gum you cannot like scratch, and they're like partnerships. What do you mean partnership? So, uh, you can like run several businesses, but that it doesn't mean that you have to be everywhere 90 of your time, like, for example, for example, my, I'm there like 90 of my time as a ceo. I'm an active ceo in this company and this is who I am. This is what I love to do most of my time, but at the end I have, like a real estate company which takes really quite a bit of my time, couple of calls a week where I have another two partners there and the property manager and the project manager.
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
From the beginning it wasn't easy but because I had the partners, we were creating the team together and each of us has our own strengths and our own weaknesses. I don't have enough time for that. They have more time and they have knowledge. One of them in the jurisdiction, so like in documents and understanding real estate law, and the second one has quite a bit of time, successful business running behind and quite a bit of a list of investors. And I have knowledge about real estate, about the birth method, what we are doing and so on, and we just combine our friendship together and started the business and it's quite successful and its synergy is quite great. Software business the same successful and its synergy is quite great. Software business the same.
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
My friend is successful in the sas company in the forex industry for automation, bought forex trending and he wants to be in e-commerce and I, for a long time, I wants to be in the software space and be like hey, let's combine our power. You have a developers, I have e-commerce knowledge, I have e-commerce team who can be that beta testers and this is how we can. Went to the ecomscoutio and created our own ai powered platform for the advertisers in e-commerce space. So basically, everything is about the partnerships. But you have to like I've done a lot of partnerships on the wrong way, and that's the part.
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
If you're speaking about how multiple businesses can run actively and actually successfully, you should understand that you should not be everywhere as a 50 plus percent shareholder, like, okay, I want to be 70 percent shareholder because this is who I am, I brought this idea and so on, and he's just implementing shareholder. Like, okay, I want to be 70 percent shareholder because this is who I am, I brought this idea and so on, and he's just implementing no better, give 60, 70 percent to that person who has time to be your operations manager, and so on, and you're going to be having less but bigger quantity of the businesses. So basically, by that being said, you're more as an advisor, as a consultant, as a visionary person and like other people, just developing business next to you, together with you for you, but achieving their own results, their own goals and, in the same time, everyone are winning. So you like, uh, I just start starting that. Uh, after five people met that guy, I, I just looked around and I checked Elon Musk like Tesla, spacex, neuralink, all those companies and this person is just managing thousands and thousands of employers.
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
That's why it's just numerous hours required of his attention and on all his interviews he's saying the same I'm utilizing only 90% of my time I'm in Tesla, not 90, 70, I believe and 20% is SpaceX and 10% is Neuralink and everything else. So basically, it's a good team and a good operators who are supporting you on the way to the next level of success. So, basically, not always working out, but when you find the right person, that's definitely going to be the win I feel like we're there at this point.
Dionne Malush:
We've we hired a ceo and she's doing a really great job. The first year was more difficult because she came from a banking industry, but there's a point, you know, I could go away for a couple of days and know that everything's OK and that feels really great. You know it's like don't worry, right? So what is one of your favorite things to do in the business?
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
I would say I'm a networker. So I love my calls with the core top managers and I love our brainstorming calls every couple of weeks with the same core top managers because this is a place where we are creating, where we open our creativity part, where we're trying to do something and it doesn't work and we're like just adjusting to trying again it doesn't work and after like thousands times it's not working, boom, we find out something. What's working. So I believe brainstorming calls in most probably one of my favorite one, and as well the sales team calls which we have five times a week and I should not be there.
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
I have a sales director but I'm still there myself saying you are the most intense ceo which I ever seen, who is always involved. But I I just love sales. I just love to be to see what they're doing, I love to give my opinion and obviously I'm not always there, but like almost every single call, I'm there because I just enjoying the process of sharing the wins, uh projections and like listening how the team feeling today and I really definitely enjoying and to have the most conversations during the week with the sales department okay, so now.
Dionne Malush:
So now, personally, do you have a hobby? Is there anything you'd like to do outside of working?
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
Yeah, like I really fun of the sports. So I love to run, I love to swim, which is I'm not using much, unfortunately after a newborn like a gym, swimming pool, became harder for me. But running and doing like a fitness exercise, at least at home, that's definitely what for me, it's normal thing, which is like supposed to be happening for every single entrepreneur. Otherwise, you get sick quite fast without having any activities At least I learned it on my own health, on my own health experience, and that's why I understand without fitness you'll get sick quite fast.
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
And I have to do that on a regular basis and in the same time, like I'm a big fan of movies, like I'm not watching that kind of more, like that kind of quantity of movies. But I love the industry, I love like to understand more about specific things and especially studying some kind of new features, which is like starting in Hollywood. And it's just like in the free time which I don't have much, but sometimes I really spend a couple hours, maybe once in two weeks, to watch the youtube videos about what's new in the industry maybe they'll make a movie about you someday.
Dionne Malush:
So let's talk about a moment that you felt like giving up and something. What, what helped you pull through that? What is your? Is it mindset shift? Was it a strategy that you used when you felt like you just had enough?
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
Yeah, like I would say that I never, ever, ever in my life, had the thoughts about giving up my first two years, when I started trying to start business back in 2017, nothing was working. I lost everything that I saved. Uh, nothing was working. I lost everything what I saved and my wife was, uh, delivered the baby and said she would worsen me if I won't stop because she, she wasn't understanding what I'm trying to do. And basically, uh, I had on my side such a strong why and I became so addicted with the process that I understood if I want to build the wealth and successful life for me myself and my family, it's only through the entrepreneurship and after that, through the investments. So, and basically, I was far away from the investments that moment, far away. And still now, I believe I'm still far from the real investments. And basically, I realized that one common thing that people are not quitting. That's why the like the books which I was reading about the successful autobiography of the different business owners one common thing between all of them they never quit, never. They just denied it.
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
And basically, I had my strong why, which was one of the points. I had no point go back, because I already burned the bridges and my wife started hating me, everyone started telling me stop it, and so on. So I understood, if I will stop, what will happen. I will just put myself back in a couple of years, because I am full in trouble now with the finances, with the relationships and so on and like no way just move forward and figure it out, what's going to be next, and that was definitely the right decision. So just curiosity of what's going to be next and strong why, which has not allowed you to stop, and not existence of the plan B. Plan B wasn't there. If you have plan B, you will definitely find out the reason why you have to choose that, why you have to quit. So if you don't have plan B, you're just moving forward whatever it takes.
Dionne Malush:
That is great advice. So what's next for you?
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
Right now. I want to finish this year with the extra seven employers we already know what kind of employers it's supposed to be and we want to grow our agency with adapting adaptation for the ai in the industry and as well like. I don't want to start new partnerships at the moment, but what's exactly going my? My focus right now it's more on the real estate. Uh, so since we started just last year, uh, we are playing. We ended up with the five doors and already regret refinances, and now we have made, successfully, another three offers and our plan is to finish up 12 properties.
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
So in the next five years the goal is 250 doors how many? We understand how we can be there. We have all the financial power. We are not in a rush because we understand we are quite young real estate investors that we will screw up if we scale too fast. We have investors, we have all the possibilities, all the capital which we needed, but we don't have yet tested team on the such kind of quantity of the apartments. We don't have yet pitfalls which are going to happen there, so we need to overtake more of them to be strong. So, step by step, end of this year we're planning to end it at 12 plus and the next year looking forward to at least 40, which means if we will achieve close to those numbers, we know how to scale them with the multifamily units to be on the goal in the matter of three to five years which I just mentioned.
Dionne Malush:
We started a little too late, but we have 45 doors now, so we're doing all right. Yeah, it's good and in our area you can really get a good bang for your buck. There's a lot of really inexpensive deals and we do a lot of seller financing, which has been very helpful in our area.
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
Yeah, it's kind of is it multi-families or?
Dionne Malush:
most multi-families I have. We have one single family, but the rest are multi, I mean yeah, I like it better doing it that way for sure the multifamily is. It makes so much more sense. We have six commercial out of all of those, so we do have to.
Dionne Malush:
There's some mixed use, but we first started in 2020. We had a goal to have 20 by the end of the year and we did it. And so then we're just like you we're not overdoing it because we're trying to keep them all in a radius close to us, because my husband manages them all. But it's it's a lot of work. People don't realize that when you're managing it yourself oh my gosh, it's so much all the time with the property manager, it will be much easier.
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
Well, what is in our end? Because we're doing everything on distance. But I feel you like, especially, a wrong contractor, wrong tenant can create you sleepless nights and delays with the bills, with the checks. It's incredible, but it's so fun when you overtake those obstacles and getting check at the end and getting the right tenant and getting refinance and getting this kind of fat piece of the check into your bank account and all that stuff. You understand why you're doing that and why real estate it's really building wealth and like it's a free money, like you're just like taking money which is tax deductible and like, wow, okay, let's repeat the same stuff yeah, everyone in real estate should have investment properties.
Dionne Malush:
There's no doubt in my mind. It's, it is great and there's a lot of good about it. So we're not. You know, we try to be really great landlords, right? We want to make sure that when they call, we listen and we pay attention. But sometimes you have the wrong one and they you know you have to get them out because they can mess up the whole building. But we're really smart in it. I think we're taking our time to building a point. But I wished I was. I don't know how old you are, but I just turned 56 this week and so no way it looks like minimum 11 to 12 years younger, seriously minimum, or even 15.
Dionne Malush:
Thank you nice it's a lot, it must be. The stress must be good for me, but anyways, yeah, so very exciting. I'm so glad we talked today and so let's talk about if you have any products or services you want to promote during this interview. Is there anything you want to tell our listeners about and see if I can help you in any way?
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
oh no, I'm good. I mean we provide the services in the agencies as described before. So if anyone with the shopify brands and they wish to like just speak and like hear our opinion about their stuff, they can easily go to our website jsmgrowsagencycom and just like make a booking of the audit call with me or one of my team members. I mean, we just like going to be seeing what's happening on their site and understanding if there is any good guidance can be provided. But in general, like you can easily find out me in instagram, this is the most active platform where I am.
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
Usually it's ecom by anatoly, so anatoly labinsky instagram page and there I'm personally answering on the dms. So if anyone wishing to like ask any questions or just say hi, please welcome. And yeah, anatoly labinsky youtube channel where you can see a lot of case studies about e-commerce, about, like, how we scaled the different advertising platforms with the different cases, so you can implement on your end by just listening what I'm sharing there. It's completely free. So, like youtube, it has all the answers to all your questions well.
Dionne Malush:
Thank you very much for being on here with me today. It was my pleasure, and I know you need to go take care of those babies. So thank you, and I hope to see you again someday, because I think you are just. You're just an amazing human being.
Anatoliy Labinskiy:
So thank you I appreciate you and thank you so much. It was pleasure to our listeners.
Dionne Malush:
Remember to follow us on social media for the latest episodes and exclusive content. If you have questions for me or want to share your own success stories, don't hesitate to get in touch. And don't forget to like, subscribe and share. Shine on Success. If we can help just one person overcome their challenges, then we've succeeded. See you next time. Keep shining.