Ex-Wall Street Whiz Kid Quits His Job To Become An Affiliate Marketer With Jacob Caris

I’m Igor Kheifets and this is the list building lifestyle. The podcast for anyone who wants to build a wildly profitable email list working from home. If you’d like to make six figures travel the world and help people improve their lives in the process, this podcast is for you. I also invite you to claim a free copy of my bestselling book, the list building lifestyle Confessions of an email millionaire at www.igorsbook.com. Get the free book plus a $3,000 bonus package that includes my best capture page templates, email, swipe files, and traffic blueprints. Visit www.igorsbook.com for details. And now it’s time to claim your list building lifestyle.

00:50

Welcome back to the list building lifestyle. I’m your host, Igor Kheifets and today I’m hosting one of the baddest super affiliates I’ve ever met to be honest, because he’s a holder of multiple awards, he won the ClickFunnels dream car, which he never claimed to be honest because he didn’t want to get the loan on it. And he is also one of the few people that I know who was able to make over $100,000 in affiliate commissions in a single day supporting Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi and Russell Brunson in their mastermind.com product launch. So I am really excited to pick his brain. I hope you are too. So please help me welcome Mr. Jacob Caris. Jacob, welcome to the list building lifestyle. Thank you, man, I appreciate you having me. I’m excited to hang out and have a chat with myself in the audience today. Yeah, and you know, I don’t. I don’t invite too many organic marketers to the show because I’m a bit anti organic, I’m doing mostly just paid traffic and you know, JD mailings these days. So for me, it’s a bit difficult to appreciate the art of pumping out content 24/7 And, you know, filming your food and, you know, being really exposed and being really active on social media. But, but I know you’ve done really well with it, and we will, we will dive deeper into it. But first, I want to, I want to pick your brain about this. So you are one of the few people in the world who actually, you know, you did well at school, you were an A student, and then you decided that you want to take things to the next level university or college and then you actually land a job on Wall Street. And, you know, we would consider this to be, you know, an achievement, right? This is the American dream to go work on Wall Street, make a lot of money, you know, be a part of that hustle and bustle. You know, that stuff. I mean, when I was growing up, I remember the movie Wall Street, the real one like that one with Charlie Sheen. And Michael Douglas didn’t really like the second movie yet. But basically, what I’m saying is you had a great job. And or at least it seems so and then you decide to walk away from it to do this crazy affiliate thing that no one heard off. So why

03:05

it was a, it was a point in my life. I was over in America, obviously, as the audience probably told from my accent, I’m not American, I’m from Australia. And

03:15

I did the same kind of work in Australia. And then the opportunity presented itself to move over to New York for a couple of years. And

03:23

I was about halfway through my second year over there. And I could have stayed longer. But my family, my dad, had some health issues. And I wanted to come back for that reason. And then there were a couple of reasons. One, moving, moving from the finance game in New York to the finance game in Australia, where it’s like, the equivalent of going from playing in the major leagues to, you know, playing baseball in the local park, kind of equivalent in terms of deals and size and dollars. So that wasn’t particularly appealing, making that huge kind of step back.

03:58

And the other thing man was I was absolutely shot, I was in my kind of mid to late 20s

04:04

doing the you know, the 80 hour plus weeks in New York. And it’s so funny when I when I go on Instagram or wherever and there’s all of this, you know, hustle culture that people yap about and I can almost confirm that none of them are doing the hours that they claimed to be doing because it’s just, it’s simply like I actually did it consistently for months on end and it is simply not sustainable. Like you will put yourself in the ground and actually ended up getting really sick

04:36

off the back of it. And so I was I looked at I was I looked at it and I’m like is this what I want to do for the rest of my life. I enjoyed the work. I was really good at it and I learned so much and I would not change any of it.

04:48

But I just kind of got to a point where I was like I don’t think this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I want more flexibility. I don’t want to be in an office all day or weekend. I want to be able to, you know, run late. I’m on my clock.

05:03

And I was kind of also at the point where I didn’t have a lot of commitments. And so it was like kind of now or never, you know, you’re in that late 20s, things get harder and harder, the older you get typically take on more obligations and responsibility. And so I just took my shot, I guess. And thankfully, it paid off. Yeah. And you know, what, what I find fascinating is, you know, you’ve invested so much to get to that level, you invest so much to get that job or similar job. And you’re just able to say, you know what, this is just not for me, and just to walk away from it, because I know people who’ve got a good job, they hate it, they’re freakin miserable at it. But they will never walk away. They will just not walk away, because they’ve invested too much. It’s kind of like, you know, being in a bad marriage, and, you know, being married to someone for 20 years, but it’s not working out anymore. And they’re like, Well, I’ve invested too much into this to walk away, you know, and then they stay there and stay miserable. Yeah, we value things that we’ve already got way higher than, you know, something that we don’t have. And if someone said, Oh, do you want this? You’d be like, No, thank you.

06:11

But yeah, I don’t know, man, I

06:14

the affiliate marketing thing, when I saw it, it just, it was like, right time, right place. And it just, I just, it just clicked. And I was like, this makes sense. If I can just focus on the front end, I don’t have to worry about the back end delivery, all that kind of stuff. It was like, and the first year was pretty basic stuff. I was like blogging and doing some reviews and putting some links up and trying to figure it all out. And

06:39

yeah, I don’t know, I was just like, I’ve got to, I’ve got to give this a go. Because I’ve kind of the one of the few things I’ve figured out over the years is it’s the it’s the things you don’t do that you regret, not necessarily the things that you do, even if you do them and they turn out to be a mistake, I’d rather kind of have a stab at it and get it wrong than go Hmm. You know, should I have done that? Or what would have happened? What might have been? I’d rather I’d rather have a go at it. So you know, I could have, it could have flopped and the job wasn’t going anywhere. Put it that way, I could have very easily walked back into another job.

07:15

But thankfully, I haven’t had to do that. Yeah. And so you quit. So you quit your job before you were successful in affiliate. Am I getting right? No. So I started the affiliate stuff in early 2017. And ended up quitting my job in about September 18. I was back in Australia and the affiliate things thing had got up to about 10 grand a month at that point. So it was it was it was making money. But I think it was probably about what I was earning in my job once I was back in Australia. So it was kind of on par. I actually wanted to wait even longer . I’m a bit risk averse, in some ways. I think as soon as I see some people who like they have their first 10 grand month and I’m out. Might be a bit soon.

07:57

But I actually wanted to wait a while, well, I don’t even know where to put that. Oh, hey, guy. I mean, the moment I had my first $100 day, there was a day when I made $141 in recurring commissions. And I just that the next day, I just didn’t show up for work. That’s what I said, I don’t need that anymore. You know, the irony of it, of course, was that for the next six months, I didn’t make a single sale. Yeah. So I eventually had to go and beg for my job back. So that was, you know, embarrassing. Yeah. But yeah, you’re right. I mean, as soon as you see that money, you’re like, finally, yes. You know, I’m on. It can’t take it anymore. Yeah, people asked me quite a bit. They’re like, when should you quit your job? And the typical answer is like, you know, when you’ve got X months of savings, or you’re at x income level, and I think they’re important, but I think I think the main thing that when I look back, it’s how confident are you that you can repeat the results because as you know, opportunities, change, methodologies, change tactics, change platforms can get rid of you. That’s why obviously, you focus on email, things change in this industry. And if you’re all in on one thing that could disappear tomorrow,

09:06

that’s not a founder, especially if you’re trying to support a family or anything like that, like you need the confidence that you can repeat it over and over again, this is why I’m always preaching to the people that I work with about, you know, studying copywriting and studying sales as opposed to like, where do I put my link type stuff? Yeah, yeah. And I mean, it’s something that a lot of people don’t quite get, for some reason that it really doesn’t matter the platform or the media, or whether you put it on the website or whether you put it on a Google Doc. What matters is the principles, the persuasion principles, the psychology, the sales and marketing. That’s what matters. That’s what makes it tick. I mean, I was just at an annex golf seminar and the room was based. It was a room full of like over 100 people who are making over half a million dollars a year. Marketing something online, you know, could be anything, you know, it could be an agency could be an info

10:00

product, affiliate money, there was actually an affiliate there who had over $2 billion in sales for a water of water company Kangen water. So he’s got like one of the largest teams and that sort of MLM slash affiliate model. And so one thing that you would notice is that is the incredible diversity. You know, there were people coming on stage, and one is like, Oh, I’m all in for tick tock, and look, I got 2 million views here and 30,000 subscribers there, then we publish a video every 27 seconds. And here’s the format. And here’s what we do. And you know, I look at that, and I’m getting dizzy, nauseous, you know, I was like, there’s no way I’m publishing that much content, then someone next goes on stage. And it’s, it’s

10:47

female fitness trainer from Dubai, who’s up, she pretty much pretty much swears by Facebook chat, or Instagram, DMS or something. And it’s all done by hand, then someone next, someone else comes on stage, who used to be a media buyer for a Gora. And he’s all about, you know, Facebook ads and someone else going on stage. Will it actually be my fantasy for them to call me on stage, you know, and be like, Hey, can you talk about solo ads? You know, but that never happened, unfortunately. But my point being is that there were tons of people in the room, everyone’s getting traffic somewhere. Everyone’s got a technique, somehow there was one, one guy from Venezuela, who was doing Shopify, like he would build Shopify stores for people and sell them for like 75k a pop. So all he’s doing is putting people from an ad on his list, and then on the Facebook group, and then just goes live in the faith in a Facebook group. And every time he does, he would also email his list and notify people. So one thing I would say is a commonality is that, well, two things. First of all, they will have a list. Even the ones who say don’t build a list, you know, they still have a list because it’s how they manage their contexts really. And the other part is they will make offers, they will make lots and lots of offers unapologetically to lots of people every single day. I think that’s actually a missing element for many people. You know, they kind of get the sink into books and courses, and they build websites and stuff like that, but they don’t make offers. Like they don’t actually pitch someone with something. And that’s, that’s where the rubber meets the road.

12:27

All right, so let’s, let’s talk about your $100,000. Commission day. I want to know more about that. Yeah. So as you mentioned, off the top that was for mastermind.com. With Russell and, and Tony and Dean.

12:46

I was at Funnel Hacking live in early 2019. And they announced it and they told the story of how Tony and Dean were going to do it together. And then Russell wanted to be involved. So we tracked down the domain and bought it and then gifted it to them and to try and get on the deal, which was quite cool. And my ears perked up when I heard it. And I was like, you bring those three guys into a room with their audiences and their experience that it’s going to be ridiculously big, right.

13:15

And then a few months went by when I got back home and didn’t really think much of it. And then I remember I was sitting at home, just a movie on TV. It was like a Thursday or Friday and I was late in the week. I remember heading into the weekend and I saw something pop up on Facebook. I’m like, Oh, that’s right, I need to do something that that movie wasn’t particularly interesting to me. So as I was sitting there, I was like, how can I possibly punch with the names that are going to be in this launch? And like to this day, my audience isn’t particularly big. I’ve got 5000 YouTube subscribers, I’ve got a 3000 person Facebook group, like it’s, it’s not a lot. I’ve done more about how you monetize small audiences and big audiences. But it was even smaller back then. And even less people knew me back then than they do now.

14:00

And so I was like, How can I possibly punch with these big players who are going to have huge budgets, they’re going to have huge teams behind them running their campaigns. They’ve got way more know how to do all these different things. I was like, How can I possibly punch and all I could figure out was I need to start sooner, because a lot of the affiliates that you compete against in those types of launches. They’re not affiliates, they’re big personal brands, and they just jump on as an affiliate for that launch. So I was like, if there’s any way I can beat them, it’s probably going to be starting sooner because they’re going to be focused on their own stuff. And then they will just jump into the launch or towards the end of the launch just before the push. And then you know, they get on with their lives because this isn’t what they do.

14:48

And so what I did was about a week to 10 days before we actually got our affiliate links. I started running ads and started a bit of a

15:00

Organic push as well from the small audience that I did have on Facebook over to

15:09

Mani chat, to get people to register for information about this thing that was coming with Dean and Tony and Russell and it was really basic, all I did was leverage, kind of curiosity around the fact that you know, these three industry titans are coming together.

15:26

And so push that for seven to 10 days. And it was just all roads lead to opt into this bot opt into this messenger bot messenger bot messenger bot. And I can’t remember, I can’t remember how much I built up in that first week, but I’m gonna say it was about four or 5000 people. So I went like I went pretty hard.

15:48

Pretty hard at it. But because of the names, their brand names, the opt-ins were so cheap, it was like they were like $1- $2 to get it to get someone on a bot. And this was back when and I think they’ve just changed the rules back now that broadcasting to Mani chat, I don’t use it too much now, but

16:08

this was back when there weren’t any rules around broadcasting. So you could just send them some people would get pissed off, but that’s okay.

16:15

And I thought it’s easier for me to use that or something. Yeah, exactly. I was like, it’s easier for me to use that for the short, you know, hard and fast launch than trying to build an email list where you know, my opens aren’t going to be anywhere near as good.

16:31

It’s gonna need to be longer form content. Whereas the messenger bot could just be short, punchy, here’s the link that gets right into their phone, people check their messages. And so build that list up. And then I remember, it was a Friday, Friday, the week later, they announced, you know, affiliate links are live. And the way that tracking worked for the launch was

16:56

it was ultimately a last touch system. But if you got them registered via email for the live webinar thing that they were going to do in like two weeks’ time that email got cooked to you. And so my logic was to get as many emails registered as soon as possible. And that’s going to be my best shot. And so like literally the I remember we had, we had friends over for dinner, and

17:20

they got the email or whatever, that they went live. And I’m like, sorry, guys, you’re going to have to excuse me, I got up from dinner, went into my study. And I sent and I started sending out the messages like it’s live, it’s live, it’s live, it’s live. And the first 24 hours, I was like, at the top of the opt ins leaderboard, we’d like 2000 registrations for the webinar.

17:41

And I remember, like, I got a couple of messages from people, I had a couple of big names, like add me on Facebook. And then it was

17:52

someone went live in the group or something they’re like, Who is this guy? Like he’s first, who is this dude?

17:59

And, and so that kind of rolled on and I just kept pumping ads to the bot list. And then as soon as they got on the bot list, it was it was registered, I started rolling out some ads to directly to register I still wanted to build the list a little bit for the rest of the launch, but I started kind of hedging the investment 5050 with just you know, direct to register essentially.

18:23

And just push really hard. I can’t. I can’t remember where I ended up in the opt in list, but I think I ended up getting about 7000 people to register for the live event.

18:37

And I knew that would that would be where I’d you know have my chance so to speak because I wasn’t doing a big bonus stack I didn’t have you know most of the guys and girls doing those bonus stacks are like they’re like you get this event in Cabo and you get like three iPads and my third kidney and like they just they go out of control because they want the leaderboard position and so I wasn’t doing any bonuses or anything like that.

19:06

So I was like I’ve got to get the transaction at the point of the live event because what inevitably would happen on the after the live event was the bonus was start and you’ve got you know clear your cookies and you’ve got I bought from this person I want a refund so they can buy from this person and get the get the bonuses and so I was like alright, the first you know, 72 hours or so after the live event is my is my shot and so I just kind of went as hard as I could for that and they

19:34

they did the live event. And I didn’t know if was it good? Was it bad? What happened? Once they open the cart?

19:44

I was sitting chatting with a mate. I think I ended up spending maybe 25 grand on ads.

19:51

So it was a little bit in the hole to begin with. Without having anything come back because it’s a live event. You’re waiting for the pitch

20:00

And then I opened the cart and I’m looking at my emails and Infusion software where they were doing the tracking. And I’m like, refreshing and I’m like,

20:10

nothing’s happening. Nothing’s happening. Nothing’s happening. I’m like, this is concerning. And I just, you know, put 25 grand up in flames. And we waited. And we waited, and we waited. And then dean went live after the whole thing had wrapped up in the affiliate group. And he’s like, Look, don’t stress, it’s gone insanely well, so well, that we, you know, we broke the carts and all the, you know, the classic, the launch is so big, we’ve broken the internet type thing.

20:35

You know, like I who, anyway a couple of days went on, and they’re like, look, we’re having to do it all manually, just sit tight. And then being in Australia.

20:45

You know, everything’s happening at night. While I’m,

20:50

everything’s happening for you guys while I’m asleep. And I had a mate, call me who I did, who I kind of worked with on the launch, kind of, and

20:59

he’s like, dude, check your Infusion soft account. I was like, ah, shit. So I pull my laptop out. I’m sitting up in bed at like three o’clock in the morning. And I’m hitting refresh. And it’s like, 10, grand, 20 grand, 30 grand now, uploading all the transactions manually. So 40, grand, 50 grand, 60 grand, and it got all the way out to like 120 and it was just like, holy crap, this is insane.

21:24

And then yeah, a few more, few more came in kind of through the, through the tail end, I think I ended up losing, like 10 grand in, you know, people Moving over to other people to get bonuses. And it was chaos after that. Like it wasn’t that great after that, because my push was for the start. And I ended up finishing 11th Overall. I want to top 10 Because they all got to go to Fiji with tiny, but I just missed out what it is that you made 100 grand in commissions over 100 over 120 I think you said Yeah, at some point. And you didn’t even get into the top 10. Now, it was huge, man. Wow, it was a massive launch. Yeah, no way. Oh, my God, that must be I think they did. This number could be wrong. But I’ve got a number like 12 million in my head that someone mentioned to me at some point, like it was a big launch. Still, though, I mean, somebody who makes that many sales should be Yeah, shouldn’t be on that leaderboard.

22:24

But this is crazy. This is not something only, you know, it kind of makes me sometimes I would sit here, and I would look at my sales for the month or something. And I’d be like,

22:36

I’m maxing out the market, you know, like, I’m maxing out the market cap for some for like one of my products or something like that. And this is actually a common thing that all the top achievers do. You know, initially, when they launch a product, it does kind of well, and then kind of plateaus at some point, because you have to start taking a different approach to promoting it. And, you know, usually around the million dollar mark, you’re like, Yeah, I’m maxing out the market cap. Yeah, but you hear stories about those launches? And you’re like, oh, my God, you know, if there’s no cap, you know, sometimes like you just think then, is there a cap? Because you can go big, you can go big with what we do. And that’s great. Yeah, I mean, you can go into parallel markets. And you know, you can create buyers that, you know, maybe two months ago weren’t aware that your product was even a thing or they didn’t know they had that problem. And, you know, there’s, it’s, it’s basically, it’s basically infinite in a lot of ways. Yeah. And what’s interesting is that Tony and Dean, you know, they launched to a crowd that wasn’t necessarily marketers. I mean, there’s a lot of people who follow Tommy, Tommy, Tony and Dean, who don’t like, who are like self-development people. People want to fix their lives. People want to fix their relationships, maybe not Dean Dean’s more into real estate. So there’s there you know, he’s got money oriented people. But Tony Robbins. I think what he did great over the years is that he sort of said, well, I’ve got an audience. And they’re human. And they’ve got needs and they’ve got problems. You know, some of them got health problems, only God relationship problems got money problems. So over the years, he produced all the different programs, right? He had the business mastery, and the relationship seminar and all kinds of stuff. And I think the lesson here is once somebody finds a guru, you know, it almost doesn’t matter what the Guru sells, right? They will do just well, it’s Tony. So I’m in you know, like there’s a lot of people like that, that no matter what the guru says or just, I’m in it’s crazy man. Wow. So I mean, making that kind of money in one day, which of course you there was like maybe a waiting period and a refund cool off period or something before he got that money but still a lot of money. Some people will even say they left changing money.

25:01

So was it life changing? Um,

25:05

I mean, given the job that I had previously, like, I wasn’t making that much in a day, but I earn good money.

25:12

I earned good money previously, I think it, I think it was life changing in that it opened my eyes, truly to the possibilities of what I was kind of sitting on. Like I’d had, you know, before that I’d done 10 Grand Rounds, 20 Grand Rounds, I think I’d had a 30 grand month,

25:31

which is, you know, which is, which is amazing money, but when you see six figures hit your account in a day, it’s different.

25:40

It’s kind of, it’s different, so to speak. And so I think, yeah, it didn’t, it didn’t necessarily change my life from like, a, you know, I don’t have one of those typical internet marketer stories of like, you know, I was in a box under a bridge and couldn’t eat and, you know, then I wandered out and found a Magic Scroll with all the secrets, you know, the typical story, I don’t really have that. I was like, I was gonna say, Hello, that’s a much sexier story, just so you know, that story would make for a much more. Yeah, conversation. But yeah, like, it almost seems like every successful marketer has one, isn’t it? Yeah. And I think a lot of them make them up, I’m convinced. Not all of them are that bad. But for sure, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Like, you don’t want to tell people I was really successful. And then I said, Well, I want something else. And I became successful at this other thing. You know, I sort of tell people, I was like, Look, I did pretty well in corporate, but I wanted to get out. I could make up some story. But, but that’s, that’s kind of how I built my brand, I’m just pretty frank with people. And I’m like, look, this is who I am. And what I’ve done. And if you know, if you need someone who’s gone through this whole thing, I remember sitting at Funnel Hacking live with somebody. And I was listening to all the speakers come across, and I was still relatively new to the kind of internet marketing thing. And I’ve only been in it for two years. And I was like, Dude, I don’t have one of these stories. I didn’t know that I’m going to make it. So I don’t have

27:06

a rags to riches story. I was like, I was doing pretty well before I just wanted something different. And then I’m like, that’s insane. I’m never going to think that again.

27:16

It’s like, dammit, I’m a capable, successful smart individual. I can never make it as a grown line. You know? Yeah. No, but you’re absolutely right, man. It’s like, sometimes I hear some stories. And, you know, I’ve got a buddy, who’s actually quite, quite smart and quite capable, but he just had just a bad thing happened to him, like he lived in Thailand, Thailand, and he owned a hotel in Thailand, and was already pretty successful, both at affiliate marketing and publishing books. And of course, he owned the hotel, which I don’t know if the window was profitable or not, but he owned it. So that’s, I mean, that’s good enough for me. And then its tsunami washed it away. So like, you know, like, that’s just a bad luck. And hopefully, he stayed alive, although he had to spend some time in the hospital, his family’s okay. But he used, you know, the online marketing industry to rebuild himself financially back into back into this game. So it was, you know, I think if you’re looking to tell a good a good marketing story, I think all of us can find that low point in our lives that people just can’t relate to, because this is what it’s really about. Its how relatable Are you? It’s not about how low you fell. It’s more about, you know, can I relate to the story he’s telling, I think your story is very relatable, because there’s a lot of people out there who have a good job, decent job, boring as fuck, and they hate it. They live this life of quiet desperation. They don’t enjoy it, they dreaded every day in the morning, they, you know, wait to punch the clock every day. But they just won’t let go of it. Because they don’t know what else can they do what you know, and they’re just too scared to go on their own. And, I mean, that’s, that’s very inspiring, very relatable. And I think, I think, I mean, I admire and respect the fact that you didn’t adjust your life narrative, you know, to fit the marketing but, but rather built a marketing brand to fit the narrative. I think that’s really powerful. Yeah, and I just can’t off right in any other way. And I think there’s a couple of things that come out of what you just said, one, I actually looked at it the other way, and I was like, this is probably advantageous because I get a lot of people who hit me up who are from the corporate game who are probably earning you know, north of 8090 100 120 140 grand a year about the transition out and they’re great customers because they’re not, you know, they’re not worried month to month, they’re making good money, which is fantastic.

29:53

I think the other thing you said in terms of you know, fitting the fitting the marketing to who you really are like you

30:00

You can’t, you can’t show up every day and create content, like I’ve built my business around. If it’s fabricated, it just, it just has to be your voice and what you’ve done and what you’re doing otherwise, it’s, it’s, it’s too hard. You’ve got to get into character, and then write it like, it’s just not, and it’s not going to happen. And I kept rolling with that.

30:23

And took it one step further. Because everything I achieved in my life before the internet marketing game was purely off the back of hard work, I just always thought, well, I’ll just outwork everybody else.

30:36

And in a lot of cases, that’s what I did. And it worked for me. And I’ve, again, terrible marketing message, but I’ve used it over and over and over again, I’ve said, I’ve just played the opposite card, and I’ve gone which is, you know, a Dan Kennedy mantra, right, like, do the opposite of what everyone else is saying, it’s actually worked really well, is being frank with people and being like, look, this shit is really hard. And it takes a lot of work, and it’s gonna kick your ass. So if you’re not prepared for that, we probably shouldn’t dance today. So that messaging is congruent with the story. And it definitely deters people, but it also manages expectations really nicely. Oh, yeah. And it all depends on the kind of market you go after really, remember, when I was doing my soul taking coaching, I was taking a very similar approach, it was very straight, straight talking straightforward kind of approach, because I didn’t want to, I didn’t want someone pay me grand and then expect a miracle. You know, I really wanted people to come in and actually put in the work and the work paid off. But, you know, if I were to just put out a different message and say, hey, you know, I got this blue button thing going on, I would probably have attracted more people. But I would also

31:49

probably have to deal with more, you know, backlash, stress, refunds.

31:55

You know, like, overall, just, you know, and you’re right, it’s, it’s, you have to have the personality to operate that way. Because some people can’t, like, believe it or not, some people can sleep well at night, you know, saying things that aren’t necessarily true, just to get the sale. And they have no queasiness about it, either. They’re like, they don’t lose sleep over it. And to be honest, like, I’ve always envied those people, because my, my mind and my heart,

32:26

it meant that many different points in my life actually got in the way, even when they’re not supposed to, you know, they, something’s really heavy on my mind. Even if I do everything right, I still have a lot of built in guilt and shame, I guess from childhood from Jewish upbringing. And it, you know, it kind of poisons my well-being sometimes, and I have to be really, really careful about the jayvees I choose to work with the products they choose to release and how I choose to market them. Because otherwise, I know it can. And most importantly, actually, I have to be really careful about how much and what content and feedback I consume in the market that too, because there could be one comment that can poison my life. Like, for real, like, there was this one guy, you know, I was, he wanted to join my solo, take a mentoring program, and it was an 8k program. But he had no money.

33:33

And he’s like, gave me the sob story about, he’s getting married soon. And this and that, and recently lost his job and blah, blah, blah. So I was like, okay, um, you know, what, give me 500 bucks. And I’ll give you access to the program, but no personal coaching, but still the same program, all my templates, scripts, etc. And I did it. And this came back to haunt me four months later, when this guy made a whole big deal about me, scamming him, started posting online about it on many different websites, including the Warrior Forum, then he found a way to post on a website called scam book that at the time, had really good SEO capabilities. So one post from him, he pretty much, you know, ranked for my name for the next few years that post alone. Now I actually ended up turning that post around by having a lot of my successful students go comment on the post. And so it became like a billboard, you know, for somebody posting a negative thing about me and then you know, lots and lots and lots of people don’t protect me. And I, you know, I’ve got that on phone calls where people say, you know, I looked you up and I saw this one guy had been experienced with it. It’s like so many people who said good things about you. So I was like, wow, this guy must be legit. But that really threw me off for about a week. I couldn’t even get to my computer. Like I didn’t want to touch it. I felt like it was a piece of shit. You know?

34:59

Have you ever had the similar experience where you know, someone’s comment or whatever got to you? Yeah, man I’ve had, I’ve had plenty of those I hadn’t.

35:08

I mean, there’s so many cases, you know what it’s like in this in this industry, I think, honestly, I’ve, I’ve moved beyond the, the trolls and the idiots bothering me for the most part, you can, you can walk them in and get rid of them, the ones that I found hit me the most, which I didn’t expect. Well, I just didn’t expect it to happen. It’s not that I didn’t expect that I would react this way. But it’s the people that you help a lot.

35:31

And we’re talking before about recreating stories, that one of the issues I see in the internet marketing world is

35:40

people like to change how they got where they are, and who helped them, and how they help them and how much they help them.

35:50

And so what really hit me was, you know, you’ll, you’ll, I like to go above and beyond for people and I’d over invest, they’d pay for three grand course group coaching, and you end up giving one to one to try and get them there. Which obviously, are self-interest involved, because you want success stories, and you want to make that happen, but at the same time you become invested in certain people. And

36:11

what really hit me was when you commit a lot to individuals, and you literally change their life, like take them from zero to 2030 grand a month. And then once you do that, in the internet marketing game, you’re fine. Like you’re off, if you’ve got half a brain, you’re rocking and rolling, you can compound one way and into another into another into another. If you network, well, if you provide enough value, if you just keep working, you’ll be swayed, like you just need that breakthrough in the internet marketing space, and you’re and you’re good as gold.

36:43

And that’s the hardest thing to achieve is that first, you know that that first momentum, like getting that that boulder moving, and there was a couple of cases where, you know, guided people very, very closely, and then they turn around and change their story and, you know, almost slingshot back the other way to try and sell their new thing that, you know, in the same market. And it’s like you if you knew what a network was worth, and what we could have done together over the next 510 years. Like, take your little course, you know, they were the ones that really that put me in a twist for a couple of months to be fair.

37:24

Was that more than the more than the trolls because that they get their own karma in the lives that they have to live? Yeah. And, you know, it hurts like I had several times when someone I brought up or mentored a trained goes on started competing business. One time I had a guy

37:45

who was almost like a prodigy, not a prodigy, but a protégé of I don’t know if there’s a word like that in English, but we use it in Russian sometimes, basically, someone I mentored into what we do. And he basically not only went on to start a competing business, but he actually took my clients, to my best clients. And about half of them I had about 80 clients at the time, were paying me $500 a month. So you can imagine the recurring income and the stability and safety and peace of mind that comes with that than ever, you know, every month you just wake up and you’ve got money coming in. You just deliver the service every month, and you’re good. So this guy contacted them one by one. And he had access to my contact book. Now was my mistake. You never probably never want to give access to your list and your checkbook to anyone. But he did. And he basically approached them and he said, look, you’re doing this with the glory, you’re paying and five bucks a month, why don’t you come with me? I know, I know, you know, I can do the same thing for you. But for 250.

38:47

And about 40 people, you know, just canceled. So within maybe a couple of weeks’ time, I had a huge drop in recurring revenue, huge drop, and these clients just kind of falling off, like, you know, like dead flies. And that was devastating when I realized what happened. And I think the worst thing about being betrayed by a student or business partner, or anyone you put a lot of effort and energy into is it changes the way you look at the world and the people. It changed the way you communicate. And it prevents you from being open and vulnerable with people which I think is the highest form of courage is to be vulnerable to be okay, I guess with being vulnerable with people, because a lot of times we put on the screen or facade want to seem like we’re bigger than we are. We want to impress upon people how kick ass we are. But I don’t see this nearly enough. Because like my best relationships, both in business and in life are with people who can be vulnerable. And I started kind of being sensitive to that but there was a time in my life.

40:00

After going through several of these bad relationships that I just stopped being so I became very distant. And that prevented me from forming the next relationship that could lead to the million dollars. You know, so yeah, it’s really unfortunate and it sucks. It sucks. Yeah, I think that’s spot on man, one of the guys I run one of my programs with and I have very different kinds of world worldviews because of the work that I used to do, which was all distressed situations. And you’re dealing with people in their kind of, at their worst times, the first day I started in corporate, my boss came up to me and he said, he said, used to call me young Jacob. And he said, Young Jacob, one piece of advice, trust nobody.

40:46

And that kind of stuck with me. It served me well in that industry very, very well.

40:54

And I’m, I’m definitely a lot more Zen and relaxed now. But one of the guys I run this other program with, he’s the complete opposite. And he’s just like, everyone benefits from the doubt, even if there’s like red flags, he’s like, benefited, without benefit of the doubt benefit of the doubt. So it’s such an interesting,

41:13

dynamic, but yeah, it’s just it where it wears you down. And it probably prevents you from maybe going above and beyond for certain people in certain situations, who would appreciate it, because you’ve been burned before, and you’re just trying to protect your own energy. Yeah, the other part of it that I really hated

41:33

is that I started losing trust in people before the relationship even took place, especially in students. Like, the amount of times I heard from a student, Igor, you should work with me because I’m super dedicated, super passionate, they take a lot of action. I’m a master implementer bla bla bla bla bla bla bla, and they’re like, kind of build themselves up to a point of, you know, like, almost questioning, okay, with you’re so great. Why, and you’re successful already. But you know, they’re like, Yeah, I’m, like, super dedicated, I’m going to do everything I’m going to tell me. And then you go through a relationship with them, as you know, you mentor them, and they are a student. And a week goes by two weeks, a month, two months, three months, six months, and they’re still dragging their feet or aren’t really doing what you told them to do. Like you go through that a couple of 1000 times. And you’re like, just you don’t believe people anymore? Do you? Yeah, you’ve got to see it in action. And that’s for sure. Yeah. All right. Well, let’s, let’s wish for something a little bit more positive. So, you made that decision. Obviously, it was a great decision to move away from the cutthroat corporate world where you can trust anyone to build your own business on your own terms.

42:40

You’ve had some massive success, probably, you know, bigger success than most people can brag about in this industry. And that’s awesome.

42:47

Let’s talk about some big aha moments, maybe moments that you’ve that you’ve realized over the years. So you’ve now been doing this for four minutes? Yep. What are some of the key aha moments, I guess, if you look back, that you would have loved to share with your older self, when you were getting started this, there’s three that come to mind.

43:15

One of them pertains particularly to the internet marketing space, but can also be kind of extrapolated out to really anything. But the first one was a light bulb I had,

43:27

I’d already been doing it, I just didn’t realize it. And it was what we kind of touched on before, which is

43:35

it’s very effective in the internet marketing space. But it’s also very effective in any area of business, I think. And it’s the ability to compound one, win into another, into another into another and progressively make those wins, bigger and bigger and bigger.

43:56

And it’s something that I talked to the folks that I that I worked with, who are starting out about like, as soon as we start working together, and I don’t think it really sinks in when they first start, like you’ve got to be ready to hear the advice. But I repeat it and I repeat it and I repeat it and you can see the light bulbs go off. And I mean, I did it without even realizing it like with the ClickFunnels thing. And then with legendary marketer KBB, there was it was it was the lessons rolled from one end to the other and the brand grew from one to the other. And the result the financial resources rolled from one thing into the novel, that I took those and rolled them into

44:34

the course that we rolled out in late 2019. And that catapulted that and then the success from that has now impacted what I’m doing now and it’s like one thing leads to another leads to another if you take methodical and congruent action,

44:52

and even if you can look one step ahead, you’ll destroy most other people because most people are just thinking about it like the end of their nose.

45:04

If you can think one step ahead and go what, like, what do I need? What would I want to do then, and then you can reverse engineer back to get there.

45:13

Like most people will make 10 bucks in the affiliate marketing world, and then they go and make their own course. And they wonder why their course is crap and doesn’t sell.

45:23

And then they’ll come and they’ll go, well, have you done, you know, nearly 2 million bucks in your affiliate marketing course. And I was like, because I did the stuff that won all these awards before I even thought about making a course. That’s why it didn’t really. It’s like loading a slingshot, right? Like the further you pull it back, the further that thing’s going to go and the faster it’s going to fly.

45:43

And you know, that that was one big lightbulb and analyze any big name in the entire marketing space. That’s what they’ve done really, really, really, really well. They’ve compounded one success into another in terms of social proof in terms of financial resources in terms of their network, in terms of their audience, in terms of their skill sets, all of the aspects from that first project roll into the second one roll into the third one. So if I’d seen that a little bit sooner, I probably would have been able to engineer things to happen faster. That’s the first one.

46:17

The second one is kind of congruent. But if you show up every day, and

46:31

chip away at making your name in your market a little bit stronger, and a little bit bigger, and a little bit better. Through your content through the ads that you’re on through the offers that you make through the clients success stories that you generate. If you focus on building that name, just a little bit more each day. And for anyone that hasn’t read the compound effect, go read it.

46:58

If you just focus on that around your name, and like yesterday, you had 100 people in your Facebook group tomorrow, you have 110 that after that you have 120 If you do that, over weeks, and over months, and more people know you today, the new yesterday,

47:13

you’ll be okay. You will get there may not happen as fast as you want. But for me, progressively expanding that name.

47:23

In a methodical and strategic way is the Holy Grail in this game. As far as I’m concerned, you look at

47:31

I think there’s other ways to make more money sooner. But I think the big picture, your name is the real asset in so many different ways. And then the third one

47:46

was one that was illuminated for me probably 12 to 18 months ago by a current mentor that I work with. And it’s quite a simple analogy. And when I saw it, I was like

48:02

most people in this world are forever trading energy for money. Even online, right? Even online.

48:13

If they’re doing a 45 minute sales call, they’re walking every person through their offer one by one, right.

48:23

You’ll make money, you make a ton of money.

48:26

But you’ll never decouple or detach fully, or as much as possible your income from your energy.

48:37

And what he illuminated for me was if you just insert between energy and cash flow, the word asset,

48:47

everything changes, the paradigm completely shifts. An asset can take many forms. But the key factor is to let the asset do the cash flowing, not you or not, you know you are managing an army of people because that’s still your energy to manage those people, right.

49:08

And then to put that into practice, it resulted in me kind of overhauling my calendar and going, how can I maximize the time that I’m investing in asset building? Be that, you know, hopping on a podcast, right? This gets recorded. However, many people can listen to it, it can get repurposed, my energy is captured into an asset and it can produce benefits for months and years to come. And if you maximize the time that you build assets,

49:41

the cash flow will fall as long as you’re doing reasonably correct activities.

49:48

And so that was a big shift for me recently, which also really allowed me to slow down because I was always that like, you know, work, work work. Go go go. The shift over to all that

50:00

methodically building assets that really made me feel comfortable kind of slowing down and being a bit more

50:07

Zen because then it kind of becomes like the tortoise and the hare type story, like you’ll, you’ll win in the long run. And every dollar you make will slowly become a little bit more and more detached from the sweat equity that you have to put into it. So they’re the big three that kind of pop out to me whenever I get asked about breakthroughs. Okay, all right. That’s cool. So then kind of following on that third one, what you would say are the biggest assets for you right now, in your business. So when I, when I think about my business, I think about it in three pillars, I think about it in terms of audience slash content, contents, how we build the audience. So it’s kind of one in the same.

50:51

The sales process. And we do a lot of one to one selling, but in a different way, which I’ll explain in a second. And then the third part is the offer.

51:04

And then I guess once you get beyond the conversion, there’s a fourth piece, which is the delivery.

51:11

What most people do in the higher in the higher ticket coaching sales space, which is where we spend a fair bit of time now

51:19

is they put the time and the energy into the sales process, which is all day in Messenger all day on the phone all day managing a huge sales team,

51:30

which has some leverage, but not nearly as much as if you reallocate that time to those other buckets,

51:40

particularly the offer and the content. So for me, the biggest thing that I want to invest my energy in is making our offers better and better and better in a couple of ways. One, how they’re delivered to the content.

51:59

And three, the asset that we actually use to sell it improves that.

52:05

Because if I make one change to the offer, the next 100 people, I send it to all see it, I only have to make the change, once I get the leverage of that change, right.

52:17

And then same on, on the content side of things like I, I write a daily piece of content that’s anywhere from 200 to 700 words, and it can get spun

52:31

email lists, a blog, Twitter, LinkedIn, like it can end up in a lot of different places. So I get a disproportionately large return on that one piece of focused effort, and then you get the compound effect of that over time. So for me the big assets that we invest in our content creation,

52:52

asset as our offer improvement, and then the delivery side of things and refining that down and down to make it more efficient. And we may not make as much in the short term, but it should be a hell of a lot more sustainable over the long run. Yeah, okay. All right. All right. Now, before we wrap up two things, first,

53:17

tell us a little bit more about, you know, how can we find out more about you? And so if someone’s listening, they want to go check you out and check out your content? How can they find out more? And the second question, I’ll just throw it out there. I can see behind you a poster or something that says DJ Karis, and it’s been bugging me since we started this recording. So where are you DJing? At one point? No, no, no, no. So I’ll answer the first one. And then I’ll tell you the story about that. So Easiest way is www.jacobcaris.com J A C O B car is.com. That’s the hub of the brand. And from there folks can join the Facebook group or YouTube, I upload a couple of times a week or go to the blog and join the list and everything links off there.

54:09

The second point is that it’s a cool story, actually. So a couple of I run a small Private Client Group called my inner circle, and a couple of dudes in their release, I helped them roll out a program about

54:27

growing Facebook groups with tick tock, right. They came to me one day and they’re like, Dude, we put out these tic TOCs. We’ve got 700 people waiting to join our Facebook group. And if you know what you’re doing with Facebook groups that can be, you know, a couple of 100 grand pretty quickly.

54:44

I was like, dude, like, we need to, you know, verify this method and then we need to get this out to the market because this is hot like this, the Tick Tock algorithm algorithms pop in and anyway, help them create this offer. And a couple of months where

55:00

Add on and I had a bit of a gap in my calendar in terms of what I was doing. And I was like, Oh guys, I’ll run a, I’ll run a promo for you on my Facebook profile.

55:09

And so I did two or three posts over the space of a week saying, I’ve got these clients, they’re doing this with Facebook groups. And we did. I did it was quite cool actually did it like you know, your traditional, like a bridge page as an affiliate where you kind of bridge over to the offer. I did that with like a, like a Google doc to bridge over from, from Facebook. And it did it did like 20 grand off the

55:34

three for Facebook posts. And so they sent me that award

55:41

for the affiliate promotion and it’s my face photoshopped on DJ Khaled with the other one across the top, you know, he’s saying so that it just appeared on my doorstep. And it’s probably my favorite of all the awards. It’s like the lowest monetary amount, but it’s like my favorite award. So it feels like a private place. Okay, yeah. And I was wondering because that guy looks fat. And I was like, in bold. Yeah, it’s definitely not. And it’s like, what was he fat and bold before he got into online marketing that changed his life so much. He started growing hair and losing weight very quickly. Yeah, really long hair.

56:20

No, that’s cool. It’s cool. All right, guys. Well, this was Jacob Karis. You can find out more about Jacob at www.jacobcaris.com. So you should go and check out his stuff if you’re looking to learn how to build small highly profitable Facebook groups and or how to roll out your own programs, how to do high ticket selling as well as how to do high ticket affiliate marketing and content creation. So this guy’s content creation machine. Now like, and one of the few people whose emails actually read, to be honest with you, like the rest of us, I mark read and get rid of them. But the thing between you and Ben Settle and maybe John Berkovich and a few other people, you know, you actually landed into my important inbox. Ben said on the desk here. Oh, yeah. I love that book. I love the villains. I loved it in the book. So good. Yeah, very, very good. Okay, well, Jacob, thank you so much for spending the time to do this. I enjoyed it. Hope you did too. And until next time, we chat. Have a good one.

57:28

Thank you for listening to the list building lifestyle. Get access to the previous episodes transcript of today’s show, as well as other exclusive content at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also remember to clean your free copy of my bestselling book at www.igorsbook.com. It explains how he made millions with list building starting from scratch. Plus, I’ll give you $3,000 worth of free bonuses, including my best landing page templates, email, swipe files, and traffic blueprints. Go to www.igorsbook.com. Now to claim your free package