James Schramko, founder of the multi-million dollar business success SuperFastBusiness.com, lives in Sydney, Australia and surfs every day. He helps information marketers and service business owners build highly powerful recurring subscription businesses so they can work less and profit more.
His real world experience running multi-million dollar businesses uniquely positions him as a high level problem solver of rare calibre.
Teams, systems, cashflow, traffic and leverage are terms James understands better than most...
James Schramko Interview
Nicola: Today I'm delighted to be joined by James Schramko from SuperFastBusiness.com. James is proof positive that you can take solid business profit ideas and turn then into a powerful online business. Leaving the safety of a 300,000 dollar a year general management role, running a Mercedes Benz dealership in Sydney, James starts his online career with just one affiliate product.
With a $49.25 commission per sale. James turned that into a 6 figure a year online business and then quickly developed his own business well past the million dollar mark. A few years later he generates a 7 figure profit from his online coaching website in traffic businesses. Importantly, James is a master of the core elements that you can tap into quickly; traffic, conversions, and leverage. Plus, I doubt you'll find a more approachable marketer on the planet. Welcome to the call, James.
James: Thanks Nicola, I appreciate you having me on the show.
Nicola: I was just listening to some of your, well, I listen to your Super Fast business podcast anyway, but I was listening to your one with Clay Collins last night, and I want to thank you finally explaining in ways I could understand, what lead links are all about.
James: It's one of my curiosities, is to take these brand names and complex and terms and get behind what they actually are and simplify them so that I can understand them and then that other people can understand them as well.
Nicola: It's an awesome business model, isn't it? Every time I use it I think, "Blimey, they've really created something here that you just can't do without once you start using it."
James: I think that's one of the secrets, it's to solve problems and put it on a recurring payment program.
Nicola: They've done that really well. If you had to ask me which of my tools I need and I can't do without, it would be LeadPages nowadays, that's for sure. Let's hear about your business. I'm particularly interested in what makes people become the entrepreneurs they are today. I see that you were doing really really well in a job. Tell me about your background and where you grew up and what kind of family you grew up in and how you became the Mercedes Benz success dealership you were, and then what made you become an entrepreneur after that?
James: I think I was an entrepreneur before that, if I look back. I grew up, I just had one sister, I had nice parents. We grew up in a very expensive and exclusive suburb of Sydney. I went to an expensive private school. For all intensive purposes, we were a very wealthy and fortunate family. My parents are really grounded, having, my dad grew up reasonably poor and my mom has always worked for charities and organizations.
We used to go out on tours around the state to poorer areas and I was fully aware that I was in a privileged upbringing. After school, which I didn't do so well at, I must admit, I started a course for about the only thing that I qualified for which was an accounting course at a technology university that we had here. It's not quite a university, it's more of a an accredited school.
I got sick, so I pulled out. I worked in all sorts of jobs for a year. I labored, I worked, I did some Fridays at an accounting firm. Then I started the next year. Another half a year after that my parents lost all their money, and we had to move out of the fancy home.
