Aleksander Vitkin Podcast

Join our growing entrepreneur community on Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/139597470073188/

Got any questions? Ask me on Facebook:

www.facebook.com/AleksanderVitkinPage/

Check out my free business training: www.businessmentor.com

Hi, my name is Sabina and I’m running a web agency focusing on e-commerce businesses, so we build websites for Shopify and WooCommerce media. And I joined BMI back in August 2018, so more than a year ago. And before joining BMI I was basically working full time as a project manager in different agencies. I was really fed up with the whole thing. You know working for other people and feeling like I was getting under paid and just under a lot of stress.

So, what I really wanted to do was just travel, I just wanted the freedom to go and travel and be totally location independent. My goal was to just become a freelancer and just travel around. I met someone that was in BMI already, and they told me about it and this guy was traveling in between Asia and Europe, and I thought, wow, that’s what I really want to do.

When I joined BMI, that was my goal, was basically, I remember telling him that I was happy to make $2,000 a month. This was gonna give me enough money to basically live in these cheaper countries, which is where I was wanting to go, like to these exotic places. What I started doing right away was, I got the tips and the tools I needed to start making money online and most importantly start finding clients online because I had tried a few times on Upwork and on different platforms to find my own clients and I just didn’t get any.

I was really amazed by how quickly things started picking up. And my goal last year was to quit my job by October, or to leave Germany by October because the winter was coming and I really hate the cold weather. So, I was able to do that, and then I started traveling pretty much one year ago, I’ve been moving around from different country to country. And at first I was really enjoying it because of this freedom. Then earlier this year I started to get really motivated by other people in the group that were posting their success stories and I started thinking what am I really doing, I really want to do something with my life and build a career, but I really don’t want to go back to having a full time job.

I started getting really motivated to really grow the business and that’s when I started to connect with other members a lot. So in the coaching calls as well as in the community, just seeing like, really paying attention to what other people were doing, what are they doing that is making them successful, talking to them, asking for tips,and that’s been really amazing. Besides everything I learned in the coaching calls, I also get a lot of value out of talking to people in the community, so even if they’re not making tons of money, maybe they’re at the same level as me, it’s always really helpful to be able to exchange ideas and to see how someone that’s even doing the same business as you, how they’re doing things slightly different and how we can learn from one another.

Before joining BMI, my doubts were that, like I was really scared to quit my job and I always had that in the back of my head that what if I need to go back to getting a full time job. And the more that I’m doing this, and the longer that I’ve been doing this, the more unrealistic that’s becoming. So for a while there it was a fear, like okay, if this doesn’t work out I have to go back to a full time job.

But right now I’m enjoying this so much. And running my own business that I can’t even imagine ever going back to working for another person, like that’s just crazy. I guess my doubts before joining were more like if this was really something that I could do. I used to think that running a business is not for everyone, you know it is a lot of hard work, it’s not like it’s an easy magical solution, but having support of the group has really helped me.

Join our growing entrepreneur community on Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/139597470073188/

Got any questions? Ask me on Facebook:

www.facebook.com/AleksanderVitkinPage/

Check out my free business training: www.businessmentor.com

Hello, my name is Marcin, I’m from Poland. Currently My business is mobile app development. So, we sell mobile app development to different clients and I am in BMI for over a year.

Basically, I started from zero. I had no experience in lead generation or experience in sales. I plan to work as a freelancer. Like I plan to get freelance remote job as the iOS developer, because that’s my background, but I couldn’t even get my social presence online.

I couldn’t get any type of job outside of Poland. I was working as an employee in a company from Poland and I couldn’t physically get out of there. Everything’s changed when I when I joined. So I was able to get clients from United States and from Western Europe. I learned a lot about sales about feed generation and how to run a business and how to have an effective communication with people, with clients, with my wife, people who work for me that was really easy because I was surrounded by the mastermind.

So I was able to basically everyday read valuable posts in the group, I can join basically everyday call with the instructor and I can ask other members. So that’s a very good place for me to learn about business. And I feel like I do it in an efficient way right now because I don’t need to like go and research and look for different books, how to run a business, I can basically apply what is really efficient, what I need right now in this month for my business. I can ask instructors what to do and physically execute on that in an efficient way.

My life right now is way better because I feel like I can grow my business and I feel the freedom of that because I feel I can grow my business so much in the next years and that gives me a lot of freedom for myself.

When I joined I planned to be a freelancer. Maybe that was an obstacle for me because I was not really ready to run a business that was not my idea even to do that. But I quickly learned that that was a good decision and I feel I cannot go back to be just an employee. I could recommend this mastermind to people who are from my experience, who are software developers, if they could combine their skills with sales and were proud to run a business. I think they could build fantastic businesses and help a lot of people. I think that in this mastermind, they could do it in an efficient way.

Join our growing entrepreneur community on Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/139597470073188/

Got any questions? Ask me on Facebook:

www.facebook.com/AleksanderVitkinPage/

Check out my free business training: www.businessmentor.com

My name is Stan. I’m an owner of the mobile development company. So we’re developing mobile applications. We’re based Eastern Europe. So I’m not the only founder of the company. I’m co founder (mumbles) with a partner of mine. So I joined BMI around a year ago, at the start of November. So in the next month it is going to be exactly like one year of journey. But I was silent in the group like for two or three months before that, I’m gaining value just from the posts of people. The results, which started with the whole business one year ago, in July, we had nothing, so I had a full time job, my partner also had a full time job.

We started the network. I was speaking with clients it was causing clients doing all the work by myself because I’m an iOS developer, as my partner too so when john and basically I had some concerns from my side and from the partner side about the journey as well. Since Yeah, we just wanted to basically figure out if it’s worth it basically so bad from the fact that I was getting value from the group being silent for like around two, three months, we were we were able to reach a stage when we were doing great revenue numbers.

And everything was from the BMI, just from being sound from the group, how to do sales, how to basically project manage the speaking clients, how to close how to market, the network, all these kind of things. So for me, it wasn’t like a no brainer, since, I saw a clear value in this kind of thing, because I already was able to reach like nice revenue number for small investments for being just solid of the group.

That’s why I thought that if I would invest more, it’s definitely going to provide me with even a better right, we’ve joined we’ve started the business. We had like a little break, let’s say to march so from November to Montreux, and I’m doing too much stuff from March we started the company, we’re ended at an office, all this kind of things.

Currently, basically, we have eight people on the team. We’re working with clients from the US and from the west Europe, our main target base are startups that are looking for development teams for native mobile development. Most of them are business owners as well by the startups and other part that are business owners who start like with mobile application development and as a side projects, to basically test out their the under market to do some things with the development.

In terms of the full process, and at certain stages. I was anxious about the current stage of the company and what I was doing and all these kinds of things, but I was always asking like questions regarding bed on the bed BMI which actually helped me to figure out how to deal with these kind of issues, these kind of problems and motivation problem and then the summer So then I’ve just basically set the deadline for myself. Everything is looking really nice currently. I’m moving in the US in one month from now to basically expand with the current business.

There’s an idea had in my mind for like three years for now, because system Europe is like a golden mind in terms of the talent and yeah, if you can provide a service in the US, you can do very well in terms of the different terms of actually being my I would really recommend it to people who because the core motivation from my side, we started with the whole business was john and nothing. I didn’t feel like it’s all right for me to be working on a job to working for someone to basically doing some things that not benefit me in the future.

Join our growing entrepreneur community on Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/139597470073188/

Got any questions? Ask me on Facebook:

www.facebook.com/AleksanderVitkinPage/

Check out my free business training: www.businessmentor.com

My name is Luis and I’m from Brazil. I just got in Miami one year ago. Since then, my life changed a lot. I have more freedom than ever and to do everything I want in terms of business. Now I have a web development agency specialize in commerce.

Before that I was just an employee on a software company. Didn’t have any business skills. Didn’t know about sales and marketing. Didn’t know any successful entrepreneur, I was just working in a nine to five job and not having any fulfillment. Then eventually I quit my job and I start my own agency.

Why I was on the BMI community? One of the reasons why I joined the group was I do want to learn about business in general right. And also connect with interesting people which end up happening. The group has amazing people that are teaching me on a day to day basis. And it really changed my life.

I look back one year ago and I see how naive I was about business and about how to do business with people in general. And I feel much more confident and I know where I’m going. I’m operating my own rules. I’m not following anyone’s agenda which is cool. Yeah I would say that the number one thing I learn from the group it’s sale skills. As a software developer you can imagine, this was not part of my skillset but now I see both things together and it’s super powerful. Before entering the group was more like how to price my service, how much I worth.

And how to build a business and now it’s more like okay I know exactly what to do. And it’s just a matter of time to reach my goal in terms of revenue. Right now we have five clients and every month we get new clients. It’s really up to me how many clients I want to deliver my service. And we have a team of six people. I’m here in internal Canada and it’s a really good place to connect with people and I’ve been learning a lot with the platform that I provide my service at the shop by ’cause they’re in Canada.

So, that’s why I came here. And yeah, I would say that if someone wantS to get into this mastermind, you have to be really ready to put the effort because all the teachings are there. All the coaches, they are really helpful. The community’s there to help you out, support you. But at the same time, you have to put the effort.

So, it’s definitely not for everyone. Actually when you have the asset, as a business, there is a lot of hours that comes in. It’s definitely you got a lot of learning. Compare if you’re alone. But you know, as a business owner, you still have to learn a bunch of things and understand the amount of effort that you have put in order to reach your goal.

Join our growing entrepreneur community on Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/139597470073188/

Got any questions? Ask me on Facebook:

www.facebook.com/AleksanderVitkinPage/

Check out my free business training: www.businessmentor.com

Hey guys, my name is Brian Lee, and I’ve been in BMI for about two years. I started my first agency with the BMI program. That was pretty awesome because before BMI I had a small publishing business, and I knew I wanted to get into entrepreneurship, I knew I wanted to learn more about it, I knew I needed skills, more skills, in order to scale, but it wasn’t until I joined BMI, did I really understand how to really build a real business. And actually create an agency.

Within the first two weeks that I started with BMI, I already got my first clients, so I thought that was pretty awesome, and after a couple of months, I was already making close to six times as much as I was with my little publishing business. So I thought that was amazing, there’s amazing mentorship within the group, just interacting with all the members, there’s a big community feel, and Alex definitely knows what he’s talking about, and there’s just a lot of support with the group.

How it was before, I was struggling, I was doing, I was spending a lot of hours working, but I wasn’t really working smart, and after the program, I would say that I worked a lot smarter, I learned to use leverage a lot more, and just the information, it’s really helpful in scaling my business.

So, I would highly recommend BMI, definitely if you’re a person that is looking to build a business, a sustainable business, a Long term sort of business, then I would say this is for you. If you’re looking for a short term get rich quick scheme, I would say this is not really the thing, but if you’re looking for something action packed, and you’re ready to take good action, then I would highly recommend BMI.

Before BMI I would say that I was someone who didn’t have a whole lot of skills, I had these micro skills, in algorithms, and understanding certain little aspects, but I didn’t understand the core skills of business, like sales, marketing, that sort of stuff, so I definitely learned a whole lot.

Nowadays I feel a lot more confident when I get on a sales call, or in a sales interaction, than I was before. I was also not really traveling a whole lot, I was stuck in one place, so I was working 14 hours per day but not really getting a whole lot of results, now I’m traveling a lot more, and I’m able to make more money, and not spend as much time working, as well, and just enjoying travel a little bit more for myself.

Join our growing entrepreneur community on Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/139597470073188/

Got any questions? Ask me on Facebook:

www.facebook.com/AleksanderVitkinPage/

Check out my free business training: www.businessmentor.com

Join our growing entrepreneur community on Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/139597470073188/

Got any questions? Ask me on Facebook:

www.facebook.com/AleksanderVitkinPage/

Check out my free business training: www.businessmentor.com

Aleksander: Hi, it's Aleksander Vitkin and I'm here with Sam, who's a member of the Business Mentor insiders. Now, Sam has been sitting down and getting some work done lately and his business has started to grow to the point where I'm quite happy about his results so I decided to get him on here to share his results, just tell us how he's doing and which results he's achieved and how you can potentially achieve the same results. So hopefully, we'll learn some stuff from Sam, welcome Sam. So Sam, what type of business do you run?

Sam: I run an SEO agency, I have a bunch of different clients and I help them get their website higher in the Google results.

Aleksander: What did you do before this business? So before you started the business, what were you doing?

Sam:  I was still an SEO but I was working as a freelancer for a bigger agency just doing the work they wanted.

Aleksander: So you went from working for an agency as a freelancer to starting your own agency essentially, is that right?

Sam: Yeah that's true.

Aleksander: How was it working for the agency? How did you like it? What were you getting out of it? What was it like?

Sam: Well, on the one hand it was low stress they gave me a certain amount of work at the beginning of the week and as long as I did it by the end of the week and everything was fine. So, everything was remote so I could travel a little bit, it wasn't too bad to be honest with you, as far as jobs go. But the pay was pretty bad, it was like a little bit above minimum wage in the UK just because I took a pay cut in order to have it remote and it wasn't really a long term thing it was very much a temporary kind of a job.

Aleksander: What is your business like now? Like, what are you getting out of your business? And what is it like running your business right now?

Sam: What it's like running my business now is much more stress but much more reward. So the work I've got going on, there's you know, I'm doing a lot more than I was as a freelancer but because I own it everything I'm working on and building is something that I'm doing for me. So there's very much more of a sense of I guess pride and satisfaction from the work but yeah, no it's a lot higher stress.

Aleksander: What's the trade off? So there is higher stress and okay, you're responsible for your own business and you're getting all the rewards what is that like?

Sam: Pretty awesome, because you know, you're working on lead generation and you're working on sales and the more retainers I sell to people the higher my income goes, right? So it's not like you know, however much work I do I make the average UK wage or anything it's you know, if I sell another retainer then my income goes up by that retainer. It's very rewarding in that sense.

Aleksander: How many clients are you working with right now? That pay retainers, essentially.

Sam: Sure, so I currently have eleven clients. It's very difficult to manage but I've figured out how to do it I've hired an assistant and everything and yeah no everything is yeah, it's a lot of stress but a lot of rewards, like I say. One of the major benefits of having your source of income being completely online is that you can choose to travel and live wherever you want. You can't just like travel around because it takes away a lot of focus from your business but I, in January I'm moving to Taiwan just because yeah I have friends there and I want to learn the language but yeah so that's my plan at the moment. I'm just gonna be heading out to Barcelona and a couple of other places in Europe.

Join our growing entrepreneur community on Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/139597470073188/

Got any questions? Ask me on Facebook:

www.facebook.com/AleksanderVitkinPage/

Check out my free business training: www.businessmentor.com

Over the last couple of years, in fact, five years, I’ve been speaking to entrepreneurs on a daily basis. And we talk about what they want, and what they don’t want. The main thing that most entrepreneurs want is freedom. The main reason most entrepreneurs are in business, that I’m aware of, is freedom. They want to achieve freedom.

Now, here’s what I’ve noticed by speaking to over 2,000 entrepreneurs. I’ve noticed that they don’t know what that is. They want it, but they don’t know what it is.The only thing that I’m consistently being told is what it isn’t. And what it isn’t, is not a good definition. So, I don’t believe it is possible to achieve something, if you don’t know what it is that you want to achieve.

So, here’s what they tell me what it isn’t. It is not a job, okay, freedom is not a job. Freedom is not a boss. Freedom is not debt, freedom is not deadlines, and freedom is not location. This is what they don’t want. In this article I’m going to venture out there, and I’m going to attempt to define freedom for you or help you with a working definition. It’s something of an ideal that we’re working towards, achieving as entrepreneurs. And you are welcome to contribute to this definition, because maybe you want the same, and maybe it’s slightly different for you.

So, what is the ideal, what is freedom as an ideal that we scan strive for as entrepreneurs? Because if we define it, we’re much more likely to achieve it, okay? Here’s my take on it from my own experience. Anyone watching this, if you’re a smart, objective thinker, if you consider yourself to be an intellectual, of course you’re welcome to adjust this as you please.

So, freedom in business is when you can move an entire industry toward whichever outcome you desire. So your potential to create is no longer bound. And this is, of course, you can do it only ethically, not by stealing, robbing, none of that stuff. Like, ethical outcome.

So, you can sculpt your word in your image. So you’re able to sculpt what you say you’re going to do into way that you wanna do it, right? That’s the ideal, that’s the ideal of freedom. And you choose the problems you want to solve, you choose how you want to solve them, and you’re rewarded for it.

So the status quo of any industry, so if you enter an industry as an entrepreneur, the status quo of any industry and opinions, well-wishers, all that stuff is kind of irrelevant to you. And when you’ve achieved this, this is when you’ve achieved freedom in my eyes, okay? So in terms of things like location, deadlines, debt and so on, that is all fine, okay?

You can be without that, if you’ve achieved that level of freedom. But I think those things are rather circumstantial, and they’re more of a result, more than a goal, to be honest with you, right? Because business and the freedom in business should be the goal, not the circumstantial things like what it isn’t. I’m convinced that today very few entrepreneurs, and it’s very obvious as well, very few entrepreneurs have achieved this.

When you think about this type of freedom, you’re thinking probably of people like Steve Jobs, the late Steve Jobs, and the current (chuckles) CEO of several companies Elon Musk, right? If they want to fix something, they’re not following the status quo, they’re reinventing things.

Join our growing entrepreneur community on Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/139597470073188/

Got any questions? Ask me on Facebook:

www.facebook.com/AleksanderVitkinPage/

Check out my free business training: www.businessmentor.com

It’s Aleksander and in today’s podcast, I’m going to talk about the ideal way of starting a business. It’s not something that may exist right this moment, but it’s something we are working towards. And another thing is, parts of this are already a reality. So, parts of this are already being used in a real learning environment for students that are learning business.

For the last five years, I’ve personally coached hundreds of entrepreneurs and we’ve been testing methods of coaching. We’ve been testing methods to get people results better and faster, and we figured out that some things work better than other things. We’ve also figured out that everyone seems to be following these cyclical patterns in terms of high P business models and high P things to sell and so on. For example, many years ago, dropshipping was huge. It was like the number one thing was dropshipping. This is maybe nine or 10 years ago. Then it went away for a while. Then maybe four or five years ago it came back. Then went away for a while. Now it’s back again right?

So, there’s the cyclical events in the business coaching community, and people are going from one to the next to the next to the next throughout the year and throughout the years, and they’re just trying business models. They’re trying to make stuff work. And what I’ve noticed is, they get stuck. They just don’t learn business properly. They just learn to run like a funnel and maybe a sales process. What they don’t learn is how business works. They don’t learn principles. They don’t learn how to detect and react to patterns or anything like that. They don’t learn the true essentials of business.

So, they’re never able to construct a business model for themselves that works, which means they’re never able to compete with everyone who can, because if you copy stuff constantly you’re never learning how to actually build stuff, because copying is not the same as building. We’ve noticed that to truly teach someone business, you need to teach them principles along with the business model.

And there’s a very specific process that we follow currently and there’s like an idealized version of it that we’re going towards, but the key principle in all this is instead of following the cyclical hype and the cyclical interest in business models and just repeating the cycle of failing and starting over again, here’s a solution. Instead of that, you need to learn what’s called independent thinking. As you’re able to learn that skill, which everyone, who is somewhat intelligent is able to do, as you’re able to learn that skill, you’re able to construct your own reality. You’re able to construct what works based on your own experience and your own brain. And anyone can do this. If you’ve been in business for a year, then I highly encourage you to do this.

Here’s the five-step process that we’ve discovered that works to build business models. Here’s the five-step process that we discovered that is the ideal way of learning business.

Step one, act on an existing working plan because in the beginning and also later on, right, so in the beginning you don’t know how business works. So, you can’t construct an existing working plan. So, what you do is you get into a mastermind or other format like franchise for example, where you can have a working plan right? So, act on an existing working plan for your business. That’s step one okay.

Step two is notice and perceive pattern. So, when you notice that clients behave in a certain way that’s employees and freelancers behave in a certain way, and the market behaves in a certain way, like I noticed certain patterns in the market just naturally by being part of it and participating in many ways.

Join our growing entrepreneur community on Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/139597470073188/

Got any questions? Ask me on Facebook:

www.facebook.com/AleksanderVitkinPage/

Check out my free business training: www.businessmentor.com

Hey it’s Aleksander, in today’s podcast I’m going to talk about what happened that one time four years ago when I very nearly closed down my business and started another business instead. I have been running this business for five years, there’s no freaking way I’m gonna stop anything, but back then, there was one time when I very nearly did it, and that was the summer of 2015.

Here’s what happened. I was in a nightclub, and it was in Finland I think, back then, and I was just sitting there, or standing, and I thought, “Man, everyone’s having fun here, “and I just can’t disconnect, I just can’t unplug “from this stress that the business is causing me.” Because I was doing sales calls myself and all kinds of stuff, so I was completely plugged into the business.

It was basically, 90% of the work was being done by me and not someone else, and I did not know how to solve that, and I didn’t know how to solve just me constantly feeling stress, and I even ended up in the hospital once, had like a little issue from too much stress, and I didn’t know how to deal with it, because no one really talks about this at all, it’s just like, you know, suddenly you have an issue in your business, and how do you solve it?

You just figure it out, so what I ended up doing was I figured out that I didn’t have any principles that I adhered to in my business that were solid fundamentals for me to build my business on, so I just had these platitudes that I listened to from random books, from random YouTube channels, like, “Follow your passion!” and like, your whatever, like what was it back then, it was just complete nonsense basically, right, just platitudes instead of principles that was basically what it came down to.

I didn’t know how to build my business based on strong principles, how to choose these principles, and I had been just lazy with that to be honest, and that’s because I was running from fire to fire that I was extinguishing one after the other instead of actually building something, instead of building something new, I was just running around extinguishing fire after fire.

I went home, and I sat down and I read books by philosophers I read books by people that are not business people, and I tried to understand why I felt that way, like why I was anxious, and why I felt like I couldn’t take doing that type of business anymore, and I figured out that I was doing it mostly to help other people, so it was like, “I’m doing it for someone else, “I’m doing it for someone else, “I’m doing it for someone else.”

In and of itself, there’s nothing really wrong with running a business for other people, cause you know, you need to get agreement from people before they give you money, you’re not gonna like, steal it or anything like that, so, but what I was doing wrong is, I was too focused on this, and I was not taking care of myself, and what I needed, and what I wanted to feel excited about the business, which is equally important, if not more so, than what clients think.

In fact, I mean definitely more important than what clients think because if the person running the business, if the head of the business is not happy and is not performing well, there’s no way the clients are gonna get a good experience, it’s just not possible, or a good product or service.

What I ended up doing was I took some tactical ones from Fiji Business decisions, which don’t really matter too much to be honest, but what did matter is why I took those decisions, because I reevaluated the reasons why I’m running the business, and I reevaluated the principles that I was focused on, and the principles that I was using to make decisions essentially, so the underlying reasons for the decisions, and after that, decisions were easy.