TIL: purpose, fiction & ads - Growth of Influence

How to spend $300,000 on ads when you only have $100?

I answer this question in the second half of this email so hang on tight.

Recently I’ve been constantly thinking that becoming clear on your vision is the most important thing there is.

The way I see it, there are 3 main variables:

The time you have.

The quality your time has.

The purpose that drives you to use the previous two.

Many people try to save time, but don’t use it for anything meaningful to them.

Others ignore their health, making it hard to focus or think clearly and decreasing the quality of their time.

Most people aren’t sure what they want, so they end up going in circles. Purposeless.

THINGS I’VE LEARNED

1.
Most people don’t lack time or energy, they lack vision.

For years I was trying to protect my time at all costs.

Then I realized that my time without a purpose doesn’t mean anything.

Spending time a couple of times per year to re-evaluate your purpose in my opinion is time well spent.

2.
If you’re so smart, why aren’t you happy?

“The only real test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life.” — Naval

3.
When reality mirrors fiction and hidden truths unfold

The more I read about the news in the US, the more I realize that all this time, a real-life Hydra has been growing within the most powerful organization in the world—the United States government.

Sometimes, reality feels more fake than fiction.

Some days, life is filled with pain and boredom. On other days, it feels like we’re living in a Hollywood movie. And then there are days when global events unfold like the season finale of a Marvel series.

GROW YOUR INFLUENCE

How to spend $300,000 on ads when you only have $100?

Well, it might sound irrational, but there is a way.

I’m not talking about taking a loan or selling your house.

Both ways can help, but what is the point if you don’t see the return that you expected on your investment?

How can you feel confident in putting money on ads when you are not even sure about the return?

I’ll answer all those questions and more, based on my experience in growing and scaling my businesses with paid ads.

I want to share with you a completely different approach. An approach that I followed when I started my business.

This approach allowed me to grow and scale my business as a 20-year-old guy without working in a marketing agency or having a marketing degree.

First of all, I want to make one thing clear. There were many restrictions. The biggest one was the financial part. I didn’t have a lot to invest

As a student, my father was giving me 200€ per month and I needed to use that money to live an awesome life in college, go on trips with friends, and start my own business amongst other things.

I decided to split my “income” 50/50 – half on starting, sustaining, and growing my business and the other half on whatever personal need I had.

It wasn’t easy but at least it allowed me to have a budget to pay for the servers, domains, software, and a little bit of marketing $ to test on forms of advertisement.

The deck was stacked against me, but I had one big advantage: a clear vision.

All I needed was a formula where I could give Facebook $1 and get multiple times that amount back.

I’ve seen other people doing it on YouTube, but it didn’t seem to work. No matter what idea I tried.

However, I knew it was worth it because the day that I could successfully spend $1 on Facebook and get $2 back in profit would be the day that I would have a money-printing machine.

November of 2019 was the first month that I was able to put $30 on ads and get 2 sales on my membership offer.

Putting $30 to get $60 in recurring revenue was an awesome feeling. So I did that again, and again, but then I ran out of money – 100€ was all I had for this month. So I had to wait another month for the money to come back.

The next month I put all the money I had into ads. The 100€ from my father, the recurring revenue from the customers of last month, and even 150€ in savings that I had.

I knew I was missing out on money, so I borrowed 250€ from my sister and another 250€ from my father. You guessed it. I spent all the money I could find on ads.

I knew that this was my time to strike as hard as I could. Two months later I had my first +2K€ in net profit.

+2K€ per month might not seem like a lot, but in 2020, as a kid in Greece, it was a life-changing scenario. In fact, it was three times the minimum wage—with less than 2 hours per day needed to run the business.

In November, I started by spending less than €100 on ads, and 8 months later, in June, I spent €5,000 for the first time within 30 days.

My business exploded.

2020 was the first year that my business made over $100K and all that because of the power of digital marketing.

January of 2021 was the first month when I put over $10K on ads and this became the minimum standard for a while.

All my clients were in the US and Canada and as a result, I had to deal with 3 different currencies and make sure that I don’t screw up any numbers.

I stopped any other marketing activity I was doing and doubled down on Paid Ads and Email Marketing for a couple of years.

Did the problems stop? Of course not.

Every time I tried to spend more than 500€ on ads per day my ads would break.

I tried again and again and again.

I spent so many months trying to break this barrier but no matter how hard I tried back in 2021 and 2022 there was a problem that needed to be solved but I couldn’t find it.

I even ended up hiring an agency for 8.5K€ and I ended up getting scammed but that’s for another story.

Starting with a small marketing budget is not a problem as long as you have a big enough time horizon to keep testing things until something works.

Starting with a small marketing budget is also not a problem as long as you know what you’re doing.

No matter what your marketing budget looks like, if you plan on starting running your own ads devote 3 months to start and grow your numbers.

Anything less than that won’t allow you to make the necessary tests and give you the data you need to take things to the next level.

to your growth and influence,
>> Chris Fountoulis
Founder – Elcune.com & GrowthOfInfluence.com
chris@growthofinfluence.com

Are you interested in our ventures?
Women’s Fashion Brand >> Elcune.com
Are you an influencer? >> GrowthOfInfluence.com
Personal Website >> ChrisFountoulis.com