What Motivated Them to Start?
Peter couldn’t imagine himself as an employee in a 9-to-5 job after graduating.
He wanted to do something for himself and studied music for that reason. Peter was 19 and was in his first year of college.
Tyler was 17 at the time, and he was blown away seeing his brother fully supporting himself.
Tyler wanted to be independent as well and not burden to his parents, who also had financial struggles, so they joined forces. He was still a full-time college student and spent ~6 hours a day writing blog posts on SEO, a staggering 350 articles in a year, yet he made only $500 from it and got zero traction.
The Early Days
Their first 3 years together were tough, sometimes not making any money from running paid search traffic to affiliate offers, but continuously learning the trade regardless: other channels of driving traffic, SEO, etc. The brothers realized and accepted that it was a long process as none of their mentors became successful overnight.
Short-term, the situation was stress-free. Their parents paid for their 4 years of college and rent.
Long-term, it was a stressful outlook. Their parents were like in Rich Dad, Poor Dad with expectations of the brothers graduating and getting a decent job.
So, while there wasn’t much day-to-day worry about money, they had to make Internet Marketing work within a couple of years to avoid having to be employees for someone else.
What Was The Tipping Point?
After 3 years of moderate success, they started meeting other affiliates in person. This opportunity of getting first-hand information from already successful people proved invaluable.
One particular mentor made them realize the potential in lead gen.
So, they switched from promoting info products to lead gen, and just 2 months into it, they achieved their first 10k month in profit, then 30k, all the way to their first 6-figure month within a year. All of this thanks to a pivotal mentor who opened their eyes, as they were too bogged down in their own heads to even think outside the box.
Once rolling, the next step was to scale everything with leverage (using credit cards) and re-investing.
By 2015, they closed the year with $3 million in revenue. During this time, their first (and for a while, only) lead buyer was in the mortgage space whose business shut down and stopped buying leads. The brothers had to reboot and consider diversifying, testing different verticals, but the amassed money allowed for a healthy testing budget.
They learned about building landing pages, email lists, getting on different affiliate networks, and advertising on Facebook. In 2015 there were not many restrictions on Facebook’s ad platform. Published ads went live within 30 minutes, clicks cost 10-15 cents driving them to offers at $1 EPC. So, Facebook was another big boom for them.
So, Any Regrets?
No. They already understood it back then that it would take time, and that there is a learning curve. Peter’s only wish was to have started diversifying and building a team earlier. They really put all their eggs in one basket and tried to do everything alone.
A single person can only do so much while remaining efficient — maybe running 3-5 ad campaigns. To really scale things and have 30-50 ad campaigns, a team is a must, even if on a commission-only basis.
Diversification mitigates risk.
Even if one vertical plummets (like in the case of their only buyer), other verticals would keep a healthy profit going.
How Did Personal Development Help Transform the Brothers?
Tyler focused too much on one aspect and burned out with his first ad campaign.
Learning the business, scaling naturally spreads out the risk, hence, the stress as well. He compared it to working out: at the beginning, everything is super hard. But training yourself over time, the right way, learning the exact things needed for efficiency makes everything a routine and you naturally become stronger.
Peter listened to Robert Kiyosaki, Jim Rome, Brian Tracy, Tony Robbin for personal development and hustled hard to make their online business work. Looking back, he attributes that being exposed to higher-level individuals, through events like The Legends Mastermind, made him grow very quickly and it completely changed his mindset.