 Hey everybody J.R. Fishers, I'm really super excited today. I've got my good friend, John Cristani, who is a tech entrepreneur and I guess super affiliate, an amazing guy and he's taken some time out for us today to kind of tell how he got started because everybody thinks you gotta have all these skills and talents and money. And you know, John, you know, started at the age of 21, I believe it was John, is that right? Yeah, yeah, 21. Well, welcome if you'd like to introduce yourself or say anything to the audience and then I'll ask you a bunch of questions, they're so interested in you. Sure, I mean, I guess I was in college, my name's John Cristani, I was in college and I just, I kind of had the choice between going the corporate route or running my own internet business. And I said, I wanna be the fun, I wanna do the fun stuff and run, you know, go around the world and live life on my own terms and run an internet business. And I'm proud to say, you know, last year I was able to make it to $7 million. And actually, I just hired my first employee ever. I've been doing this all, yeah, I've been doing this completely solo. Everybody thinks they need employees, how'd you pull that off? Actually, it's not really even an employee, it's a co-founder, you know, we're technically, neither of us manages each other. How I pulled it off was I ran, I've always focused on running a really lean business. And I mean, I also lost a million dollars trying to manage people. Ah, who was that, bro? Yeah, no, I mean, my first, I made a lot of money when I was pretty young and what ended up happening is I thought I had the mightest touch and I was starting another business which was, you know, an affiliate network. And I ended up making $4 million my first year in that business except my expenses were $5 million though. So that doesn't work out mathematically, right? Doesn't work out mathematically because all the rest of the money, basically I blew everything I had made because I had gotten cocky and a reality check. Well, tell me, how did you go from being 21 to doing $7 million this year? I mean, that's just insanity. People can't even comprehend that. And over what period of time was that? Sure, sure, so I'm 33 now. I believe people really highly overest, have a tendency to overestimate what they can do in a short term, yet completely underestimate what they can do over long periods of time. And really the way I've gotten there is it's just, I honestly, I love marketing. I really enjoy it. Actually, you can see like, I have like Photoshop up on this screen if you're watching on YouTube. I've Google AdWords up on this screen and I have a bunch of file folders and stuff. So I'm still doing marketing every day. I love it and I always seek to get better at it and that kind of has fueled me, you know, just 1% continuous improvements. What is it? Compon or something. It's, you know, it's made it very easy for me to start profitable businesses at this point, so. Now, did you have to invest a lot of money to get started? Because I know my audience is gonna wanna know, hey, a lot of these guys don't have a lot of money so they can't do what you did. Is that true or not? Sure, I mean, the fact is on the internet, it's free to reach people. It's completely free and you don't need technical skills. I did not have any money when I started. I didn't have a trust fund. I didn't have, you know, it's not like I had like great, you know, I'm not super smart. I got, you know, getting great grades in school. All I did was, you know, at first I just learned a skill which was learning how to do online advertising and you know, I just post for free on places and I'd say, hey, want me to do your Google ads? And I just, I send a message to enough people and you know, some business owners were like, yeah, actually we'd like you to do our Google ads. And I started my business that way and then it involved, evolved into performance marketing which is known as affiliate marketing and the rest is history. Now at one point I think you actually worked for a marketing firm and you made them a lot of money. Yeah. And I think you actually went in and asked for a raise. Can you take me through that story? I thought it was hilarious. Yeah, so you talked about the speech I gave at CNN, right? Actually I read it online. Okay, yeah, so I actually recently gave a speech at CNN about this but essentially, I mean, what I was making, you know, I had transitioned out of the first marketing agency I worked for and I had started working for this new marketing agency. I took over, I only had two clients that I was supposed to manage. One of them was spending 80,000 a month. Now for those of you who are not in the ad agency business, the way that ad agencies typically charge is a, almost all of them do is a percentage of spent. So 10% of spent meaning if a client is spending 80,000 a month, the ad agency gets 8,000. So my job was to help this client who was doing, their name was Greenlight Financial. They did mortgages and refinancings and they had a telemarketing team that would work with people to accomplish this. My job was to get them the money they were spending on Google to make it profitable for them in terms of leads and new customers. And I was able to increase their spend from 80,000 a month to 2.2 million in the course of six months, which ended up being hundreds, millions of additional profits for this very small ad agency in a very fast amount of time. Now when I had asked my boss for, I set up a meeting with him and I was going to ask him for either a raise, expanded responsibilities, some sort of incentive plan, maybe a commission for bringing on new clients or something in order to advance my own income because I had proved my, I was the best employee wherever I worked and I would accomplish anything. Whether to increase my salary. He said, or what? Oh no. Yeah, he gave me the one objection that, and this guy, he's a Harvey Weinstein doppelganger. Like he looks, he's big, he's not, and he's just a sour, mean guy, mean-spirited guy. And he said, or what? I had no idea how to respond to that objection. I was willing, I had grants prepared, I had why giving me expanded responsibilities would be a benefit and he'd make more money. And at that point I decided, I said, okay, I'm not gonna be able to grow in a job as fast as I'd like and realize my potential. And I ended up, and it was that week I decided I said, long-term I'm just, I'm gonna have to find my own path. And yeah, after two years of working in an ad agency, you know, I ended up transitioning to starting my own company and it's been a lot better. And you actually quit was essentially a pretty good job, but what I hear from you, you realize at that moment, that guy didn't care about you. Yeah, I was director of marketing, I had an assistant, I had an expense account, I had my own office with a lock on it, I had a gym plan, health insurance, I had the full package. And I had multiple companies that were offering me the full package and this was only after, I mean, I'd only been working for companies, like this is like a little over a year of work experience. So anybody out there, if I mean, if you're listening into this, you know, be the, first off, you can grow in advance quickly in your career, but also understand that lazy on, I know there's people talk about lazy entrepreneurs, but if you're a lazy on, if you're not a good employee, I don't think you're gonna be a good entrepreneur. I think that's a bit of a controversial statement in the, you know, like become an entrepreneur space. I don't know what your thought is, but I've always been, I believe working a job is very straightforward, therefore it's very easy. You know exactly what you need to accomplish. So if you can't do that, then when you stare into the abyss of, you know, daily tasks as an entrepreneur, then I just don't think people will make it. Now, something else I read about you, I thought was really interesting. You read Tim Ferriss' book, which is the four hour work week, which all of us entrepreneurs know about. And I know I have a lot of people listening, thinking, wow, that's great. I only have to work four hours a week. Can you kind of dispel that little bit? Cause I know I work a lot. There's a lot more than four hours a week. And I think a lot of people are thinking, well, I want to be my own boss, so I don't have to hardly work at all. Is that true? Yeah, I would say so. Now, I mean, some people will kind of dissect this and say, well, you know, I don't consider it work, right? It's work. You know, if you ask me, I'd say I'd rather be on the ski slopes right now. Right. You know, I'd rather be skydiving. You know, it's work. I work 14 hours a day. There you go. I work solid 14, and even in my free time, like last night, you know, I quote unquote, got off around nine, nine o'clock at night. I spent the next four hours watching interviews with successful startup, software startup founders because we're building software ourselves and I'm trying to place myself further in their mind. So as an entrepreneur, you never really turn off. You're going, if you want, if you're going to become an entrepreneur, yes, you can make a lot more money. Yes, you can do things on your own terms, but you're going to be probably working a lot more than, if you really want to make it, you're going to be working a lot more than the average Joe who works at John Badjouce and has six hour shifts every other day. So working for somebody else, that's going to always be less hours than working for yourself, isn't it? 100%. And I see a lot of people say, well, you know, I got my education, I went through high school. I got my education, I went through college, I got this college degree. In this arena here in selling online, how do you feel about learning new things? Do you think it's necessary? I mean, do you think you've got to learn every day? Because I know it seems like every day. I want to put a copy, wait, sorry, I want to go back and put a copy out on the four hour work week. Now the good news is I could take two or three weeks off and I'd still be making $100,000 a month. My business will, I could take a month off and it would still, I'd still be making money like clockwork. So it's not all bad. You do have some, I think the four hour work week is more about freedom that you and as opposed to saying, oh, you can be lazy and make tons of money, which is I think a misnomer. Sorry, sorry, just want to put that copy out. No, I think that's a really good point. I think what I took from that book is you can set up a system where you have some passive income and it allows you to do something else. It may be allow you to take that off, but also may allow you to work on the next project if you have money coming in. And on a job, you don't have that. Yeah, totally. And it's like once you start to actually be successful as an entrepreneur, I think you end up going down this rabbit hole into this mindset of, you know, you have to, you're just gonna get stuff done and you're gonna, oh, you have that get stuff done on your desk right there. Yes, I do. I won't say the SH word. I know we're on camera, but basically, you know, once you go down that rabbit hole and once you become mission focused, you become a soldier to business almost, you can't just turn that off, right? It's, you know, you can't just turn lazy all of a sudden, but you will be able to retire. Now, let's quote, oh, I'm sorry, go ahead. No, no. How important is it? You know, I hear people saying, it's been said to me, oh, you've left your old friends behind and you don't hang out with them and don't spend time with some of your old friends when you were a kid or 10 or 20 years ago. How do you feel about surrounding yourself with the right people? Oh, well, first of all, I didn't leave my old friends. My old friends left me, they stopped advancing in their life, there became a point at the end of college where they just said, oh, I don't need to keep learning. I don't need to keep advancing. I'm just gonna, you know, whereas I am a huge, huge proponent of surrounding myself with the best people. This has been, you know, this has been the most helpful thing for me, you know, is literally just placing myself around successful people and allowing just through osmosis and opportunities and whatever, allowing myself to be raised up to their level, taking advantage of the opportunities. And if you're looking for your big break, I mean, 80% of, I think, anything in life or entrepreneurship, business especially, is luck. But you can create your own luck. You put yourself around where the monies flow. Don't hang out in the slums or don't hang out with your alcoholic friends who all they wanna do is go to the bar or your weekend warriors. I mean, hang out with successful people that are passionate about something and doing stuff. And that's how I met my first mentor. That's how I got my first deal. That's how I quit my job, is I just started every day after work. I'd get off at six and I'd straight up just go someplace where rich people were. I just would, I'd be like, where do rich people hang out? I mean, I hang out at like fancy hotel bars, right? Fancy hotel bars, right? Business travelers, during the week, business travelers, expensive hotels, corporate credit card, right, rich people. So I just wanna be in the action because once when there's money flying all around you, right, there's deals happening and all this stuff, it's easier to just kinda stick your hand in and like, you know, you just kinda poke your head in. You just stick your hand in and you can grab some for yourself. It's why cities like New York and San Francisco and Los Angeles are so expensive is because there's money flowing around. There's deals happening, there's transactions, there's all this stuff, right? You know, out in Farmsville, there isn't. So I encourage people, you know, and I grew up in LA. I had a huge advantage starting out. There's billionaires all around me, all around me. But there's a lot of folks who wanna become successful but they aren't willing to give themselves those advantages. And it's 80% luck. Make, come on. Put luck on your side. It's easy. There's a formula to it. Surround yourself with rich people. Go to the conferences where they're all at. Salesforce conference, everybody there is millionaires. Where did we meet? You remember? Oh, was it a billion summit? It was the, I think, the Clickbank Platinum Summit. Right, everybody there, millionaires. Right, every single person. Yeah. And so that's why I go to those sorts of events because I say, oh, I'm gonna meet myself a network of only millionaire internet entrepreneurs. Yeah, you know, I have a lot of my students who wanna make money online and they'll say things to me like, well, just tell me the five or 10 steps I need to do so I don't have any failures so I can just go ahead and make some money. And I can get to the church. And matter of fact, I have a lot of people that will contact me and say, hey, it seems like you know this pretty well. I wanna start a business. I'd like to have you run it and I'll give you 10%. I'm sure you've had that same thing. Oh, I get that all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you've got the system. So tell me about starting a business and the assurances you have along the way or the lack of assurances you have along the way, you're just doing it. You gotta believe in yourself. If you don't believe in yourself, nothing will work. You have to be stubbornly believe in yourself. You have to, I mean, entrepreneurship is not, entrepreneurship starts when you are at an obstacle that seems so monstrous that you can never break through. Now an example from one of my students is, some students get, they're trying online advertising and they get their Facebook account banned and then where their brain goes is they go into self doubt. They start thinking, am I doing something wrong? And then they say, and then they start thinking, how am I gonna advertise on Facebook? I don't have a Facebook account anymore. I'll never be able to get a Facebook account. My life as a marketer is oak. And that's not believing in oneself. That's not looking for solutions. That's looking at problems. And a lot of, and that is the single biggest kind of correlation for folks who don't believe in themselves is they start focusing on the problems rather than focusing on problem solving and solution finding. You know, that's a great example and I know a lot of people lose Facebook accounts. If somebody were to lose their Facebook account, they couldn't advertise and you're the kind of guy that's positive. What direction would you go with that? Great question. So first off, you can start a new Facebook account. Not complicated, free. I mean, it's just so obvious, but so many folks don't think of it. Just start another one. It doesn't cost any money. You can, I know people who have tons of Facebook accounts. Another thing you can do is buy a Facebook account. You can buy somebody else's or rent a Facebook account. There's multiple ways around there. The third thing you can do is you can advertise on another advertising network. Oh, what do you know? Facebook is the only one. I don't even really advertise much on Facebook. I spend most of my time on Google. There you go. Is it because Google's better than Facebook or Facebook's better than Google? Not necessarily. It's just because I can reach all, you know, everybody in the world, everybody that uses Facebook uses Google too and uses the internet. It uses YouTube, right? It's not, there are billions of people, you know? There are billions of people. I'm just trying to grow a business to $100 million or, you know, a billion dollars a year. So I don't need billions of people to grow a business to, you know, $100 million a year. I only need, you know, whatever, you know? Like 100,000 customers, which is a less than, less than 0.1% of the amount of people on Google or YouTube. So again, it's don't, if you focus on the obstacles, that's what your life's gonna be about. If you focus on the solutions and finding solutions and really sitting hard and with yourself and working on a problem. I work on problems for days and weeks. Now my company is spending months on problems and it's, I mean, I could go off on a huge tangent here but basically I believe the whole thing boils down to our folks' attention spans are being shortened and shortened and shortened because of this endless scroll of the social media news feed and people are unable to focus on long, you know, longer-term problems and longer-term thinking like they used to. The other thing that I hear a lot from people and maybe you can address this is they say, well, John, you got in at the right time. I mean, when you got in, it was easy and now there's like, for example, there's so many more YouTube channels now and it's so much more difficult and so much more complicated and I feel like I just missed the boat. What would you say to those people? I totally, you know, entrepreneurship is 80% luck. But then again, I created my own luck because I'm continuously, you know, one is surrounding myself with smart, rich people. And again, I didn't, you know, I click bank platin, I mean, you have to be invited to but you don't have to be invited to the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. You don't have to be invited to the bar at, you know, Tony Robbins mastermind, you know, hotel or whatever, these are all free places where I met some of the most wealthy individuals I've ever met. And I got lucky because I started YouTube advertising in 2016, I got lucky because I started Facebook advertising in 2012 or 13, yeah, I got lucky a ton of times but that's because, but what you don't see is the other 99 things that I did that were not lucky and it's because I put myself out there. I've been casting the reel like, you know, I'm out there, you know, I'm not sitting on the couch, I'm out there casting the reel and trying to catch some fish. So I guess the question is it too late to start a business online to be successful in 2020, is that, is it too late? Hey, thanks for watching my video. 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