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To-Do’s and Not-To-Do’s in Building an E-commerce Brand - Golden Stream Media | EP. #44

August 03, 2022 | Author: Andrew Maff
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On this 44th episode of The E-Comm Show, our host and BlueTuskr CEO Andrew Maff is with Anatoliy Labinskiy of Golden Stream Media. Anatoliy Labinskiy is a Ukraine-based Dropshipping expert in the Shopify platform. From his humble beginnings as a waiter, he is now a 4-time owner of 7-figure winner awards in the e-commerce space and has founded Golden Stream Media which helps businesses to manage and advertise their brands. Over the past 3 years, they have successfully served clients and made more than $10,000,000 in total own and client results.

Listen to Anatoliy as he shares not only his fair share of mistakes and secret sauces to finding the right strategies and techniques to building a 7-figure business in the e-commerce space

If you enjoyed the show, please be sure to rate, review, and of course, SUBSCRIBE! 



Have an e-commerce marketing question you'd like Andrew to cover in an upcoming episode? Email: hello@theecommshow.com

 

 


To-Do’s and Not-To-Do’s in Building an E-commerce Brand- GOLDEN STREAM MEDIA

SPEAKERS

Andrew Maff and Anatoliy Labinskiy

 

 

 

CONNECT WITH OUR HOST: AndrewMaff.com  |  Twitter: @AndrewMaff | LinkedIn: @AndrewMaff

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Anatoliy Labinskiy

 

Anatoliy Labinsky is a Ukraine-based Dropshipping expert in the Shopify platform. He is a 4-time owner of 7-figure winner awards in the eCommerce space.

He founded the company Golden Stream Media, which helps create businesses, its management, and advertising. Over the past 3 years, we successfully served our clients and made more than $10,000,000 in total and client results.

Anatoliy is included in the Forbes Business Council and featured as one of the Top 10 E-commerce Entrepreneurs helping people during the COVID-19 recession. On top of that, he was recognized by Yahoo Finance as one of the publication’s Top 10 E-commerce Entrepreneurs.

Transcript:

00:02

The number one rule for me in life since sphinx start working for me, do more of what's working

 

00:11

Hey everyone, this is Nezar Akeel from Max Pro. Hi, I'm Linda, and I'm Paul, and we're Love and Pebble. Hi this is Lopa Van Der Mersch from RASA. 

 

00:18

You're listening to, and you're listening, and you are listening to The E-Comm Show.

 

00:29

Welcome to The E-Comm Show, presented by BlueTuskr, the number one place to hear the inside scoop from other e-commerce experts. They share their secrets about how they scaled their business and are now living the dream. Now, here's your host, Andrew Maff. Hello,

 

00:49

everyone, and welcome to another episode of The E-Comm Show. I'm your host Andrew Maff. And today I am joined by Anatoliy Llabinskiy of Golden Stream Media. Anatoly, how're you doing? Are you ready for a good show? Hey, Andrew. Yes, I'm really excited about that. And I'm doing great. What about you? How's your day so far? Going great, super excited to have you on the show, there's gonna be a good one. I know that obviously, you're an E-commerce seller yourself, and to help other e-commerce sellers become themselves and start to grow from there. So let's get into that. So I'm going to obviously give a minute here, I would love for you to kind of tell everyone a little bit about your background, more about, you know what it is you do what golden true media does, and we'll get into that. Okay. Yeah, perfect. So I would like to start in general, like where I have been and when my journey started. So it was 2017. Back in 2017, I used to work in Dubai, and my wife became pregnant, we will like kind of broke, renting this Filipino feminism small room. And my wife, like shocked me that we are pregnant. And I decided to promise myself that my kids will come into the world with a completely different financial situation than I was growing out. And that was the real kind of thing that has changed completely my mind completely my actions in my life. And from that moment, I brought my wife to Ukraine, and this story is super long. But in general, it has been

 

02:18

completely changed the moment for me. I brought her to Ukraine, stayed in Dubai, in apartments with seven other people, like rented small bed, but space and started studying online opportunities. I didn't know about the commerce, anything about Facebook advertising, nothing. It just came to me the ebook of one guy in e-Commerce who promised us all his work.

 

02:43

With 100 bucks, you can start your e-Commerce business. First of all, I was like, What is? Does it mean e-commerce? And secondly, what does it mean to advertise on Facebook? How right? For me, it was I was just, you know, just a simple user of Facebook as a social media platform, nothing else. And when I read that book, it was Friday 17 or 15th of August. Not sure I don't remember exactly 2017. And it was a good moment. 180 pages of the book, like in one day in one shot. I was shocked that this is what I want to do in my life. I don't know how I have no clue how I will do that. But I will make it happen. And I wasn't believing about 100 bucks. Believe me, I am not that person who is like gonna be believing in that kind of stuff. But I was impressed by the opportunities that exist. And yeah, because of looking for different opportunities, I decided to try and make it worse, I started studying the industry to create my first store. And in the same time, I used to work two different jobs: office job in the morning and evenings it was like our restaurants, as a supervisor. After that, I get another two extra work on the weekend in the nightclubs when I'm free in the restaurants. And I was doing so many times just to feel as much cash as possible. Because first of all, I need to save something, and secondly, because babies come in, and secondly, because I started spending money on Facebook. And the thing is game so hard that they spent everything that they have first jumped into the crypto, and in the crypto 2017, We're the end of 2017 It was hype. I lost an average. Here's what I put there.

 

04:34

Facebook advertising wasn't working for me. And it was one of the biggest things, which is I understand that 99% of the people are quitting because the first 200 bucks are not converting the first 200 bucks that were spent and nothing working, and they like it doesn't work. It's not for me or whatever. For me, it was the opposite. I spent 1000s and 1000s in the four months I spent all

 

04:59

Over $6,000 I spent on crypto over 3000. It was all more than my savings because I even borrowed the money pays for some extra services where I got scammed. Because people take the money and never come back to me. Like there were different things that made me broke in financially but so strong mentally because I said to myself, I don't care, I will keep going, and I will make it happen. There is no other solution. Especially my baby at that moment already has been born it was October. And that one particular moment, I was like launching my first store end of September, start spending money, nothing is working, pay for the guy who disappeared, invest in crypto and February owl. No, January lost everything that I had borrowed the money, I was dead on Facebook. And really, like, this is how my story began. And that was horrible. It was one of the hardest years of my life. Because the total of five jobs, one full time for different part times even video for the shootings in Dubai, on the weekends. And I was just whatever I making, throwing in Facebook. And the one thing I never asked a question to myself was what I was doing wrong. No, I was just wasting and wasting and wasting. I'm calling that wasting because I know the reason. But in general, when you spend on Facebook money, it's not a waste, you're testing. You're trying to understand what's working. So you invest in. But that moment I exactly was wasting because I never asked myself what I was doing wrong. And I use all the strategies from YouTube in the same

 

06:40

At the same time, the algorithms and the performance, messed up everything, and every 15 minutes, I was changing something in the campaign. So yeah, like new big mistakes. But everything has changed. At the end of January, when I started, I decided to give it a shot for less money than what I had, I had a couple of hundred for the advertising, around close to 1000. And

 

07:09

like I need someone to help. And I decided to give it a shot and promised to one guy doing group coaching. And in the first 15 days, $1,000 in sales is where the evolution started.

 

07:25

At the moment when I was concrete our last version and last budget I just put in and I found out oh my god, I didn't follow KPIs, I didn't understand the columns in phase, I touched every 15 minutes when I have to leave it for 24 hours you know, and a lot of other things. And I finally started to educate myself in advertising in the right way. And that's just where results began. But at the same time, they also as well. But it's another thing just like I described to you in the beginning and only one thing fishes help me to make the difference and when well to compare to the other 99% of people who quit in is just never give up and I knew that there is no other way or moving forward, or nothing like laces was the only thing how I made that work. Yeah, but that is an impressive story. So you definitely learned by doing you know it's it sucks because sometimes you know you got to do that to learn but obviously you came out on the other end of it, so it was obviously worth it in the end. What is it you were actually selling back then? Oh, great question. Actually, that product was from the beginning of my store from the end of September when I created I first of all I had a niche store. It's a cat niche I decided that it's a great niche to start with because it's like a broad interest everyone loves cats. But that product was always there actually it was attracting my people but I didn't know how to read analytics and Shopify people was always going to the page of this product people will always was adding to cart, and they didn't follow that I mean but never purchase and when they start with the mentorship pointing out to me Listen you have a winner most probably let's test it out, and that was a t-shirt

 

09:14

with the pocket like this, and when you remove in the pocket down at the hearing was some pretty key to inside when you're removing the pocket is showing the middle finger.

 

09:25

Yes, exactly. This is the reaction that was in

 

09:29

an engagement under the post. People will love it. And the winning audience became teachers 45 plus women and ladies when we're buying in the comments like hey, let's buy the Warthog in for all of the friends and five people in the same time. We're taking orders in different sizes, and different colors. Let's buy for the week, and let's make it fun. And this is actually was showing me what does it mean?

 

09:55

Sales by impression sell on the emotions you know and

 

10:00

I understand that subject as well, because of the coma, read the comments. It's one of the best things if you want to understand about your products, I read the comments. And that was awesome. And we made 15 in 15 days 8k, And after that, Facebook decided to change the policy. And the middle finger is not allowed anymore on Facebook.

 

10:21

And we got banned. But we will be taking like a whole journey on fails. But yeah, this was the first winning product that we found, and it was an awesome experience. So you mentioned that you know, obviously figured it out, it went out. Finally, like starting to see sales going What did what was essentially the secret sauce that was able to kind of get you over that hump, because I know, obviously this store and I believe you had

 

10:48

a couple of other stores that you ended up surpassing seven figures annually, which means you figured out the secret sauce because a lot of people, that's a struggle just to get over that first seven figures, let alone do it a few times. So what is it that you see has been that that real thing that has helped you kind of scale the stores?

 

11:05

So, for example, with the cat store, I moved forward to summer, so it was February 2018. And I'm moving well to this summer. But I found out that I don't want to sell T-shirts. So first of all, ban happens I tried to overtake him by making animations and all the things it didn't work. We start in the summer we found another approach which is to start overtaking the policy. And we made another couple of keys. But it was a lot during the spring, it was the testing phase of the different stores with the watches with the wallets because of these kinds of bans. And nothing was working that well here, and there are a few key things profitable. But I found out that February, which is it does exist. It's working. So let's move on. And that's the first of all the secret sauce store sauces for sure you have to test a lot of angles a lot of things I know everyone is talking about that. But the number one thing is really to understand your audience for example, about the cat store, I made it a maximum niche store, so I was analyzing the successful stores of the cat niche. And I texted, I remember to several

 

12:22

rescued centers for the cats and dogs better to the school center and said, Listen, guys, I'm gonna be I'm selling this stuff I'm going to be just donated like 5% of the profit to work to you. Can I just mention your name on my website? And nobody was responding except two guys. One asked me to jump on the call from New York, saying it cost me $1,000. For me, it was

 

12:47

worth

 

12:49

  1. Yes and no, I understand. Thank you so much. Like I don't want, and another one said, " Yeah, no problem. Like it was sheltered from Canada. If I'm not mistaken. Please do it. And I was honest, I said I will be seriously denied it. And I wasn't an agent, but it was small to like 2030 bucks, like, it depends on the sales. So and I was just like mentioned on my store, their partnership, and not even partnership, we are from every single sale, we are donating for these pets. Pet rescue center, who, I don't even remember the bear. But

 

13:28

anyway, it was a big pet rescue center, which is I put their logo, I made some nice text about our cooperation, cooperation, and that every five people of ourselves is going to them plus in every single ad copy. And then the sentence has been that we are cooperating with and donating with the dispute Center. This is as well, I believe, was helpful for me at that moment. And when we started other stores, I was doing similar approaches. With other stores, even if it's not related to the beds, we will find other industries where we can donate and inform people about that. So it is also like, for our audience, especially when you have already been in NGO and won product, it would be valuable that they are doing the good things and buying from you. So it was another thing was that gives us big potential. But by end of summer, I was talking during the summer with one guy from the United States. And I've been in the FBI and moved back to Ukraine. And he was suffering by he had the products, which were selling well but one agency just left him, and he said I don't know what to do, or we have because they had several problems because of the product quality. And the agency decided instead to solve the problems. They just decided to leave him, and he said I don't know what to do man come on, and I was talking to humans doing 300k a month, and we were just like quiet chatting. And the secret sauce here is

 

14:59

guy, so you have to network with people in the industry in which you're trying to succeed. Just talk to them, don't ask for anything, just speak with them because we became kind of bodies kind of friends. For and first time in our cooperation or our conversation after three months, I just said, Listen, let's jump on the call because he knew that I had knowledge because at that moment, I was super active on Facebook and was posting me fails my results, screenshots and back in 2018, it was so like super hot thing, like posting in the groups. And I was posting like guys were commenting, and this is how he found out about me. And we were talking, and I said, let's jump on the coil, see what kind of problem you have. And let's see if we can manage that together. And I didn't offer him anything I just said I will look for you and give you some advice. And, long story short, by end of September 2018, we decided to become partners because he found out I knew Facebook, and he loves to manage the store. I hate managing the store. I love doing that. It was perfect. You know, combination. And October we started end of October with the first ever in my life. For him. It wasn't $50,000 in revenue with the profitability wasn't that big. It was around 15% profitability. But that was the year. But that was a cool experience, and it was shoes.

 

16:29

Classic oxford shoes

 

16:32

is urgency left him because of the quality problems? So I came, and we tried to solve those problems together. And for me, it was interesting to experience. And for him, it was just like he had no clue what to do. So we combine everything together and become from 2018 person to partnership; healthier it becomes 5050. And we became official partners, we opened the LLC together like we've done all the things that it needed. So October 50k, December 150. And by March 2019, we made it in 13 days 250 And Facebook, find out what your Facebook score is.

 

17:13

Yeah, so all Jordy on the fails. Yeah. Wow. So I mean, I admire that you, you got your hands dirty. And that's how you figured out how to do all this stuff. So it's that's I admire that that's the way to do it. That's the way to learn through experience. You can read all the books worldwide and watch all the courses. And it's never, you never really know until you get in there and figure out all the nuances. But so, let's flash forward. So now, obviously, you've gotten through media, started to build this out, and are taking what you've learned and implementing it for other e-commerce sellers. So why don't you tell me a little bit about what that is? Yeah, sure. So it was exactly 2019 When we did in March, this resulted from 250, And we got screwed because of the score. By that time, I had a couple of people who asked, because I was active on Facebook groups, asked me could you please teach me. Can you mentor me? For me? It was surprising because I never tried to push my service. So I didn't have service, we had the stores. And I said okay, why not? For me, it was interesting if it would be working, what's working for me for other people. And I start doing mentorship for a couple of people, and it starts working. I like Whoa, awesome. Like I like the strategy I'm using, and it's working. And yeah, by that time we start figuring out how to solve the problems vis a vis our store, we will manage into edit and other products to change the page change the domain, so the things are good regarding the score. And I decided while we are doing that it's not super active. People are continually asking me for mentorship, so I started doing mentorship actively, and I even couldn't wait to find out how however, you have 35 active students one on one with me, not a group coaching one on 120 minutes twice a week every single person will jump in one on one with me where I haven't used that account I had access to every single student at accounts in Sunday nights I was texting them out your messages like hey you have to do this this this and that and because of this approach a great customer service a because it's me like I've been there I know what I want to see where if I would go back in time I want someone next to me like me I mean who gonna be on Sundays to text me Hey man, you didn't duplicate the campaign when I tell you why.

 

19:34

And I was pushing, and I was following well we made in the year around two million in the students' results, and during that moment we figured it out with our stores is the partner we create another store, and we continue shoe store, and we create another store for Health niche and of 2019, and we found out a winner as a belt for the back, which is just you present the air everyone origin

 

20:00

Was this product before it was new, we were one of the first people who found it. It wasn't famous on AliExpress. So this is my strategy in product research in general, it's not looking for the famous product look on outstanding products, which is nobody selling but looks attractive, and you find out then goes out to introduce the audience. And that usually gives you higher iOS during the testing phase and scalability on a too stable level. And especially back in 2018, without iOS and all this stuff, which is going on now. It was great. And we just finally took and then the angle was simple, we just copy-paste the text from Aliexpress Which sentence was perfectly written, I just took the text and put on that quarter, and the video is off from Aliexpress It was incredible 5.5 arrests and average like we made three

 

20:50

Yeah, 330 or something like in the sales in the in totals like over half a million on that product before COVID and all that things like wasn't the same time with the students and by November and of this that year, one of my mentor who is still working with me I mean as my life mentor right now before it was about Facebook strategies about everything now it's about real estate investments now it's about different things. And like I got from that mentor plug for 1 million in Shopify store in 2019. And he said to me, Listen, like this mentorship, you won't be able to scale, and I was exhausted store managing the business mentorship is one on one, not group coaching once a week, six times six days a week and plus at night I'm sending out your messages to every single student right why they haven't done this or something like that.

 

21:46

I was doing like customer service for me was the number one thing, and after that, he said open the agency Adam truly wanted to open the agency

 

21:58

and I took a couple of people who will want to work with me actually why is the conversation started because I said listen so many of my students asked me to manage stores for them I said I don't like why they're asking me that he said to do it I like he's doing it like okay to a couple of people I found out one of my friends from Ukraine who hungry and ready to learn I said listen, would you like to be with me 365 days in a year where I'm going to be teaching you media buying, and you're going to be running stores together with me so I will be able to focus on my business he said let's do it. So and foremost, like from it was sorry, agency staff those two clients started end of 2018 and for one year with this media buyer plus all this my business things and mentorship we will manage in two or three customers as an agency and one of them we just found the winner and the S, for now, it's already over 6.5 million in sales. So the girl was struggling for three years alone, jumping into our stay with us for over seven months with up and downs, not good results because there were problems finding the right angle for her pod store. And after we found the winner of in an angle on October 2019 first million in four months, we just like scaled skeleton it's for now. It's 6.5 there were a lot of underwater stones. Because of is because of COVID because of

 

23:34

everything so, but yeah, we are

 

23:38

and golden stream media as an agency started on the 25th of March 2020 During COVID, mentorship wasn't that moment. It wasn't making sense because people like quitting or losing their jobs, and they were not ready for the mentorship, plus China had been closed. And we've I found out like suppliers from us from Europe. And my mentor said to me Listen, move to the agency 100 people in the end because I was exhausted with the mentorship. I was exhausted, and he said the agency's way to go. And we decided to take up our students again more, I mean adding more people there I hire a couple of students as a media buyers by students who want to work, they don't want to be intrapreneurs you know, not everyone wants to be intrapreneurs someones one just love media buying. And I said listen, would you like to join me I will coach you for free. And you're going to be making money with me. Okay. And this is where the story started with the goddess three Media Two years ago, I mean, and we started scaling like in the workforce months, we like scaled maybe 12 weeks or something like that. And after that, move forward is that is the bigger numbers. What I'm who's

 

24:59

Like the ideal person that comes to you? Is it someone who's looking to start their first ecommerce business? Or are you now working with, especially from the agency side? Are you working with people that are a little more established? And you have to kind of help them get to the next level? What's the preference there? So it's actually an amazing question, because this is one thing, which is, as well, and I'm putting a lot of attention right now, are we doing what like the number one rule for me in life since sphinx start working for me, do more what's working? So and since all of my students and all the audience wishes have been around me, was a beginner, we were focusing on helping beginners to find their winners to scale those winners and

 

25:47

just manage the stores for them. Now it's become it became much harder with iOS is everything else. So we have a couple of established businesses with us. And we would like to scale on that way more, I mean, to manage more stable businesses because we know how to scale, and it's super scalable. When you have trusted our audience, you have trusted business with you. And we are good at it, we have our finger, an ecosystem. Where a person after a sporting happens, we create the package, an ecosystem where it's established then brands come into us. And we implemented on Google after that, adding Tik Tok with an SMS email marketing, where all the profitable part started. And if it's necessary, which is usually it's as Google Shopping for the retargeting for the simple, like most winning attractive products. So like, but this gives us when Facebook has bug has problems, tic tock given us quite a bit, and especially email SMS marketing given us greatly because we have guys who are doing great SMS and email campaigns, which has given us extra from 18 to 26% on the revenue, which is no expanding, so everything is highly profitable and is give us a head and over 20% profitability.

 

27:09

Only from that campaigns with the all the others, like sometimes Facebook is given us breakeven, sometimes it's given us five 10% profitability. But you know, if you are in the commerce for a while, you're understanding that on the front end, you could be on breakeven or you're gonna lose money. But on the back end, if the ecosystem is built correctly, you're making all your profits. And this is what attract people who are working with us. But the majority of our clients are beginners to Shopify automation. That's what was working from the beginning. And we continue doing that. So people who like Amazon automation, but on the Shopify platform, we have a fulfillment team. We have team members who are taking care of the customer service for clients who made their buying, like in total, it's over 40 people. So we are quite big and growing. And yeah, this is what to feel to kind of clients which are focusing but the major goal is to have more brands than Shopify estimation, but at the same time we see that it's like perfectly work and all together

 

28:17

and it's only that was amazing. That was a lot of information. I appreciate having me on the show. I don't want to take up too much more of your time. I would love for you to take the opportunity let everyone know where they can find out more about you and more about Golden stream media.

 

28:30

Yeah, of course, I appreciate that. So yeah, I'm more than active all the time on E combine natal Instagram, it's my main Instagram page. It combined Attali or golden stream media, our Instagram page for the company, and our YouTube channel where we like to start recording valuable information valuable videos on the YouTube features call in Anatolia Verbinski, you can find it too like we just started growing. It's the first 1000 subscribers, says for now. There so yeah, like more than welcome to chat with the guys and see if we can help them. It's not about you. And I'm trying to sell something. I'm just the person who learned from my failures and helped everyone else overtake those failures more smoothly. Because fails in these kinds of businesses, like in any kind of business, always exist. And this is exactly what we are focusing on to help make this kind of journey on smooth way and building from the drop shipping business, small brands can scale and then exist by selling that brand on the marketplaces. So yeah, I do appreciate your attention. And that was cool. Yeah, appreciate having you on the show. Thank you so much for being on it. Everyone that tuned in. Thank you as well for tuning in. Make sure that you rate reviews, subscribe, and all that fun stuff on whichever channel you

 

30:00

prefer or just head over to our YouTube or ecommshow.com. But as usual, thanks again for joining us, and we will see you all next time.

 

30:09

Thank you for tuning in to The E-Comm Show head over to ecommshow.com to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform or on the BlueTuskr YouTube channel. The E-Comm Show is brought to you by blue tusker, a full-service digital marketing company specifically for E-commerce sellers looking to accelerate their growth. Go to BlueTuskr.com Now for more information. Remember to tune in for another amazing episode of The E-Comm Show next week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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