Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - Getting Paid to Share What You Love | Aurelien Amacker - CEO of Systeme.io

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Lessons - Getting Paid to Share What You Love | Aurelien Amacker - CEO of Systeme.io · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, you will learn strategies for building a competitive product,
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  setting up an affiliate program, and scaling a remote team for growth.
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  The discussion covers maintaining profitability without funding,
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  balancing risk, and staying resilient.
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  You'll gain insights into overcoming challenges and finding fulfillment in the journey.
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  So you built an incredible product, but simultaneously, you're also being very competitive
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  on price. Take the market strategy was hitting your email list,
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  and then but also the affiliate program. So these are all making sense.
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  Walk me through the affiliate program and how that was set up to encourage people to,
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  I guess, refer business. Yeah, sure. So I love the affiliate program business model.
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  I think it is just great. I remember back when I was sending courses, I could hear stories
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  about people having. So people having just products like in fitness or in another industry.
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  So just having products and an affiliate program and nuts.
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  Not focusing on traffic generation because it was completely relying on the affiliates.
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  I was like, this is a great business model. You know, I wish I could do that someday.
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  So with our tool, we launched our own affiliate program in 2017. So I told people,
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  I told my lace look, I'm going to pay you 40% on all the series you generate on our courses
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  and on the software. And this also started attracting affiliates, you know,
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  little by little. I mean, it's really a combination of the product is good. The offer is good.
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  I mean, you know, like the price and the affiliate commission is good. And today,
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  we paying our affiliates close to 100,000 euros per month in affiliate commissions.
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  And so you set it up so that you get affiliate commissions for lifetime or as a for a year.
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  And it's a percentage of all the recurring monthly payments as well.
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  No, no, it's 40% as long as the customer space. You know, that's the thing.
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  It's funny. When you discuss about affiliate programs with many business owners,
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  very, very funny. It's the same story that I'm going to try to, you know, like I'm going to try
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  to, you know, I'm going to pay you that for one year or, you know, I'm going to try to
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  game the system, you know, and I'm like, this is stupid. Like I want to
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  being an entrepreneur, we all know it's about building value, right?
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  So I want to be the value for my customers, for my affiliates and for my team members, right?
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  So I mean, it would be a very short, short term, uh,
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  decided to try to, you know, like, uh, flow my, my affiliates like, I want them to make as much
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  money as possible. So they keep promoting us, they keep working hard and I'm telling you that's
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  what, that's what's happening because I can see some people who, you know, are trying to make
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  money online, but, you know, they don't really, uh, succeed and then they promote our
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  ship program and they start making money and it's great. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, and now you have grown
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  the business to your updated numbers, four million annual recurring revenue. Uh, this year,
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  I saw that point here that you sent over five to six million in ARR, still bootstrapped.
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  No plans to raise money. You're just keeping it going as is for now, correct?
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  Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, it's, it's a very simple playbook. I mean, I'm already make, I mean,
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  we're profitable. I'm already making, I mean, yeah, I mean, I'm making the money I'd like to make,
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  which is a lot more money than I need, you know, so I can, we bought our dream house with my wife.
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  Uh, so we're going to pay off our, uh, mode gauging, I don't know, two or three years,
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  we're investing, you know, I mean, we're doing great and come reinvesting everything that comes
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  on top of that. Very nice. And, and the one other point that I thought was interesting
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  that you are a hundred percent remote. And I know that a lot of companies have done this,
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  but you, you went a hundred percent remote from the start. So how do you, how do you manage,
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  uh, how many staff do you have now? How do you manage them? How do you be remote effectively?
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  Yeah, so I think it's one of the, uh, one of our strength in, uh, in my company is the ability to
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  lie higher people and trade them and make them grow. So today we have, uh, 65 people on the team
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  in about 10 different countries. So French speaking ones, English speaking ones, Spanish speaking
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  ones, because we're expanding to different markets. And, um, I don't know, it's funny, you know,
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  because I think that's, I mean, I mean, it's the future, you know, you have a boot by the founders
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  of, of Bay, Bayskamp, you know, 30 city webinars. They wrote a book actually about it that's called
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  remote. And it's great because they explained to you what are the benefits, why it's better. And, uh,
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  yeah, we've been doing it since day one and it, it works fine, but you have to, I mean,
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  everyone uses time doctor, uh, a software to track their time and it takes some screenshots.
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  So I don't spend my time, you know, like, uh, talking at the screen, obviously,
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  but like when you have someone who's lacking or, you know, you're not really sure, you can check,
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  check out what he's doing. And sometimes unfortunately, I mean, it happened, you know, people
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  doing like, uh, watching series or whatever, but it doesn't happen much. I mean, you spot these
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  people very easily, right? Um, so I mean, I think this is the future. I mean, you don't have any
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  expense for the office space for, you know, computers, whatever. I mean, this is so much better. I mean,
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  the best, the best benefit that people don't think about is that I don't have to go through
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  an office, you know, and show up and show that I'm there and leave late so that the employees,
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  I mean, I can do whatever I want. I just take my, my phone, I have the Slack app and it's easy,
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  like I can go to the gym, I can go to the shopping center, whatever. And yeah, reply to my team members
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  if I need to. Yeah. So, so you said it out and, and are you, you're not personally managing the 60
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  people. Have you, like, introduced layers of, of, uh, virtual management, uh, remote, like,
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  managers? Yeah. Yeah. Of course, we had, we had to, I mean, uh, so the way it works, uh, so me,
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  I'm in the company, I'm like the CEO, the marketing, uh, director, manager, I don't know how you,
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  how I should call it. And I'm also the product manager. I'm the one supervising the product,
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  you know, making sure it's great and taking decisions and discussing with the customers and developers
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  and team members and stuff. So, um, I mean, the customer support, we have a manager, um, we have like
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  15 people in total, uh, in our customer support, we answer our customer seven days a week, uh,
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  usually under two hours. So people, our customers love our customer, our customer support, you
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  know, because it's very, very effective. So I, I have someone managing that. Uh, then, then the
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  developers, it's mostly our lead developer, which is our first developer. Um, I mean, I have a,
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  a lot of different small teams, you know, and I manage them. I mean, I have one assistant that
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  manages that supervises different teams. Um, okay, okay. Yeah, we have a lot of different teams.
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  I mean, obviously, so you set this up this entire, this entire corporate structure has been set up
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  remote and that's how it's managed. Now, very impressive. I think that you're right. It is 100%
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  the future of, of how organizations can work and it saves you a ton of money. Very effective. Like,
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  I remember I was working in the office, you know, like 15 years ago and I was like, uh, sometimes,
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  I was like on dating websites, you know, I mean, you know, like, uh, it's not because you're
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  at the office that you're effectively working, you know, so yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's true. It's
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  true. Um, and, and you know, question for, for you and also some advice for people that are
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  looking to start their own thing. So like you said, you started a blog, you went to courses, you
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  went to, you went to software, you turned down a job. If you were going to do it again, would you
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  do it the same way? Would you go all in or would you do it? Maybe less risky. What's your, what's your
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  take on that for somebody wanting to start? No, I mean, no, I would do the same. Obviously, you know,
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  like, uh, there is this question in podcasts like if you could talk to your 20 year old, that's my,
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  that's my other question I ask at the end. Yeah. I'm like, you know, like, uh, what, what could I say?
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  Maybe I would tell, I would tell me, look, but he don't, uh, you know, don't stress out. It's
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  going to be all right. Uh, enjoy the ride because, um, I was, uh, yeah, I mean, I mean,
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  there were some tough years. I'm not going to lie, you know, it's easy after Worlds to say,
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  everything is great. You know, no, it wasn't. I was actually feeling like a failure after I left,
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  Jeff Walker was messing my group because I had my, uh, buddies making, you know, a million
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  euro long sheets. And I was just on my own making, yeah, making your, making actually a good income
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  and I was feeling even worse because I was like, dude, you're living in Portugal, the minimum
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  salary is 600 euros per month. And you're living 20,000 euros and you feel like S, you know,
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  and, yeah. And I read the book, you know, uh, the subtle art of not giving your F. Yeah, yeah.
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  And the main idea of this book is it's okay, not to feel okay. And I was like, oh, that's
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  amazing. So yeah, thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that
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  subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation,
• 10:18
  check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.