I’ve been meeting many people lately…

Most of them are successful entrepreneurs… Some of them are only starting out their entrepreneurial journey.

What’s striking about them all…

They all think they are missing so many things to be successful.

When in reality they need only one thing.

They have it 95% right and simply need to add 5% to it.

Where does this 5% come from?

For me, it comes from everywhere. Meeting people, podcasts, books, consulting, or my spiritual journey…

I’m like a hawk hunting for my next victim — insights.

What did it take me to get 3 businesses to $1.5M — 2M in monthly revenue?

Around 4–6 months of research, consulting and testing.

However, after doing the entire research, I found only 3 things, which took me in a total of fewer than 30hours to implement for all of them.

Now, with 3 businesses I work with, we all reached $1.5–2M in monthly revenue.

What’s next?

Well, now we have the formula figured out & I can see it will take us to $30M in yearly revenue.

We’re building systems and processes for that.

But as I am writing about it, a question popped into my mind:

“Isn’t it strange that all of the businesses I work with are making almost the same revenues?”

My answer is — no.

Because I truly believe that business is a reflection of the personal development one has to undertake.

The question is though — how will my personal development take me to another level?

Maybe now it’s not only my personal development but rather my team’s personal development?

P.S. Lately I’ve been sharing with you lots of personal development stuff, and not the actual strategies… It is for a reason. Those who have reached 7 figures in monthly revenue already know it. And those who haven’t… Will see that the learning curve is slightly lower at this point & it has more to do about the mindset as there is no secret media buying strategy you can use to get to another level.

After the 3 day retreat, I’m back on track.

Although, I’m still feeling as if I’m still on holiday.

However, I badly needed it.

The last time I tried to take holidays was in December, however, I completely missed it & worked throughout.

And what I discovered lately — the more I relax, the better ideas come to my mind.

Here, in front of the forest and 200m by the sea, I managed to sleep for almost 12hours daily.

If there was a relaxing championship, I would have won it this weekend.

The best though — we masterminded with Kris about the agency, our side projects and what we want to achieve in the next 3 months.

And I wanted to share something that might be useful for you.

Before the weekend, we had some structure hiring, accepting clients, building new projects, etc.

However, we saw that it was scattered all around.

For now, we decided to work on 3-month basis.

Which means…

We’ll be accepting clients on 3 months basis.

We’ll be building 1–2 pods within the agency on every 3 months basis.

We’ll take on a project and try to make it see a daylight every 3 months (if that’s possible).

Why 3 months?

It’s a sufficient amount of time to build almost anything in digital space.

It’s enough time to see whether a person will or will not perform.

And will give us a lot more structure.

Another outcome of this weekend was…

We finally got fully aligned with Kris about the agency & from tomorrow on, you’ll be receiving my emails from Sugatan domain!

Pretty exciting things are waiting ahead of us.

But…

I’m interested.

How are you planning your goals? Is it 3 months or do you use some kind of other structure?

P.S. we’ve just released a podcast with one of the most experienced and successful people I know in ecommerce space — Joe Rozsa. Listen to the podcast and learn from his experience working in this space for over 22 years!!!

Many people could call me or Kris an overnight success.

I can see why…

In just over 1.5 years we managed to build a 7 figure agency with over 30 people working here…

We managed to scale 3 brands to over 8 figures in a matter of months…

Yet what you haven’t seen is the preparation that we undertook years before we started working with these brands…

For over 8 years, I’m reading 3–4 books per month.

Listen to at least 2 audiobooks per month.

Meet with completely 5–10 new people per month and get new ideas…

Kris was going to sleep listening to Neil Patel’s, other courses & books for over 5 years…

These were the years of misery.

I was studying at University and working 2 jobs to have enough cash to survive & get the experience I needed to get the next job I wanted to have…

Kris was a server at the restaurants for many years…

And now these things are the things of the past…

The reality is — all of these years were a preparation for a chance we got last year.

And when we got a chance, our eyes lit up and we decided to go all-in.

As if our life depended on it.

So if you’re thinking whether you’re on the right track — keep going.

Keep learning, keep expanding your knowledge and the opportunity will come.

Just like it did for us.

Last week I paid a visit to meet one of our clients — Stronger Label.

It was a fascinating experience.

Up until now, I’ve met only one founder from their team in New York for 1 hour in between the flights.

Since it’s only a 1–1.5hour flight, me & Arnas have decided to pay a visit there.

And it was more than expected.

We spent 3 days together, playing games, doing wim hof at the office (yes, it looked like we’re building a cult there).

During lunch, we were discussing the strategies on how to scale them 2–3x next year and we managed to convince them to try out our creative team!

It was a big game-changer for them & us.

We’re now more in sync and we’ll be able to work more efficiently.

On the weekend, Jure (a guy from our group) paid a visit and spent the entire Saturday together with me & Kris.

Walking around the city, having lunch & dinner together, and then going to a movie.

Such a simple thing.

But out of this simple thing, we brainstormed ideas, so much, that I’ve created at least 10 ideas to test.

This is why masterminds work.

& I think this is the main advantage I have over the others.

I go to have lunch every day with a different person (until I burn out).

Usually, after lunch, I have at least 2–5 ideas to test from the advertising point of view.

Which brings me to the point…

Even though most of us work online, it’s simple to forget a real human interaction.

For me — that’s the best part of the business.

& I think that’s what every entrepreneur should be working on.

Masterminding with others, sharing their ideas & see what we can build together.

And when you look around yourself…

There’s a lot to be built.

I’m flying to Stockholm in a few hours.

This is going to be the first time I go to visit my clients at their own facilities.

I’ve been working with this particular client for over 1 year and have helped them grow their revenues 3x.

Since then, they’ve moved offices and have grown their team from 7 people to 25 people.

It’s really interesting for me to see this.

Cause I usually work from a coffee shop or home.

Alone.

I only have to look up at the numbers on Google Analytics & Business Manager.

Tell our partners what needs to happen for us to reach certain numbers.

I make my decisions based on that.

& my job is pretty easy when you think about it.

I don’t have to be dealing with so many things…

Fulfilling the orders, customer service or anything that doesn’t grow our revenues.

& I love it.

Cause I know that wouldn’t be my strength and I wouldn’t really feel happy doing that .

However, it gets pretty lonely up here.

I can sometimes lose sense of reality and not understand the impact me & our team is making on these businesses.

So while I wanted to settle down for a long haul in Vilnius, I wanted to make these short trips to visit our partners.

In February, I’m going to fly out to the US.

New York to begin with (where Kris is going to speak at the conference by the way).

And then to Atlanta.

And for now…

I’m on the way to Stockholm.

Today we’re launching our value bomb.

All of the lessons learned are in 2019 are at your fingertips.

It’s over 50 pages long and too me over 30hours to write.

I wrote it at the coffeeshops in Guatemala, Mexico, Colombia, US, & Lithuania.

Eugen, our UX/UI person, worked on it to ensure it looks good and readable on the site.

I’ve left nothing behind.

I’ve exposed our systems, processes on scaling the account and the agency itself.

I & our creative team partnered up to write an entire process of creating the creatives that convert at 2x+ on cold traffic.

I’ve read all of the notes & test results on everything I did in 2019 & ensured to include as many details on the tests as possible.

I was interviewing our email marketing expert to give me the entire process of creating these emails that are generating us over 30% of our entire revenue.

I’ve included the tests that have helped us to increase the AOV by $20 and increase our revenues 5x in only 1 month.

And I could write even more curiosity bullets for you here…

But I won’t.

I’m sure it will give you tons of value.

I can guarantee you — after reading it, you’ll have soo many ideas it will take you a few months to execute upon.

But you might ask:

“Why are you sharing all this?”

I’ll have to be honest.

I know that after reading this article you’ll think “holy shit, that’s so much value & there are so many things we’re not doing yet”

And that’s my goal.

To make you realize how much there is to execute upon so and will take you forever to do that on your own.

So you’ll want to hire someone else to do that for you.

And you’ll want someone who’s experienced at it.

At that point, I’m sure Sugatan will cross your mind.

So if I did a great job at writing this copy — you’ll be hyped to read it.

So without further a due — here is the link to the article.

Read it, and share it in your groups, & with your networks.

P.S. as I mentioned in the email yesterday — this month we’re going to take on 3 partners only. After that, we’ll be closing our doors to the new clients and we’re not sure when they’re going to be opened again. So when you’re ready to skyrocket your sales — apply to be our client asap to get a chance to be our partner.

A few months ago I watched a TED talk.

It was by Elizabeth Gilbert (an author of Eat, Pray, Love).

I highly recommend you watch it.

But before you do that, read this blog.

3 months ago, one of the clients that Kris & I helped to scale to 8 figures decided to shop around.

Let’s call him Nick.

He told us we were not the agency to take him to $50M in yearly revenue.

So he went on a search and spoke with another 50 agencies.

Nick chose the top 1 & started working with them.

After 1 week, he called us up and told us he was thinking of coming back because the performance dropped.

No shit, Sherlock.

It happens 90% of the time.

No matter how good media buyers or strategists are — they need time to adjust to the businesses they work on.

Anyhow, he went on and worked with them for another month, until he snapped and decided to sign a contract with the second agency on the list(and you know their name for sure).

Nick worked with them for 3 weeks and called us up again.

This time he seemed to be even more concerned.

He was feeling they did not have enough skill to push him forward. He was afraid he was going out of business.

So he came back to us offering us equity and a revenue share contract.

Pretty good.

But knowing the agencies he worked with, I was really afraid it had nothing to do with them, rather than the business itself.

I knew it was going to be challenging.

& the reason why I took him on — I knew he wanted to move very quickly.

Quicker than anyone else I know in the industry.

So I knew I was going to learn from him 2–3x faster than with any other business.

I took the challenge and dove deep.

After spending around 6–8hours analyzing the business & jumping on the meetings with them, we started to execute.

As always, we started to go with the lowest hanging fruits first.

And within 2days of running the ads, I get this message from Nick:

“Man, I love you”

I didn’t know what happened.

I went to a coffeeshop, opened up his shopify account and I text him back:

“I know why you love me now”

His revenue numbers were 1.7x~ higher than any day in the past 2months (except Black Friday).

And that’s without any sales…

Simply by analyzing the account for 2hour, & Arnas executing on the plan for 2–3hours, we managed to do it.

How?

Well, I’ll leave this as a secret for now, as I’m still trying to put it into SOPs for the team.

In fact, it can actually change the way we run our agency & will not need to add so many bodies to keep growing.

Because there really are only very few things to double, triple or even 12x your business in a matter of days or months.

These things don’t require many resources…

They only require a few insights….

That’s why I feel lucky enough to be working with multiple businesses and see these patterns we can apply throughout the businesses.

P.S. we’ll be opening up slots 3 this month for new clients. After this, I’m really not sure when we’re going to take on more clients as we’ll be focusing more on filling in the gaps within the agency, so we push it even further afterward. If you want to add some fuel and skyrocket your sales, apply to be our client via the link here.

Opening my heart here.

It’s been almost a month since I’m in Lithuania and I simply love it.

In fact, I fell in love with it so much, that I’m thinking of buying a property, opening up a coworking place for Sugatan team & our network.

And while I love the idea of traveling & getting to know other cultures…

I’m just as fine being bored to death and simply walk around the city collecting new marketing ideas & ads to run with our partners.

I’ve already found a yoga studio I’ll be going to regularly.

I’m starting DJ lessons today & have already re-established relationships with good buddies of mine.

I’m hiring an assistant who’ll be next to me and run my life (or a life manager — I need one for sure).

I love the idea of eating at the same place and not having to think about it.

But…

The situation could change within the next few weeks.

You see, Kris still doesn’t know if she’s going to get her visa to in Europe, so we might leave everything behind and move back to Mexico…

And that doesn’t scare me at all.

Because that’s what entrepreneurs are really good at…

Adapting to the situations at hand.

There have been so many plot twists in the past few months, I can’t count them all…

All of them made my problem-solving abilities stronger and there’s no situation I would not be able to get in and solve it somehow.

Yes, I would be super stressed out and it would be painful in the beginning, yet we always find solutions….

That’s why we’re entrepreneurs.

I’m super interested in the way our brain works.

I read books on behavioral psychology, neuroscience, spirituality, & take psychedelics to understand myself better.

Yesterday I had a chat with a guy who reminded me of a lesson I learned studying these things.

During the conversation, he was telling me he was getting bored at work.

He has been there for 4 months and he thinks there is nothing else to learn there.

The reality is — there probably aren’t many MAJOR things to learn so he feels there’s nothing else to learn about it.

Because he’s not being challenged so much, he starts getting lower doses of dopamine and serotonin he used to get when he started working there.

That’s when the brain starts craving for more of it.

It starts wanting to change the project. Learn new things. IT DEMANDS DOPAMINE!

Yes, it’s highly addictive.

In my opinion, this is where it’s going to be determined if you’re going to become an expert or just another person who knows something about it.

Because an expert will be OK with being bored.

They’ll start digging in the details. He’ll be consulting with the top people in the industry.

Until?

Until he has it mastered.

If they don’t — they’ll have many loose ends, but nothing built on solid ground.

I’ve repeated this mistake myself.

In business & in personal life.

In the past 10 years I’ve dated over 15 women.

The first 6months would be nothing but perfect.

Dates on daily basis… Sleeping over at each other’s place… Endless conversations…

But every time I hit 6 months’ time, I would end the relationship.

Full stop.

Somehow it didn’t feel the same… I wasn’t feeling excited about it… Sex wasn’t the same…

The butterflies were completely gone.

But because I was journaling the whole time, I started to see that it was a pattern.

6 months.

I was thinking the love was gone.

Yet the reality is — the love I once had at the beginning of our relationship wasn’t actually love.

It was my hormones messing up with me.

Dopamine and serotonin.

& once I got smaller amounts of them, I would think this is it & would end the relationship.

I’m super happy I learned it before meeting Kris.

Otherwise, I would have repeated the same mistake every time we got in a big argument (oh yes, we argue on a daily basis).

Instead, now, I know it’s normal to feel like that and I value commitment over the hits of these highly addictive chemicals.

This weekend was the worst in the last 2–3 months.

I woke up on Saturday, looked at my calendar, which said — “meeting at 10.30am”.

“No way,” I thought to myself. “I don’t work on Saturdays”

I still went, but I wasn’t present.

My mind was elsewhere.

I was looking through the window. My back was bent.

I looked like the least confident person in the entire city.

Like a drunk.

No.

Maybe like a drunk & homeless.

Ok. That’s bad enough. But what could be worse?

Drunk, homeless & sick.

But why did that happen?

Well, the day before that, I worked for 14hours.

Had multiple meetings with the team members, partners, podcasts, was planning next week, had lunch with young entrepreneurs & finished working at 00am.

For some of you (Kris included), it might not be huge.

But for my body — it’s simply too much.

Usually, my brain stops working at 9 pm and that signals for me to go to bed.

Sometimes it switches off at around 3 pm, but then I manage to turn it back on doing Wim Hof & meditation.

But at 9 pm, nothing would do it.

And that shows the importance of sleep in my life (and potentially yours).

My brain didn’t have any resources to go forward, but I kept ongoing. Hence, the next day I felt like this.

At this point, I could be telling you how important it is to sleep well etc. etc.

But that’s not the issue I’m having here.

The question is — why on earth did I have to work for 14hours in the first place?

And this has to do with not-delegating enough tasks & once saying yes to too many things.

As we spoke with Kris, our plans are to increase our team to 75 people.

That’s more than doubling our team members next year.

And in order to do that, we’ll have to be the masters at delegation.

But I’m not crap at it.

I sometimes do really well.

The best example of it — Pinterest ads.

A few months ago, I was thinking of what would be the next needle mover for our skincare brand & Pinterest ads at the bottom of the list.

In the beginning, I thought I’ll be learning it myself at some point in the future.

So started to look up the courses, looked at the dashboards etc.

But at a similar time, a friend of mine referred Lindsay for this task.

I hopped on the call with her and within 30mins we had a deal & started running the ads.

2 months later, we’re scaling the Pinterest ads as we’re getting over 2.5x ROAS on cold traffic.

If I was to learn it on my own?

I would’ve bought a course, consulted with someone and maybe, only maybe, in 4–6months I would’ve scaled it to this level.

Too slow.

So much easier to outsource it to someone who knows their sh*t.

And if you’re not running your traffic from Pinterest — I highly suggest listening to our podcast with Lindsay & see how your business could benefit from Pinterest Ads.