From a multi-level marketing scam to digital publishing
Nick Martin is a half-Danish, half-English entrepreneur, who loves beaches, marketing and golf. He started his online marketing career back in 2000, where he excelled in the traffic exchange niche. In a matter of months, he drove his first free online membership site to 10K+ users. Since then Nick has built more than a hundred online marketing sites and a very broad knowledge of SEO/SEM. Today, he lives in Bali, and is the CEO and co-founder of MagLoft.com, which is a digital publishing solution for bloggers, publishers and agencies.
What inspired you to become an entrepreneur?
I think I’ve had many smaller events that have led me to various stages of my entrepreneurial journey, but there is one particular event that stands out. I had just turned 18 years old and I was looking for a student job to supplement my income. For some reason I decided to answer an advertisement that had been put up in a phone booth. So, this is back in 1997, when you had physical ads and actual phone booths on the streets. They invited me to an event in a neighboring city and when I went there it just completely blew my mind: When I arrived at the venue the first thing I noticed was all the fancy cars that were lined up at the entrance, and the well-dressed young men and women, and a check-in counter with mobile phones lined up on it! The conference started and there was a lot of hype high intense energy in the room. The music was upbeat and positive. People were standing up in the chairs applauding and just generally generating this amazing hyped up vibe. As fresh 18-year-old, I was immediately taken away by the energy in the crowd.
To make a long story short, it ended up being a multi-level marketing scam: there was no product, there was no service, it was purely a recruiting other people scheme and I hated the idea, but I absolutely fell in love with the compensation model. I was never able to recruit any of my friends or family, but it did teach me a very valuable lesson in integrity and honesty, and being genuine about what you are trying to sell or convey to other people. Now, I have to thank the people that got me involved, because if it wasn’t for that single event, it may have taken me much longer to realize that there are amazing opportunities available to everyone. Plus, it led me to the Internet and affiliate marketing, where all the pieces started to fall into place for me.
Can you remember what the biggest barriers to entry entrepreneurship were for you?
Honestly, there were no major barriers to get started in the world of entrepreneurship for me. Sure, there’s always the financial aspect that if you have money available you can get started faster or in bigger dishes and markets. But back then the Internet was still so very new and there were so many opportunities that there was no real need for capital to get started. However, the lack of network… it was hard to find people in my circle of influence that were interested in the same things as I was, which was getting online doing Internet marketing and affiliate marketing. I tried desperately to get my brothers involved, because I knew that if we were more people it would be more fun and would be able to help each other grow.
What does success look like to you personally?
I got intrigued with the idea of being able to work whenever and wherever when I was very young. That was one of the first things that really got me hooked after I got involved with online marketing. I always told myself, and I still do today, that the vision for myself is really to be able to go to work whenever I choose and wherever I am. Obviously, that comes in many shapes and sizes, yet I would say I am successful today living from that phrase, because I am able to work when and where I choose. But of course there are bigger goals as well. Most of my projects online have been solo projects or working with just one or two outsourced third parties. Today, we are building a ‘real company with a real team and this is super exciting and more challenging than all my other projects combined.
My next milestone for success will be financial independence and the ability to give back and take care of my family and close friends that really need some help.
What is your role at MagLoft?
I’m the CEO and cofounder of MagLoft. My day-to-day routine and responsibilities include everything from KPI’s to company documents, to team management to finances, strategy and vision.
What does a productive day for you look like?
A productive day for me looks like an all green scrum board. Also, inbox zero and all my customer inquiries and requests from the rest of the team completed and answered.
Which problem are you solving with MagLoft?
We are helping publishers and independent bloggers really make the move towards app publishing. We see this as an industry in huge growth and something that consumers will soon expect you to be able to deliver. We believe that Publishing in the form of print is more or less dead. The blog is also in danger, as ad blockers have really gained ground. So, the medium left is native apps, where you can deliver your content still using ads but in a more pleasant way.
Specifically, we are targeting WordPress bloggers because they already have good content and a following, so our offer to them is to get a complimentary app that will strengthen their blog and give their readers more options to stay in contact with them.
Where does your motivation to solve this problem come from?
I started MagLoft. because the options available at the time were extremely expensive or incredibly technically challenging. I run several blog’s, and one of them I wanted to grow the market because it was all in Danish. I knew I couldn’t just translate its content to English, because the competition for WordPress tutorial websites in English is enormous. So, I went to the App Store and searched for WordPress under the newsstand. There was only a single WordPress magazine app in there. That really got me into publishing and all the horrors and complexity of publishing an iOS app. In short; I wanted to make this process as simple as possible for myself and for others and that is how I started the first line of code for MagLoft.
What does success look like for MagLoft?
I would say we are already winning it since we started the company with nothing and we have bootstrapped it to a place where we have paying customers, a team of six and we’re still making a profit. Winning is great, but crushing it is more exciting. We really see ourselves crushing it when we have tens of thousands of bloggers using our system to automatically convert their existing content into their own native apps.
Which one thing would you love to tell your younger self?
Don’t try and do everything yourself! It took me a very long time to learn that you get more done way faster when you have a team that you’re working with. For the longest time, I was convinced that the Internet marketing opportunity would allow you to go solo all the way. Although that is entirely possible, it’s much harder and you just aren’t able to leverage other people’s strengths and abilities that way.
What has been your biggest failure?
I think my biggest failure was when I tried to re-launch one of my first online clubs. Again, I thought I could do all of it myself and get around the programming by just hiring a freelancer online. That turned into a several year project, which cost me a lot of money and time, and we never managed to launch it. This is where I realized that larger projects just require a collaboration of people that come together to reach a higher goal.
What would you highly recommend aspiring entrepreneurs to do?
I would definitely recommend aspiring entrepreneurs to surround themselves with other like-minded people. This has been the biggest eye-opener for myself, and a huge motivational boost.
How big is the team?
We are two cofounders and we have an additional four Indonesian team members.
What are you currently struggling with?
We are struggling with presenting our core offer in a clear and easy to understand way to our larger target market. We have a great product that can do lots of different things in digital publishing. Yet, because it can do a lot it’s sometimes easy to explain in a clear way to segments of our target market that only need a single feature set.
What’s your favourite emoji?
The dancing emoticon in Skype because it makes me smile
Who is your favourite super hero?
My favorite superhero was definitely Spiderman: “With great power comes great responsibility”! Now, I listen a lot to Gary Vaynerchuk, because he tells things as they are. He has no filter and sometimes tells you things you don’t want to hear because you don’t want to face them.
Challenges expressed are in no way meant to solicit commercial acquisition.
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