Interview With Nicolas Berndt (Teenage Fitness YouTuber)

Hey Nic,

Thank you for taking part in this interview. So, we have known each other for 14 years now because you’re actually my nephew!

I have been following your progress for the last year and have been blown away by not just your dedication to fitness but the growth of your YouTuber and Instagram channels. As someone who has struggled with growing my supplement store socials (readers give some love here @humantonik), I am keen to get some tips.

I am excited to learn more about your journey, how you became a fitness YouTuber and tips for others looking to follow in your footsteps.

It would be great to get some background information from where you were born to where you live today. What’s your backstory?

Hey everyone,

I'm Nicolas Berndt, the Teenage Fitness YouTuber you've might of heard of on YouTube and Instagram. Thanks for having me for this interview, and yes, I do remember that we're actually family – you're my definitely my favorite uncle!

So, my journey began in Atlanta, Georgia, where I was born, and it's where I still live today.

At the young age of 9, I was deeply inspired by my favorite anime protagonist, and that's what got me into martial arts. I loved every moment of it. But as I continued with martial arts, at the age of 12, I decided to try out weightlifting as well.

Initially, my intention with weightlifting was simple – I wanted to get stronger to complement my martial arts skills.

But you know what? It turned into something much more profound than that.

Weightlifting became an incredible outlet for me – a way to self-improve and to deal with any stress that life threw at me.

Through weightlifting, the passion for self-improvement led me to want to improve every aspect of my life. It motivated me to start my own YouTube channel, where I could share my knowledge and experiences with others, hoping to inspire and help them on their fitness journeys.

Alongside that, I have also ventured into creating “Cute Futures” and online courses, aiming to build a great income stream while doing what I love.

For me, fitness and personal development have become intertwined, and I am truly passionate about helping others find their path to a healthier and happier life.

I believe it's never too early to start, and through my journey, I hope to encourage others to pursue their passions and dreams, no matter their age or circumstances.

What motivated you to start a YouTube channel focused on fitness at a young age?

My motivation to start a YouTube channel focused on fitness was twofold.

Initially, I saw it as a strategic way to attract customers for my business, “Cute Futures.”

Although fitness and my business were in completely different markets, I believed that leveraging my youthful age and showcasing my great physique would help me gain views and bring awareness to “Cute Futures.”

However, as my YouTube channel grew and I received immense support from my fans, my purpose underwent a transformation.

I discovered a genuine passion for making a positive impact on young teens' lives. My focus shifted towards helping them improve themselves, build self-confidence, and pursue the life they aspire to lead.

While it's true that I saw YouTube as an opportunity to capitalize on my business ventures, I quickly realized that my calling was in empowering and assisting young teens on their personal growth journeys.

As a result, my channel became a platform dedicated to inspiring and motivating others to achieve their fitness goals and embrace self-improvement in all aspects of their lives.

Your current YouTube channel is 164k as of today, what do you attribute your growth to?

I believe that the significant growth of my current YouTube channel, which has reached 164k subscribers today, can be attributed to a combination of factors.

Firstly, YouTube shorts have played a crucial role in driving my social media growth. These short, engaging videos have allowed me to showcase my unique personality as a jacked 16-year-old with a friendly and goofy demeanor.

The contrast between my outgoing personality and my body's appearance seems to resonate with viewers, making them more interested in following my content.

Moreover, my physical appearance has also contributed to my success on the platform.

While it's essential to focus on substance and meaningful content, I cannot deny that my looks have captured the attention of viewers and drawn more people to my channel.

Ultimately, it's the combination of being authentic, leveraging YouTube shorts, and embracing the uniqueness that has helped me connect with my audience and achieve substantial growth on my YouTube channel.

We have discussed growing social media audiences recently, having seen my channel what tips would you have?

Just to clarify, this is merely my opinion and not necessarily the best one.

However, for your Instagram account, Human Tonik, I'd suggest focusing more on your Reels. As you can see from Gym Shark, one of the largest fitness brands, their Reels are not only entertaining but also possess a virality factor.

While I appreciate the aesthetics of your static posts unless you feature someone like Chris Bumbstead, these posts probably won't go viral, which is why Reels are so crucial. Making them more engaging and occasionally not even showcasing your product might prove beneficial.

No offense intended, but when scrolling through your Reels, I find them somewhat dull. Adding more entertaining content or even jumping on a trend will certainly help.

How to achieve this, you might ask? I'd suggest studying the strategies of your major competitors or even viral videos. Look at what their Instagram content is like and draw inspiration from them.

Remember, sometimes the most professional approach isn't always the best one.

I've witnessed many businesses build huge followings by doing some of the most questionable things.

In your opinion, what's the most common misconception teenagers have about fitness?

In my opinion, one of the most common misconceptions that teenagers have about fitness is the belief that lifting weights can stunt their growth.

I want to clarify that this is, in fact, a misconception.

When performed with proper form and technique, lifting weights can be highly beneficial in various ways and will not stunt growth.

It is essential to understand that weightlifting, when done correctly, can promote strength, muscle development, and overall fitness without any adverse impact on growth.

However, the concern arises when individuals engage in weightlifting with bad form or attempt to lift excessively heavy weights.

In such cases, there is a risk of injury, particularly to the growth plates, which can negatively affect growth.

It's crucial for teenagers to approach weightlifting with proper guidance, moderation, and emphasis on maintaining good form throughout their workouts.

Are there any fitness trends or practices that you're concerned about, especially when they're promoted to young audiences?

One particular aspect that raises alarm is the promotion of super-fast body transformations, whether they are attributed to exceptional genetics or the use of steroids while claiming to be achieved naturally.

I understand that being a part of the fitness influencer I am also part of the problem. While I take pride in achieving a great physique at 16 through hard work and dedication while staying natural, I also recognize the significant role played by genetics in my journey.

The problem with such promotions is that they can create unrealistic expectations among young audiences.

It may lead them to believe that rapid transformations are the norm or that they should look a certain way at a particular age, which might not always be achievable in such a short time frame.

This can foster a sense of inadequacy and unnecessary pressure to achieve quick results, which may not be healthy or sustainable.

I firmly believe in promoting a balanced and realistic approach to fitness. It's crucial to emphasize that progress varies from person to person and that it is perfectly okay to progress at one's own pace.

Comparing oneself to social media influencers can be discouraging, as it often showcases an idealized version of fitness that may not be attainable for everyone.

What's your approach to nutrition? How do you manage your diet while still enjoying the foods you love?

My dietary approach is quite relaxed. As long as I meet my protein needs and don't exceed my calorie limit, I can enjoy a wide variety of foods.

However, I still aim to eat healthily because food significantly affects our mood and motivation.

Maintaining or losing weight while eating the foods you love is not as difficult as it may seem. The trick is to make healthier foods more appealing and replace high-calorie foods with those that have fewer calories.

Take, for example, pancakes and syrup. By adding protein powder to the pancakes and using sugar-free syrup, you can reduce the calorie count. Small changes like these can make a big difference over time.

In the end, the key to weight management is keeping track of your calorie intake.

To lose weight, you need to eat fewer calories than you burn. Conversely, to gain weight, you must consume more calories than you burn.

What advice would you give to other teenagers who want to start their own fitness journey?

Just start and have fun!

What’s next for you Nic?

In the next few days of August, I plan to start my business and training courses.

Like I've said before, I've got a business named “Cute Futures.” I've worked on it for about seven months and I'm really excited for it to finally be out there.

Also, I'm going to focus on the online courses that I'm about to launch.

In these courses, I'll be teaching people about my workout routine, nutrition, motivation, and even how to manage their time with school, work, or other activities.

Plus, I'll show teenagers how to make money using what's called affiliate links. I can't wait to get started

Hey Benjamin,

Thank you for joining me in this interview today.

We first met a few years back during an online marketing conference and recently undertook your SEO audit for our superfood supplement store.

So, Benjamin, I am keen to know your story, so let’s jump straight into this with my first question.

It would be great to get a little background information from where you were born to where you live today. What’s your backstory?

I was born in a tiny town in Slovenia, a tiny European country right next to Italy.

Today, most of my time is spent in Tbilisi, Georgia, where I moved about 2 years ago, mainly due to much better business opportunities compared to those available back home.

How did you first get into search engine optimization (SEO)?

I started online at the age of 12, initially on YouTube – here’s my first video.

I was incredibly passionate about smartphones and gadgets and started making video reviews of everything I had around the house.

By the age of 14, I was sponsored by every single phone carrier in Slovenia and I was regularly sent smartphones to review on my YouTube channel.

At 16 I had the idea of creating my own website.

I had no clue how to do it, so I went on YouTube and learned WordPress.

That was 7-8 years ago, and at that point, local businesses in Slovenia didn’t really have nice websites, so I started a web design company, building websites for local businesses, called GoldenWeb.

At some point, we were creating about 6-7 websites per week and had a very good process, but soon I discovered that all these businesses didn’t really care about websites, they wanted leads.

This realization led me to Google Ads, and then eventually to SEO – because I don’t like paying for stuff I can get for free – especially when it comes to traffic.

Very rarely do I see SEOs focusing on E-commerce (you may be the first). How come you focused on E-Commerce only?

After the transformation of GoldenWeb from a web design agency, to an SEO agency, we were primarily serving local businesses in Slovenia, but to tell you the truth, there just weren’t that many quality projects available.

I wanted to go big and eventually got into affiliate marketing with SEO after attending the Chiang Mai SEO conference in Thailand, hosted by Matt Diggity.

About a year after that, I had a very successful affiliate website making solid income, so I decided to start offering SEO services to other affiliate websites.

Since my background is in web development, I have the advantage of being able to really dial in the technical SEO of a website – which is a big deal, since SEO is all about stacking marginal quick-wins and improvements.

We got quite popular in 2019 after appearing on some bigger niche website podcasts, but I was always thinking about going bigger.

How can I work with the biggest websites in the world, where I can have the most impact, and provide the most value?

This led me to the question…

Why am I serving affiliate websites, if they all work for eCommerce websites?

This ultimately leads to one more transformation of GoldenWeb, now into an eCommerce SEO agency.

Today we work primarily with Shopify (and some WooCommerce) eCommerce businesses and some of the biggest DTC brands in the world, such as ORLY, BlendJet, Theory11 & others.

What are the quick wins for e-commerce sites looking to get search traffic?

We have our own internal list of 285 eCom SEO quick-wins, ranging from technical SEO all the way to off-page SEO.

I’ll share 3 quick wins as an example, that you can apply to any eCom store if you want to boost up its organic traffic.

Keyword Mapping

Keyword mapping is the process of defining the best possible target keyword for a specific page.

We do this by going into Google Search Console, selecting the page we want to find a keyword for, and noting down all of the keywords it’s already getting clicks for.

We then go into Ahrefs, and compare the search volume of the keywords we noted down, as well as the average DR of a domain ranking for that keyword, and also our current keyword position.

By looking at all of those factors, for all of those keywords, we then compare them with each other and pick the keyword that has the highest search volume, with the highest chances of ranking in the top 3 results in the shortest time possible.

We then put that target keyword at the start of the meta title, put that keyword as an H1, and start building links.

Recapturing Broken Backlinks

Nowadays everyone’s so obsessed with building links, and while I agree that it should be one of the top priorities of an SEO – many forget that they might already have links, but aren’t utilizing them to their full potential.

You see, if another website sends a link to your page (and your page doesn’t work, has been renamed, or shows a 404 code), then Google won’t pass the link power from the linking domain over to yours.

The solution is to create a list of all 404 pages receiving external links and either recreate the pages or redirect them to a page that actually works.

Unoptimized Index

Another major opportunity that I see pretty much every eCommerce brand missing out on is not optimizing their index.

You see, Google will only crawl a small portion of your pages at once, thus you have to make sure that all of those pages are highly optimized and target specific keywords.

If you have low-quality/duplicate content indexed, you’re doing yourself a disservice and losing out on a lot of potential traffic and customers.

We get search traffic to our blog posts, how would you turn this traffic into buyers?

Turning blog traffic into customers is a process that starts before you even publish the blog post.

It’s of crucial importance that you pick keywords to target that have high buying intent (to either convert into a sale or into an opt-in for your email list).

When you first plan out your content, have a list of calls to action for every single blog post you plan on writing and publishing.

My biggest piece of advice would be to plan the call to action ahead of time, whether those are placing buy now buttons into the blog post or linking to the product pages…

Or if those are quizzes and free resources that you offer in exchange for an email address (and convert the customer at a later date with email marketing).

I have seen your case studies, they are impressive. Can you go through one of your best case studies and how you grew their traffic?

It’s never easy picking out a case study – especially since we’re currently uploading 5 new ones…

For now, I’ll share a case study on how we generated $981,172.04 in Additional Organic Revenue in 6 months for a Solar Shopify brand.

The return on SEO investment (just in the 6-month period) was over 28x and we achieved a 111.79% increase in revenue.

I’ll summarize the 2000-word case study below, but here’s the link to it, in case you want to read it in full.

Full Technical SEO Audit

We start off every SEO project with a full SEO audit, where we cover over 285 on-page, off-page, and technical SEO factors & opportunities.

The Solar brand mentioned above had tons of technical SEO issues, keyword cannibalization, on-page issues, as well as off-page SEO problems due to negative SEO done by competitors.

SEO Audit Implementations

After we identified all of the issues it took us about 16 days to clean up all of the errors & apply all of our suggestions to the client’s store.

Keyword Mapping

On top of the technical issues, the store didn’t really have any keyword research/on-page SEO done.

We selected and identified the top 25 money keywords, assigned them a target keyword, and optimized their on-page SEO, which instantly boosted the rankings.

Keyword Research and Content Planning

When it comes to content, we’re known for a fact that we write more content than any other SEO agency does for their clients (we write from 30k to 100k words a month).

In the case of this project, we exported around 200,000 keywords related to solar, clustered them, and then sorted them into SILOs for better internal linking.

Here’s our full Shopify SEO guide, which explains how we go about content planning (as it’s quite an in-depth process).

Content Writing, Uploading, and Publishing

After the content plan is done, we start with writing and publishing.

It’s important to note that every article will link to all other relevant articles in the same SILO, as well as all of the relevant keyword-mapped pages that we defined in step 3.

Linkbuilding

Our go-to linkbuilding method is PR and outreach linkbuilding, where we get our clients featured in relevant media publications and guest posts.

We mainly build links to the client’s money pages, with keyword variations used as anchors.

You give free SEO mini audits to E-commerce owners. Can you tell me the process and what you can expect from the audit?

We offer a free mini SEO audit where we run your site through 10 potential quick wins that can be applied for a boost in SEO and rankings.

This is mainly, so we see if there are enough opportunities to implement for the site and if it makes sense to run the full SEO audit, which covers 285 opportunities.

At the same time, it also gives you an idea of how we work and what these opportunities look like.

If you’d like to request a free mini SEO audit for your store and book a time for a call with me, you can do so by clicking here.

GoldenWeb Mini SEO Audit

Hey Mark,

You co-founded Manta Sleep in 2016, a range of sleep masks that, to use your words, “empowers light sleeps to sleep better and do more”.

I first became aware of Manta Sleep from your presentation explaining your branding process and developing a company culture.

You did a fantastic breakdown that helped me in my supplement business, so thank you.

Thanks again for your time today, let’s jump into the interview.

I would like to get some background information from where you were born to where you live today. What’s your backstory?

I grew up in Vancouver, Canada, and spent most of my life there until my early twenties.

I don’t really have any entrepreneurs in the family and thought business people were semi-crazy risk-takers – definitely not me.

So without any real plan in place, I stumbled into majoring in accounting and worked in public practice for a year. Hated it.

Felt like my soul was dying each day I went to work.

Then two catalysts prompted me to quit, travel, rediscover myself, and start my first business in 2012.

The first catalyst was that a close high school friend passed away from leukemia.

I thought if I was going to die in 6 months, I didn’t want to spend my time working as a goddamn accountant.

Second, I started listening to a podcast called Mixergy by Andrew Warners.

Over the course of a year, I started to realize that maybe I can start a business.

I started to believe.

That’s what propelled me to quit my job, pack up my bags, travel, and start a business.

What was the inspiration for Manta Sleep?

My business partner and I were getting bored with a previous business.

We were doing it purely for the sake of making money, and it was boring and uninspiring.

So we decided to work on something that was meaningful.

I’ve been a light sleeper for most of my life, and have been using sleeps masks for 20 years. Always thought we can do something better.

That’s how Manta Sleep was born.

You did an amazing breakdown of how your approached branding for Manta Sleep. Please summarise your approach for other eCommerce owners struggling with brand identity

A strong brand is not about your font, or your logo, or your style guide.

Those come after.

Fundamentally to have a strong brand, you as the owner need to know why you are doing what you are doing. Why your enterprise exists.

If you were able to answer that question clearly, then you have a strong brand. You have a strong message.

Everything else comes after (font, logo, style guide, copy guide, etc).

Just answer the question, why does your company or brand exist, what is it trying to do?

Can you give us an idea of the size of your company? Are you mostly remote working?

20+ people, mostly working remotely.

The thought of a big remote team worries me, how do you manage, grow and keep your team engaged?

Have a great hiring process that filters out people that don’t fit in with the culture.

I recommend reading the book: WHO – The A Method For Hiring (check out the book on Amazon here).

Also, have a strong set of goals and KPIs.

When there are no goals or ways to measure performance, then as entrepreneurs, maybe we get worried and think to ourselves, what are my team members actually doing?

But with a strong set of KPIs, you can simply measure by actual performance.

Team members will enjoy the experience more as well because there is greater flexibility.

I often say to the team:

as long as you are getting it done, I don’t care where you are

I think engagement comes from having a purpose and vision for the business and sharing that clearly with the team.

When they know where we are all going, engagement is nature.

We don’t need to create any gimmicks to try to engage people.

What’s been the biggest challenge in growing Manta Sleep?

We design our products in house.

They aren’t private labelled. They don’t exist.

We are literally creating something out of nothing, and this process is extremely challenging. But also fun.

What has been the biggest level that has influenced the growth of Manta Sleep? This can be internal with your team or external factors.

Joining communities with other entrepreneurs who are more successful than I am.

Then we can take the lessons from people who have been there done that and just execute. It’s a great way to hack our way to rapid growth without needing to figure it out all on our own.

I’ve really enjoyed being part of Ezra Firestone’s Blue Ribbon Mastermind.

Manta Sleep is continually innovating, and recently you released Manta Sleep Sound Mask. I haven’t tried this one yet (no hint, lol) how did this come about? Could you share your approach to R&D?

In the earlier stages, it was all about solving our own problems.

Being a light sleeper, I intuitively understand what light sleepers want, and how to communicate with them.

Now, with all the customer feedback we’ve been getting, they give us a general direction of what to work on next.

For example, our customers have been asking for YEARS for us to make a sleep mask with Bluetooth speaker functionality. It just took us a while to come up with the perfect design 🙂

In general, though, R&D is hard and challenging.

But it’s also the area my business partner and I are the most excited about.

As I mentioned above, it’s literally creating value out of nothing.

What’s next for Manta Sleep in 2023?

We will be expanding into additional sleep accessories beyond sleep masks.

Please look forward to it 🙂

SHOP MANTA SLEEP

Hey Ollie,

Thank you for taking part in this interview.

We recently met through a paid forum called Dynamite Circle, and I immediately resonated with your content around fatigue and brain fog.

We discussed my previous symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome and how you have helped your clients combat similar conditions.

You kindly gave me access to your 21-day brain fog blitz course, which contains a wealth of information to get your health back on track.

I would like to go into more depth to discover more about your functional medicine healthcare background, nutrition therapist, elite trainer, author and international speaker who started in the fitness industry in 2006.

You transitioned into the health world in 2015, working with high-achieving entrepreneurs, busy professionals, and world-champion athletes from around the world on the impact stress has on their day-to-day life.

So, thanks again, Ollie, and let’s jump into our first question.

I would like to get some background information from where you were born to where you live today. What’s your backstory?

I was always that overweight kid who had no real interest in being physical, getting bullied for being overweight, and going into the health world was the last of my career ideas, but it did happen.

One big changing point was my dad passing away suddenly when I was 15, he suffered from stress due to work, getting migraines and other symptoms.

When he was 47, he went to the hospital with a migraine, he then had a stroke, and 6 days later, we had to turn off his life support machine.

It was this moment which was going to push me into the health world in a massive way.

I kept going through my last school year and then college and music college before finding the gym and dropping over 100lbs and getting onto the bodybuilding stage doing 7 shows between 2008-2012, it is something I am glad I went through but ended up giving me an obsession with training in an unhealthy manner.

I ended up being offered a role back at a company I worked with in the corporate world before getting messed around. I had panic attacks and anxiety before turning back to fitness as an occupation in 2014, leaving the role.

From there, I worked to build my presence by working with a lot of people wanting to transform their physique before turning to the endurance world to become a performance nutritionist with people who’d competed in the Tour De France, Olympics and even coached the Ultraman World Champion, these were the extremes, but something wasn’t clicking.

I was helping professionals pay their bills, but it was about speed, going from A to B as fast as possible with an afterthought of health.

I started working with two entrepreneurs, one named Ron then another called Rick, it was when I was with Rick in Nashville that things clicked.

We were standing in his kitchen with his 15-year-old daughter, 13-year-old son, and his wife Jill he said, ‘you’ve given my wife back what she married 10 years ago.

I couldn’t help my dad but I could make sure I do everything I can to get make sure people don’t get killed by stress, the rest is history.

You were a competitive bodybuilder back in the day, how did you get started?

As mentioned, I had dropped nearly 100lbs, I didn’t know how much this would change my life, but I had the confidence to get on stage and show off my hard work.

I did my first shows in 2008, then some in 2010 and 2012, they did run my whole life and nearly cost me my job as a manager in a fitness center but they taught me to persevere.

When I finished competing, I thought I was confident.

Still, I had developed an eating disorder, exercise bulimia, and excessive clean eating, even taking broccoli and chicken to the cinema for a first date when it was my off-season!

I weighed everything and never cheated until I had full-on binge outs making myself physically sick.

I had to do a lot of inner work here involving hypnotherapy, mind work, life coaching, and more to get my confidence truly deeper than just on the skin.

Although I am much better, I still suffer some symptoms of chronic fatigue, so I am interested to know your experience and how you overcome it?

Chronic fatigue is something many people are driving their bodies closer and closer to each day and I truly believe that we’re going to see this being one of the most common health issues around, the problem is that it shows up as so many different things though that many just don’t get diagnosed quickly enough and get the right treatment.

I work with many people who have suffered from chronic fatigue or are suffering from chronic fatigue, and there is one big thing we need to look at that many get wrong.

What is the root cause of fatigue?

As in, where does it stem from? We may see a symptom of low libido, migraine, poor sleep, energy dips, etc., but that is the outcome, where does this start?

It will come from cellular health and usually also signaling of the cells down to the brain, so we have to ask the right questions to make sure we’re treating that root cause and not the symptom, I want to stop the symptoms whilst we fix the cause.

Many people focus on the symptoms, and therefore they come back after a short period of time.

Discovering more about your background, what stood out is your background in “functional medicine”. How does this differ from a registered nutritionist?

Functional medicine is a powerful thing that looks at health as a more overall root cause rather than a system to system approach we see in the more conventional medicine model, it will look not just at nutrition but stress in the environment, relationships, the mind, and more alongside nutrition too.

The goal for me as a functional medicine practitioner is to get to the root cause of the symptoms and not treat just the symptoms, but we do have to have the foundations in place and good nutrition, as a result, looking at deficiencies and needs of the body day to day.

A registered nutritionist is someone who will make sure deficiencies are catered for and specific needs of nutrition but less of the actual western medicine approach, this is my view of the difference between them.

There will be some crossover, a lot of the things I work on involve nutrition and making sure we get good quality food into our protocols but we may add some supplements, although I am not a practitioner that dives straight into the supplement side of things for everyone with generic protocols.

What’s the #1 mistake you see with lifestyle habits that affect day-to-day energy levels and fatigue?

I would say not prioritizing sleep with the world we live in is ‘go, go, go’ it’s easy to get light exposure at the wrong time and push your sleep to the side.

Still, if you’re not getting consistent, good quality sleep, waking refreshed and recharged after 7-8 hours of sleep, then there is no way you will continue to perform at your best day in and day out.

What’s the #1 game-changing lifestyle habit you have seen make the biggest improvements in health?

Sleep is a big one as you can see from the previous question, but also one big habit has been to stop the caffeine first thing in the morning and let the body wake up naturally first, not to demonize coffee, I love it!

But push it back 90 minutes or 2 hours from waking and see what difference it makes over time to energy through the day and sleep at night.

Your previous experience with burnout, brain fog, and insights from functional medicine has seen you put together a course called the 21-day Brain Fog Blitz. What can people expect from it?

The 21-day Brain Fog Blitz was a process I was working with clients on time after time which I decided I needed to put into a program to make available for people to do in their own time.

It is 3 weeks of habit-building through 17 videos. However, you can work through it in a time frame that suits designed to allow you to build the habits to blitz the brain fog truly, it may take longer to get the habits in place. Still, the goal was to break down what we were working on with clients into 3 weekly areas in easily digestible videos that will not overwhelm people.

After the videos have been completed and you’ve implemented the things spoken about, you will start to notice brain fog clearing effortlessly.

All within the 21 days of implementing the videos.

I’m quite proud of the information that is in the course and looking forward to having more people implement what is inside to get their brain fog blitzed once and for all.

Get 21-day Brain Fog Blitz Now
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Over the years, you have had great success working with elite athletes and, more recently, with entrepreneurs helping them to become high performers. How can you get in touch with anyone looking to know more and work with you?

I am on social media, but you can contact me on my website.

I also have a free presentation, ‘Is This Burnout?’ which will go into a little more depth about what I have discussed here today.

Check out 21-day Brain Fog Blitz
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Hey Anatoly,

You’re a serial entrepreneur and podcaster based in Bali, and I had the pleasure of being interviewed for one of your “10 Million Journey” episodes recently.

It was a lot of fun, and we soon released that we had several things in common in terms of Triathlon (in the past for me, but you still compete), digital entrepreneurs, and we are dads.

I am excited to discover more about your journey and how far away you are from your target. So, let’s jump straight into this with my first question.

It would be great to get a little background information from where you were born to where you live today. What’s your backstory?

I was born in Latvia, which is a country in Eastern Europe. It was part of the Soviets, so when the USSR collapsed, all the countries that were part of it became independent and tried to find their identity.

Lots of corruption, freedom – really wild times.

I grew up in a middle-class family, and for most of my early life, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. So I was just coasting along life, skipping school, having parties.

When it was time to go to University, I did not know what I wanted to do, so I just went to a management school in Latvia. I partied and felt completely lost.

In 2008 when the economic crisis hit, Latvia looked really grim, so I asked my parents If I could study abroad. We visited Canada a few years earlier, and I liked it. Toronto is a big city with high rises and kind people – I loved the vibe.

The biggest issue was that I changed the setting without finding myself. So I went to a business university in Toronto and continued my party lifestyle until I was invited to a dean's office, where they told me that my grades and attendance were so low that I could either go into some obscure major or I would have to leave this school.

I wanted to stay in Canada, so I took a summer off and started thinking. The only idea I had was to switch to something I enjoy more and more practical. In my early years, I spent lots of time online, chatting with people, and building websites and projects for fun.

I decided I wanted to attend a college instead of a university and study Software Development. In Canada, colleges usually teach practical skills, while universities focus on theory.

This was one of the best decisions. I did not skip classes, and I really enjoyed coding. I got an internship after a few semesters in the research department of my college. I was so good that they hired me part-time immediately, so I studied and worked simultaneously.

During my second internship, I chose to work in one of the biggest IT companies, called Red Hat. They gave me a project that seemed impossible, but in 8 months, I had completed it, so they also hired me part-time.

After 4 years in college, I graduated and got a job in a startup. It was stressful but rewarding, and they paid really well. For the next 2 years, I worked hard on this startup.

I married my wife in Toronto, whom I met in Latvia in business school. She finished her studies and moved to Canada with me.

One time we decided to visit Vancouver.

The startup I was working on was not doing super well, so I decided to apply to a couple of companies in Vancouver just to see if there were opportunities. I was invited to an interview in a posh office of a charity company that was looking for a senior developer.

They had all attributes of a startup – a flexible schedule, drinks on tap every Friday, and a ping pong table. After the interview, they offered me and asked if I wanted to relocate – I took a chance.

Next was several years of living a dream in Vancouver. I was into running at this point, so I spent my lunch breaks running in the beautiful Stanley park.

This running obsession led me to sign up for my first marathons. In the next 2 years, I did 5 marathons around the west coast.

At some point, I thought marathons were not enough, so I signed up for my biggest sport challenge to date – Ironman Triathlon (4 km swim, 180 km bike ride, and 42 km run). The only problem was that I did not know how to swim well, nor did I bike. I hired a coach, and with his help in 6 months, I completed the Ironman triathlon.

At the same time, the company that I was working for, had a change of leadership, and the path they were taking did not sit well with me.

This Is when I realized that working for others is very challenging for me. I invest all my energy into the work, but someone else makes decisions that force me to leave.

I left this job I loved to start a consulting company. Teaching development teams how to work together. I have also started sharing my findings on the YouTube Define Agile channel. This work took me around the world, helping teams to work efficiently.

On the side, I also started looking into more passive income businesses. We tried dropshipping storage sheds, a great lesson for us to choose the products we liked instead of going with the hype. I remember somebody was calling me about a storage shed and asking questions like:

I have this big boat, how will it fit in the shed ?

or

What screws should I use to assemble it ?

I cannot even assemble a table from Ikea. So these businesses did not work well.

When I discovered Amazon, we took an ASM course and launched our first product.

My wife and I had this dream of traveling around the world and working remotely. I found a remote development job to cover our costs of living if we decide to travel. My wife gave birth to our son Ezra, and when he was 5, we decided to travel around the world.

For the next 2-3 years, we were on the road – Spain, France, Israel, Latvia, Portugal, Hungary – we lived in beautiful places while working on Amazon, and I worked as an IT consultant and ran my Agile business.

How did you first get into Amazon FBA?

It started with me trying to work for myself and be an entrepreneur. I bought an ASM course. We launched our first product – green binoculars that did not go well – but taught us a lot!

You are currently based in Bali, what attracted you to the Island, and do you see yourself living there for some time?

On my podcast I often ask – what is your favorite place in the world – many say Bali. So I decided to go and check it out for myself.

Bali is very special. Along with great weather and beautiful scenery, what attracts me is the community. People are open to connect and share their story.

On top of that, you get a lot of value for your “buck”. Labor is very cheap in Bali, so I can afford to have nannies, housekeepers, and people who cook and drive me around – something that I could not afford in Vancouver – which makes my life much easier.

Locals say that you don’t choose Bali, Bali chooses you – and on some level, I believe it.

Like me, you’re a dad who juggles entrepreneur and family life. What’s a typical day for you?

I love this question, I will answer with a quick story.

My Podcast Strategy Manager, Valentina asked me to record my typical day on video, so we can create an instagram reel out of it. That is when I realized – I don’t have typical days, every day is different.

That being said, there are some things I do very often.

My day usually starts with waking up around 6 am – 7am and I go for a long walk in the rice fields. If I am lucky – I get to see a beautiful sunrise. This walk allows me to get grounded before I get into the morning with 2 kids.

I come home, and we have breakfast with the family. Then either my wife or I take my son to school, which is 15 minutes away by scooter.

From there, several things, for example, on Mondays, I take my 1-year-old daughter to a playgroup.

Many days I find myself in the wellness center. I do some work from their cafe, maybe 2-3 hours (depending on the day), and then do my routine of going to the sauna, cold plunge, and swimming laps. It repeats for about an hour. This puts my body and mind in a beautiful state.

Then I ride my scooter back home, and our housekeeper usually prepares a healthy lunch that I eat.

From there, a few more hours of work, or maybe another walk, or I go drink matcha latte and socialize with friends in a local cafe.

I usually work with a personal trainer in the afternoon at the gym.

After the gym, I go home, eat dinner with the family, play a bit, and put the kids to bed. When they are sleeping, my wife and I sometimes watch a movie, read a book or just go to sleep.

I go to sleep early.

Thursdays, I spend most of the day recording podcasts in the studio and then going for dinner. Weekends we spend with kids and friends, or travel.

What was the inspiration behind your “10 Million Journey”

In 2019 Covid hit, and traveling became harder. We got stuck in Latvia for 5 months. I got pretty depressed that I could not travel and meet new people. I had to find a way to network but also grow my business. This was when I started my podcast, 10 Million Journey.

The idea of the podcast is to grow my business to 10 million and record how I do it, also interviewing incredible people in e-commerce. This allowed me to network during Covid and stay accountable.

Through the podcast, I kept hearing about Bali being the best place on earth. We decided that we wanted to spend some time there.

It has been 1.5 years since we have been in Bali, and my podcast has evolved into something bigger. I have started interviewing incredible people living in Bali- entrepreneurs and interesting people sharing their incredible stories.

You have set up several brands on Amazon, do you look to grow and flip them, or are you building a portfolio?

Currently, I have one Kitchen and Dining brand, but over 3-4 years, we built many different brands. Usually, we either got suspended for the brands (especially in supplements), demand dried out, or we made some big mistakes.

When starting on Amazon FBA, what’s your number one tip?

That’s a very hard question.

Before getting into an Amazon FBA, people should understand that it is not a get-rich-quick thing.

You will have to learn lots of things (marketing, sourcing, product development, etc), and on every $1 million screenshot, you should understand that people are taking home as much as most senior employees while often working very long hours.

I think people should get into Amazon FBA only if they love building cool products that bring value to people. It will be a tough road, but you will learn a lot and be rewarding in many ways.

I hope that's practical enough 🙂

Can we get into some numbers and see how far you’re from reaching your target?

Currently, we have a 6-figure Amazon brand, so I am far from reaching my 10 million targets, but to be honest, I am pretty happy at the moment, and I take it slow because life enjoyment for me is much more important than any targets out there.

This was a significant shift after coming to Bali.

Hey Mark,

Thank you for spending the time on the interview today.

For anyone not familiar with your YouTube channel or social media, you’re a health and fitness YouTuber that has been documenting your journey from being overweight to being an athletic dad in his thirties.

Your content is down to earth without the BS and hype seen elsewhere, with a good few jokes thrown in. Being a fellow Brit I certainly appreciate the humor!

So, Mark, I am keen to know your story and how you not only get fit but established yourself as a YouTuber and dare I say it, an influencer.

It would be great to get a little background information from where you were born to where you live today. What’s your backstory?

That’s a long period of time to condense into a couple of paragraphs!

I was born in Reading, a town an hour away from London, in the UK. I still live close to there now – It’s a perfect mix of being able to get into central London for a night out or get out into the countryside for some cycling, running, or walking.

Jumping some early years that are too long ago to remember, I had my first child when I was 21 and working as a lifeguard. It became quickly apparent that you can’t raise a child on lifeguard pay so I quit and went into financial services. This was the mid to late 90s when you could just walk in with no qualifications and make ok money. It wasn’t quite Wolf of Wall Street…but it wasn’t far off!

Jump forward 15 years and I was mid 30’s, my 4 children, making a good living but terribly out of shape and unmotivated.

I wanted to do something different with my life but needed to keep earning what I was making in the only job I was really qualified to do. So I tried all sorts of hobbies to see if I could get excited about something – anything!

The only two I really enjoyed were stand-up comedy and running.

The stand-up had to go as it didn’t suit the lifestyle of a family man with a full-time job, even though I loved it.

The running was a lifesaver though, I just went full Forrest Gump and ran around for 10 years losing over 100lbs in weight and getting to a point where I was not too bad at running around.

Then I started YouTube.

At first, it was just a joke between me and my kids to see if I could even make one video. Then it became me making videos about my hobbies that a few hundred people would watch. That coincided with my getting an indoor exercise bike at the start of the covid lockdown and making videos about that, which did quite well.

Suddenly, a few thousand people were watching.

Very organically, it just grew into where it is now – a channel just covering what I do to stay in shape.

Not an elite athlete shape, just someone better than most as a result of putting in a bit of effort. It’s designed to do nothing more than motivate and entertain. If people get more from it, that’s cool.

Congrats on recently hitting the 100k YouTube subscribers. So, are you now a full-time YouTuber / content creator?

Yes, I am currently in the process of selling my financial services business to do YouTube full-time.

So right now, I’m doing two jobs!

By August, it should be YouTube only which will mean I can double my output of content overnight.

What really resonated with me is your tagline of “be above average”. In this social media world of pushing to “be the best”, I found this to be incredibly refreshing.

People seem to like that. It came about because I was describing my running and really good runners would say I wasn’t really that quick, while regular runners would say I was an unrealistic target for them because I was too quick!

So I started to explain how I was simply above average and that was what I trained to be and what I valued.

The simple idea is that if 100 people turn up at a race, I’ll beat 50 of them. I don't believe, for most people, that getting to a place where you are better than most is that hard – yet it’s incredibly rewarding.

Going home from a fun run knowing you were in the top half, even if only just, is a great feeling. If you want to go beyond that and be the best, that’s great, but you require an exponential increase in an effort to achieve just small improvements past a certain point. If you have family, kids, pets, or a job, for most people, that’s not worth it or necessary.

And yes, social media is full of people describing how to be the best.

In the fitness world, they are often people with an advantage that most won’t have. That could be their genetics, their access to training resources, their wealth, the fact it’s their job to be on Instagram, and, obviously, lots of performance-enhancing drugs. People often ask “why would they take PEDs” – the more sensible question is why WOULDN’T they! They are cheap, easy to get, and work, and the health issues are less than that caused by eating a standard western diet.

In simple terms, copying what someone that looks amazing on social media does is as useful as copying Usain Bolt run training to enter your local 10-mile fun run.

It’s clear that you are in great shape, and certainly “above average”. What are your fitness goals going forward and will you need to change your tagline? 😉

My goals are really fluid. I just do what I want based on what looks fun. This year I have a paddle board race with my dog, a 100km ultra marathon, some Spartan OCR races, and a bunch of smaller events. If it looks like a laugh and seems like a challenge, I’ll have a bash at it.

And the tagline won’t change! I go out of my way to take on things that I am not suited to, for example, the 100km ultra is not an ideal event for a 220lb 6ft6 runner like me, I’ll get beaten by LOTS of people and I’ll try to make the top half. As always. If people want to moan that I’m better than “above average” they have too much time on their hands and should spend that improving their own situation, not worrying about the grammatical accuracy of my catchphrase!

When you first started the channel did you intend to document your journey from your corporate life (interesting “suit & tie” combination) to fit?

Not really, but YouTube loves those transitional videos with clickbaity “before and after” photos. What many people do, because of that, is produce cliched nonsense about how they trained like The Rock for a day. As though anything will happen in 24 hours!

I figured, as I had an actual transition to describe, that was of greater relevance to most people than just copying Chris Hemsworth’s diet for a week, I’d make some content around it.

Putting yourself out there on YouTube I imagine means you need a certain amount of “thick skin”. What’s been the most controversial content you have produced and why?

Well, the most controversial is certainly my switch to Vegan but I limit my videos on that subject because I don’t find it that interesting. As such, it doesn't really raise much volume of controversy.

In general, I don't get the sort of negativity some get because I make it very clear the videos are just me doing what I do, and I hope people enjoy watching and have fun doing so They can then go off and do what they like to do.

I never say how people should eat or train, I just show the choices I make.

As a result, there’s not much to disagree with. Even when it comes to the vegan stuff, I’ll get butchers saying they love the video. I don’t ask people to agree with me or copy me, I’m just trying to be entertaining.

Because of that, 99% of the comments and feedback I get are very positive, in fact, hearing how people have been motivated to get after their own goals from watching my stuff is wonderful.

Sure, there are some lunatics that post daft stuff, but you don’t need thick skin for that, you just need to be confident in what you're doing and the value of it. If someone wants to throw abuse at me, why would I need to give it a second thought?

In fact, on a few occasions, I’ve pinned the more ludicrous comments to the top of the comments section so everyone sees them! That normally results in hundreds of people diving in and ripping apart the original comment. I don't have to do anything more than sitting back and chuckle to myself.

There is so much advice out there on how to lose weight and get fit, much of which contradicts each other. What works for you? Do you count calories, follow any particular diet, or do Intermittent fasting?

I count calories because, at its core, that is the only way to control body fat.

If your fuel tank is overflowing on the car you’d be nuts to not monitor how much extra fuel you were adding. You’d also be equally daft to try and cure an overflowing fuel tank by just driving faster…which is what people do when they try to use exercise as the primary solution to being overweight.

However, I'm also a believer in having something more to hang your hat on than just calorie counting alone.

So I do use things like IF because I enjoy the process of planning my diet around that approach, even if, ultimately, it's just another way to limit the day’s food intake. People that say JUST calorie counting should be enough need to realize, for some, that is as silly as saying alcoholics should just limit alcohol. Often, you need more than the basics to plan around and focus on.

Mark Manson talks about the importance of emotion driving the ability to change and follow new habits towards goals. There is a lot of emotional baggage associated with eating, and both weight loss/gain, you talk about this a fair amount on your channel. What’s been your “trick” to stay on track?

Well for a start I don't stay on track! And part of my success has been down to understanding that doesn't matter. I have periods where I will overeat, to ridiculous levels at times.

I don't mean the sort of “I ate 10k calories of fast food” stuff you see on Youtube where people just lie about what they ate for views while flashing their 6-pack abs.

I mean I will have day after day of eating to excess and putting on 10lbs very easily and very quickly. However, over the years I’ve just learned to accept that as part of my journey. It’s like the stock market, it doesn’t always go up but, as long as the trend is upwards, it’s all good.

So now, when I eat badly I just relax, allow that situation to pass, and then get back on with moving forward.

You follow very much a trial and error approach to discover what works for you. What books/podcasts have inspired you or you have learned from?

Born to Run got me into running, and running correctly. More recently, Atomic Habits just confirmed a few approaches to life I had were the right ones. I recommend both.

What can we look forward to next? Are you going to start a blog or focus on video?

A blog is possible but the first objective is to step up the video output to twice weekly. It’s the part I enjoy the most – making little stories and making them fun and entertaining.

I’ve only been making videos for a few years so there’s still plenty to learn about that, and improvements to make!

Can you imagine yourself living abroad? Maybe even set up a business abroad? Well, Jalila couldn't either until she made her first move to China. Then, she started a podcast to tell other people's stories too.

Hey Jalila,

Thank you for spending the time on the interview today.

We recently jumped into a call to record an episode of your podcast where we discussed setting up my supplement brand whilst living abroad.

I only got to know a little bit about your story and how you ended up living in China after moving from the US.

So, Jalila, I am keen to know your story, and how and why you started your podcast.

It would be great to get a little background information from where you were born to where you live today. What’s your backstory?

So I was born in Panama (Central America) and currently living in Shanghai China. I was living in America before I moved to China (first Beijing) in September 2019. I was comfortable but extremely unhappy in America.

I really did enjoy living in America but I was missing out on knowing so much about the world, like truly knowing different cultures, languages, food, people, and experiences.

I always regretted not studying abroad and when the opportunity arose I said well maybe the Universe is speaking to me and this is my chance to not regret it anymore.

You were in the Police Force in the US, what was your experience and how come you left after 10 years?

Yes, I was a police officer and felt exhausted emotionally, physically, and mentally, and knew that I needed a drastic change. There is no end to crime and no end to violent crime. So many people needed help and many times really just help with their lives.

It wasn’t the right career for me as I once thought it was.

I was a victim of an armed robbery, a man early one morning in North Miami exited the passenger side of a two-door vehicle, opened the gate that I was standing behind while waiting for the school bus at age 13, pulled out a knife, put it to my throat, and said: “Dame la cartera” (give me the purse).

I screamed and struggled, which of course later on I would be telling women not to do until he was able to pull away from the purse, jump back into the waiting car and drive away.

My mom was tired from work as an ER nurse and she was sleeping upstairs in our duplex apartment. She came running downstairs and we went to the Miami police department to report the crime. I met with a black female detective and I always tell people, that it was like the Batman movie, the experience, the person who helped me, it imprinted.

I knew I wanted to fight crime from then on.

Funny thing, a career test in College said that was the last career I should undertake because of the rigidity of the job, the lack of creative expression, and the monotony.

Gosh, was that test accurate.

I loved helping people but it really drained me. There is more that I could say, but it’s a former life, and it definitely made an impact because I saw behind the scenes of the policing and the criminal justice system, how poverty and race play a role, and at times I was saddened by that.

So after I left policing I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do for work when I left policing, but my boyfriend who I was living with said that I loved to read, so suggested that I find a job around books.

I laugh now when I think about that, I was like really like I’m wouldn’t be the typical library employee, I don’t like being quiet, and when I talk, it’s loud and exciting and I would probably pressure people to read many different kinds of books instead of what they came in looking for.

I’m always reading and always thinking that I’ve stumbled upon the next great book.

Actually, right now I’m reading The Law of Success by Napoleon Hill and Where you are is not Who you are by Ursula Burns, because I’m getting ready to move to Colombia and I like to think about success and finding your path, will cloak me with words of wisdom and a mindset that all will work out tremendously.

Anyway, I really enjoyed working at the library, yes, they hired me because they said they actually want to change the perception of the library (later on I don’t know if that meant hiring an Afro-Latina former police officer or just someone very enthusiastic and vocal about many different types of books.

At times it seemed like the former rather than the latter, but no matter, I created various events for the library and people attended. Yes, libraries in America have events that the community can attend, it’s really one of the last free public spaces, besides like a Church.

I’m really great at connecting with people, public speaking, and organizing events, and it was a great experience working there.

What made you move to China in 2018 and had you traveled outside of the US much before?

I attended a woman of color podcasting event and met a woman named Jenaya (episode 2 on my podcast) and when I mentioned hanging out since we had such a great connection, she said that she was moving to China in a few days but we could keep in touch on Facebook.

I asked her why China and she explained the cost of living was low compared to the salary she would earn and pay off her student debt and also she would travel.

The travel part was what interested me and I did keep in touch with her after 6 months, from October to April, I decided that this was the road I was going to take, to live the life I had only imagined, living abroad.

Jenaya sent me the name of three companies to check out, training centers, in China, which would make sure the visa process was done correctly, and train me to work with kids, teaching English to them.

I recognized only one company, Disney English (yes, Disney company had training centers in China but in June 2020 because of Covid they shut down). I applied on April 26th, was given a contract I think on the last day of April and after plenty of paperwork, received my visa in my passport from the consulate in August, and the plane e-ticket a few days later.

I had traveled to many places, including France, England, Spain, Belize, Costa Rica, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, before moving to China, but I knew that traveling was going to be different from living in another country.

Also, two to three weeks' vacation wasn’t enough, I would come back depressed, wishing I could’ve stayed longer. Thus, living in China would be my chance to really know a country, not just vacation, the good and the bad, and that’s been the case and I’m so happy I’ve done this.

You started a podcast that shares expat stories about living abroad that gave you the idea for the “Are we home yet?” podcast?

I was extremely down in November (2021).

I felt lonely and lonely and directionless.

I hadn’t found a consistent intimate partner/boyfriend during my entire time here and I really didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life.

I didn’t know why I was still in China. I had only traveled to Switzerland and Liechtenstein right before the pandemic occurred in January 2020, but once I returned from vacation, which was Chinese New Year, I hadn’t traveled anywhere from 2020 to 2021 because of the pandemic and China’s closed borders.

I started going on expat Facebook groups and talking to other groups, and funny enough I met many expats feeling the same, weighed down by the stalemate we all were in because of Covid, unsure if living abroad was still right for them, uncertain about their future career, wondering what the next step to take was.

And therein the idea for the podcast was born.

How do you make a home somewhere that is not your original home, how do you make friends, raise a family, get a job, start a business, and relate to others, locals, in a way different than you were used to back home.

What does home mean when you are building something new when everything is strange and you have more questions than answers?

I wanted to talk about these things and I wanted others to hear these conversations and to see that many struggle to move abroad, but there’s a profound reason that we go someplace new, the life, the community, the culture, the freedom, the growth, we just weren’t getting that back where we came from.

I was on one of your podcast episodes and have to admit it was one of my first and so a little nervous. It was fun and easier than I thought it would be. You are a natural interviewer. Did you follow any courses or literally just jump in?

Thanks so much, I feel nervous at first during each interview, but you did great, you really did.

I haven’t taken any courses, and it sounds naive but I just wanted to have a good conversation.

I have enjoyed listening to Snap Judgment, This American Life, and Sporkful podcasts and they always seem so chill and having a good time talking with their guests and I wanted to be like that, that’s about it.

I love good stories and I’ve done storytelling and organized storytelling events here in China. I wanted my interviews to be that good story that people lean in to listen to.

There have been a number of new bloggers and podcasts in the last few years because many of us have been in lockdown. What’s your strategy for getting guests and growing the business?

From the end of December to the beginning of March, I interviewed people I found through Facebook expat groups, but now it’s branched into guests from Instagram because I follow #expat and a few people have come from referrals, someone knows someone else who would like to tell their story.

I’m always looking for the next guest even though I’ve interviewed more than 100 people because there’s always that next opportunity to connect and learn from that next guest.

What’s been the biggest challenge in getting the podcast started?

The biggest challenge was just making sure that I was organized.

What order were the guests going to go in, having a list of questions for the guests, getting everything edited and aired on time, blogging about each episode, making sure the website, OMG, the website was running smoothly, things like that.

It was such an undertaking and I initially worked with a company, which I don’t work with anymore, but they provided some guidance which was helpful in the beginning.

I now just work with a sound editor and he helps me with the sound and posting to the podcast hosting platform Captivate.

I feel like I have more of a handle on things after a few months now and working on creating another podcast, where I would talk about independent and foreign films, but it would just start out as a monologue show and maybe eventually invite guests on to talk about films and tv shows that have touched them, changed their life path, maybe that they’ve created.

What’s been the number one thing you have learned since starting?

I have learned that I needed to relax and something just go with the flow, it’s okay if I have to redo an interview or change the order of the episode, or ask a different question.

This podcast project has opened doors that I had not thought of, such as being a paid writer.

People have told me they’ve enjoyed my blogs, and encouraged me to sign up for paid writing opportunities.

I see how connected we are and that if I ask for help there will be people to say yes, I will help you even though I don’t know you, because we’re out here figuring it out just like you.

I’ve learned that it’s true that you find your passion in what you already do naturally.

I have always enjoyed talking to others, asking questions, being curious, and hopefully in time money will result from this endeavor, but so far, in the beginning, it’s been wonderful learning so much, creating and running the podcast and website, and blog.

Where do you see yourself in the next 1-2 years?

Well, I’m working on moving to Colombia next month, so I look forward to being there for a few years. Colombia’s cost of living is low and I would like to adopt a child and should be able to do so there as a single unmarried woman.

As a parent, I’ll be able to raise a child there and have time to spend raising that child, so not necessarily work full-time but still have a good quality of life.

I want to finally travel again, and get to know South America for several years to come.

And I want my first podcast, Are we home yet?, and my second podcast, which is still being worked on, to really reach people, touch them, inform and inspire them.

There are so many things I want to do in life, but that’s about it for the next 1-2 years.

Do you have a story to tell but are not sure how to tell it? This is where Harry can help in producing a video of your brand that stands out and connect with your audience.

Hey Harry,

Thank you for joining me in this interview. We were introduced via Emil Goliath as I saw an amazing brand story video you produced for his nutrition and fitness coaching business.

I was blown away by the quality of the production, but more importantly, the story took me on a journey and had me gripped from the start. I immediately reached out to you to start developing my own brand story for Supergreen Tonik (I embedded the video below).

I am looking forward to discovering your journey and the secret behind making an engaging brand story video.

So, Harry, let’s jump straight into this with my first question.

It would be great to get a little background information from where you were born to where you live today. What’s your backstory?

Thank you for having me! So first off, I am 26 and I am originally from a place called Liskeard in Cornwall.

Despite being a cornish town, there was very little farming or surfing going on so I had to find something else to be interested in, which turned out to be video!

When and how did you first get into video production?

I got into video production at a time in my life when I was really struggling to find a sense of purpose. I was 19, I had just dropped out of university, and I moved home without much of a clue as to what to do with myself for the next 80 odd years.

I spent a lot of my free time watching YouTube videos and one YouTuber, in particular, stood out to me. conveniently just around the time that I dropped out, he opened a position for an unpaid creative videography and marketing internship in New York City.

Despite not knowing much about video at the time I made my application which was a video and to my parent's horror, I was offered the position.

I completed my internship and found that not only was I drawn to video as a creative release and as something that could be used as a practical business tool, but actually that I wasn't that bad at it. I’ve done it ever since.

I have seen a number of video production companies, how do you stand out from the crowd?

We stand out from the crowd because not only do we know high-level video production, but we also speak marketing.

I take point on the majority of client projects and take a tremendous amount of pride in being responsive, diligent and all the other things that make life easy for the client (as well as producing what I would like to think are top-tier video assets)

We first spoke around May 2021 when I was looking to have a brand story video produced for my company. I was intrigued by how you were going to do this being based in the UK and me in Malaysia. This happens often though, right?

This is something which I am getting more and more. The internet has made it possible to vet, find, and communicate with other creatives all over the world. If a client is particularly far afield but still wants to work with me, today's technology makes that absolutely possible.

Generally, I will take the role of project manager and editor. Throughout the process, I personally reach out to and vet videographers near the client geographically. I interview them, I speak to them and make sure that they meet our incredibly high standards and we then work together to deliver a stress-free, cross-border experience for the client.

When I first thought about doing a video for my brand I had little idea of scripting or even how to tell a story, instead of focusing on the product. Is this the biggest mistake you see?

Absolutely. I could talk for hours about why storytelling is the most powerful marketing tool and why video is the most powerful way to deliver it. It's the same thing with marketing.

People gravitate towards talking about the features of their product, however so much of the time it's not the features that do the selling, it's how clearly you communicate how those features benefit someone and also so whether you're able to make an emotional connection with that person.

if you can do both of those things you will make the sale 9 times out of 10.

Video is in my opinion (and as backed up by data) the most effective tool for doing this en-masse.

When first onboarding a client, what’s your process of turning their brand into a story?

The great thing about most businesses is that they already have a story. The most important thing that we do is sit down with the client for an extended period of time and really dive deep into who they are as a brand, who they are as an individual, what the company stands for, what are its values, and what the goals of the project ultimately are.

This is a hugely enlightening experience not only for myself but quite often also for the business owner because often as business owners we are so wrapped up in delivering our service or our product that we very rarely take time to sit down and ask ourselves these questions.

With the cost of cameras and the quality of mobile phones now, do you really need a big budget for equipment or is it possible on a shoestring budget?

What the cost of cameras and the quality of phones has done is lower the barrier to entry, which is fantastic. There will always be a place for that, just as there will always be a place for professional video production.

I would encourage anyone to have a go at making a video themselves. However, the reality is that we as business owners are all too often spinning ludicrous amounts of plates, and speaking from experience, what we really want is someone to come in and deliver the result in a way that minimizes stress. That's what I do.

What’s been the biggest win for you or a client with one of your video productions?

The biggest wins for me aren’t necessarily the big, one-off projects that make a huge splash, although that’s always cool. For me, especially lately, I’m focusing on building long-standing relationships with clients. Whether that be on retainer or for ad-hoc projects.

Something that people might not know is that while brand videos are our bread and butter, we can handle all of your video and photography needs, including social media posts, paid ads, VSLs, and YouTube videos… You name it.

I consider it a huge win when a client decides to trust me with some of their most important business assets in the long term, and that’s what I want to do more of.

Video for Supergreen Tonik

Can you share some of your best videos?

The best video I could ask you to watch if you want to know more about me is my own brand video, which you can find pinned to the top of my website.

It was entirely made by myself and the team and hopefully shows off the best of what we do.

If you’re still keen for more after that, some of my personal favorite projects can also be found on the website.

Hiring remote staff can be a time-consuming and costly exercise, especially if you don’t get it right. This is where Anna from Remotivate can help in finding and hiring your A players.

Hey Anna,

Thank you for joining me in this interview. I was referred to you by Nate Ginsberg as I was looking to hire for my super greens supplement business.

Realizing that I am terrible at hiring staff it really was a no-brainer for me to jump on a call with you to learn more about how to hire key remote talent for my business.

I am excited to learn how you got into recruitment for remote businesses and key things to consider when looking to hire for your team.

So, Anna, let’s jump straight into this with my first question.

It would be great to get a little background information from where you were born to where you live today. What’s your backstory?

That’s a great question Adam! I was born in Dnipro, Ukraine, but moved to the US with my family when I was 5. And we stayed in the Boston area until I was a teenager.

My family then decided to move back to Ukraine (that was fun lol), and I spent the rest of my upbringing there.

Because my family is from the East part of Ukraine, I grew up with Russian at home, and really struggled when we returned, because you need Ukrainian to study, go to school, do your exams, get into college/university, and so on. And because of this, I actually had a hard time with school.

That’s why my family eventually decided for me to finish up my high school studies at a music college, where I specialized in Jazz and Opera Vocals.

I didn’t end up finishing in time for my associate’s degree but got an amazing job at 18 sending students and young workers abroad all over the world. I fell into online recruitment and operations at that stage, and within 5 years was heading many international programs, opening new offices, leading job fairs of hundreds, and sending people to all corners of the world.

After 5 years in the business, I got quite bored to be completely honest. I’d learned everything I could there, and I couldn't stand the lack of ethics in how things were run.

By absolute chance, I got a job offer to help with Operations and Hiring for a Remote Company – that being Nate himself. 😉

And the remote world inspired me in ways I never imagined. It gave me the opportunity to connect to a global community that changed my life, and in return, I got the opportunity to give back and help many business owners with their remote hiring needs.

I started traveling, visited over 30 countries between Asia, Latin America, and Europe, and have helped hundreds of employers fill online jobs with the incredible team I have built at Remotivate.

Currently, I’m finishing up the Winter Season in Bansko, Bulgaria – It’s been a dream of mine to learn to snowboard so here I am doing just that every weekend on the Pirin mountain.

After this, I’m heading over to build my base in Barcelona.

How did you get into the remote hiring business? You started your remote hiring agency Remotivate in 2019. What led you to start this agency?

A lot of how I got into it comes back to my background (mentioned above).

I worked as an Operations Manager and Head of Operations for various remote companies once I got into the remote workspace. There I helped businesses grow their remote teams.

Throughout my travels, I also met a lot of online business owners, especially in the Dynamite Circle community. Many of whom struggled with hiring for a variety of roles.

After taking on numerous projects, receiving many requests, and getting overwhelmed with the workload, I decided to take it from one-off projects, to an agency and started building my team.

Remotivate was officially registered in 2019.

Related: Things to know before starting your online business

I assume hiring your team for Remotivate was a breeze. Can you give us an idea of the size of your team and where you’re based?

Many would assume so!

But bootstrapping a business without capital, loan or investment, especially growing a productive and professional team is actually a very challenging endeavor.

I’m sure a lot of small businesses can relate, but what made my agency even harder to hire was the fact that I was trying to bring on sourcing and recruitment specialists who understand how to hire in the remote space.

It’s such a new space, as recruitment is still very much behind as an industry, and many are doing things the old fashion way. From cold calling to headhunting to charging extremely large percentages of salary.

What I’ve implemented with the business, and our practices, are usually quite unheard of.

I’d say the Agency’s success is due to two main factors. First and early on, my family actually came on and helped me grow it. I’ve been very fortunate to have such support.

Second, we spent many months investing in our internal training. We’ve been able to build a successful, hardworking, and fun culture because of the work we’ve put in to set processes, videos, training, KPIs, and an overall fun experience to work on a daily basis.

And though it’s still a challenge to find people that will be able to meet our requirements for most of our internal jobs, I’ve learned a great deal throughout the years that has helped my team and I identify who are the best candidates for us. And this too has provided me the opportunity to help small businesses, not just from my operations and recruiting perspective, but also as a bootstrapped business owner.

Many entrepreneurs or agencies would first think of hiring from the likes of Upwork or OnlineJobs, what are the benefits of working with Remotivate?

To start, I’d like to say platforms and job boards are great – but there are a few reasons why some businesses might want to avoid going down the road of building a team on their own.

Any freelance platform like Fiverr or UpWork, or job board like AngelList or Indeed doesn’t provide you with a positioning strategy, job description, or vetting process to actually identify a great candidate.

If those aspects are areas you haven't had experience in, that’s more of a risk for the entrepreneur trying to do it themselves. Aka a lot of financial and time investment in potentially hiring the wrong person for the job.

Platforms like UpWork are great for junior candidates. I always say you don’t need to hire a recruiter to find a candidate you will be teaching up (though there is still the hardship of identifying the right personality).

Finally, doing it yourself is great if you or your team have the time. Working with a lot of agencies and online business owners, one of the biggest challenges in tackling all these platforms is the time investment that goes into it.

As an example, we had a very successful company come to us, they received hundreds of applications on LI, and it would have taken them hundreds of hours to comb through those candidates.

On top of that, it was a C-level role – and most companies that do have an HR or internal team handling the recruiting process, usually don’t have the experience hiring, vetting, or interviewing for top leadership or C-level candidates.

This is where our agency is really about to shine. We save our clients time, we provide strategy and expertise and are able to help bring on top management and leadership talent that are remote ready.

There are many remote roles that require different skills and in some cases geographical locations, what roles do you focus on and why?

Through the years, we’ve come to niche down into working specifically on non-technical roles, with a large focus on Operations and Marketing for management and leadership positions in the remote space.

Our multi-step hiring process enables us to have a very data-driven approach to sourcing and vetting the best talent, and we found we’ve been best at identifying those soft skills needed for great leadership that are generally the hardest for most companies to vet for.

You have a proprietary vetting and filtering process for hiring remote staff, could you outline a little about this process?

We have built our own ATS system, and share the system with all our clients as soon as we start hiring. This provides our clients with a level of transparency that most recruiters aren’t being as open about.

We start with the vision for any role, first understanding what our clients need, and what success looks like. We put together a job description that aligns with that vision and start our sourcing efforts.

What’s quite unique about our sourcing is that it's data-driven. Instead of trying to headhunt a few average candidates that tick the boxes of a role, we focus on inviting hundreds of qualified candidates and finding the best fit for the job.

We’re inviting anywhere between 300-and 1000 candidates to apply for each position we hire.

Candidates go through a simple questionnaire, an online video screening, and a thorough interview with our team, before being sent for a final chat with our clients.

We screen for personality fit, relevant experience as well as long-term motivation and alignment with the company they are being interviewed for.

We help facilitate final interviews, test projects, and conduct reference checks.

Overall, our process currently takes 4-6 weeks, but we are actively working on cutting that time down, so we are able to provide a better faster service for our clients.

With the recent global events have you seen a push towards more remote work and do you think this is a continuing trend for digital nomads/entrepreneurs?

Absolutely!

One of the most common realizations professionals all over the world have had is that they feel they can have more of a work/life balance with this new work style. And not only are they able to be with their families more, stay healthier through more regular exercise and gym, eat healthier at home, have more fulfilling breaks, but they also are able to be more productive!

And employers are seeing it too. Because of a more flexible schedule, some team members work weekends, or nights, to make up for taking time during the day or mornings. Often, they get to choose the hours they will work, meaning they can put in the time where they are most productive and get the most output.

Now whether more people start traveling as a result of remote work – I can't say one way or the other for sure.

And this is because, remote work has created more balance, for people to spend time on things they love – but generally that means moving to a better town or city for living. Having more time with family. Taking kids out for sports and activities. Having more time for self-care and activities that light someone up.

One thing I am sure of – this new remote work world, will definitely create more joy and balance for many who have made or will soon be making the transition.

Related: Making money online as digital nomad

Where do you see Remotive in the next few years?

Ultimately, I’ve seen Remotivate as a company that creates and will continue to create impact in the remote workspace.

At the moment, we are a small growing agency, helping entrepreneurs hire remote staff internationally.

As we grow, my team and I want to create content and educate more businesses and candidates about remote work and remote hiring.

We want to find more ways to help connect clients and candidates, as well as help create more work opportunities.

We are advocates of and believe that the future is remote. And this is only the beginning.

When visiting a website you read the words within the context of the design and if done well your experience is a positive one with little friction. The overall user experience (UX) is where Amy comes in by helping narrate the story of the website for the visitors.

Hey Amy,

Thank you for joining me in this interview. We first met recently through a mutual friend and fellow expat Tim Uittenbroek over brunch after a stroll up Pearl Hill.

I was excited to hear that you work in UX design as I am always looking to improve the user performance of my website. I developed my e-commerce website and so was keen to discover your thoughts.

So, Amy, I am excited to learn more about your journey and how you can improve our web experience. Let’s jump straight into this with my first question.

It would be great to get a little background information from where you were born to where you live today. What’s your backstory?

Yep, sure. I was born and raised in Hong Kong. Moved to Penang with my family just 1.5 years ago.

You have recently moved to Penang, what motivated the move and how’s your experience so far?

I have been to Penang a few times before actually moving and I always love Penang, with the amazing colonial architecture and history, of course, it's a food paradise as well!

And since my husband has got a job offer from Penang, we were more than happy to move here.

How did you get into UX Design?

I used to study Graphic and multimedia design and I was a game designer before. There was a time we (while I was working in a gambling company in Hong Kong) had a crossover project with another company about data research/ qualitative research. It just impressed me a lot with all the user data and feedback we have gathered to help us make decisions and create future planning.

After that, I started to learn about “User-centric design”, and “User research” on the internet, like Youtube and Medium. Tho back then “UX” wasn't really a big thing in Hong Kong, I couldn't find any courses or job opportunities to learn more about UX.

So I started to look around in other countries.

God bless me, I've found my first UX title job in Singapore as a junior position.

That's how it started.

So, what does a UX designer do?

There are so many different types of UX designers. Hence many different titles can come across with similar job descriptions.

For example, some would prefer to be called a UX specialist, Product designer, Researcher, UI/UX designer, or hybrid designer!

Mostly also depends on what kind of products you are focusing on. It could be hardware as well.

But for me, mostly Mobile App/ web design.

So no matter what product it is, it has to be a user-centric design to support users’ needs. We need to understand users’ pain points and identify the problems than improving the current design/ ideas. It’s more than just interface design, it's about the whole product’s life cycle.

And how do we do it?

To be more technical, we follow different research methodology and theories, and depending on budget and time, we need to choose the best way to bring the most positive impact to the users and business.

I was a web developer for many years and so worked with business owners building websites. It’s a challenge. So, I am very interested in understanding your process when working with a client?

Similar to the above.

We should always listen and understand the problem. If we don't understand the problems, there will be confusion and we won't see the outcomes.

First, identify the problems, and understand the pain points (thru research/ interviews, etc.) Next, you can do some sketching or unfurnished design. Then test it. (test it with the right methods.) Analyze the results, and refine the design. Usually, I also like to do a metric mapping for the next action to understand the efforts & cost to prioritize and make a decision.

Usually, a client would say I don’t like the current design/ it’s just not working/and it just looks dull. And my questions would always be “Why”/ “Then what would be the first change you want to make” there should be many open questions while you are trying to understand clients/users' perspectives. Then follow up…

Somehow we would find out it's actually not just the feeling about the visual design but about the hierarchy, functions, placing, fonts and the user flow could be just too complicated.

What are the common UX design mistakes that you see with e-Commerce brands?

I think they don't understand what is user experience and user-centric design.

And the most common mistake would be assuming.

For e-commerce brands, probably the structure of the content.

They assume what would be the most important information that users want to see. And when users drop off from the page, they would assume because users weren't interested or busy.

A cheeky question for you here, after looking at my Supergreen Tonik website, what is the most obvious thing you would suggest we changed?

I remember my first impression was about the content being too long as I was a new user, I did try to read about the Supergreen Tonik details. But then I gave up haha.

So yah I suggested modifying the contents.

When implementing UX design changes do you split-testing the changes? If not, how do you confirm changes have made a positive impact?

Split testing is only one of the methods.

There are other frequently used methods as well, like interviews, quick click tests, card sorting, etc.

• Interviews -> you can share the prototype or the actual products to the users and ask the right questions to get feedback, and sometimes we create different tasks for them as well to create a completion rate.
• Card sorting -> you can just write down/ print out the names of all the categories, shuffle the cards, and ask your friends or actual users to try to place the cards in the piles.

For different products would be different features and contexts.

But those methods will always help you find out if users are using your product correctly and if it's easy for them to use.

And in general, there are two different types, Qualitative or Quantitative.

Split testing is mostly Quantitative. So if you only use split testing you might miss some quality insight from the users.

Interviews, and focus groups, could be considered qualitative in that you would likely see the behavior and feelings, etc.

You tackle UX projects for both Phone Apps and websites (I think here you meant desktop), apparently from the obvious challenge of a smaller screen, what are the other issues?

The gesture would be one of the big differences, the thumb gestures and those short cut you use with your laptop and phone.

Moreover, the navigation style, most likely mobile app users prefer the vertical style, and desktop users prefer the horizontal.

How do you see UX design changing in the next few years?

It's been changing every year.

Recently there’s a new term “UX psychologist”. Emerging psychology in UX. That sounds make sense, sometimes you have to learn the emotion and the brain's reaction towards different things.

Also the new trend of VR/AR and 3D design. Using these technologies to create new experiences for users.

Some properties’ websites would allow you to use their VR/ AR feature to make you feel like you are in the selling unit, and when you are in the street you could just use your phone to scan around to see which units/ houses are available for sale.