The Germany Expat Business Show
A podcast that shares knowledge, stories and inspiration for anyone starting, running or growing a business as a non-German in Germany.
The Germany Expat Business Show
From Student Visa to Amazing Side Hustle Success with Aazar Shad
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Ever wondered how a successful entrepreneur and side-hustler from a foreign land made it big in Germany?
Aazar Shad is a hustler, entrepreneur and marketer. He loves ads, tearing them down and figuring out why they work. He runs an expat newsletter, The Munich Post with 5500+ subscribers.
Originally from Pakistan, Aazar made Munich his home and showed us that resilience and a never-say-quit attitude can lead to incredible success.
Buckle up as Azar takes us through his entrepreneurial journey filled with trials, tribulations, and triumphs, along with his in-depth insights into the fascinating world of performance marketing and consulting.
You can find this episode and all episodes as well as show notes for each at https://thegermanylist.de/the-germany-expat-business-show-podcast/
Starting or running a business in Germany as a foreigner? Already running an online business in Germany as an expat? Wanting to grow your German-based business? Working as a freelancer in Germany? You'll love my guide with over 30 resources for expat business owners in Germany.
Hi, I'm Eleanor Meyerhofer, a native Californian designer and digital strategist. In October of 1999, a few years after graduating from design school, I flew from San Francisco to Munich with a fistful of Deutschmarks, a dial-up connection and an extremely vague plan. 20 plus years later, after a 10-year stint at a global agency freelancing and launching two online businesses, I'm still here. Now I'm talking to other XPAP business owners to share knowledge, stories and inspiration for other non-Germans running businesses in Germany. I have just officially kicked things off. I might just leave it in like this, like a cold open. Whatever. I am going to introduce you as Azar Shad and we kind of met on LinkedIn, but I discovered you through the Munich Post, which is one of the things we'll talk about. So I'm going to kick it off by asking the standard question I asked what is the two-minute story of how you ended up in Germany? Should?
Speaker 2:I.
Speaker 1:Yeah, go.
Speaker 2:Okay. So I used to be a living very low-income family in Pakistan. I had a dream of changing how my life was as a child and I didn't want to give the same thing to my kids. And so while in Pakistan we were having, we became better because I started earning. But then I realized that I'm too great for people who I'm working for. So I was a really good salesman.
Speaker 2:So I moved to Germany and wanted to just be abroad and said, okay, you know what, let me study that. And then figured out like, okay, you know what that is, I could stay in Germany longer. And once I figured out I could stay in Germany longer, the main reason was to improve my life and quality of life better. And then I figured out from being from a big company to small company startups they have a lot of money which they don't. It was just a good dollar in my eyes. And figured out I was start-up is a lot more hustle. The two startups two how do you say it like? Two different startups failed and then started learning a lot and then just turned into marketing, into SU and digital marketing. That was my path. But the short story of moving to Germany is just like I just wanted to improve my quality of life and things were not doing well in Pakistan and it's kind of still stressful.
Speaker 1:If I can't, I just remember this from one of the newsletters, the post newsletters. You came as a student, though, correct? Yeah, okay, so you came in your study two years. Okay, can I ask you a little bit about that? Yeah, just because my path here was so different. So is this? When was this?
Speaker 2:It was in 2014.
Speaker 1:Okay, and what is that? The blue card visa, or is that something else?
Speaker 2:So the thing is, germany doesn't give you quickly the work permit or ability to stay longer. You can come in tourist visa and that's it, and then you have to go back. But if you come with a student visa, germany has a lot of benefits. You can stay longer, you can apply for 18 months for a job and then look for a job, and then you can also work during your studies. That was really new thing to me, because in Pakistan we don't do that. Only people who are like way lower income family do that. So like the whole point of coming as a student rather than like just having a work applied was like it was harder previously than 2014. Now it's way easier.
Speaker 1:Okay, and was that process of getting a student visa difficult, like, do you just have to have secondary education in your home country?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you need to show that. So, like a lot of people still cannot come to Germany because some people do their bachelor's for two years and Germany doesn't recognize that, I used to be one of the top school like you know, harvard's of Pakistan.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And everything was done. Well, everything was clean. I also had to. I got rejected a couple of times while I was doing my master's, so I had to get two years of experience to show that, hey, I'm actually committed. I know now something, so they wanted that as well. The hardest part was that going through the bureaucracy as well, yeah, yeah, yeah, and language.
Speaker 1:Did you have to speak German, or was?
Speaker 2:English, fine English. I figured out a lot of programs. I applied in five different countries and 10 different universities and I got into five different universities so did not want to do put all my bags in one basket and I figured out that Germany is the best place to be because education is free, yeah, and while being there, I can still be a waiter and learn and learn language, learn my way out of it and just do whatever I can survive.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, okay, it was hard, but like I found a program that was in English, Okay, and so I want to go back also a little bit.
Speaker 1:So after you got out of school here, did you say you went to like a big company or you started your own businesses right away?
Speaker 2:I started working for a very big company that was acquired by Intel and it was very perfect. It was like a lot of Germans coming at the right time, leaving at the right time. You could not. They're nice to you but they are not personal. And I got fired because, like I was in the wrong job, I said I know Axel really well. I did, but not that well.
Speaker 1:And I was a student, you are a salesman.
Speaker 2:Happy to teach me all this stuff, but like I got fired because like I sent a wrong mail at the wrong address and that was my agent to get fired, I'm okay, this is the shittiest job I've ever had. I'm never going to and I am a marketer. So like I don't want to do the finance thing, I just like, okay, let's just, I learned at least some excellent. That would be great, but did not work out and the company itself was like very conservative in general, yeah, yeah, and I was like, like as a consultant, weird, so okay, so you.
Speaker 1:so you have a great opportunity to leave that job. One door closes, what door opens? What did you do after that?
Speaker 2:So the thing is like I have a sales background and I was like, okay, now I'm going to just look for jobs in startup because the sale, the process to apply to get into the job, is way faster, it doesn't take long, there's no HR direct up to a founder, that's okay, let's try startups.
Speaker 2:And so I somehow landed into a company, a place called wire, which is very popular for startups and it's used to be marine plots, and so I was doing some free work and then, within wire, I found out a business. Every three months they did roll a new startup and I worked for another startup, but that was also a German. But the founder actually fired me after three, four months as well. So I got fired again, but and I'll tell you why but like the founder was also a German about it, so he did not like share, I'm bringing leave. There was no clear visibility, there was no clear, clear product market fit he. The reason I got fired was because I was I was just not speaking German, so like I was getting a lot of customers by talking to them in English.
Speaker 2:He's like yeah this is a good approach, but probably it makes sense of a German guy. And so he said, okay, no, it doesn't make sense. Like I tried you a hardworking person, but like it just doesn't make sense to keep you because we need somebody who speaks German, and so I had to get fired.
Speaker 1:Okay, I love. I really appreciate how Frank and casual you are about it and there's like no you learn from your failures more than you learn from your success.
Speaker 2:And like, there's always survivorship bias and I think getting fired is a normal thing. It's not something that people should put a taboo on. Like, yeah, because like it, just that they're like, two different things did not work out together and then I found an American company. I was working for there for two years, so like I worked and I hacked the whole system by the way, you have not asked me, I'll tell you. So, this company. So I could not get a proper working student job in Germany. Then I did not want to do and I got an American company, was paying me three times more than a standard German company and I was working as a part-time employee and I did not send all the money to Pakistan, to Germany. I sent it to Pakistan as a resident because in Germany I had to pay tax and I was not allowed to. So a tax was fine, but I was not allowed to work as a freelancer and I had to go to a special application if I am a student and a freelancer.
Speaker 2:So what I learned with my that job experience was okay, I have to lie to them, send money to Pakistan and then send money back to Germany, because only that way I would be able to survive without letting the government know that I'm a freelancer. I know that this is the biggest problem of German system Like, students cannot be freelancers. They can be working for them, but not freelancers Like, and you have to go to the application. I actually went to the application once I started my own business and it was a horrible experience. It took me eight months to get all the things approved by IHK and yes, I think I stayed at my corporate job.
Speaker 1:I stayed five years because I wanted to get my unbefisted to Alfin House 11. So my basically green card and then, and I remember, I couldn't freelance. Like there was a whole lot and somehow after a certain amount of time then I could freelance when I had that.
Speaker 2:But I cannot freelance. I'm waiting for my passport before getting the freelance. I'm still like I have a company and I still cannot freelance.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And I'll tell you that is another old system, yeah, like the German system.
Speaker 1:Okay All right, let's use that as a segue. So you are not a freelancer. So I've been, you know, I know you, like I said, from the Munich post, and then I've been poking around and see you have another thing called the performers. But why don't you tell me about your, your main, what you are doing?
Speaker 2:So I'm actually right now a performance marketing consultant for a lot of direct to consumer companies who are running ads and want to get customer faster and want to scale. Either they figured out a market, they figured out everything and they want to scale faster or they want to get product market fit faster. So that's what I do right now and performers is kind of my main thing, because what the funnel is very simple. So I think in funnels anybody wants to get a job, anybody who's in internet. Usually things in funnels like the performer is basically my consulting job and I, you know, like there is like one client fires you, then you have to find another client. So I didn't know much to be in that situation. So I have created a brand around the performance. I've been doing content marketing and all those things since 2020 for myself, before that for other brands, and I was always like you know why don't I do myself? I've made people money, not myself. So like let's, let's, let's do that. So I started a podcast on growth marketing to tell people hey, I know more good marketing because I have podcast. And then I used to call people who I want to work for or I wanted to learn from, and then that turned into a generic growth marketing podcast, into a specific performance marketing newsletter, and I was a performance market. I turned into performance market year two, three years ago and so I said, okay, you know I now I've hit the limit of learning. What should I do? So the performers came from the desire to be learning from other brands without talking to people. So that's why I started this newsletter. I had a thousand people.
Speaker 2:When I changed, I pivoted from growth marketing to performance marketing and then the whole idea was that, like you know, there's a free content that everybody can consume. From the free content, some people would want to join a paid community, which is, like you know, $20, $30. And then, from the paid community, if somebody wants to have a course, I need to start a course and then it can make money from that. And it's like it's like a funnel. I want to learn from you, but don't want to pay. I want to learn from you and join other people. I want to learn from you, from your course. I want you to. I don't want to work with you, but I want to you to coach me. So there's another one and there's a fourth one. The funnel is like oh you, just I don't have time, just do the work for me, and that's the concept.
Speaker 1:So like back end offer.
Speaker 2:And so that, just like I started with one client, oh, the profound marketing also made me realize that, like I cannot work from one company, so like I cannot be employed. And the reason why I could not be an employee was because I'm a rebel, so like I don't follow rules and like many, people don't like rules, so I Germans love rules.
Speaker 2:So that that I realized that like, okay, well, it just doesn't make sense. So I work for one company, but I work for one company. Now I work for three companies and they pay me the same salaries, so like I made three more income and didn't have to pay full attention to the whole thing, just one specific thing, and that turned out to be really great for me, and so then I said, okay, let's just scale this business. I never want to look for another job. I never look for a client. Clients should look for me, okay.
Speaker 1:Let me stop you there one second and ask you two questions. For the folks at home that don't know, can you please just give a brief definition of performance marketing and also growth marketing, while you're at it?
Speaker 2:So growth marketing covers from the point somebody learns about you to the point somebody is still your fan. It's like a full, full circle, a full journey of a user who's actually going through learning about a product, and growth marketing job is to get them aware, get them consider the product, get them by the product and keep them happy. So it's a full like it's a. There's a lot of generic department that you as one person do, and performance marketing is like okay, growth marketing could be like here we, I'll find a way to get customer without, without paying anybody. Performance marketing is like I don't have time.
Speaker 2:I just want to pay people money to get customers right now at a reasonable cost, and this could be Google ads, this could be Facebook ads, this could be okay Bing ads this could be okay Bing ads. This could be TikTok ads, this could be anything. That's ads is like performance marketing general.
Speaker 1:So that the same as paid customer acquisition. Like yeah, okay, okay, got it. And then just one little thing I want to follow up on. You mentioned you're not allowed to freelance, but you are a consultant. So what's? How does that work?
Speaker 2:So I had a company like in 2017 that still makes like half a million, but that company I sold my shares to my founder because the company was not going really fast since 2017. It was a little GDPR. The law was coming after May 2018, when the GDPR law was passed and started and implemented, nobody started caring about GDPR before they were after they weren't, and I was frustrated so like nobody wanted to buy the product anymore. Nobody was responding to emails anymore. So I'm going to buy, sell my shares. But one good thing happened with that company was that I stayed an employee because to KVR, I need to show as an as an employee of a company, and so I routed all my consulting gigs through E-Comply and I still, to date, my E-Comply is my proper employee and selling hours, my hours to some other companies that I'm working with. They pay, my E-Comply pays me and that's all because I have a nice founder.
Speaker 2:I used to be a founder, so like, like I have an understanding thing. A normal person would have a harder time to actually find this Okay, and once you start a company in Germany, you don't start as just like I'm putting my capital like a capital to start a company. You. Usually you think that you will exit one day, so you buy, you start a company where you put money and that company puts money into the main company that is actually running. So I had two companies. One was e-comply and the one was the company that I owned, and that company I still own but I'm still an employee. So it's like a really complicated system. But basically I sold my shares to e-comply. I stopped being a founder but I was an employee and I still kept the other company. But that was just like every year. To just was costing me 700 euros for nothing because I had to do accounting every year. They'll pay my tax advisor every year.
Speaker 1:Okay. So, let's just quickly go back to the performers and like what you, what, what is? So you have this, you do consult companies, and then you have the performers, which is is it safe to say it's like a membership.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a newsletter with membership in it.
Speaker 1:Okay, and what's that like?
Speaker 2:So I have 16 members. So I have like 16 members who are like really advanced, who I am learning from and they are learning from me and learning from each other. I'd say, like immunity is a way harder thing to figure it out in general, because you need to enable people to talk to each other. Unless they are like hundreds and thousands, it's very hard to make people talk to each other. Everybody's a lurker on the internet.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And not an active member, so you have to make it work. I think the performers is, in general, is a great business, like I have to just do two calls and manage a Slack group and I get paid for certain doing certain things, but obviously I have my time spent on. I could do some other job and make more money, but it's something that makes teaches me, so I love it. That's the answer that you're looking for, but one thing I want to clarify yeah, I have four side hustles and four clients and I'm four side hustles are managed by my company and the four clients are managed by the company that is I'm employed at.
Speaker 1:Still, Okay, okay, that's how you do all of this.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I want to ask you I have at times, very, very, very at a high level, thought about memberships, but it does seem very hard because I'm in a zillion Slack groups, I'm in a zillion communities and they have like upwards of 200 people and you see how, like you said, everybody's a lurker. How do you handle that? How do you keep like engagement and like life going in a community?
Speaker 2:So it's a lot about a lot of marketing tactics that I can tell you. The marketing tactic is basically first of all, you don't let everybody in. So in order to not let everybody in, you need to ask the people to pay you.
Speaker 2:When they pay you, then they care, usually because they're like, oh, now I paid for it, I need to read whatever, and because there's so much free content on the internet, you just keep ignoring. But the paid content, like okay, I should spend some time on this because I paid for this. Right, that's like one. Then you don't let everybody in through exclusivity, so I don't let everybody who applies for a performance as that. Third, you tell them the values of the community, like it's all about giving each other back, and so suggestion is to keep doing this, and in order to do that, you need to also actively contribute. Then the fourth thing, other than values, is that you place certain members who are basically your, your close friends, who are in the group, and they tell them to keep actively promote whatever they figured out so that they share the contents.
Speaker 2:Other people find it valuable. And the fifth thing is who is in the group is really important. So if some big dog is in the group who's like a really big influencer, people love him, people love her, whatever. And so if that person is in the group, I want to be in the same group because I admire that person and I'm kind of a semi influencer on Twitter and LinkedIn, so people want to be talking to me and so sometimes it helps. Is that like, okay, you know, like I share my tactics and strategies openly. I don't keep gatekeep anything, I just like make sure that everybody's like, because I don't think those are really are going to make any difference to me anymore. So like I'm going to share it with other people and it's useful for other people and so like they just want to be close to me because I'm a semi influencer as well. So it kind of worked as well.
Speaker 2:So these are all the tactics and I keep doing it. Like, for example, I just moved away from monthly membership to early membership. I'm adding an interview where there was no interview previously, it was just an application. So application and interview.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:Harder for people to get in and having this form of like I want to join, but he's making it harder. I just want to join and see what it feels like inside. So all of these things, they play people psychology and they say, okay, I need to contribute as well and be like active member.
Speaker 1:But it sounds like it's also an experiment. Is that fair to say?
Speaker 2:It used to be, and not anymore, for one year at a time. It is an experiment.
Speaker 1:No, but I mean trying these different tactics.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, like let's see the yearly works better than the monthly.
Speaker 1:Let's do the interview, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's all experiments. You have to keep doing experiments. One thing that with business, when you have whatever that makes money, you cannot stop experimenting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm learning that. So this is one of four side hustles. So the other one that I know of is the Munich post. So let's talk about that a little bit. How did you? Well, first you can talk about what it is and then how you got the idea for it.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, that's a good story. So I was already doing well financially. I did not want to start on the other side as I had a Pakistani friend who was working in the viewer with me and that guy in that time wanted to. He wants to become a politician. So I remember, like there was a, there was some politician who had his own media company, and everybody has some kind of a media company when they want to go big in America. So like, for example, Jeff Bezos has a, has the Washington post.
Speaker 2:So, it came from that inspiration, like inspiration from Jeff Bezos, and what happened was that I'm so okay, if you want to politician, start the news, the company, because when you will become a politician, maybe other people don't want to cover you, but you will have a strong follower community. Start with that for free. And he was already sharing a lot of content on the internet for free, but for a specific community, that's for Pakistani, and I gave him the, gave him the, taught him everything. He did, never wrote a blog post about it. So I said, dude, like we just started this, I wrote first newsletter for you, I promoted actively in my news feed and you still not working actively. Just give it back to me.
Speaker 2:My wife was looking at it. She's like oh, it's amazing, let's do it together. And so this was a way for me to interact with my wife on another level, with his business, and that was just like okay, we have something together as a baby other than our baby. So like that was interesting. And we just did it for one year for free before we thought about okay, now it makes sense to actually like like one year every week.
Speaker 2:We used to fight about like it's not making money, why are we doing this? It's not making money. Why are we doing this? So at some point I said, okay, now I'm gonna even though I don't have a lot of subscribers, I'm gonna start looking for sponsors. And at first I shut it off and then I started working. So the meeting post was just like something that I always needed it. I gave somebody an idea. Somebody didn't take it. I had to take it back and I said, okay, I'm going to do it for me and then just wrote it for me and I found, figured out, there are a lot of people who are like me, who want to also receive news about news in English and not in German.
Speaker 1:And you don't do it alone.
Speaker 2:There's like three other four people Got four people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, and it is. I love. You know what I like about it too. That, I think, is so clever. It's a formula it's three pieces of news, two events and then a restaurant. Did I get that right? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So the Munich post is basically news in English. That was the main idea. But I was already looking at a lot of newsletters and my newsletter was not. The performer was not kicking off as good as the Munich post. So I said, okay, the performer is not kicking off. What did I learn from it? I learned like the content is not just, the rest of the people are like it's all over the place. So I said, okay, I stole the idea from James Clare, who has three to one newsletter as well. I have another friend who has marketing is like on marketing examples, you also run three to one newsletter.
Speaker 1:I know that guy Harry's example. He's a friend, yeah, he's also the member of performers as well.
Speaker 2:He's starting to run ads that he has not done that yet. And I can also do three to one. Nobody knows. People know James Clare, people know this guy, but nobody in the Munich would know three to one format. Yeah, let's do this. There were a lot of copy pasting 341, 231, whatever that is like. And then this is make this make sense. This is what would I would read. So I just did it and it worked.
Speaker 2:And then we were about to shut down and it found a writer after two of us me and my wife, who want to be already had an editor, by the way. That time I think we had an editor, like last year already. She just want to volunteer to work with us. And she said okay, I love the newsletter, I would love it if you don't make any grammar mistakes. I hate it.
Speaker 2:When I see any grammar mistakes, we see the OCD about it. I said, okay, well, I'm not gonna pay. If you want to edit, you can edit. And she used to edit every week. And now and then I was shutting down and the writer came in and said I read your newsletter and I would love to write for you. And then she came in as well. So now she writes two people one person curates, my wife create, curates, the editor edits and then I post that find that I look at for growth and look for sponsors and it works out because I don't want to spend that much time on the minute post because there are only four people working on it. It was just happened to be that everybody who was my customer came from the, who was my teammate, came from the newsletter already.
Speaker 1:So they all were reading the newsletter and they turned it Okay and then became part of the team.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it's just like if you do a good job and if you're serving a need, people come and they want to help you. They want you to continue and a lot of people said they would be disappointed. I'm like, okay, you know I should restart this thing. And now, apparently, both of those people this is the interesting part of it the editor and the writer they make good money from my other projects proper consulting projects and I use them there as well.
Speaker 2:So, like they started for free, but they now make money on the side because of connection with me.
Speaker 1:So there's a lesson in there like do we kind of following your passion can lead to actual paid?
Speaker 2:work. So there's this guy called this name Vayner, gary Vayner, and.
Speaker 1:Gray.
Speaker 2:Vaynerchek Jab jab, jab hook. Yeah yeah, yeah, basically, you keep giving, keep giving, keep giving and at some point you will get it. This is the main formula.
Speaker 1:Okay. So how did you get the? How did you build a subscriber base?
Speaker 2:So initially, what I still? I still still do it. I don't do it anymore, I'm too lazy about it, but basically promoting on my newsletter my news feed. But basically there's an expire group called International Friends in Munich. I'm expired in Munich.
Speaker 1:And all the Facebook groups you mean.
Speaker 2:All the Facebook groups and I'm like, okay, I'm not gonna spam people, but what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna share the news for free.
Speaker 2:And if they like it, then they can see in the comments and they can join if they want. And then I used to do. Some of my news actually got viral on Reddit as well and so a lot of people use region in Reddit and so Reddit people gave up for to the news somehow and then I probably got a lot of subscribers from Reddit as well. There's a subreddit called Munich actually.
Speaker 1:And subscription is free, correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, so it's monetized via paid like, not sponsored posts, but sponsored Like yeah, sponsored Okay. And is it hard getting sponsors lined up?
Speaker 2:So that's the biggest struggle that I have is like a lot of newsletter gets sponsors from their subscriber base because they're reading it and they wanna be in it. The mini post is the only newsletter that doesn't have subscribers. You're the proper bit of it. So just for people to know, like Eleanor is now the first sponsor who came from then Actually they're two, but like the other one I don't know if he was a subscriber, but he found out. He said, like the resident theater in Munich actually sponsored one time and so to mention them in the events and but they don't read the newsletter. They just found out that it means promotion and so they paid some money. But you're the first proper one who's like a reader and sponsor. I usually struggle a lot to find sponsors because, first of all, it has to add value, like as a sort of English speaking audience, first of all, and second of all, the product has to be good.
Speaker 1:Third is like like I have to actively call, email people to tell them about it and then convert them to sponsor you know I'm surprised because I'm gonna leave them nameless, but there are two big expat kind of portals, just not to say the word. One. I thought about this, but the sales process I found very weird. It was quite expensive. I had to do this long sponsored post and write a lot of it myself, and so that was kind of a big barrier to entry. And they have these smaller classifieds, but only for certain industries. And then there's another one and, like I, it says if you're interested in advertising, sign up here. And like the link is broken and it doesn't work. And so I thought like why are they making it so difficult? But, and so yours. It was just like okay, reasonable price, good response, send me the stripe link done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I, as I said, I hate bureaucracy, so I don't wanna make more bureaucracy out of it. I think the other ones are pretty standard. They're working for 10 years on this business. They're not gonna sell it, they're just gonna keep doing it. They don't. They're not only present in one country, they can present in multiple countries.
Speaker 1:They know this from the yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So, and the thing is like they are too big now to fail. So they're like everybody just reads their news that they have to go to a resource. They're too big ones, they are too big publication for English. So like, yeah, I think if you talk to them, like if they are open to it, they should have another category open for you guys. But, like, most people are not looking for entrepreneurs who can help them with their business. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess that maybe it's just a little too niche.
Speaker 2:Too niche for them and they want a generic expats wants like. So I think if I have a lot of doctors and dentists who speak English, I am guaranteed like if they're interested in sponsoring. I'm pretty sure like the audience will love it. Because the biggest problem some of my friends had like hey, I can't speak in German. I don't have confidence to talk to people and get an opponent. What should I do?
Speaker 2:Like this is like a common problem A lot of expats don't speak German, so like it's just a good business for those people. The shitty part is that, like a lot of doctors are just getting like you know, it's not America you don't have to work hard to get a customer in Germany. Like you know, everything is just through health insurance.
Speaker 1:Well, that's all. They just have a steady pipeline, it's baked in, they don't need to do, but they don't need to get more customers.
Speaker 2:They don't need to get so like they're like okay, you know, I don't care, this is what my revenue will be. Why should I work hard to get it? So that's why getting doctors and dentists sponsors doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1:But like I mean just to start a business, like I will stand at line in the Auslander Behorter for you, or like I think there is a company in Berlin that does like, like they're like a paperwork helper for the to get to the doctors. No, just all your German paperwork for. Yeah, they like, just deal with all of that for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think they could be good sponsors. Yeah, yeah, but then Berlin.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, I got to find out what their name is again. One thing I want to ask you about is in another conversation you mentioned that you the Munich post. It looks like it's on Substack, but it's not Substack, it's beehive, you told me, and then you said, like Substack is terrible, Like why is it terrible?
Speaker 2:So Substack is good to get started with. Like you know, it's like a, it's like Mailchimp of email marketing. You're like it's good to get started with, but then you find out sucks. And the reason why it sucks is like, as a paid marketer, I want this ability to grow the newsletter and Substack makes you grow the newsletter through word of mouth. If you're already too popular, if you're a good writer, people already know you. You put it on your Twitter and people will find you and then they will subscribe to you.
Speaker 2:Right, substack? Substack is good for that, but Substack is terrible, for I would say somebody wants to grow the newsletter through paid marketing, like an arm dollars in. I want to know how many customers Like, for example, right now we have 75% open rate consistently and I'm going to I'm going to see from somebody subscribe from day month one to month nine, something that Substack wouldn't care about because their audience only comes from free marketing. So, like big newsletters, substack also has. They used to have a recommendation. They started recommendation in Ingen, but I could not find anybody in their recommendation Ingen for my who would recommend me, but a lot of people were starting to be high. We have grew because it positioned itself as a growth newsletter rather than just a newsletter.
Speaker 2:Substack is a free newsletter. It's a replacement of AM, I would say ConvertKit plus a website, right? So like blog, your magazine, but we have. It's also free, but what we have does is like okay, if you want to grow fast, you should be with us, not with Substack.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, cool. So that's just two last questions. You met, you have a, you have a child, kids kid One, how many?
Speaker 2:A one, one, one, okay.
Speaker 1:So you got a lot going on. Oh wait, no, actually let me go back to this. I mean, well, I can ask you this question how do you like do all of this?
Speaker 2:So when you convert your side as a linch to something that you are passionate about, then it gets very easy. So, like I, the newsletter is to force myself to learn from other businesses. So I would anyway, you know, try to do this for free, for myself when I'm evaluating a competitor, when I'm starting a client and looking at different market, looking at what is different about it. So I said, okay, this is a practice I love and I love breaking things down Like this is like something that is like my pet peeve, and so what I do is like I was doing it for free. I said, why not? I do it for other people and they can learn from it.
Speaker 1:So, newsletter.
Speaker 2:Mind performance letter is for free, right. It's just like. The performers also get me customers, the performers also get me like. You know, it's like a complete cycle of getting subscribers, getting paid members, getting like, and so my free content is on social, then free content on newsletter. So all of this I'm already doing it. I'm just promoting a lot more than a normal person, because one newsletter can be 30 tweets, 30 posts, three perucials. So all of this is like I'm already doing. It Might as well just promote it as well and learn from it. So that's like one one answer, for I'm learning. The key thing is I'm learning For the other. I've just dedicated the Munich post, almost almost allocated.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:The SEO business is completely so that the two other side as well. They're like the newsletter also makes you know, like sponsorship money. So that's like second side as well, from the same side as like paid community.
Speaker 1:When you say the newsletter, you mean the Munich post.
Speaker 2:The performers the performers.
Speaker 1:Okay, so there's a performance of Munich post and two incomes One is community and one is sponsors. Okay, but you can, you can say that right, oh, you consider it. Okay, that's two side handles.
Speaker 2:Who does in income streams basically?
Speaker 1:The Munich post performers, newsletter performers, community, and then SEO business, the SEO business.
Speaker 2:So I started my career in like digital marketing and SEO and I used to love trying different software and I was like, since I'm learning a lot, how about just make a blog post out of it? And I used to already. I used to make my clients rank for it. So when I used to make my clients rank for it or my companies I used to rank for it I was like, I'm making them money, but how about I also start doing it so I get a cut as well? So now every every month there's somebody who writes six blogs on my, on my website, othersharkcom and othersharkcom. When you go to resources, you will see like a lot of SEO articles that are basically I'm trying the product, I've tried it, I loved it and I just made a review about it and that's ranking organically and that also brings like a good amount of revenue.
Speaker 1:So affiliate marketing, affiliate marketing yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's also one more thing that is important. No, it's like I make that money messily because I don't work hard on it.
Speaker 1:Okay, Because, yeah, it gives you outsource the blogging, Okay. So I'm going to ask you what keyword search tool do you use?
Speaker 2:So I, so I am a fan of both softwares and it's very hard to pick one, but I'm using currently SEMrush.
Speaker 1:SEMrush. Okay, so I use EBRUS suggest just because SEMrush is and you know what I don't. Really SEO is not a big marketing strategy for me in the end, so but I do sometimes use it just to check other clients. Anyway, last question If you could go back in time, what would you tell yourself when you started your side hustles?
Speaker 2:Start as soon as possible, whatever you have an idea and figure out. So there's this term called IqqaGai, what you need. So IqqaGai is basically what you love, what pays money, what people are looking for, what gives you joy all of this together, something like that. I don't remember. Let me look at it.
Speaker 1:I hear I see that a lot on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's basically so that was like a clear. It's in German what you love, what you need, what people pay, what you're good at so for, and that basically is like marketing is something I love. Like you know, the world needs to learn more about marketing. People pay for marketing people also, and I'm really good at it. So like these are four things right, the minute was the same. Like I love reading news in English, the world needs in English, people are willing to pay for something in English, because I saw the local dot a was like charging money and I pay money for the local indirect competitor and the fact is that I'm really good at writer, which I learned to become a good writer. I was not a good writer, so I'm good at it, so, and I know how, the, how to position it in a way that a lot of people will like it. So that's like, figure out IqqaGai of your side as well. So, giving you an example, I have a friend, a Yumaichi sponsor.
Speaker 2:A couple of weeks later he is he's into three things he's into guitar, he's into fitness and he's into workouts. So he's into three things. So that's what he loves, right, and so I'm like okay, if you love this, which one would actually make money and select. Okay. And guitaring he pays like 200 euros per month, which is like not a lot, but like he doesn't stay consistently, so like guitaring will pay somebody for a short period of time. Then he's he's good at all of these things. That's, that's also done. He loves all of them. That's also done. So what will he pay? Guitar, his sense of smell with his perfumes are. The third thing is a personal trainer.
Speaker 2:So I said I would just be the personal trainer, and then what he is that he's good at is he's a brown guy who is still eating some of the diet stuff which is from our culture and still maintaining a really good physique, and that's a unique part point of view. So that's what he is. A guy is becoming selling to brown people a diet plus personal training services to people who would want to get in shape but don't want to sacrifice the diet. So that's his and that's what we can when we were hanging out, and so I think you just need to have this concept in your head to figure out what you really could have, what is something that nobody can actually replace you in the world away. A few people actually do that really well, so that's well.
Speaker 1:Thanks, that's a good note and I always find that real that I thought question very difficult like what are you the best at in the world?
Speaker 2:It's like well, but if thinking about that within the Ikegai terms does help, Actually, it's not that easy to figure it out, especially if you are in that question yourself. So that's why I had them. I think the one question that can help you figure out what are you good at in the world is like go to your people who you've worked with, who are your friends and what are you, what are you good at with, who are your friends and tell them, hey, what do you think like my unique ability is that's one question what is my unique ability? And through that you can actually figure it out like, okay, you know what it just makes sense to me to do, follow this thing and it will be. The other thing is, like what I usually also recommend is to not start a side as that nobody's ever tried. Start a side as that a lot of people have tried. Only you are also really good at it as well, okay, all right.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks so much. It was great talking to you as our team here.
Speaker 2:It was a pleasure conversation. I just hope people who are listening to this podcast they find something unique and valuable because, like it was all over the place from my story to my marketing lessons to side as well- I'm sure they will.