JV Jungle: Unleashing Affiliate Potential with Email Farming

Dustin Howes: 0:25

Special. Hey folks, welcome to affiliate nerd out. I am your nerder Raider, dustin. How's spreading that good word about affiliate marketing? You're gonna find me every Tuesday and Thursday around 1215 on LinkedIn live and wherever you get your podcast, so please consider subscribing. My guest today is Igor Kaifetz. He is an Amazon best-selling author of List building lifestyle. Thanks for joining me today, igor, and welcome to the nerd auditorium. Oh.

Igor Kheifets: 0:59

Wow, great to be at the nerd auditorium. That's amazing my first time.

Dustin Howes: 1:05

Well, you're a lifetime nerd, I would assume in your space, like I remember Seeing you as one of the first people I ever saw on YouTube ads oh really.

Igor Kheifets: 1:18

Probably I thought I was too late to YouTube ads, really yeah.

Dustin Howes: 1:22

I mean, yeah, at least at least you got the targeting right. Because, yeah, five or six years ago people just weren't doing in the right fashion and I was interested in affiliate and doing a lot of research and watching a lot of videos and making a lot of videos, and you got me like I came in, I took one of your courses, I got in your email campaigns and Then this comes full circle, like I actually get to meet you a couple of months ago and and just so honored to have you as as my guest now.

Igor Kheifets: 1:53

Well, that's amazing, like it does happen every now and again, that that things like you said happen happen full circle, especially with people who persevere and actually do something in the industry, which is, of course, as you know, most people who buy courses don't really do anything, for a Million different reasons. So I'm really happy that you got the value and and and that we we're now here. I mean it's, it's beautiful. I think it's great.

Dustin Howes: 2:22

It is. It is amazing this industry is incredible to continue your learning, and that was one of the first keys to me getting into the affiliate lifestyle rather than just being an affiliate manager trying to make my Way into the affiliate world. So Great tips there. If you have any questions for me and Igor, jump into the chats. We've got live Q&A going, but without further ado, igor, who are you?

Igor Kheifets: 2:54

I'm a loser. I'm a loser who made it. I'm a Ukrainian born, Israeli raised Loser who was not supposed to live this life. I genuinely believe I kind of Won the jackpot and got out of jail. I mean Something like I hacked the system in some way and broke out of the matrix because the life will live today. It wasn't planned, it wasn't Meditated. You know it went. Something went wrong along the way and I ended up here.

Dustin Howes: 3:28

That's amazing and your journey in this affiliate world. When did it start? Like how long ago.

Igor Kheifets: 3:38

It started about 15 years ago. I was, I was young, I was about 18 or 19 years old, and it was shortly after I read Robert Kiyosaki's rich, that poor dad. Oh okay, that book kind of got me off the path that I was. On. The path that I was on, I was attending the Israeli Air Force Academy because Israeli, israeli army subsidizes your education.

Igor Kheifets: 4:04

Oh so it's a really cheap, it's a nice cheap way to get education, but what the way you pay for it is, you do extra military service. So I was in that academy and I read, I read rich, that poor dad which, funny enough, a friend put my hands and this friend was the total loser, like total deadbeat loser, who was basically making fun of me. One day I was like really nervous about an era dynamic Exam that I had coming up and and he's like why are you so nervous? What do you mean? I need to pass the exam to get good grades so I can, you know, get rich someday. And and he said, well, but that's not how it works. It's like what do you mean? Well, you know, like all the rich people, they're not the ones who have the. You know, they're not straight-aid students. You know, I was like what do you know about this? You're, I mean, you've always been like bad at school and everything is like, yeah, but it's not. I'm not saying it, it's, it's this guy, robert Kiyosaki, was saying it.

Igor Kheifets: 5:03

I was like Robert who's like no, no, there's this book and he explains that the richest people in the world are, you know, college dropouts and so on and so forth. And and this was such a crazy Polarizing idea to me that I said you know what? I want to read that book. That night I went with him to his place, got the book he had to ask permission from his dad and I read the book the same evening. It totally blew my mind fast, for it convinced me that I did not have to be born rich and that I wasn't a completely. I was just basically in the wrong path to success. Because I wanted to be rich, I wanted to be successful, I wanted to call the shots in my life, I wanted to not be a loser anymore and I wouldn't have a lot of money because I grew up very poor. Unfortunately, due to some you know events. If you want to get into those, I'll explain, but it's going to take another 10 minutes. But basically, my dad makes the bad investment.

Igor Kheifets: 6:00

We moved to Israel to save ourselves from a local loan shark. In Israel he suffers a heart condition, goes into surgery, can't get a job since we live on one income or social security. It's sporadic, like I'm not sure if I'm going to get a job or not, but if I remember I was in Italy. They silently put it you know the money on it and I said hey, let's pay you thebalance. We live on one income or social security. It's sporadic, like sometimes it's like this, sometimes like that, you know, mulching money off of our friends and family, and so I grew up very poor and I can, I understand, you know, with my skin, with every fiber of my DNA, and I'm thinking how can I, how can I make some? For sure, in his book totally changes my paradigm, like absolutely changes my paradigm.

Dustin Howes: 6:51

Beautiful. We all need that kind of story and we all know military isn't exactly the most forward-thinking Organization. I jumped into the Marine Corps when I was right out of high school and served my six years, but I always knew that I wasn't going to be a lifetime server in that industry because my mind was elsewhere, trying to go and hustle and make this money and Get to this place where or you are today. So our guests Igor Link in the profile. You can go check them out there. If you'd like to be an Igor seat in the future here, go to Dustin house comm slash, nerd drop application and we can nerd out about affiliate. So, igor, love the story, I love the background. Everybody needs their start. So what are you doing today and and who are you servicing out there?

Igor Kheifets: 7:44

So today I run several online businesses and that's one of my you know kind of rules is the business has to be online. I don't want an office, I don't want to micromanage people, I don't want to have corporate policies. It has to be online and it has to be quick to start, easy to start, low barrier. So today I have a couple of businesses. One part of my business is I'm an affiliate marketer, so I promote other people's and companies' products and services and exchange for commissions. Actually, just before getting on the call, I received an email. There's like a $27,000 wire coming my way. It's about 40% of an affiliate commission that I've earned last month.

Igor Kheifets: 8:27

And the other part of my business is I teach people how to do affiliate marketing, e-farming list building. Basically I kind of do it, but I also teach people how I do it and that's like the ones that are taking the most of my time. But we're also developing a software and there's a few other kind of passion projects happening on the side. We actually just developed an Igor GPT, as I like to call it. Basically, it's an AI version of me, okay, yeah. So it's really funny. It has a personality, it was trained on all my data and it knows like to reference all the different things and be quirky. So now I can talk to myself, which is super enjoyable. I mean, I was missing like somebody smart and capable and handsome in my life that I could talk to.

Dustin Howes: 9:17

Oh, brutal, Like you've got to. I can't imagine talking to myself. I would just imagine I would hate myself. Do you find the same thing when you're talking to your AI version of yourself?

Igor Kheifets: 9:31

No, but I try to break it right. Most of the time it's like where's the button that I can push? Money will come the other way. I'm sorry, igor, this button doesn't exist. It's like ah.

Dustin Howes: 9:46

Awesome. So affiliate marketing where do you balance all of this? Like you're, I like to call digital hustlers out there that are doing affiliate. They're their own merchants, their JV as well, and so much more. How do you balance where you're focusing your time when you're doing all these different things?

Igor Kheifets: 10:11

Yeah, absolutely Most like. For the most part, my day is pretty set Like. Remember I did. I was attending the Air Force Academy and my dad used to be an Army officer in the Soviet Army. Like I was born just before the war came down and my dad actually graduated the Sevor of Military Academy in Moscow, like back in the late 60s. So I come from a family of like an Army guy who later tried to be an entrepreneur and failed miserably a school teacher, a music teacher my mom was a music teacher, my mom's parents were a nurse and a teacher and my dad's parents were a school principal and a chief technical officer at a furniture factory. So I come from a family where discipline is like important and therefore I was raised knowing that and these values were instilled in me. So even when I became an online nomad, my life did not actually resemble one of a nomad Like a typical affiliate. Nomad is kind of somebody who's like in a different country every other week. You know lives in huts or airbnb's.

Dustin Howes: 11:28

Right.

Igor Kheifets: 11:28

Like they kind of just go to burning men and everything. I'm like the complete opposite of that Very boring life routine like house, two kids, wife, two cars in the driveway. You know the gardener comes in every other week to do my, you know, to do my long so, but in between I do get to have like amazing experiences. Obviously, I don't worry about the money, the inflation doesn't bother me, the upcoming stock market crash everybody's talking about this. It's just, you know, it's a different life. It's just a lot more peaceful, a lot, you know, there's less stress about finances. My kids can attend private school. You know, like I've actually been counting, like I spent more on private schooling in last few years on my kids than you know, than my parents spent on rent in their entire lifespan in Israel, which kind of? But I also moved my family out to Toronto, so I used to live in Israel, but now we my family, like me, my kids, my wife we live in Toronto, my parents are still back in Israel and there's really not much of a balancing happening simply because I wake up early having the kids. You have to, because if you don't wake up, they'll wake you up, because for some reason they just you know, six am. They're like up and running around, so I started working pretty early. I started working maybe seven am, but then I'm done by two. One pm Depends on if I'm feeling it today. Maybe if I've got an interview like this, which I would also consider work although it's very fun too I'll do it in the afternoon. But for the most part, my days are pretty balanced because somewhere along the way, my mentors taught me how to properly manage my time, because the thing the advantage, but also disadvantage of having an online business is that you can work whenever. When I just started and I was working two day jobs, I would work on my online business late at night. But when I switched to full time online, then I could set my own hours, so I was able to really get a hold of my calendar. I learned to schedule things, including thinking time meetings. Sometimes I'll schedule an appointment with myself just because I know I need to get something done.

Igor Kheifets: 13:53

Now, if I'm traveling, that's a bit more challenging, like this weekend. I'm going to be traveling to LA and then driving to Palm Springs. There's going to be a three day rock festival in California. It's going to be Guns N' Roses, judas Priest, full ACDC, metallica and someone else. So that's like a big deal to me because I wanted to see ACDC live. It's on my bucket there's like a bucket list that I have and it's like number five on the bucket list because it's my all time favorite band. So I'm going to go there and the weekend I'm going to spend in California. So I'm probably going to be going to the concerts in the evening, but during the day wake up, maybe do a couple of hours of work and then just hang out, maybe go and get a massage or whatever, and then hit the festival. So it's very flexible, I guess is what I'm saying. No matter who you are or what your work habits are, you can fit it into your lifestyle.

Dustin Howes: 15:03

Great and it sounds like you've got that flexible living, but you're still very driven at what you're doing and you're getting to focus on more of the strategy and having others executed. At this point in your life and where you are, so affiliate was able to get you to that point. What does affiliate marketing really mean to you, and was this the original driver of all your revenue to get you to this point in your career?

Igor Kheifets: 15:34

It put me on the map. Basically, when I got into it, I didn't have any sense about business or marketing. I had no skill set selling and I definitely couldn't create my own products, not to mention that once you create a product, you also have to create the marketing for the product. So I didn't have any of that. So affiliate marketing to me is this springboard that puts anybody on the map, because it offers you a product. It offers you a processing service, meaning that somebody can swipe the credit card and you'll actually get paid.

Igor Kheifets: 16:14

You don't carry any risk whatsoever because if somebody creates a product and they give you an affiliate link and you can promote the link and you make sales, there's nothing you need to do. You don't need to invest into an infrastructure, websites, customer support, product facilitation, shipping development, nothing. You just need to get a good pair of eyeballs onto the page and if they decide to buy, you get a commission. So there's no risk and all the upside. You can start instantly, literally like right now, can be making money within like a few hours, and your job as an affiliate really is to figure out how to get the most qualified, targeted eyeballs to the offer you're choosing to promote, not to mention that you can do it simultaneously for multiple different products, multiple different offers, multiple I'm sorry multiple different niches, multiple different markets and multiple different product types.

Dustin Howes: 17:13

Great. And speaking of making those choices, what goes into making those decisions for you? What's like the first factor? Is it the market need, is the research, and you found a niche that has underserved and you go after it, like what's your process here? And finding brands to work with.

Igor Kheifets: 17:35

I don't look for underserved niches. I in fact look for the opposite. I look for, like a really saturated, aggressive, competitive market. Okay, Then my chances of making money in that market are very, very good. You see, let's say, let's take golfing, for example, right? So people who play golf, they're crazy about golf, they spend on told amounts of money on it, they're driven by God knows what and they'll spend a lot of time on the, you know, on the green and they'll, you know, put down $900 on a on like a stick. I mean I don't get it, but people spend money on it.

Igor Kheifets: 18:11

So, yeah, there's lots of different products and services in that category, which means all I need to do is just pick the ones that are converting the best, or the ones that are perceived to be the best, or the ones that are unique and stand out, and then just go and put in front of golfers. And if the market is big, if that niche is big and alive, that means it's going to be much easier for me to find people who qualify as good prospects and potential customers for it. You know, like, if there's like a big community of golfers or a big interest in golfing, then my job is an affiliate to bring the right eyeballs to the offer website link, whatever is going to be much easier because it's going to be much easier for me to find these communities. Then it just becomes a matter of can I craft a message that gets their attention? But first we need that market to be there right, and the bigger the market, the more aggressive the market, the better.

Dustin Howes: 19:09

That's a really interesting like backwards model. From what I've heard, most affiliates, especially the ones that are doing it on a not a big publication style, like I would say, like big publishers follow that kind of trend, but the smaller bloggers are always looking for the opportunities where there's, you know, high keyword volume and yeah they do keyword research?

Igor Kheifets: 19:36

Yeah, because they're competing for a very limited space on the first page of Google. They have to go like that. But I've never been I've never been big into search engine optimization, never was able to make it work. So you know, search engine optimization is one of many techniques that you could be using as an affiliate marketer to drive eyeballs to pages, and it's just not a technique that I personally use. Okay, gotcha.

Dustin Howes: 20:02

Well, I want to come back to that. But, switching gears, I want to get into the joint venture world and learn more about that. I don't think I audience really quite understands what joint ventures might be a part of and in the world that you're living in, can you explain what JVs are?

Igor Kheifets: 20:20

first, sure. So JV stands for joint venture and there's also term JV partner, which is a joint venture partner. It's someone you run a joint venture with, and a joint venture is really exactly what it sounds. It's when two parties come together and bring value of hopefully equal size to each other, and in the sense of affiliate marketing. For example, this could mean that two vendors come together and promote each other's products to their respective audiences and therefore both will make money in two ways One, they'll make money by selling their own stuff to another person's audience, and the other part, the other way they make money, is they'll make a commission off of the other side of that transaction.

Igor Kheifets: 21:03

So let's say, for example, let's say I have a supplement brand that helps people improve their memory, okay. And let's say you have a supplement brand that helps people improve their energy. You know kind of get more juice Okay, the battery. So we can promote each other because typically you know somebody who wants to improve memory probably will be open to improving their energy levels too Great. And so we, you know, I'll run a promotion to my people, to my audience, my customers, with your affiliate, with an affiliate link pointing to your supplement, and you'll do the same to your audience for my supplement. And by doing so we will split the money for each sale that occurs, but also we will elevate both of our brands at the same time.

Dustin Howes: 22:00

Brilliant, brilliant. And what's a great way to do this, or maybe a most common practice? Is it in, like the checkout cart, or is this via a webinar where you guys are both educating some folks like what's the most common JV style of a product?

Igor Kheifets: 22:17

I guess it would depend on the type of product, because the world where I hang out a lot, which is the info marketing space, where people sell coaching, consulting, you know all kinds of information products, trainings, coaching, mentoring, membership sites. You'd see a lot of, lots and lots and lots of webinars, especially for higher ticket stuff, for like things that cost more than more than a thousand bucks. When it comes to supplements, for example, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be doing webinars and they would just mail each other's long form sales pages. So, okay, it would depend. I guess it would again depend on the market.

Dustin Howes: 22:57

So it could be very simple and it could be a little bit more complex, just depending on what the products are and how much sales you have to actually put in behind the other person's or company's product.

Igor Kheifets: 23:43

Okay gotcha.

Dustin Howes: 23:46

Well, great Thanks for dropping that definition. And in your world, like what kind of networks are these JVs typically on? I don't see them happening a lot on an impact or CJ in most parts. But like what kind of networks are these happening on?

Igor Kheifets: 24:08

So again, depends on the different markets. For example, impact sounds more like a software platform, right? Different CP networks specialize in different offers. Okay, what I would say is that joint ventures is something you come across more often, not so much from networks but in mastermind style environments where people come together to exchange ideas, to brainstorm marketing promotions, to get mentorship and advice. So if you're a member of like a mastermind of some kind that relates to your business, you might find that, let's say, as a supplement owner, you might find that being just a member of a mastermind for supplement brand owners, even though there's no specific goal for that mastermind to facilitate joint ventures, just by putting everyone in the room with a similar type of business, ends up creating joint venture opportunities. Yeah, so it's almost like a side effect, without, like, not a primary thing, not the primary purpose, but a side effect.

Dustin Howes: 25:16

Beautiful. Just the power of networking in those circles is incredible. I've great you've invited me into your world in the past with the JV mixer. That you've done, which is an incredible value for those in that space, and you make it into like a speed dating situation, which I thought was really brilliant.

Igor Kheifets: 25:43

Yeah, it's really neat because, as over the years, as somebody who was always looking for joint venture opportunities, I found myself having to join. $30,000 a year. Masterminds Go to different seminars and I still do it. But the problem with that is, first off, you actually have to travel somewhere. Second, it's 30 grand a year. It's. You know, I can afford it, but it's not like I'm like happy to pay it. Yeah, I still cringe having to pay it. So I figured at some point, what if I created an environment where we just come in with the purpose of creating joint ventures and we just have to show up once a month, virtually, and then we can network with like a bunch of people really, really fast? Because, you know, even like the idea of having each and every one of us spend about four to five minutes with each other is going to give us the opportunity to assess whether or not we want to continue the conversation, and then we're just free to do follow up calls and, you know, and develop these relationships further.

Igor Kheifets: 26:50

Another thing about joint ventures is that they don't always happen right away, meaning sometimes it takes like a couple of years for a joint venture to actually take place, like you'll meet somebody at an event or a dinner and then time will pass and they'll see your ad on YouTube. And where you'll see their ad on YouTube, or you'll be, you'll come to a different seminar and over some you know they're paying out there too. Oh, let's go grab lunch. You grab lunch, okay, and six months later you know you go in their podcast or something you know, and then it's sort of like it's a slow burner, but eventually it turns into a joint venture and, what's important, it's a relationship, because joint venture alone is great value. But what if a joint venture actually leads you to go and do more handshakes that end up turning into more joint ventures? That's the true beauty of like long term relationships in this game.

Dustin Howes: 27:46

For sure and I think that's so true in every form of partnership Like nothing happens the first time you shake hands with somebody. They have that trust has to be built and developed in some kind of capacity. Somebody's got to give somebody a little bit more value to get something reciprocated back in the end. So very rare do I go to a conference and like meet somebody and we knock it out of the park the next week. It's just really hard to build that kind of camaraderie that quickly, but with you know meeting them again the second time, that's when the real money comes and I just love that you're facilitating these kinds of relationships. The one that I went to, I think I met 30 people in about 45 minutes and it was just speed dating at its absolute finest and I just loved it. It was incredibly valuable. So thanks for letting me come into your network there, man.

Igor Kheifets: 28:46

Yeah, my pleasure man. I love inviting high quality people there. We curate it. We truly only let high quality people there, and I felt that it'd be a great addition to them.

Dustin Howes: 28:55

I appreciate that. So, wrapping up on JV's, like, where do you get training for this? Is there anything that you know out there that can train people on, like how to become a joint venture savvy?

Igor Kheifets: 29:12

To be honest, personally, no, I don't teach it, but I know you do, I know you are, you know, actually together with, I would say, a leader in that space on how to do joint ventures. So maybe you want to talk about that.

Dustin Howes: 29:27

Well, I guess that brings up our sponsor of the day. So who should it be? Perhaps it should be performance marketing manager the online course that is teaching the right steps to be an affiliate manager and grow your affiliate program. I don't dabble a lot in the joint venture. I appreciate the plug, igor, but I'm just getting started in this world and I can't wait to continue on and carry on. But my community is growing by the day and we are all going to be in this joint venture world in no time. So come check out my community. If you'd like a checklist for your affiliate marketing program, go up to this QR code or go to dustinhousecom slash checklist and go check that out. Switching gears a little bit, your main focus has been in the email marketing space for the most part. I think that's where I've picked up most of your content, but the affiliate world that I live in is very heavy on publications. You told me about the true market value of email marketing that you see on an everyday basis.

Igor Kheifets: 30:42

Yeah, I'm very biased towards email marketing because almost every dollar I make I can track back to like an actual email sent out. My specialty is building big email lists and therefore you know I do a lot of email marketing and if you look at the data like, you can go to a website. Email is not dead dot com and it's just some guy put it together and it's just a bunch of references and links and studies and marketing studies and different articles and different tests that were done to show that email marketing consistently outperforms pretty much every other form of marketing, with a few exceptions and different situations. Like, for example, if somebody desperately needs, like a solution against, you know, a flaming hemorrhoid, right, they're not going to go and look for an email about it. They're probably going to get on Google and be like flaming hemorrhoid, you know, really hurts. What should I do now? And so, in this case, seo with a very particular keyword or a paid ad on Google will do better, but not every transaction will be like that. There's lots of transactions that happen that are not of that nature, where people buy for a different reason. People make a buying decision differently, and so, if you know all the different businesses that I've studied who are successful, especially with affiliate marketing, I mean, most rely on having an email database and sending out emails. But again, many different ways to skin the cat and you just pick what works for you.

Igor Kheifets: 32:26

For me, it just makes so much sense to do email marketing because I build an asset and I can tap into this asset again and again and again and again. And it's my moat. It cannot be taken away from me, unlike my social media accounts that can get shadow banned or blocked or whatever. I mean. If they can ban Trump, why wouldn't they ban me? You know what I mean. So email is just a great, solid foundation that I know I can build on for years and years and years. And then that's what I've been doing for the last what? 10, 15 years?

Dustin Howes: 32:59

Awesome, and you came up with a concept that I've never even heard of, or at least you turned me on to it. The email harvesting has been around, but you're calling it something a little bit different. What do you call it? E-farming, email farming? Ok, tell us about e-farming and what you're doing with it.

Igor Kheifets: 33:18

Yeah, email farming is basically building email databases. I call them email farms, and the reason I call them that is because every email is kind of like a seed that I'm planting that ends up paying me dividends. Almost like having a garden full of apple trees and the apple tree constantly produces apples. I pick them and there's going to be the next apple the next season. Right, so with my email is that's exactly how I feel. Any one particular email subscriber or customer on my list usually has multiple purchases with me. I can promote a bunch of different products over time. So it's something that again like a foundation that I can build on and that grows over time. Because I'm lazy and my definition of lazy is isn't necessarily somebody who's afraid to do the work. It's more like I don't want to do work one. I don't want to do work over and over and over again, meaning that I want to work once but get paid many times.

Dustin Howes: 34:13

OK.

Igor Kheifets: 34:14

That's my definition of lazy, and so, in this case, obviously lazy is good, and one of the few things that allows you to work once but you get paid over and over again is having an email list, because it's this resource that continues to pay you again and again, and again.

Dustin Howes: 34:29

I find it hilarious that how self deprecating you are at this point, like the fact that you're calling yourself a loser and lazy, is just hilarious, because I know you're neither of those. I used to say I'm a really bad adult because I was bad with, like, spending money and I had to change my mind frame. So, no, I'm not a bad adult, dustin, quit calling yourself that. I'm getting away from the self deprecation for the most part, but I love still going back to that it's it's. It's fun to make fun of yourself.

Igor Kheifets: 35:05

Yeah, I mean I guess I just grew up like that, I grew up in Israel and you, everybody gets made fun of everybody. I mean you should, you should turn on the TV in prime time, like on a Friday night or something. There's so many racist jokes and sexist jokes and that you know they really don't care. So the more visible you are, the more you get made fun of. And and I figured you know what, I might as well just do it myself. Yeah, Control.

Dustin Howes: 35:37

Give it, give your audience the M. I would make fun of you in the future Like awesome. All right, igor, tell us about your book. It's Igor's book dot com. Tell us. Tell us what you're writing about here.

Igor Kheifets: 35:49

Yeah, so the book is called List Building Lifestyle Confessions of an Email Millionaire. It's already an Amazon bestseller, and the reason I wrote it is because over the years, I kept being asked like how do you build the list? How do you do affiliate marketing, how do you do this, how do you do it? So at some point I say you know what might as well write a book, and so this became a really easy way to answer that question. So if you want to learn more about what I do, how I do it and how you can potentially do it yourself, then get the book Again List Building Lifestyle Confessions of an Email Millionaire. You can get it at Igor's book dot com or you can get it on Amazon.

Igor Kheifets: 36:27

Now, I recommend you get it on Igor's book dot com because what I'll do is I will also throw in An audible version of the book for free.

Igor Kheifets: 36:36

I'll give you a PDF version so you can read on your computer, and I will throw in about $3.2,000 in bonuses for free with the book. All I will ask you to do is chip in on shipping and handling, which is 10 bucks if you're in the US or 20 bucks if you're outside of the US, and I'll be even losing money on the shipping and handling, and the reason I'm doing that is because if you buy it on Amazon Amazon being the greedy SOBs that they are they will not share your email address with me, which means you won't be able to get on my list. You won't be able to become a part of my universe. Now I really want you to get on my list, so that's why I'm ethically bribing you. So go get this at Igor's book dot com. I promise to make it worth your while, and I've been told the book's pretty good too. So, but you be the judge of that.

Dustin Howes: 37:26

Ethical bribing is my new favorite catchphrase. That is brilliant. Now I'm going to steal that and use it moving forward. I love it. All right, Igor, that's great. Now it is time to defend your posts. This is one of my favorite segments today and this is an actual email from you that I got because I'm in your network. It said hey, I'm dropping a quick note to let you know that you might have met the following character at one of my mixers. You gave him his name and his email address and you say I've had a bad experience with him and I highly recommend avoiding working with him. Just FYI, Igor, I just love the transparency of this message. This is super harsh and it makes me never want to get on your bad side, but I just absolutely love the strategy behind this to like not mess with Igor here.

Igor Kheifets: 38:25

Look, I really only done it to protect my own reputation because, having built the JV network the size that I have, a lot of people come to me and they connect with me, but they also connect with my network. As you've seen, I'm pretty generous with my network, which means if you know me, you can pretty much get access to anyone on my Rolodex and I don't like protected, I don't hold back on it, I don't charge anything for it. I'm happy to share because I believe that the more we share, the more relationships we build. Everybody ends up being more successful. More connected makes more money.

Igor Kheifets: 39:00

Now, just so it happens that this particular person doesn't happen often, but it does happen sometimes. He attended two of my events and he made it seem like he's a JV manager for a guy I know who's like a fairly big dude. He's like really top on click bank all the time and everything. Then he offered me to broker some deals on the side for me. Now I gave him some criteria on the deals that I was looking for and he actually brokered a deal that did not meet those criteria, in spite of having clear instructions. I've repeated the instructions several times. I've ensured that he follows them. He said yes, yes, yes.

Igor Kheifets: 39:42

Then he brokers this deal that ends up being dragged out over a couple of weeks and the size of the deal is so small that it's just not worth it for me to get my team working I already had them working on the deal for two weeks and end up canceling the joint venture.

Igor Kheifets: 39:59

Okay, and I go back to this guy and I say, hey, I canceled the joint venture because it doesn't mean the criteria that I gave you. Please, next time, you know, make sure that means the criteria to which the response by this fellow was to take my screenshot, the screenshot what I sent him in private and then go and post it in a group chat with the joint venture partner that he arranged for me and basically make me look like I am well dissing or disrespecting the other JV partner, which I guess I was, but again, it was private conversation. So he just takes it, makes it public, to which I felt look, it's okay if you bring me a JV deal that didn't work out well, but it's totally different conversation if you're acting unprofessionally like that, which means I can't trust you.

Igor Kheifets: 40:56

So I said I told this guy I don't want to work with you anymore. This is highly unprofessional. And you know he in return he ended up sending me some angry you know messages, whatever, again acting more and more unprofessionally, to which I felt you know what, if this guy attended a couple of my events, he might be pitching the same deals to my friends. Now if he pitches them bad deals and they met him at my event, it's probably going to hurt my reputation, because your reputation is only as good as the people you associate yourself with. So the same night or the same day or maybe the next morning, I sit down and I wrote this message. I said look if you're working with him or if you're like, if you met him, I had bad experience. I don't recommend working with him and that's it.

Igor Kheifets: 41:47

I didn't like explain what happened. I didn't try to like further convince anybody, and what's interesting is that I received quite a few replies saying something like oh, no, thanks, or you know, basically, thanks for letting me know. There was no drama beyond that of any kind. There were two people who really wanted to know what the hell happened. So I told them on a private call.

Igor Kheifets: 42:11

But most people just said, ok, no, that's it, that was the end of it.

Dustin Howes: 42:15

Yeah, that's all I needed. Like I know if it was going to get to that point where you're going to email your entire audience like something went down, so I can completely understand your side of the point of like it's got to escalate really far. But this brings up a new segment of something I wanted to do is a lesson of the day, and I think the lesson here is who you don't work with is just as important about as who you do work with at the end of the day. So picking and choosing the right partnerships that you're throwing out throughout the day very valuable to your brand and the people that associate with you.

Igor Kheifets: 43:00

Yeah, I actually have a story about that. I have two stories about that, but I'll tell you one.

Igor Kheifets: 43:06

And that's a story by a friend of mine. I'm not going to name any names, but they basically met up with this guy who had like a reputation for being able to deliver big amounts of traffic and do big stuff, and so they immediately form a partnership, and they decided to do a physical seminar together, and they do. I think $100,000 in sales for the seminar, maybe $300,000 more at the seminar itself. Now, the JV partner, though, ends up being very unstable in terms of how they behave, and it gets to a point where he wants to take all the money, and he ends up physically threatening my friend and his JV manager in an elevator, and that whole thing reverberated throughout the industry for at least the next three to five years.

Igor Kheifets: 44:00

Yeah, now, when it came, when the time came and I launched my e-farming program and I decided to take it to JV partners, I got introduced to that guy, mm-hmm, the unstable guy. Now, I didn't know at the time he was unstable, but, you know, I started chatting with him and I was like oh no, I know you, and I heard you can do big things and you know you, he drives like a. Really like. His signature thing is that he drives a really expensive car again, I'm not gonna say which, because if I say it people will know, but it really I mean a really expensive car. So it's like oh yeah, I know you're like big and I would love to work with you, so I'm thinking dollars right in my in my, in my eyeballs, is like dollars, because I know if he's gonna like promote, he's gonna make a killing.

Igor Kheifets: 44:44

And then I I'm a part of like another group where we sometimes sit down to discuss JV deals and things like that, and I bring up the guy's name and One of the members of that group is one of the two guys who got physically threatened by this dude. So he gets on the private chat with me and he, you know, just tells me the whole story of what happened, how they made a lot of money together and then it got really, really ugly. So you know, I it took me two weeks to make a decision, but I ended up calling off the joint venture with that guy because I figured it's not so much about the amount of money that was made, it's more like People tend to behave in patterns and if somebody is like a reliable person, they'll be reliable all the time. They'll. They'll have a pattern of being reliable. They'll have a pattern of being a good joint venture partner.

Igor Kheifets: 45:36

If somebody is eight is like unstable, it's like a pattern, so it's I'm gonna kind of. You know I'm inviting trouble for myself. So I ended up not Doing the joint venture. And what's really interesting is this guy ended up losing lots of joint ventures over the following six full months or so and even if your partnerships because kind of like took a step back, almost I guess the reputation caught up with him, because I know at least two other people who had like joint projects with him that ended up breaking off.

Dustin Howes: 46:06

Yeah, that's. That's a wild story, man, and just highlights your risk reward with the partnerships that you're working with and Tuning that in trusting your guts, all Assets, like a great business owner is going to have to go through and and those learning process Awesome. Really appreciate you being here. Igor, thanks for chiming in and Kristen, heavens, big-time Evans coming in. Shady partners can burn bridges for you Absolutely. Thank you, kristen and for Well. As we wrap up here, I just want to let everybody know next week or and guests are gonna be Blake Cantrell and John LaBruto, so join us around 12 15 on LinkedIn live here. If you want my affiliate program checklist, go to this QR code or go to Dustin house calm Slash checklist. And lastly, igor, how do we connect with you?

Igor Kheifets: 47:08

Yeah, you can, obviously can go grab my book at yours book calm. On social, I'm not very active. I tend to stay away from social because it it does kind of suck me in and it takes a lot of time, end up just chatting with people and scrolling through a bunch of stuff rather than doing any real productive work. So you can hit me up on LinkedIn. I check it maybe once a week. You can also follow me on Facebook, where I never post. I also post, like my team will post content on YouTube.

Igor Kheifets: 47:38

So if you want to stay up to date with what I got going on and I guess the one place where I do put a lot of effort is my podcast, which is again a bit of a one-way communication, but the podcast is actually titled the same way as the book list building lifestyle, and this is where I host lots of really cool people, share my insights and wisdom and I kind of kind of communicate. But for the most part, you won't be, you won't find me on social, just because it won't. I think it was it. I think maybe five or six years ago it was just before I moved to Canada I read this book which I highly recommend everybody reads. It's called Deep Work.

Igor Kheifets: 48:20

Deep Work by Cal Newport, and that book pretty much convinced me that I don't need to be on social and I don't need to check my email every 20 minutes and that I can completely disconnect from the world for, you know, a period of time, without hurting my income and without, like you know, basically missing anything, because you know. That book made some solid arguments, especially if you're a creative type and you need to do any kind of content creation, or if you're the sort of person who has to do lots of thinking, lots of decision-making. Um, very good book.

Dustin Howes: 48:58

Fantastic. All right, you can find uh a link my affiliate link to deep workbook in the description of this, because if I If I'm missing out on affiliate commissions, I'm doing it wrong. Igor, really appreciate your time. Thanks for being here and and spread the good word about affiliate. And this is Dustin house signing off. Join me next time on affiliate. Nerd out and keep on recruiting. Take care guys.