659 - Bootstrap your inner digital marketer: Tom interviews Greg Potapenko - Screw The Commute

659 – Bootstrap your inner digital marketer: Tom interviews Greg Potapenko

Greg P, I've seen him called a lot of times. He is a Canadian Armed Forces Warrant officer. And he's an award winning digital marketer. He bootstrapped a seven figure agency and seven figure E-comm brand, and Enlisted2Entrepreneur.com.

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Screw The Commute Podcast Show Notes Episode 659

How To Automate Your Businesshttps://screwthecommute.com/automatefree/

entrepreneurship distance learning school, home based business, lifestyle business

Internet Marketing Training Centerhttps://imtcva.org/

Higher Education Webinarhttps://screwthecommute.com/webinars

See Tom's Stuffhttps://linktr.ee/antionandassociates

[01:22] Tom's introduction to Greg Potapenko

[07:06] Working in a gold mine

[08:34] Transitioning to start a business

[12:47] Being a competitive shooter

[15:58] Creating H-Hour Marketing

[27:39] Mistakes new entrepreneurs are making

[30:33] Sponsor message

[32:40] A typical day for Greg

Entrepreneurial Resources Mentioned in This Podcast

Higher Education Webinarhttps://screwthecommute.com/webinars

Screw The Commutehttps://screwthecommute.com/

entrepreneurship distance learning school, home based business, lifestyle business

Screw The Commute Podcast Apphttps://screwthecommute.com/app/

College Ripoff Quizhttps://imtcva.org/quiz

Know a young person for our Youth Episode Series? Send an email to Tom! – orders@antion.com

Have a Roku box? Find Tom's Public Speaking Channel there!https://channelstore.roku.com/details/267358/the-public-speaking-channel

How To Automate Your Businesshttps://screwthecommute.com/automatefree/

Internet Marketing Retreat and Joint Venture Programhttps://greatinternetmarketingtraining.com/

KickStartCarthttp://www.kickstartcart.com/

online shopping cart, ecommerce system

Copywriting901https://copywriting901.com/

copywriting

Disabilities Pagehttps://imtcva.org/disabilities/

Tom's Patreon Pagehttps://screwthecommute.com/patreon/

Greg's websitehttp://h-hour.agency/

Enlisted 2 Entrepreneurhttp://enlisted2entrepreneur.com

LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/gpotapenko/

Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/hhour48/

Email Tom: Tom@ScrewTheCommute.com

Internet Marketing Training Centerhttps://imtcva.org/

Related Episodes

Robert Kerbeck – https://screwthecommute.com/658/

More Entrepreneurial Resources for Home Based Business, Lifestyle Business, Passive Income, Professional Speaking and Online Business

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The WordPress Ecourse. Learn how to Make World Class Websites for $20 or less. https://screwthecommute.com/wordpressecourse/

Build a website, wordpress training, wordpress website, web design

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Join our Private Facebook Group! One week trial for only a buck and then $37 a month, or save a ton with one payment of $297 for a year. Click the image to see all the details and sign up or go to https://www.greatinternetmarketing.com/screwthecommute/

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entrepreneurship distance learning school, home based business, lifestyle business

entrepreneurship distance learning school, home based business, lifestyle business

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Episode 659 – Greg Potapenko
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody, it's Tom here with episode 659 of Screw the Commute Podcast. I'm here with Greg Potapenko and he's had a program in the past called From Siberia to Success and wow, an immigrant's online millionaire success story. We love success stories, so we'll bring him on in a minute. Now make sure you pick up a copy of our automation e-book. This e-book we actually estimated to save me 8 million keystrokes. It's a macro program, so you can make a couple of keystrokes and and fill in. War and Peace if you felt like it. So that's just one of the tips in this 60 page book I'm going to give you just for listening to the show. Check it out. It's good to commute dotcom slash automate free, screw the commute dotcom slash, automate free. And while you're at it, pick up a copy of our podcast app, but screw the commute dotcom slash app. That's app You can put us on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road.

[00:01:24] All right. Let's get to the main event. Greg P, I've seen him called a lot of times. He is a Canadian Armed Forces Warrant officer. And he's an award winning digital marketer. He bootstrapped a seven figure agency and seven figure E-comm brand, and Enlisted2Entrepreneur.com. Greg, are you ready to screw? The commute?

[00:01:58] Hey, Tom. Hey, thanks for having me. Thanks for the wonderful intro.

[00:02:01] Oh, it's my pleasure, man. So, Siberia, huh? We see it on TV all the time, is where people get exiled to. What's you remember much about Siberia?

[00:02:13] Yeah, I'm in like I live in Toronto, Canada right now, and the climate is actually not that far different. Really? Except, yeah, the winter is a little longer, but it's about the same. And it was you're right. It was an area that, you know, in the old days people would get exiled to. But it's the same thing you can say about Australia. It's not like that anymore. It's not just convicts. It's actually like a pretty populous region and a lot of natural resources and a lot of industry in business, But I don't remember much about it, as you rightly said, because my family left when I was. Actually 16 and one day. So right after my birthday party, we got on the plane and we left. So that's that's it.

[00:03:03] They speak straight Russian in Siberia.

[00:03:07] Yes. Yes. So do you speak? Oh, yes. That's my native tongue. And I speak English and also taught myself Spanish. And we probably going to touch on that later when we go go through some of the things that I've I've been exposed to.

[00:03:25] Okay. So here so I'm going to try out Russian on you and you see if I'm full of it or you can even understand what I'm saying. Here we go. Ready? Cockpit poster, IATA.

[00:03:38] Horatio? Yeah.

[00:03:40] What do I say?

[00:03:41] It's basically like, how do you do? Probably the closest. The closest? The. No meaning that. But I think literally it's like, how is your life?

[00:03:53] So is that more formal or is that.

[00:03:57] Yeah, that's. That's quite formal.

[00:03:58] Yeah. So if you just met somebody new, that's what you would use.

[00:04:03] Um.

[00:04:04] Or if they were if it was a young person, would you use?

[00:04:07] I would say I would say it would be if you meet an acquaintance that you haven't seen in a long time, that would be a new respect, like more like a younger to an older like, you know, basically like, how's life being? But like in a more formal setting, I would say. So something you would say to a close friend or when you just meet somebody for the first time, they'll be out of context.

[00:04:31] Yeah. Okay. So. So the only thing else I can remember was Julieta. I think that's a street or something.

[00:04:39] Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.

[00:04:40] Skyhorse That's.

[00:04:41] That's what it was. Okay. There you go. Have you. Have you been.

[00:04:45] No. No, I was just listening to back in the day with a CD to learn Russian, and I said, Man, this is hard. What was that? Is that around 1997 when you came over?

[00:04:58] Yeah. So 97, we. We left and we arrived into Canada. And, you know, I've been living here in Toronto pretty much ever since, you know, with the exception of like business travel and leisure travel and being a little bit of a digital nomad sometimes.

[00:05:16] But I love that. I love that. Now, they don't like me in Canada that much because when I first started speaking, I got a gig up in Ottawa and I'm all proud of myself. I'm an international speaker now, so I get at the border. This is years ago, and they said, Hey, what are you doing up here? I said, Oh, I'm speaking. I'm all proud of myself. They said, You're getting paid. I said, Absolutely. They said, Oh, is that right? Well, come on over here. In those days you had to have a work permit, and I didn't have one. They kept me 3 hours in interrogation. I missed my limo. I had to bribe my way to get out and go up there in the meeting place. Say, Oh, you should have just lied to them, you know?

[00:05:54] Yeah. Actually, Tony Robbins seems to favor that similar story you had when he was starting. He had a seminar in Canada and figured out the same way that, like, he needs a work permit. So he actually hired three buses to shuttle people over to Niagara Falls. Us did this seminar there to avoid being thrown in jail. So it's actually a story that I've heard so many times over. You and Tony can probably connect over that. Then you can have him as a guest.

[00:06:27] Well, I like that. I mean, I couldn't bus anybody anywhere because it wasn't my event. But I went up to Ottawa to this enormous I think that G-7 summit was there. It was enormous wooden building. And so I I forget what's Chateau Monto, Bryan, is that sounds familiar. I don't know. But but anyway, it was the whole thing was like a giant log cabin, this entire big complex. And the and I said, man, I'd love to have the termite contract on this place.

[00:06:57] Yes. Yeah, that sounds like a very Canadian place. I don't think I've been there, but yeah, sounds. That sounds awesome. Was it?

[00:07:06] Also, I heard that you worked in a gold. You had something to do with a gold mine. So what's that all about?

[00:07:13] Yeah. So for about almost six years, I was actually working for. The company called Barrick Gold, which at the time was the biggest gold mining company in the world. They just basically went through a huge merger in 2005 and basically bought a similar sized company, which made them the biggest at the time. I don't know if they still are, but yeah, I, I wasn't working like down in the mines or anything, but I definitely had site visits I've been to. These weren't underground mines. Yeah.

[00:07:50] This is like quarries, right, with these.

[00:07:52] Yeah. They're like giant quarries. It looked like, you know, giant craters and, like, huge trucks that are like 200 or 300 tons. I've been to those, and I've been up in the mountains at like four kilometers above sea level in the mountains of Peru and Argentina. So definitely seen my share, you know, lived a little bit with the miners there.

[00:08:17] Did they pay you in gold?

[00:08:20] No, they paid me in Canadian dollars and the pay was good, but it wasn't. Where I thought it needed to be. And eventually that kind of led me down the path of starting my own business.

[00:08:35] Now, did you. Did you save up money or did you just quit cold turkey? How did you transition to start your own business?

[00:08:42] Yeah. So essentially it was a long winded ramping up process. So it was not a cold turkey. Kind of like when I quit smoking, it wasn't cold turkey. So basically.

[00:08:55] I smoked. Wait a minute, wait a minute. You smoke? Mr. Marathon Guy, triathlon guy that was a smoker.

[00:09:04] I used to smoke a pack a day.

[00:09:06] Oh, my.

[00:09:06] God.

[00:09:06] This is for the triathlons. I can just see a triathlon guy going down, puffing a cigarette.

[00:09:13] Yeah, well, you kind of derailing there, there's no question. But yeah, so, like, it was basically like the culture in Russia, especially in the nineties, was very unhealthy. So, like, that's what you would do is like you would drink heavily and you would smoke cigarettes. And basically that was that was, that was life. And I brought those habits over.

[00:09:34] Now, when did you start because you left there in 16.

[00:09:37] So yeah, even younger. Exactly. Like, you know, it's just the early teens. And I brought those bad habits over and I stuck with them for for a few years. But then in the year 2000, I joined the Canadian military as an Army reservist. And that's kind of like when my wakeup call was that, you know, they're making us run and P.T. and I wasn't like unfit or anything. But the definitely first couple of years, I was still an active smoker. But like, I actually realized that in order to to level up and be an effective soldier and a leader, I need to actually be fit. And I was still like one of the I was working hard and I was smoking and running and working out and actually was one of the fastest runners in the unit already.

[00:10:27] And even while you were smoking.

[00:10:30] That's right. Yeah. Eventually they they a couple of years in, they saw potential in me and they sent me on like first like a para course, which is the airborne school here in Trenton, Ontario. And they said subsequently I would go to the NCO school, basically the junior leadership school where they create like master corporals and sergeants. So I heard that both of those courses were very demanding, and that's when I kind of made a decision, you know what? I got to quit smoking and in order to get ready. So I got on the pretty serious prep program actually, at the time the US Navy had the the official pre training for Bud's Navy SEALs available as like a dock document that I could download. So I basically just took that and minus the swimming I did all the running and pushups and everything and it's like an 18 week program that works you up to be ready to go to Bud. So basically I started doing that and eventually cutting down smoking from a pack a day to like, you know, three quarters of a pack to half a pack to like basically two cigarettes a day. And then eventually it went to zero over a course of about a year.

[00:11:40] So is that one of the hardest things you ever did? No, no, no.

[00:11:45] I mean, it's been 20 years, but like, no, it wasn't very hard, to be honest. Like it was actually, because I did it gradually, I guess, and I was pouring myself into fitness and I was also in in university as well, getting getting my finance degree and serving in the military as a reservist. So I had a lot of logs in the fire. And that was just one thing that didn't serve me. It was also became very expensive actually, in Canada to smoke. Yeah, they literally like almost doubled the price of cigarettes overnight. So that was another factor. Like as a student, a struggling student immigrant, we obviously didn't have a lot of money. So, you know, spending seven or $8 on a pack of smokes was actually a big hit on my daily budget. You know, you either eat lunch or you smoke, you know?

[00:12:32] Yeah. And when I was a kid, there was $0.30 a pack and I was standing next to somebody in 711 and they spent I don't know how much on a carton of cigarettes, 35, $40 or something. And I couldn't believe it. It's crazy. But there's also I was thinking when I was looking about some of your stuff, the gold is one thing, but then you were a competitive shooter. And so people always bugging me to buy gold all the time. And I said, No, that's ridiculous. Buy bullets, because if you have enough bullets, you can get all the gold you want. So. So what's your competitive shooting career like?

[00:13:15] So again, in the military, I mean, basically. Developed an interest for marksmanship. And we had a we were lucky that a captain joined our unit who was actually a very high level competitive shooter. He shot like Bisley in the UK and like all the big Commonwealth tournaments, and he stood up a shooting team for the unit and basically for a few years he was really running a lot of those initiatives at the brigade level. So that's when I got into that and got coached by this person and other other coaches and actually went to compete at a national level. And here in Canada for, for my my brigade team and I've done that twice. So it was in 2001 and 2000, 2003. So I spent the entire summer in 2001 at Connaught Rangers in Ottawa, actually not far from where you probably had that log. Yeah.

[00:14:20] Well, what kind of shooting was it? Because there's all kinds of different shooting competitions. So what? What was that?

[00:14:26] And so that one used to be called C.F. Slack. Now it's called CAF. So basically Canadian Forces Small arms competition, and they have international delegates there as well. The Americans, Brits, the Gurkhas and a few other agencies come. But it's it's a national level. But were you.

[00:14:46] Running and gunning or was it sniper or what is it?

[00:14:50] I did I did all three disciplines. I did the service, pistol service, rifle and precision rifle. I didn't do machine gun, though there was also that. So I have competed in pistol service, rifle and precision. So it was a combination of deliberate shoots and stop shoots and fire and movement. And now I've seen some some of my mates, they still compete. The competition is like a lot more quote unquote tactical. Now they have like different type matches, like high speed style, like shoot, no shoot hostage style. We didn't have that at the time, but it was it was more like traditional target shooting. But fire movement elements, snap, shooting, deliberate. I was. I was still there. So, yeah, I, I got into the finals both years, but I never, I never got, like, any top. Prizes or anything, but it was still a great experience. Learning about it and everything.

[00:15:48] Yeah, I've had a lot of a lot of firearms training, the shoot no shoot stuff with the video stuff where they can mess with you with the computer. That's always challenging. So. So when did our how did you come up with that name and was that your first business that you bootstrapped? What's the transition into the business world?

[00:16:09] Yeah. So before we got derailed, actually, it wasn't like my first foray into a business because believe it or not, when I came over first in 97, I just don't know anybody. But it was my real first exposure to the Internet. Like we didn't really have the Internet back in Russia. I mean, we did, but it was only for a couple of months before we left, so I only really got to dive deep into it here in Canada. So aside from playing games and going through chats and all of that, I took an interest in HTML and I actually learned how to build web pages. I guess it was an outlet that was more like, I guess like early days of blogging. I wanted to just like I was going through a lot of things, moving to a new country and losing my friends and blah, blah, blah, you know? So I bet I built like, I guess like a sort of a blog for myself to put my thoughts on. And I learned HTML, right? So then I kind of met some people in those chat groups and IRC chats, and basically we figured out we could actually make money on the internet. So I actually made like several thousand dollars in like 98, 99, you know, probably like 15 grand worth by essentially it was being a what's called now a display publisher. So we would build websites, we would put banner advertising on them that would pay for every click that we generated. And then we would try to get traffic to those web pages we built.

[00:17:44] There was no search engines before, there was no Google, there was no Yahoo. There was like early days of like AltaVista, the AltaVista and. Yeah. So basically, like the the way people found new websites that would go to these directories and just like, oh, there's ten new websites yesterday. So we basically like spam them every day. Just try to get to the top of the list and that's how we got traffic. So obviously, you know, it was a very rudimentary tactic and eventually it stopped working and but it was my first kind of like glimpse of like the real Internet money that, you know what, it's actually possible to do something online and then get paid for it. And then, of course, I. I didn't pivot at the time and I just basically went the traditional route of going through university, getting a degree, serving in the army, getting a job. So I worked a couple of jobs after graduation and I got into the gold mining company and it was good. And in all, as a 20 something flying around and business class and spending months abroad and exotic locations like South America. And I actually flew the corporate jet a couple of times. I was actually pretty a pretty cool experience. Yeah, they were good about that. But still, you know, the pay was good, but it wasn't like really where I thought it would be. And I really tried hard to get a get a different job. And I went networking and interviewing. I was working on my CFA designation, trying to get into the financial world as an investment bank or an equity analyst.

[00:19:18] I've made connections on Bay Street here in Toronto, which is like mini Wall Street, but it just kind of wasn't wasn't getting a lot of traction. And I ran late 27, basically about to have our first child and figured out, you know what like it's it's not it's going to be challenging basically to to be able to support that in Toronto which is not the most. Woke up city in the world. So I was looking for yet another thing to do. Like my job already working full time. I was working part time in the military and I was studying my ass off and the CFA program and networking. So I found myself with one more thing on my plate, which is basically. Online marketing. So I thought, Well, I know how to build websites, like maybe I can do something with it. And I stumbled upon a forum where actually they were sharing how they were making money with affiliate marketing generating leads at the time for financial products in UK. So those were like essentially second mortgages and stuff like that. And it was really crazy. Like the lenders at the time would loan 125% of LTV, if you know what I mean. So like if your house is worth £100,000, you could get £125,000. It was great. So I was start reading the forums and kind of getting some information from from the forum members and I needed to learn how to drive traffic. So I, I bought a book. There was no YouTube at the time. There was no Facebook groups, none of that.

[00:21:02] So I bought a book about how to run Google ads. At the time they were called AdWords, basically search advertising and started experimenting with it and essentially combining the newly acquired skill of getting search clicks to a web page that I already kind of knew how to build. I started that, and of course, that was the perfect time to start advertising financial products in 2008, because, as you know, what happened is the market crashed. So the the lenders stopped lending and basically the payouts per lead from lead buyers went from $250 to $25. But I still remember, like, that first epiphany where I got my first lead and I was actually I finished my day at the day job at the Gold Company, and I had a workout and I was walking over to the armory for my army duty and I had a little blackberry pearl at the time, and I got I got an email, you got my first lead. It was 25 bucks. And at the time, the. No, sorry. It was £25, which at the time was 50 CAD. And I was on my way to my armory to report for duty and to get paid 50 CAD for basically spending the evening there. And that was like, Oh my God, one lead equals to me spending an entire evening in uniform working. Wow. That was kind of the aha moment where I thought, okay, you know what? Like if I scale this, this could be pretty good. And. It took me a couple of years. Was some things that didn't quite work out at the time and learning the ropes.

[00:22:52] Man, I was doing this like very part time with everything else that was going on. But essentially by like 2010, 2011, I was making. Pretty much my half of my annual salary in a month or two. Right? Right. So that's when I was finally good enough courage to actually say no, what I'm going to do is for real. And in October of 2011, I wrote the resignation letter while. You know, I was actually on an airplane reading the four hour work week book and rereading it for the second time, and it kind of was the final straw that broke the camel's back where I said, you know what? I need to do this now, otherwise I'm never going to do it. And I wrote the the letter on the plane. There was no in-flight wi fi back then. And as soon as I landed, I sent it off and they weren't too happy about that. But. It was a decision that needed to be made. So basically that's and that's when I incorporated my company. Before that, it was just like a sole proprietorship that became corporation, and I chose the name HR early two earlier. Question is, it's a military term that signifies essentially the moment when the the action begins in a mission. So if you remember the D-Day operation, World War two allies landing. So the D-Day had an H hour, which is basically the moment when actually the operation commenced. So that was it. So and that's how I chose the name Beautiful.

[00:24:16] Yeah. And that was that the agency or because you mentioned two different things, you have a seven figure agency and a seven figure com brand.

[00:24:27] Yeah. So the reason I started as an affiliate marketing business, and once I got enough experience with advertising affiliate campaigns, I took on a few clients directly helping them run their ads. And so it's basically a performance marketing agency where we run ads for clients either in their own ad account or on an affiliate or partnership basis where we drive the traffic and we get paid by the results. We generate like leads or downloads, installs, purchases, whatever the e-comm stuff is actually. Something which started in around 2016, 2017 when like Shopify started to become more of a household name and became really easy to sell physical products online. So I started experimenting with it and basically ended up opening a few Shopify stores and basically the agency ran them as internal clients. So I already had the infrastructure in place for like buying ads and creating landing pages and ads and videos and graphics and whatnot. So it was literally just almost like creating an internal client. And yeah, I was able to scale a couple of those products to, you know, just over $3 million in overall sales. And it was a cool experience as well.

[00:25:55] Beautiful. Now what's enlisted to entrepreneur dotcom?

[00:26:00] So great question. It's something that I felt. Compelled to do for quite some time, I want to say about four or five years now. Basically, I think if you know. Alex Chafin. He calls it the call for contribution. But essentially it's like a desire to kind of give back somehow. And I really feel strongly about the military community, especially the entrepreneurs. So the military entrepreneurs is the intersection of those two. And I felt like maybe I can share some of the knowledge that I gained over the last almost 15 years now with somebody who is. Either starting out or early stage. And I actually first I got started as a mentor with a local Canadian non-profit. Actually, it's a Commonwealth based non-profit, but they have a chapter in Canada which focuses on one on one mentoring of veteran entrepreneurs with business mentors. The mentor doesn't have to be a veteran, but it's nice. So I've done a couple of engagements there, and then I thought, Well, this is great, how can I do more of it and at scale? So that's when I started The Enlisted to Entrepreneur. It's basically like a free Facebook group where I share. Some of my learnings along the way. There's some recorded trainings about how to get started in digital marketing and e-commerce and some other lessons and slowly trying to build an engaged, tight knit community of business builders with a military background. So that's, that's what is really great.

[00:27:40] Great to give back. Yeah, for sure. Now, what are some of the mistakes that you see do entrepreneurs and veteran entrepreneurs making when they try to get started?

[00:27:50] I'm in mistakes, to be honest, never end. I mean, I still make them often and I'm still learning every day. Like that's that's one thing. I guess the biggest mistake is you stop learning because we had to we had a term in the military skill fade. So it's very real in the fast paced business such as digital marketing e commerce. So you have to you have to stay on top of things and sometimes you do fall behind. So that's. That's a bit of a mistake if you're kind of further along the way. But when you start out, I think a lot of people especially like. With no prior business experience or training. They they go after ideas that don't have a product market fit. I think that's that's probably the biggest problem because you can get a lot of things wrong. But if you get your product market fit right, a lot of things still take care of itself. Like I've seen somebody with like a really horrible website, like a basic Facebook ad that they shot with their iPhone in their hand like a selfie video. And the website looks worse than the website that was building in 97 in Notepad, honestly. And he still was able to sell 500,000 worth of product because he invented like a really cool toy. During COVID, when people were stuck at home with kids and didn't know how to entertain those kids. So like the timing was right and the product market fit was right in, the product was actually good. So with very rudimentary marketing, that person was able to to get really good results. Whereas if, if somebody goes after an idea that has. No legs, then they can have the best ads in the world. They can have the best looking funnel in the world, the best looking upside and still fail. So I think that's where a lot of that. Happens.

[00:29:50] Yeah, we call them CSIS, and everybody thinks it's the TV show. But no, it's crappy, stupid idea. And everybody's ideas are crappy and stupid unless they can prove they aren't with real numbers. So keyword research and market research and everything before they put money into all these websites. And I've made fortunes on what they call ugly websites because the product was a high need, reasonably priced and sold like crazy. And especially if you can do digital products. I know you're talking about Shopify, but but digital products are 97% profit, gross profit. So you can make even more mistakes and still make money if you if you're careful. Careful. So we've got to take a brief sponsor break. When we come back, we'll ask Greg what a typical day looks like for him and how he stays motivated. So, folks, about 25 years ago, I kind of turned the Internet in the digital marketing world on its head, and that guys at my level were charging 50 or 100,000 bucks, mostly guys, to teach what they knew to small business people. And if you gave some of these people 50 grand, they'd be hiding out in Siberia because you know, they'd screw you over. So I said, That's too risky for small business people. I said, No, I'm going to flip this upside down. So I just charged an entry fee and then I tied my success to their success. So for me to get my 50 grand, you have to net 200 grand. Well, people really like this idea in 1700 plus students later, over all these years, it's the program is still going strong.

[00:31:27] It's the longest running, most unique, most successful Internet and digital marketing program ever. And I triple dare dog dare anybody to put their program up against mine. And they won't do it because I'm a crazy fanatic. So. So you get an immersion trip to the retreat center in Virginia Beach. We have our own TV studio. It's all one on one. You're not lumped in with people more advanced or less advanced. You have access to my whole crew that I've trained very, very powerful. And plus we have the only licensed, dedicated Internet and digital marketing school in the country, probably the world, but for sure the USA. And we give a big discount. We give a scholarships to military first responders, law enforcement and nurses, and very powerful and portable skills, especially for our military folks. So anyway, check check out the mentor program at great Internet marketing training dot com and check out the school at Imtech VA dot org, Imtech va dot org. All this stuff and great stuff will be in the show notes. And then if your military puts slash military after the school, when you can see all the veterans we've helped.

[00:32:42] All right. Let's get back to the main event. We're here with Greg Potapenko, from Siberia to success. I love that that title of one of his programs in the past. And Greg, what's a typical day look like for you? What time do you get up? What do you eat? Do you have a morning routine? How's it run for you?

[00:33:00] Well, I don't have a set routine per se, but I do have three children. So a lot of the.

[00:33:08] They make the routine, I guess.

[00:33:09] Yeah. A lot of the schedule does revolve around like the times when they need to be dropped off at school, picked up, dropped off at the night. Older school. 14, 12 and four. So basically between, between their schedules, that's. That's where I need to make mine. So yeah, aside from that, basically I do make sure that every day there's some sort of. Physical Training, Inc..

[00:33:44] Are you still running? Running the marathons and stuff.

[00:33:48] I'm mostly into triathlons for the last five years, so I did I did run before 2018, and then 2018 I started doing triathlons. So I actually run less now and spend a little bit more time in the water and on the bike because I haven't really done that before 2018. But yeah, I definitely try to incorporate some sort of physical training, at least on a daily basis. I do feel bad if I, if I skip a day and just. Try to get to work as soon as possible in the morning after getting. Getting everybody to where they're supposed to go and just sit down and crank out, you know, five, six, 7 hours of work before I need to get up and go pick them up again. So that's that's kind of.

[00:34:39] And when are you doing your workouts?

[00:34:42] In the evenings, because usually that's the time when I'm other parents are waiting around for their children, like to do their night classes, like typing on their phones. I just go to go to the gym or go for a run or write something. So that's that's that's what works for me, basically. That's not not the only way of doing it. But that's that's what I kind of over the years. The routine that I created.

[00:35:13] Yeah, we love to hear all the different stories of people. People have made it in so many different ways. So I love to hear your stories. So how do people get ahold of you.

[00:35:23] So you can get a hold of me personally through most of the popular social media right now by simply searching for my name, Greg Potapenko. So you can find me on LinkedIn, Facebook. So yeah, you can find me with that name on most social media platforms or like if you prefer to go by the social media handle. So it's hhour48 at Instagram and Twitter and if you want.

[00:36:11] So those are, those are my personal profiles. And if you are interested in checking out what my agency can do, you can go to our, your agency to check out our performance marketing. And if you're a military entrepreneur or are thinking of transitioning into becoming an entrepreneur after the military, then yeah, the project for enlisted the entrepreneur is still open. Just go in and join the group and go through the training and check it out. So that's it. Beautiful. Well, thanks so much for coming on.

[00:36:47] Folks, Greg Potapenko, hhour48 on social media and you have H-hour.agency. If you're thinking about running ads.

[00:37:05] Oh, I'm is that in all the things. In the domain names.

[00:37:09] Domain name our agency and then for veterans go to enlisted the number two entrepreneur dot com so great great meeting you Greg I don't think I know anybody else from Siberia. So you're the one we thank.

[00:37:27] Or you can call me the man from Toronto. Like the movie. The Netflix movie that just came out. Oh, that was a pretty, pretty hilarious one, actually.

[00:37:36] The man from Toronto.

[00:37:37] All right. Check it.

[00:37:38] Out. So thanks so much for coming on, folks. Check out all Greg's stuff and we will catch you on the next episode. See you later.

[00:37:45] Thanks, Tom.