The Growth Booth

Achieving Lifestyle Balance Through Online Business | The Growth Booth #59

February 21, 2023 Season 1 Episode 59
The Growth Booth
Achieving Lifestyle Balance Through Online Business | The Growth Booth #59
Show Notes Transcript

Is it possible to have it all, or do you really have to choose?

Welcome to the 59th episode of The Growth Booth Podcast, a show focused on supporting budding entrepreneurs and established business owners alike, towards achieving lifestyle freedom through building successful online businesses.

This week, Aidan discusses achieving lifestyle balance with Igor Kheifets, the brains behind e-Farming. Discover the blueprint into structuring your life with the freedom to balance between family, relationships, money, health, and everything in between.

Whether you're looking for step-by-step strategies to start building an online business, simple game plans to grow your business, or proven lifestyle freedom frameworks, you’re in the right place.

Stay tuned and be sure to join the thousands of listeners already in growth mode!


Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

02:40 The Best of Both Worlds

08:50 The Kiyosaki Impact

11:50 Recipe for Lifestyle Freedom

15:45 Episode Sponsor

16:19 Maintaining Balance

25:40 Routines

29:58 What's e-Farming?

40:17 Outro


Links and Resources Mentioned:


About Our Host:

Aidan Booth is passionate about lifestyle freedom and has focused on building online businesses to achieve this since 2005. From affiliate marketing to eCommerce, small business marketing to SAAS (software as a service), online education to speaking at seminars, the journey has been a rollercoaster ride with plenty of thrills along the way. Aidan is proud to have helped thousands of entrepreneurs earn their first dollar online, and coached many people to build million-dollar businesses. Aidan and his business partner (Steven Clayton) are the #1 ranked vendors on Clickbank.com, and sell their products in over 100 countries globally, as well as in 20,000+ stores across the USA, to generate 8-figures annually.

Away from the online world, Aidan is a proud Dad of two young kids, an avid investor, a swimming enthusiast, and a nomadic traveler.

 

Let's Connect!

●  Visit the website: https://thegrowthbooth.com/ 

●  Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aidanboothonline 

●  Let's connect on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aidanboothonline/ 

●  Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheGrowthBooth 


Connect with Igor at igorsbook.com.


Thanks for tuning in! Please don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe!


Aidan

Hey, everyone, welcome back to The Growth Booth. This is episode number 59, and I'm here with you today, Aidan Booth. I've got a very special guest, someone who I met in person for the first time not that long ago. His name is Igor Kheifets, and you may have heard of Igor. He's been doing some really, really interesting things behind the scenes with internet marketing, building a business, and just getting some truly amazing results. And one of the things that have always struck me about Igor, and this is from even before I met him in person to now actually having hung out with him for a good couple of days and sat down, had dinner with him, and drank numerous coffees with him and just chatted to him a lot is he seems to have a really good balance of lifestyle, which I think a lot of people tend to neglect or just lack altogether. So Igor, firstly, thank you so much for tuning in here today and being on the show. 

 

Igor Kheifets

You're kidding me. It's a true honor and a pleasure. When I started in the game, I think you were pretty big. So for me to be on your show is just a true pleasure. I subscribed to it, by the way, a couple of months ago, as soon as I heard that you started it. I'm just excited to be here and hopefully make it a tremendous episode, one for the books. 

 

Aidan

Awesome. Speaking of books, I know that you've got an awesome book, which I've just finished going through myself, and people can see what that's all about and check it out by going to igorsbook.com. That'll take you to a page where you can get all the information about this. I know that that dives into more around this whole conversation of lifestyle. 

 

I guess something that I see, I don't know if you've seen this as well, Igor, but I sometimes see people who are doing okay financially, but they've got zero time freedom, or they've got this new work from home thing since after the pandemic, so they've got a little bit of geographic freedom. They're able to move around, but then they don't have some of the other bits and pieces. So what's your take on it all? I mean, do you really have to choose between lifestyle freedom or income or family or relationships or fitness? How can someone structure things so that they can have the best of all worlds? 

 

Igor Kheifets

I used to believe that you can. I used to believe that you really had to choose. I grew up in a family that put me on a path to traditional nine to five, right? So my dad was military, my mom was a music teacher, and the message was going to school, getting good grades, finding a good job, and hopefully, when you're 50, you can become the CEO of something and you'll be alright. That's the reason why they sent me to the Israeli Air Force Academy when I was a kid because they felt that by going through this academy, I'll have a great career in the military. I'll be able to retire from the military when I am 45, and then with military experience, usually what happens in Israel, which is where I'm originally from, you get recruited into these big corporate conglomerates, and you can move up the ladder. And going to school, I was surrounded by people whose dream was to get a company car, get a company cell phone. At the time, we were still using cell phones, not smartphones, and a paycheck in the high four figures. That was like the ultimate dream. For many years, I believed that to be the dream. 

 

One day I was really stressed out before my aerodynamics exam, and I was hanging out with one of my buddies, Max. Now, Max wasn't a straight-A student like me. Max was pretty much a deadbeat at the time. He was already almost one foot out of high school, almost dropped out, smoking, partying hard, and I was really stressed out. And Max was like, “Why are you stressed out, bro?” And I'm like, “Well, I got this big aerodynamics exam coming up.” He's like, “So what?” “What do you mean so what? I want to do well.” He’s like, “Yeah, but why do you want to do well in an aerodynamics exam? What do you even need that for?” It's like, “Well, I don't really need it. It's just I need to get good grades so I can get a good job and become rich.” 

 

And he started laughing at me. I was like, “What are you laughing about?” He's like, “That's not how you become rich.” And I was like, “What do you know about becoming rich? You're practically homeless in a few years because you're a deadbeat,” and he said, “Well, obviously, I'm not the person to listen to about this. However,” he says, “my dad is reading this book by someone called Robert Kiyosaki. It's called ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’. In that book, he explains that the richest people in the world are not the smartest people or straight-A students.” I was like, “Yeah, but that's just a ludicrous idea.” He said, “No, you should read the book.” And you know what. I actually did read the book. I went to his place. I got the book from his dad, I read the book, and that book blew me away. 

 

It basically made me believe in this one simple idea: that you are not born rich – you become rich, and you can become rich even if you start out poor. From there, it sparked this journey, which, of course, culminates today, and hopefully it will culminate many, many years from now, not today. But, you know, I ended up building multiple six-figure incomes in about a year and some years and changed after I got out of the Israeli Army because, in Israel, the army service is mandatory. And then from there, I kept scaling and scaling and scaling to a point where it's now multiple seven figures every year. What's really interesting about this, which ties really into the idea of having lifestyle and income and freedom, is that I work the same amount of hours today as I did when I was making six figures, as I did when I was making five figures with this business, which is a testament to the idea that you really don't have to choose. You can have your lifestyle, you can have your freedom, and you can shape your life in the way that you see it. 

 

For instance, I'm a father. I got two kids, ten and four. Whenever my daughter has a play, she acts, whenever my son has a judo practice or he's got something that's happening in his world, like, I can actually put everything on pause and I can go and give them attention. Now, this is not to say that I spend 24/7 with my kids, right? I'm not that good of a father. I still get bored. And you know, I really love what I do, but whenever I need to be there, I'm there. There's never been a moment, besides one time when I did fly out to a seminar, when I wasn't there for them when they were performing or doing something or they needed help or whatever. Even today, as we're shooting this episode, my kids know they can actually run downstairs to me. I work out of my home basement and they can interrupt me, which is not the best thing for productivity, but they know they can. They don't feel like they're not important. 

 

I was born in Ukraine and I immigrated to Israel when I was twelve. So I grew up first in Ukraine, then in Israel. I only remember playing football with my dad once or twice in my whole life because he was never around. So when I decided to have a family, I knew I'm going to do it right. I knew I'm going to do it in a way where my kids won't have to compete with my “job”, if you know what I mean. 

 

Aidan

This is really interesting. We've got lots of parallels here. When I was about 19 years old, I was studying at university. Essentially what would have turned out, I would have eventually become a manager in a big factory or company or something. That's really where my degree was pointing me. I was at a birthday party with some other university students, and I got talking to one of my friends, and I don't know how the topic came up, but he said, “Oh my God, you got to check out this book. A friend of mine gave it to me, and it's called ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’,” and I'd never heard of it. I was 19 years old at the time. And, sure enough, I went and had a look at it, and it was like a switch flipped inside me. And at that stage, I was like, “Oh, passive income. That's a thing. I can get this passive income working for me, potentially.” 

 

And for me, then, it was even just $50, $100 a day, would have been even less than that because I was a poor student, would have been magical. So, for me, what I took out of that book was, yes, definitely passive income. Definitely, you don't need money to start. What you need is a desire. I went on to read, I think, every single book that the Kiyosaki brand, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, put out and have read many, many more since.

 

Igor Kheifets

Your favorite Kiyosaki journey? What's your favorite Kiyosaki book? 

 

Aidan

Going back almost 20 years. Well, definitely that one there is probably the most memorable. I mean, Cashflow Quadrant was a good one as well. We talk about money to work for you rather than….

 

Igor Kheifets

Yeah, I think you're great at that too. I think you're great at that. I've studied you over the years, of course, and seen the way you do things, and I think you're a true testament and a real-life example of a guy from the Cashflow Quadrant book who built the pipeline. So at the beginning of the book, he tells a story about the guy who kind of fills the bucket with water. And so there's another guy, he builds a pipeline. You're incredibly skilled at that. I think the people who truly want passive income, who truly want to have lifestyle freedom while scaling their income year to year, should embrace this concept of a pipeline. They should embrace this concept of building something that can produce $1,000 a week automatically versus trying to make $10,000 per week by hustling to get that money, because I've done both, and I burn out real quick. 

 

Aidan

Yeah, the hustle is definitely a recipe for disaster when you keep doing it for too long. 

 

So what has been your sort of go-to recipe, if you like, for being able to achieve this lifestyle freedom, which so many people have struggled with? What were the things that have worked well for you? 

 

Igor Kheifets

Well, first off, it was the transition from the idea that I have to close every sale or go do the legwork to make the money. So, in other words, at one brief moment in my journey, in this industry, in this game, and in this entrepreneurial journey, I switched from trying to build systems to try to go and close deals with people almost one on one. Whether it was meeting with them, whether it was getting them on the phone, whether it was like chatting with them somewhere on a platform, I really was going for the sale. I kind of became very sales-oriented, and I started offering a service and trying to close the deals. 

 

And what I quickly learned is that there are only so many hours in the day, and I can't possibly scale if that's how I earn my living because there are only so many conversations I can have in a span of a workday. There are only so many days in a calendar month or year, and I was constantly limited. What's even worse is that if that month I wasn't necessarily closing well, I ended up trying to hustle harder towards the end of the month to cover for the gap, and therefore, I was sacrificing time with my family. I was saying no to my wife. I was saying no to my daughter. I was basically showing them they weren't important to me. And it kind of peaked at a certain stage when I was working all day long on my laptop, trying to message people, trying to have phone calls with people, trying to get people on Zoom calls and stuff. Well, at the time we weren't calling it Zoom. We were actually using something called Join Me or Skype. I don't know. Right now it's a little bit easier, because back then, technology kind of struggled with the whole screen sharing and webcam sharing thing, but I was hustling, for the lack of a better word. 

 

And I remember it was like 8:00 or 09:00 p.m., and I turned everything off, and I was just kind of taking this breather, and I stepped out of my room, which was my bedroom, my office, my game room, and everything in between besides my bathroom. I noticed there was no one home. What happened was my wife just left. Can you believe it? Like, she just got tired of waiting. Turns out earlier that day, she tried to talk to me, asking me questions or something, asked me if I wanted to go somewhere, and I completely ignored her because I was so in the zone, trying to build something, maybe a landing page or talking to somebody, chatting or writing an email, whatever. And she just took our baby daughter, and she walked. She walked. She disappeared. I started calling her best friends. I started calling my friend's mutual friends. If you're married, then you're mostly friends with other couples. You're not really allowed to have single friends anymore. 

 

So I started calling everybody, and no one knows where she is. At that point, I knew there was only one place where she could be, which is at her mother's place. I went and I got her to come out and talk to me, and that was the day when I pledged. I basically said, “Okay, I promise you I will change this. I will not hustle anymore. I will figure out a way to do it because you're important to me.” 

 

Aidan

Right. It's moments like that sometimes when you realize even if you had all the finances in the world, you had complete financial freedom for whatever you're doing, it's all kind of worthless if you don't have the means to enjoy it, or you have all the money in the world, but if you're not healthy, then what's the point? You can't actually be out there and really enjoy it all that much. That's why this idea of balance is so mission-critical. How do you maintain balance? Do you have a routine that you go through on a daily basis? Because it's also relatively easy to fall into that trap of being so in the forest and unable to see the bigger picture when you're working and you're focused on something. So how do you control that in your life? And are there any routines that you have? 

 

Igor Kheifets

Yeah, it's actually even more difficult when you consider that you're making money. Every time there's a payment coming in, there are endorphins hitting your brain like crazy. Because if you're in the business to make money, which I hope you are in the business to make money, and you get on the phone with somebody or you send an email and money starts coming in, the first thing you want to be doing is to write another email, go have another call. So that's how I was. I truly had to take a step back and reevaluate how I'm building my business. Because at the time, my business was just me, and I had to take a step back and start building out systems that give me leverage, where I could still be investing the same amount of hours or minutes or effort, but at the same time, I could actually start scaling my income through the means of leverage. 

 

And so, to answer your question, my workday is something like this. I wake up around these days, around 06:30 a.m., and then I try to get in like an hour, maybe an hour and a half of work before everyone else wakes up. Because as soon as everyone wakes up, as I said I got a son and a daughter, it's impossible to get anything done even if you're hiding in the basement. Yeah, exactly. So the first hour, an hour and a half of each day, I give it to myself. Sometimes I alternate between two things. Sometimes if I've got a big project I'm building or something, I'm gearing up to a product launch or whatever, I'll give that hour to the thing. I'll give an example. When I was writing my book, I would wake up, and for the first hour of every day, I would devote myself to my book. That was very productive because I ended up writing that book in 13 days. So that was, like, real quick. I think that the secret to getting stuff done, especially if you're a really busy individual, is you wake up a little bit earlier before your entire household is up on their feet, and you give that 1 hour to yourself and your biggest project. You'll be surprised how quickly you can move forward if you're just operating without distractions. 

 

Now, once that hour is done, I go upstairs, and we have breakfast together. I try to have breakfast with my kids because I found that sharing a meal with anyone, not just your family, brings you closer. So if you've got a routine of sharing a meal with your loved ones, even if you're really busy elsewhere and you don't get to see them too much throughout the day, you still feel like they feel like you guys are connected. 

 

Actually, funny story, I learned it from a mobster when I was growing up in Ukraine. It was in Ukraine in the ‘90s, shortly after the wall came down. It's a very nasty place. The only people who were making any money were actual criminals, and they were doing racketeering and stealing stuff. I mean, classic mafia stuff, right? 

 

Now, my dad was retired military at the time, and he was connected to all sorts of criminals in the city because you are either friends with them or you're their enemy. So you're either friends with them, or they come to racketeer your business. So he went on and he did something smart. He befriended the biggest mobster in town. It was the city called Bila, [Tserkva]. And in that town at the time, there was one guy named Nikolai Makarinco, or his nickname was Macar. Macar was basically the most feared gangster in town. He had the police in his pocket, everything, like, I'm talking classic 1930s Chicago mobster-style story. 

 

There's one thing, though, about him that I and my dad actually admired a lot. I admire it more today than before. And that is he never missed lunchtime at home. So we're talking about a guy who killed people for a living, a guy who racketeered people, but he still made it a point to go home for lunch, to have lunch with his wife and his daughter. 

 

Aidan

In the middle of something big, and he's like, “I'm not going to kill this guy quite yet. I got to get home for lunch and eat my knockers, and then I'll get back and finish the business later.” 

 

Igor Kheifets

Yeah, exactly. I'm pretty sure.

 

Aidan

It's a joke, but it's probably real. 

 

Igor Kheifets

Dude, in every joke, there is a part joke and a part reality. So I'm pretty sure it's exactly how it unfolded in some days. But you see, it's a big thing because I made it a point, starting at a certain time in my development, to have breakfast with the kids, to have dinner with the kids. I think it's an important part of the day to help me stay connected. Because I believe, first of all, I do believe that money is important. I believe if you're completely and utterly broke, it is your obligation to make yourself financially capable so you can go and make some money and give a better life to your family. I do believe that my first priority as a leader of this household is to provide for this household first and foremost. Like, if I was dead broke right now, I wouldn't be having breakfast with my family, I wouldn't be having lunch with them. I would be out there making money until I had something where I felt comfortable and secure that I’m providing enough. 

 

However, I do believe that after the money is set and you can afford to start building systems, maybe hiring people, investing in technology, using software or automation, that's when I believe that the quality of your life will be largely determined by the quality of your relationships. This is now a concept I learned from a buddy of mine, Cabral, who's really big into relationships. He really mastered, I think, that part of life. And so if your relationships with your spouse, your children, your friends, best friends, colleagues, et cetera, if those are quality relationships, juicy, meaningful relationships, you will always find your life to be meaningful, enjoyable, and a life of quality. 

 

So between those things, that's where I invest my time. I invest in relationships, I invest in my business, and I invest in my family. So after the kids leave, my wife will do the school run, I go back to work and I work up until about 01:00 p.m., sometimes 02:00 p.m., depending on how well I flow, depending on how much I feel like working some days. Like yesterday, I honestly feel yesterday was a wasted day because I really didn't get much done at all. Like, I found myself playing video games at like 11:00 a.m., so it wasn't a very productive day. But the good thing is that my system kept working, so my life didn't fall apart. I could afford it. 

 

But that's my goal, is to work the first hour to give it to myself, then have this for maybe like 09:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m. or 1:00 p.m., sometimes 02:00 p.m. I'll do more work, but then it's lunchtime, and after that, it's just coolly time. Based on what I determined that to be, a date night and go to the movies with my wife or go play some video games. I'm big on video games. You can tell. Like yesterday I spent a lot of time playing on my Oculus Quest 2. Do you know what that is? 

 

Aidan

Yeah, I have an Oculus. It's amazing. 

 

Igor Kheifets

Yeah. So I love Pistol Whip, I love Beat Saber. You know, it's funny. Do you know what's my ten-year-old daughter's favorite game is on the Oculus? It's the Job Simulator

 

Aidan

The Job Simulator. Wow. I haven't actually seen that one. 

 

Igor Kheifets

Yes. I was like, “Oh, my God, you're like an entrepreneur's daughter. You can't be playing this game.” No, but she actually enjoys pretending she’s doing something important. And the job she selects, like a waitress or a cook, she cooks eggs and stuff. I'm sure you've seen it, it's a game where the human is working for the robots, and the human is cooking for the robots and serving the food. Yeah. 

 

Aidan

It's funny how kids love that kind of role-playing. Often I walk into my daughter's room, and she's younger, so my daughter is four years old and my son is six, and she'll be jabbering away to some of her dolls there and playing the role of a teacher or a mother or whatever it is that occurs here on that day. But role-playing, it's also really important in their education and development. 

 

A couple of things that I wanted to add on there to what you said. I think routine is really important during the day. I'm like you where I like to get an early start and try to get something meaningful done before the house becomes chaotic, which typically happens at around 07:00 a.m. 

 

So this morning I got up and got started at 05:20 a.m., and I thought, “Okay, fantastic. I'm going to have one and a half hours here,” and then, sure enough, Murphy's Law. After 20 minutes, for no rhyme or reason, my daughter was up for the day. So it doesn't always pan out. But anyway, that's how I tend to approach it. Then in terms of me, I've really got three focuses in my life, and first and foremost, it's family, and an extension of that being friends. So friends and family. The second one is my health and fitness, and then the third one is business and investment. I put them in the same category because my businesses, my online businesses fuel my investments. So the money that I make online is directed into investments, which then give me back a lot of passive income. 

 

I've spoken about that in previous episodes I've done where we speak about the wealth trilogy. And if you want to check those out, you can see them on The Growth Booth episodes number 21, 22, and 23. This is where we talk about wealth building and different ways that I've done that through property and stock market and other different bits and pieces. But there are three things for me, and if it doesn't, if there's something that comes up and it doesn't really fit in that category, then I just say no to it. So I had an example of this, I had a friend of a friend visiting Buenos Aires, and they reached out and they said, “Oh, you know, I'd love to catch up and I would have loved to have caught up as well,” but I have so many family commitments and commitments with my friends, not to mention health and fitness and my businesses, that I just have to say no. You can't be everything to everyone. 

 

And another thing sort of building on knowing when enough is enough, knowing when to say no. I think oftentimes with finances you hit a point beyond which having more money doesn't make you happier. And I've read studies about this. It's definitely different for different people depending on where you are in the world. I've seen people hustle themselves into a state where they are just not happy. They've to grind themselves away for a little bit more money and a little bit more money and a little bit more money, but they would have been so much happier just saying, “I'm comfortable like this. Enough is enough, and I'm going to focus on not being that guy that is completely skewed towards one end of the spectrum or the other.” So I think knowing when enough is enough. 

 

And also, I think by design, trying to invest your time in systems that are scalable or building teams around something, because at that point you can disappear for weeks or months and come back and your business is even bigger. And when you're able to do that, I think that's the real acid test for your systems and your business. If you disappeared for six months, when you come back, would it be in a better state than it is now? And if the answer is yes, then you've probably cracked the code. If it's no, then you need to think about what can you do to get to a point where that can happen. 

 

In terms of businesses, I think when anyone hears your name or finds you online, one of the things that occurs is they hear about this concept called e-farming. I'm keen to get the 10,000-foot overview around what e-farming is all about, why it's an interesting business model, and also to get you back on another episode at some stage to really dive down deep into it some more. So could you share a little bit with our audience here today? 

 

Igor Kheifets

Yeah, absolutely. So you want to think of the concept of e-farming as a concept of planting seeds in the garden and those gardens growing into trees to give you fruit. And the reason you want to think about it this way is that it's a very leveraged way to make money. I'll give you an example. The size of your income can largely be dependent with e-farming on the size of your e-farm. And what's really interesting is that back, let's say back in 2016, my e-farm was one size. Back in, say, 2019, it grew a little bit. So what's really interesting is that between those three years, I tripled my income. However, I did not work three times the hours, and I did not work three times more intensely during those hours. 

 

What happened was my e-farm grew. That was the only thing. What's interesting is that the e-farm, at least using my system, the e-farm grows automatically. In other words, you set up systems to grow the e-farm rather than trying to grow that e-farm yourself. What ends up happening is you build this big asset over time, so it starts small, and then you grow it, grow it, grow, grow it. This asset continues to produce income for you year after year while you continue to maintain it, nurture it, water it, watch the soil, etc. That's your job as an e-farmer. But the beauty of it is that it takes only a handful of hours each week to do.

 

So, once you've done the work upfront and you set up your garden, your e-farm, that's when you switch to operating it or maintaining it and continuously, gradually growing it, which again, happens automatically without you having to actually go and try to force it by hand. So the concept of e-farming was really life-changing for me because if you really think about it, it's a classic example of switching from working or trading hours for dollars to actually recognizing that you can build a system that produces income for you. So you almost want to think about it like owning a real estate property, because the real estate property that pays you cash flow, that pays you to rent, where you've got tenants, for example, and it pays you to rent, right? If it covers your mortgage and all the interest rates, etc., it becomes an asset that continues to produce month after month. 

 

Now, the only difference between an e-farm and a real estate unit is that, first off, you start growing it. You build it, you don't just buy it, okay? But that's also an advantage because you can start with very little next to nothing and continuously grow it. But there's also no limit to how big you can scale it. So, in other words, the real estate unit is limited by the square footage, by the area where it's located, or whatever. Your e-farm can continuously grow and grow and grow. Sure, sometimes it'll grow a little bit, and sometimes it'll grow much faster. But the point being is that there is this potential to continue to grow it and grow it and grow it and to continue to cash out virtually every day. That's not a concept. 

 

Another thing about e-farm I really love is, with a real estate unit, you cash out once a month, and the market conditions or regulation limits you. For example, here in Canada, where I live right now, it's regulated. You can't just raise your rent. The government won't allow you to. So you're limited, but with e-farm, you can cash out every day and the limit is only where you set it, which means if you want to make more money, you grow your e-farm further and you continue to optimize it so it can continue to pay you dividends. 

 

Aidan

I love this idea of planting a seed, speaking metaphorically here, and being able to harvest it over and over again. You mentioned your background growing up. So my mum was a teacher, is still a teacher, and my dad was a farmer, and in fact, they still live on the family farm back in New Zealand. This whole idea of being able to plant a seed, to watch it grow, to nurture it, and then be able to harvest it and then do it all over again has always kind of resonated with me from an investment standpoint, but also from a business standpoint. Regarding the way you do e-farming, is it something that is more specifically related to e-commerce, affiliate marketing, and building an audience? All of the above? Are there any more specifics that you could give us around sort of, I guess, the business model? I've learned a little bit about the philosophy and the idea about you've got this thing leveraging and it's working for you and it's growing on autopilot. What about the specifics, if you like, of what it's all about? 

 

Igor Kheifets

Yes, absolutely. The story keeps things kind of blind because first I want to make sure people understand why it's so fascinating before I start revealing what it is, because a lot of times if I just straight out say it, they simply don't believe it can be that lucrative. But here's the deal with e-farming… 

 

Aidan

I should add it here as well – sorry to interrupt you – is that I know that there's a lot more that we can discuss, so let's sort of promise one another that we'll get on another call or something like that, where we can dive into it with more detail. Maybe we could even do a Zoom call or something so we can see more about what you're doing because I don't want any of the power of this just to be lost in the podcast if that makes sense. 

 

Igor Kheifets

Yeah, absolutely. But let me share one thing that I think will be really beneficial, to give people a more concrete idea of what we're talking about here. So e-farming is first off, I had to say this, I didn't, but it has nothing to do with actual farming. So you don't need to go and have a plow and have a horse and a tractor, nothing like that. It's also not yield farming, which means it has nothing to do with cryptocurrencies or anything like that. 

 

Now, e-farming, the E in e-farming stands for email. And why email? Why are we farming emails? What is that even? Are we spamming people? No, what we're doing is we're building what I call email farms because, and I don't think many people know this, but you notice you've felt it for yourself too, you've seen the impact of this because the email or email addresses are probably one of the most profitable assets you can own and have in an online business, or in any business for that matter. Because email as a media is to this day, by the way, with all the TikToks and all the social networks and everything, it's still the most profitable way to communicate with people, with offers and products and services. This means anyone who owns an email farm gets to make a lot of money. To give an example, a mediocre email farm will probably produce about $0.50, maybe thirty-five cents per email address, okay? Per month. This means if you've got a really bad e-farm that's the size of 1000, then you're still making $350 a month. But on a good e-farm, an e-farm like, for example, an e-farm like Aidan runs, you're looking at a double-digit dollar value per email subscriber per month. This means a 1000 email farm can actually produce an income of a good several thousand dollars every single month in a leveraged way where you don't have to toil and break your back every single time to earn that money. In fact, a good e-farmer, and I'm not exaggerating this, a good e-farmer produces more in a day than many people who work average jobs make in a month of working eight-hour days. And really, really grinding it out. That's the power of owning an e-farm. It gives you tremendous leverage and of course, lifestyle and freedom. 

 

Aidan

Yeah, the one thing that I've noticed over the past 17 years is the value of emails. Having an email subscriber that you've built a relationship with has never, ever dropped. In fact, it hasn't got lower. It's even increased. I think with all the hot air that's out there these days and with all the social media platforms, people often think that they need to be on TikTok with a huge audience, or they need to be on Instagram with a huge audience. But I can tell you from personal experience that I would much rather have 1000 email subscribers than 10,000 or 20,000 Instagram followers. They're just like apples and oranges. They're completely different. The way that you can communicate in the way that you can monetize is completely different, and the way that you can provide value is also completely different. 

 

The other thing about email is that you can leverage it in so many different ways. I mean, we've got a huge e-commerce business, and believe it or not, it's a physical product business. But what is one of the key ingredients and the key tools that allows us to monetize email? The exact same thing is true in the way that we build our affiliate websites and our CPA websites, and the exact same thing is true in our software businesses. Every single one of our businesses seems to have this one ingredient in common. 

 

So, Igor, I really look forward to diving into this more with you and learning exactly what you do. We'll get something scheduled here and we'll be able to come back and discuss this in much more detail. In the meantime, though, we will get this episode published over at The Growth Booth, episode number 59. We'll put links there as well to where people can get your book, which is again at igorsbook.com, and transcripts and all the other good stuff. 

 

Igor, I'm conscious of time here. Thank you for being here with us today. I know that you would have whet a lot of appetites here by talking about e-farming and we'll come back to it. But also, it's been fascinating to learn about how you juggle your businesses and your life with family and everything else. So thanks for being here. 

 

Igor Kheifets

My pleasure, man. Thanks for hosting me. 

 

Aidan

All right, guys, that's a wrap for episode number 59. Head over to TheGrowthBooth.com, and navigate to episode number 59. Remember to follow along wherever you listen to this podcast, be it on Spotify, be it on Apple Music, be it on YouTube, or of course on TheGrowthBooth.com. 

 

I will see you on the next episode of The Growth Booth, and I am going to get Igor back in the very near future to talk more about exactly what he's doing, which is so lucrative right now with email. So that's a wrap. We'll see you in the next episode.