Johannes is a serial entrepreneur who has created numerous online businesses that have exceeded one million euros in sales, WITHOUT being the face of his business AND while spending his time traveling with his family.
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(Literal) Text Transcription of the video : How Johannes works less while traveling with his family and having a successful online business ?
Olivier : All right, can you do the most sexy clap with this camera ever saw? Hello, my intelligent TRS! I hope you are doing well. I’m today with an amazing guest, Johannes. How are you?
Johannes : Hi, everybody! I’m good, I’m really good.
Olivier : So, Johannes, I want to interview you because you’re an amazing example of someone who not only is a good entrepreneur—an amazing entrepreneur—you know how to build companies from scratch and to make them reach at least seven figures, but also without killing yourself, without working 70 hours a week. You have an amazing lifestyle, you travel a lot, you have kids, and you don’t work so much. So it’s very impressive. Can you share, like, in summary, what you’ve achieved so far in your entrepreneurial journey?
Johannes : It’s a very open question. So, I started working online 12 years ago when my daughter was born. I was working as a consultant and flying back and forth every week through different countries, and I came to a point where I just had a realization that I didn’t want to be a weekend dad. I wanted to be available for my daughter, for my family, and I wanted to have a business that would allow me to maintain my lifestyle because I was making decent money as a consultant, but I wanted a lot of flexibility and a lot of time. I did quite a lot of research and then found the information product world and started my first product back then, 12 years ago, which was a speed reading course in the Spanish-speaking market. We took that to seven figures, and then we launched a memory training course with the world memory champion, which was also instantly successful.
That’s the first time I started doing launches. I got to know Jeff Walker and the whole launch world. And yeah, since then, I have built seven or eight—I think I said eight before, but I looked at it; I think it’s seven—seven different seven-figure businesses, information marketing businesses in different countries and different niches, from how to speak English for Spanish speakers to how to reinvest in real estate. I’m involved in a project in Germany where I’m mentoring and coaching, which is an AI training that is growing very quickly as well. I’m currently working on a business in South America where we teach people to work remotely and generate an income in US dollars while remaining in Latin America. That’s also at multiple seven figures now. So yeah, I’ve been doing a few of these information-based businesses pretty consistently.
Olivier : The results you get?
Johannes : Yes, I think it’s—once you have figured out the system, you can replicate it in other areas and other niches. What’s probably different as well from what I do to what most people do in our world, in our market, is that I’m not usually the face of the business. I partner with other people that are experts in certain areas and help them to create a business around their expertise, so that allows me to focus on the business and the marketing part 100% and not having to do the content, which is probably one of the reasons that has allowed me to work in many different markets and verticals because it’s not me. Otherwise, I would have had to reinvent myself, yeah, seven or eight times in all these different markets.
Olivier : So for every one of these businesses, you were not the face of the business, correct? You didn’t create the content, correct? You were like the COO and the head of marketing, basically?
Johannes : Yeah, I think probably the best way to explain it is like an editorial company, but instead of publishing books, I help people to publish and market online courses. And yeah, that’s probably the best way to describe it.
Olivier : So it’s a very interesting way of being an entrepreneur because, as you said, you can just replicate your skills to any industry with the economic potential.
Johannes : Yes, I don’t know if to any, but I have tried a lot of different ones, and it has always worked so far. I mean, I did way more. If I said I took seven niches or seven businesses to seven figures, I did a lot more than seven projects. These are the seven that really worked. I’ve probably done at least another 14, and half of them we got to six figures or multiple six figures, and then another seven, maybe another third, just didn’t really work out. A lot of times, the ones that didn’t work out were more relationship problems with the experts. They didn’t really understand the business model, or the working together didn’t work out in a way that didn’t make sense for me. It’s important.
One of the most important reasons I have my own business is I want to choose the people I work with. I want to choose the people I spend my time with, and if I see that something’s not working and the energy is not right and it’s not fun to work with the person, I would just kill the project because I know I can do another one that’s more fun or where there’s a better underlying relationship with the person I work together with.
Olivier : Yeah, so it’s very interesting. It’s like you have this goal of having an amazing lifestyle, and you don’t let your companies get in the way.
Johannes : Exactly. I think for me, when I started my business—as I said earlier—that was my reason, right? My reason to start an online business is because I wanted a certain lifestyle, which for me involves family. I just had another baby, so being with my family but also traveling—I love traveling. I travel to anywhere between five and 15 countries every year, and most of the travels I do with my family. That’s the reason I started my business.
I think people sometimes get caught up in the idea they start a business because they see the lifestyle that’s possible, but then they get caught up in the nitty-gritty of the working, and they get really busy, and then they end up having less time for themselves than maybe before they were an entrepreneur. I think that’s one of the most important things to remind ourselves of again and again: like why are we in this game? Why did we start an online business? How do we want our life to be? And how can we create a business or businesses that support that lifestyle we want for us?
Olivier : Yeah, and I mean, I’m curious about how you started too because how did you manage to learn all these skills you apply now in these new businesses? So for your first business, you said it was a business to memorize more efficiently, right?
But so how did you learn marketing and all the skills you needed to build and grow a business from scratch?
Johannes : I just learned. I did my own almost MBA at home. I bought courses, I bought books, I just spent time studying, learning things from people. Back then, it was mainly people here from the US—we’re in the US together right now. It’s still a market that’s further along in certain areas, but right now in Europe, there are more people that actually have the skills to teach this kind of online marketing as well. I think going to events is something really important—meeting people in person, making friendships—so you have a network of people you can talk to. Maybe even joining a mastermind where you can go deeper, and you build real connections and friendships because whenever you are stuck with something, then you can just pick up the phone and call somebody else who is in a similar situation to you.
Also, finding affiliates to promote your things, finding people to work together—yeah, that’s one of the big things for me: going to events and meeting people in person and building real relationships because we’re already online behind the screen the whole day building our business, so that’s the best way to learn. Probably if you would ask me about that, it would be to meet people in person.
Olivier : Yeah, you know, it’s so amazing because, I mean, I have the same strategy as you. When I want to do something, I first learn by myself how to do it: like reading books, following courses, connecting with mentors, going to masterminds. And for us, it’s obvious, but for many people, it’s not. Like, I mean, for the majority of the population, if they hear that, they will be like, “What do you mean? You didn’t go to school for four years to get the diploma of how to become an entrepreneur?” and blah blah, you know?
Johannes : Yeah, that sadly doesn’t work. I wish the school system or the university system would actually teach you entrepreneurship in a practical way that actually helps you to build a business. I have not seen that. But I also think the thing with a more structured education many times is the people that teach something are full-time teachers, and I think you can only learn entrepreneurship from people that have actually built businesses themselves.
There are a lot of people that have built businesses that teach what they have learned and what they have done, so I think that’s one of the main criteria. If you want to choose somebody to learn from on how to build a business or especially also how to build a lifestyle business, you always need to find a mentor or a teacher that has done what you want to do. So if you want to build a lifestyle business, don’t learn from somebody who’s working 12 hours A day, seven days a week, because he tends to keep your marketing skills sharp, but he cannot teach you what you’re looking for.
So if you want to build a lifestyle business, go to Olivier. If you want to build—you know what I mean? So it’s about looking for the right mentors and investing in yourself, investing in buying a course as well, and really following through—sitting down and doing the work, which is not always easy when you’re at home alone by yourself. That’s why the network of actually meeting people is so important as well.
Olivier: Yeah, and um, why didn’t you want to like start your own company by yourself instead of, you know, finding a partner?
Johannes : Because, to be very honest, I just don’t like—this is like a really big exception that we’re doing an interview and you post it on YouTube. And I’m like, I’m a very private person. Usually, I do sometimes go to events and speak, but there’s none—you don’t find me online. I don’t have social media; like, I don’t have an Instagram account, I don’t have a Facebook account, I have a Twitter account, which I don’t use, or an X account, which I don’t use, but that’s it. So I just don’t want—I just figured out at some point that’s not something I want to do. And that goes back maybe to the initial thing of I think it’s so essential before you start your business to really think, “What do I want from my life? How do I want my life to be?” And in my case, which is different from your case, I just decided I don’t want to be a public person.
I don’t want to do videos; I don’t want to share my life on social media. So I found other people who are willing to do that. I think there’s this concept called “unique ability” from Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach. I know you know, and I am as well. Unique ability is like the intersection of something you do really well and you enjoy doing at the same time. I think it’s important to find what is your unique ability for each of us—what is my unique ability? What do I enjoy doing, and what am I good at at the same time, or learn to be good at—and then focus on that and try to find people, a team, collaborators around you to do the other parts, because they might enjoy what you’re not enjoying. And I guess that’s probably the—was a little bit of a long answer, but that’s probably the best way I can explain this.
Olivier : Great! This is really a good example of, you know, just finding a way that works for you, because many people, for example, are blocked at this stage. They are learning marketing; they are learning how to be a good entrepreneur, but like you said, they either don’t want to be the face of the business or they don’t have really an idea of what to teach, of what to do, and then they are stuck there. But it’s kind of easy to overcome this by using your strategy, which is to basically find a partner who is willing to be the face of the business, who already has a business, already has an idea.
Johannes : Exactly! But who doesn’t want to learn the whole marketing stuff. Right, so it’s a perfect synergy.
Olivier: Okay, it’s a really good strategy you can try if you really want to have a business in service of your life; you’re willing to do the work to learn the skills, but you don’t know—you don’t have any idea, or you really don’t want to be the face of the business. Use Johannes’ strategy. The world is full of entrepreneurs doing so—sometimes doing great offline, but they don’t have any online strategy, and it can be amazing to help them digitize their…
Johannes: Exactly that! So there’s different ways, right? You can start. I had businesses where I started from scratch, where somebody literally did not have any following on social media. They just had something valuable to teach to the world, and I helped them to build everything from scratch. But I also worked with people who already had a level of authority and audience, and then it’s obviously very quick.
Like, for example, what I told you about my second business, the memory training business—he was a world champion in memory training, so he already had a lot of credibility. He was on TV a lot, so it was relatively easy to position him and to say, “Hey, do you want to learn memory training from the world champion?” Because until then, he had only done offline training, and there was nothing online where you could learn from him. Right, so there’s so many opportunities at so many different levels to do that.
Olivier : Yeah, and I mean, the world is full of experts that are really good at what they are doing, but they don’t know how to sell themselves. Like, millions of people—it’s just ridiculous. And sometimes they have a good following on social media, but they don’t know how to monetize it.
Johannes : And then learning the skills—the marketing skills—and then help them to monetize their list, that’s a very shortcut to making quite a lot of money quickly, actually, because they already have an audience. They have a warm audience that follows them; they trust, but they don’t know how to market a course to them. So if you fill that void, you can make considerable money very quickly.
Olivier : So what would be the most important skills that people need to learn to be able to do what you do—like build or grow businesses, like regularly to six figures or even seven?
Johannes : I mean, first it’s like learn the craft yourself. You need to learn marketing; you need to understand funnels; you need to understand copywriting; you need to understand traffic to a certain extent. So first, you need to learn the basic online marketing skills yourself. But then, in order to scale, you need to start building a team. There’s no other way. So the next step—you can just by yourself or maybe with one assistant, you can get to multiple six figures or maybe even low seven figures.
I think you can make a million a year in sales just by yourself, but you’re going to be working a lot. So if you want to build and scale your businesses and have a certain lifestyle, you need to start building a team. You need to either train other people around you with the skills you have learned, which is a little bit of a longer way but it’s a cheaper version because you take people that will not request a very high salary from the beginning.
Or you collaborate with other people who already are at the high level of the game—they know what they’re doing. If you don’t have the money to pay them initially, you can maybe get an agreement where you share percentages of the company with other people. So you find somebody who’s, for example, really good at buying ads on Facebook, and you partner with that person. You say, “Okay, so you get a certain percentage; I get a certain percentage. Let’s work together on this.” Then you don’t have to learn how to buy ads at scale on Facebook because you involve somebody that already knows how to do that.
And then we come back to the importance of life events, in-person face time with people, because that’s where you meet and start establishing a network of these kinds of people. It’s very, very difficult to do that if you always stay behind the screen online.
Olivier: So you have many skills. You know how to build and grow a business from scratch; you know how to monetize a list, an existing audience efficiently; you know how to do that while keeping your lifestyle and enjoying life.
So I have a question for you guys—okay, you guys who are going to the event: what topic would you want Johannes to talk about? So like, for example, what could you talk about at the event?
Johannes : I could talk—I mean, I could talk about the general business model to say how to build an online business without being the face, right? That could be one thing. To go deeper and to explain like which pieces need to be put in place, etc. I could talk about, I think, the topic we were just discussing—building a team and starting to scale. I think there are two essential things to that. So I could talk about how it is a lot easier if you create what I call a mission-driven business. If there’s a mission behind the business, like the business I mentioned earlier where we teach people in Latin America to work remotely, because it really changes the life for a lot of people. It’s literally the alternative of migrating illegally to the U.S. and working as a cleaner or as a construction worker. They can now just work from home online for a company in the U.S. in customer service, for example, and get an income in dollars. So there’s a big mission behind that—to change Latin America, to make the world a little bit fairer, etc., etc. So to have a clear mission and then find the team of people who really support that mission and believe in that mission makes a lot of things easier and helps you grow a lot quicker.
That’s one thing. And then the other thing is—it’s another concept from Dan Sullivan—what he calls a self-managing business, which is really important for you to keep your lifestyle. So how do you work together with a team in a way you don’t have to micromanage and review every step and everything they’re doing? Because then you cannot have the lifestyle. How can you create a team that works in an autonomous way, in a way that you could just say, “I’m not going to be online for the next month,” and you could do that anytime without that affecting your business, even in the middle of a launch, right? That’s like the end goal. And I do think I also learned a few things over the last 12 years on how to do that.
So yeah, we could start from the basics of how to set up a business where you’re not the face, or we could go all the way toward saying how to build a seven-figure business while maintaining lifestyle, leveraging a team, and what’s the kind of things Ido there to do that. I think this would maybe be depending on where the audience is at now and if they’re like starting out, or people that would like to scale from where they are, or people that would like to delegate more things to a team to get more of their lifestyle back again
Olivier : How to build a business to seven figures while keeping your lifestyle ?
Johannes : Yeah. And so—or how to create a mission-driven business, which is part of that—and how to create a self-managing business could be an interesting thing as well. Where a team runs the business for you.
Olivier: For you, yeah.Okay, very interesting! And I mean, there will be a bit of everything in each presentation; the focus will be different.
Johannes: Yes, right.
Olivier: Okay, so please tell us in the comments what focus you would prefer. Do you want Johannes to talk mostly about how you can build from scratch a business that goes to seven figures, or more, without killing yourself in the process? Do you want Johannes to focus more on how to build a business aligned with your values so you really love your business and the impact it has on the world? Or would you prefer that Johannes focus on having a team—how to build a team that manages the business for you? So tell us in the comments.
Johannes : Anything else as well you would like to talk about. And based on this interview, I’m going to be around—I’m going to be hanging out for the days of the event. So even though if I speak on one topic and there’s another topic or anything I’ve been talking about that we didn’t cover, you can just walk up to me in the hallway, find me, talk to me—I’m going to be around to answer any questions you might have.
Olivier : Thank you, Johannes. It was good to have a little glimpse of your amazingness and everything you’ve achieved and what you will share at the event. So thank you, guys, for watching this short interview with Johannes. As usual, I’m asking you to choose one thing—one thing that you will apply in your life or in your business, or on both, and do it! Okay? When you do that after watching a video, it means it was not only general knowledge, but a skill that you acquired by watching us. So please choose one action to do and do it. Thank you very much. Thank you, Johannes, and see you soon!
Johannes: See you soon!
