200+ deals by Website Flipping Legend: Mushfiq Sarker (#285)

I had a great chat with Mushfiq.  We talked about his flips, what his business looks like today, and what he sees for the future.
We compare flipping websites to real estate and talk about some of the big brands that he likes to bash publicly online via Twitter (he looks out for us smaller website owners).
In 2023, I plan to connect with at least 25 different folks in my industry and meet them for a virtual online business coffee chat.
Who should I connect with next???

Want 100 Money-Making Ideas?  Get them here: 
https://www.brooksconkle.com/100ideas

Transcript

Mushfiq: 0:00

My first product generated a$100,000 in the first year. So I was like, okay. There's something here

Brooks: 0:06

I just got done with a chat with Mufi Sarker. This guy's a veteran in the space. You're gonna enjoy our talk. He flipped over 200 websites. He basically has a private equity firm that buys and sells sites. So if you're interested in the online space at all, this is an interesting chat. Enjoy MUFI, you doing all right today? I'm good. How are you? Yeah, we're live, man. Good. So I've run across you online for probably a few years now. Like we just crossed paths. I am in a, Facebook group that you run. What's the name of that group? The website?

Mushfiq: 0:42

Flip Club, I

Brooks: 0:43

believe. Website. The website Flip Club. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm in that Facebook group. I think I, I, I heard you on the Niche Pursuits podcast is where I think I originally heard you. Really, really cool podcast to me because it's just people that are in the same space, right. Doing the, doing the same thing. Right. Right. And so I think that's super cool.

Mushfiq: 1:01

That's awesome. That was, that was 2019 my first podcast appearance. And that's when I launched one of my products with Spencer, you know, wanted to do talk and then cover what the product was about and do it. Review of his site on the yard.com. Back, yeah. Yeah. Before he owned it and he sold it. Sorry. So, yeah. No, Spencer's great. I love that podcast. I listened to that podcast since 2010. So honestly, that's one of the first, I think,

Brooks: 1:29

Got it, got it. Yeah, I, I've heard the episode, so that must be the one where I, where I learned your name and I was like, oh man. Cool. This guy knows who he is doing. Yeah. And that's one of your, that's one of your products, right? Easy wins. Like you still, you still sell that product, right? Easywins.io

Mushfiq: 1:41

Easywins.io yep. It's. It still sells. It's still, I keep it up to date. And, you know, somehow people like it. I, I dude. It, it is that, so that's such a brilliant product. I have a friend that's bought it. I haven't purchased it, but isn't it like a, it's like an active, basically like a giant air table up to. On a spreadsheet. It seems simple, right? But It's the knowledge that people are paying for, right? Because you're adding to it. You keep it up to date, and if something changes, you can go in there and live, change it. Man, like for me as a, as a fellow online entrepreneur, I'm like, man, that's a brilliant product. Yeah. And it's totally worth paying for, right? You can pay for someone's knowledge, like in. Right. In an instant, like table like format. Yeah. The way, the way I was, cause I can do consulting, I do, right? And I can do a live tear down or a report, which I still do. Customized report. It's, it runs about$500,$600 per site, or, you know, it really, it's. I am Customizing my easy wins air table to your site so you can just get access to all of it, 120 or so and keep it for life and train your VAs or your team to essentially just like a checklist. Just go through that. After you make an acquisition or you build a site and you wanna monetize it, just go through that. Apply the top ones that make sense. Definitely a guaranteed you will have an increase in revenue or your money back

Brooks: 3:04

Yeah, no, I love it, man. No, I mean, that makes sense. Like someone could pay you and you can do it. Yeah. Yeah. Or you're like, Hey, look, just buy this product and you go through it and then have your people go through it and Yeah. Nah, that, that makes, that makes total sense, man. Yeah. How so? Okay. When I, I remember, I remember commenting on something on Facebook few years ago, and I think you were, I feel like you were in engineer. And live in the Chicago area, is that Yeah,

Mushfiq: 3:26

I'm still in Chicago. Suburb, not in engineering anymore. Like no day, no day job. This is what I do. I

Brooks: 3:32

remember, you remember you, I, I remember you posting about that, maybe you were saying that, like you stopped that full-time job, but at the time that was like a, that was a, I guess a couple years ago or a year ago or something. You were blo, you were doing more, I feel like, with websites than most people I know that do it full-time. And you were working engineering and like blowing and going with websites,

Mushfiq: 3:52

right? Yeah, yeah. It was. I mean, since 2008, I've been part-time buying, selling sites, growing them. Okay? 2019 is when I launched my newsletter on all the sub one or two products in the Facebook groups, and just getting active. More people used to kind of know me in the background, my name from 2008 to whenever, but I was never public. So 2019 I started on ck, did all that, and then 2020 I left my job. Permanently career, switch of career, essentially. Yeah. And since then it's been, it's been great.

Brooks: 4:27

Well, I mean, based on what you're doing, man, you're basically like a, I mean, yeah, you can't, you can't have a job doing what you're doing. You're basically like a private equity company now, man. You are. I mean, you, you are right. You're essentially growing and, and I, I wanna talk about that with you cuz I've kind of watched what you're, you know, just, just being affiliated in the groups and stuff. I'm like, man, I'm seeing you launch this new stuff. And I'm like, this is a cool trajectory, what you're doing in your business. But let me ask this. Did you have any plans for this? Like at all when you started, was there any grand master plan or are you like evolving as a business owner over time?

Mushfiq: 4:58

No, it was always evolving. Right? Yeah, it's always mindset changes, you know? It's always the same formula that I like to apply. Mm-hmm. It's just that it might be, Little changes on how I go about it, but I never had the vision that, okay, you know, this is gonna work out like this. Actually in 2019, you know, it launched, it took off pretty quickly. I mean, my subscriber growth, My first product really generated easy win, generated a$100,000 in the first year. So I was like, okay. There's something here. Yeah. And I didn't like my day job. I worked okay. You know, engineering, I mean, I have a PhD, so it's kind of hard to leave your career when you spent so much time studying. I mean, I was studying until 26, right? Yep. I'm, I'm 33 now, so, You spend a lot of time on that and it's just oh man. If it was just a bachelor's degree, which most people have in our industry, at a bare minimum you can leave it. But you do a Master's and a PhD, it's oh. Yeah. You put your, dedicated to your life. And so it took me a while to figure out, okay, I don't like what I do. I like this website though, which I've been doing. I have a, I, you could probably say I have a PhD in business growth because I did that Yeah, since 2008 and I started my PhD in 2012. So, I have, I have dual PhDs. And if you really, if there is no degree for what we do, but exactly. Speaking based on that number of hours, you know, if you be an expert, you have to put what, 10,000 hours that's like the same. Exactly. I'd probably put 30,000 hours Yeah.

Brooks: 6:35

Was see was. and that, that is what amazes me about everyone's story in this, like in this arena. And every, and that's why, and that's why for me, Like in 2023, I'm like, I wanna connect with at least 25 other people and just record conversations because it's so interesting to me because there's some common thread that we all have because none of us, none of us went to school for this. What we're, what we're kind of doing now, right? It's, as far as I know, not one person had a background in this and said, cool, this is my training. Everyone is at some point, found this industry along the way and they're like, oh, this is cool. Yeah, let me, let me do this. Let me, I guess, try get started, whatever. And then has grown into something, whether it's like a number of websites or like you like. Flipping a ton of websites and then creating a well, shoot, I mean, I mean actually let's talk about it. So for, for you it's flipping a bunch of websites. Yeah. Then I feel like you started creating, you created a product like, oh, cool. Well, here, here, here's what I do. Yeah. And other people are, are, are buying it. And then you have what is the deal? Deal feed. Is it deal feed that I owe where you're basically like aggregating site center for sale?

Mushfiq: 7:37

Yeah. I mean, to your point, You know, I don't wanna, I don't wanna talk too much about my product. Let's just talk about

Brooks: 7:42

Well, but, but No, but, but, but here's the thing. It's not, it's not pitch, it's not pitching your products, but to, to me but to me, this is shop because for me, as a business owner, this is, this is what I, I, this is what I plan to do, right? I intend to put out more educational products. I intend to evolve my business. And, and so to me, and probably others, this is, you know, it kind of is shop just kind of talking about what, what you're doing or what you've done. Yeah,

Mushfiq: 8:04

no worries. No worries. So, yeah, I, I think on the first point, you know, none of us ever came from background and growing sites. But it's those technical skills that we've developed. Some people have a business background, some people have economics. Some people, a lot of people I know have an engineering background, and with me it was always the. The ability to do research, the ability to dig deep, the ability to really study something, and that's why I'm, I enjoy buying businesses because due diligence, that is really my expertise. I, somebody can put a business for sale up. I can really break it down into why this will work or why this won't work, or the red flags or anything. And that's what has actually helped the Website Flip grow, because initially weekly I would put on a newsletter breaking down why this is a good thing, the red flags, what is it really worth. is there any red flags here that, oh, the seller isn't disclosing that. It does take him. He's, every seller says, oh, it takes me three hours a week. Right. It's really 20 hours a week for sure. And why is that? Right? There's a lot of things. And so that's really what propelled the growth. So I think there's a transfer of skills you know, one skill that I am building now. Growing and I realize that I can't do everything by myself is team building partnerships hiring people. It's something that as a back, my background as a solo in our industry, it's called, you know, independent developer, independent consultant. You just work on your own as a. As a PhD or a researcher, you don't work with people. You don't have anyone under you and you don't really have anyone above. You just do your thing. And once you have something, it turns into a product or a business that I don't even follow through. That was like my role in, in startups or in, in my research community. So it's a very independent day, and now I'm coming into this world where I realize, You know, I can stay as is like this, making whatever I'm making. And, and it's a good life. But, you know, I want, I want to do more. And so I need to do partnerships. I need to structure deals. I need to hire the right people, fire people fast. It's, it's so much harder.

Brooks: 10:07

there's a, yeah, man, there's a lot. What, what has been, okay, let, let me actually find. Hold on. Let me, let me grab these notes cuz this is kind of interesting. I, I apparently, I apparently in Trello, I made some notes from something you said and I guess maybe on a podcast, hold on. Lemme try to pull it up. See? So it looks like I edited this February 19th, 2022. So, so that's like a year ago. I don't know if that was on the podcast, but this is basically notes from you about building a team. So basically said anytime I've got five active sites I'm working on, I'm an escrow now to sell a site for 175K. I just bought one for 33K. I'm always replenishing. So, so that was you, I guess, like a year ago kind of how you were working? Yep. Yep. and you, and you said, my team consisted the following. You're like me. You were saying you're like basically strategists, acquisitions, operations. Yes. A growth specialist whose job was to implement different strategies, landing pages, testing. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. and SEO specialists who helps you do keyword research audits, internal linking. Mm-hmm. VAs for formatting posts, adding images. Mm-hmm. And then writers, like various freelance specialists. Right. And then I have this note of six website operators. If I decide to keep this, keep a site in my portfolio, I source and hire a dedicated operator. Yeah. How different do you look today from like looking back at that, that's a year ago? Like what, what does your structure look, structure look like today compared to that? Yeah,

Mushfiq: 11:22

very similar. Okay. The only difference is that I have transitioned from paying people by the job or the hour to salary. Now I have enough cash flow. Enough assets where I can just hire people with whatever they need to survive. And then also give people equity in their ownership, right? In whatever I'm working on. Or even if I'm not giving equity kind of a bonus structure where they feel good for example the website flip now. It, it's a, it's a machine, right? There's a weekly newsletter. We have to source deals. I look at them, my team looks at them. We pick maybe we look at 10. We pick one or two that look good. We look at age domains. We look at GoDaddy auctions for age domains. I mean, there's, it's, it's, there's four people behind the scenes and I'm the face of it, right? Yeah. all through 20 21, 20 22. I used to do that. I used to do that and all of it. Now, you know, realizing that I need to hire people. And, but with the quality in mind. So I haven't just hired random virtual assistants and just trained them up because this is not something you just can be trained with SOPs. Now this is some, there's some expertise involved. Yeah. So what I do, I, I went and hired people at my competitors and competitors saying not direct competitors, cuz there isn't a direct competitor. But I went to the brokerages and hired their investment or their due diligence experts. So I hired. Head of due diligence at Investors Club. Now he works full-time for me. So that person has looks at hundreds of deals a month. So it's a perfect position for him to do it on an unbiased basis because, you know, when you're a brokerage, you are representing a seller. So there is some, you know, biasness just naturally, it's not like any broker wants to do that, but there is. But with me, I'm an in. You know, industry independent, right? I don't care which brokerage. I will call any brokerage out if they're doing bad practices or whatever. Anybody who's doing bad practices. And so now he enjoys working with me, right? Sim simultaneously I like the way I kind of structured it with him is I g I gave him a salary that he needs to survive or, you know, whatever he was getting paid before, a little bit higher than that. And then also said, okay, you're getting yearly bonuses, right? If I do well, you do well, right? And so, And that, that's our structure. I'm not really giving equity. I am starting to give equity. It's just I don't want to give equity in my holding company. The website flip cuz there's a lot of things involved, but individual things I'm working on, I'm happy to figure out a operator for that who does the day-today, whereas I just work on the strategy and growth.

Brooks: 13:58

I've seen you post about kind of, Like equity or bonus structure and stuff, which is kind of like, I feel is not very typical in our industry, but I, I, I think it's really smart to do. And honestly, like for me, like my newest project that I launched that I, I think will take a long time to grow, but I think it'll be potentially could be one of our biggest, I I've told my whole team that I'm like, Hey, I'm gonna take a portion, a portion of the equity now. I'm not doing it in a, in a and I was gonna ask you this. Do you do it? An actual structure, like an actual equity in me, L L C. I'm not doing that with my people, but I'm basically verbally telling them, Hey, hey, hey, like a portion of proceeds, I'm gonna split this up amongst you guys and I don't know. I

Mushfiq: 14:33

can give some examples, I think that might help. Sure. So I bought a site, it was only about, it's eight,$10,000. It's in the real estate niche. I kind of buy things randomly. That's, that's something I need to fix.

Brooks: 14:45

If I, I know you're always trying to sell'em. You're always trying to sell stuff, man, because you buy'em. We can talk

Mushfiq: 14:50

about, I, I, I buy'em cuz I get off market deals and they might be at really good multiples and I don't really have the time to think about it. And, and I don't like to ask sellers, Hey, gimme a week to look into this. I, I think that's unfair cuz when I bought sell something, I hate it when somebody tells me. I'm gonna take my time or I'm not gonna respond. So anyways, I like to practice what I preach. Fair enough. And so I just make an offer. You know, if they accept, they accept it's usually a low, lower than a brokerage offer. Right. And I'm not gonna compete with them. Right. They can, anybody can make more money with the brokerages. I'm just here to give you a quick transaction. And so I get a lot of these very. Low, multiple quality sites usually. So I bought one in the real estate niche. Now, I also, I have real estate properties, so I thought, okay, this might make sense that I could start another newsletter or some, another website in this space doing similar what the website flip is doing, but for real estate deals turns out it's, you know, not after holding it for a month or two okay, I'm not really that interested in this. It's a lot of work. So I had one writer in my team. Very talented guy. He wrote for niche pursuits, he wrote for the website Flip. He's just a full-time writer and I offered him, Hey, I'll give you 30%. You handle all content production on this site. I will handle conversion optimization, figuring out monetization and all that. So he charges 10 cents a word. So I was, if I hired him, you know, and need the production, it could be multiple thousands of dollars a month of content and he was happy to just take, he knows my background. That helps. Right. Knowing that I know, I know, I know. I mean, when I get involved, we can grow something we can use seo, whatever tactics to grow something and an exit. Right. So he's happy to forego. Rates or money upfront for the future potential. So 30% on that deal, right? So that's one. Yep. And another one, and then maybe we can discuss just yesterday no, yesterday, maybe over the weekend. This is January late January now. So, Somebody messaged me on Twitter saying they have a a two site package in, in a, in a niche. And I said, okay, gimme the traffic numbers. Oh, it's getting good traffic. Last month got 50 k, now it has 85 k. I was like, okay, this is a great candidate. Cuz it's growing. And I told him, look, I'm not gonna pay the typical multiples, and he needed cash quickly. So this is something that's really worked for me. People who just need something quickly, maybe they want to transition, buy something else. This individual wanted to buy real estate, so he needed money. I bought it at 17 x multiple, which the going rates now is like 40 x 35, so a half, right? Yeah. Yep. Then you. I slept on it, we did the deal and I realized, okay, okay, I bought this as cheap, I can flip it right? But it's has a good TR growth trajectory. And the way this guy has managed it, you know, he's hired a lot of good writers, has a whole content production process kind of optimized. So I said, I'll give you 20%. you manage the whole thing for me. I don't, I am just here to give you advice. And then we will grow it for six to nine months, maybe 12 months, and then we'll, we'll sell it. And so he got his payout and he got it, his 20% equity. So he's, you know, hopefully this hasn't really materialized, but hopefully he's, he's happy. And so yeah, these are the things I kind of do now. Realizing. I can keep adding sites to my portfolio, but the website flip and all these other things take up 80% of my time. Yeah. And so I need to figure out ways to bring people on and usually it's the sellers they're willing to stay on. Most of the time it's just that they need a cash. Infusion for whatever they're doing, but they don't really want to exit the whole, they'll keep, they'll keep building sites, so might as well work on something they've been building up and then rely on me to get that growth and then we can have a higher exit than they would've done by themselves. Right.

Brooks: 18:34

Super smart man, like really smart strategic deals. So, and for you, you realize that hey, I only have so much bandwidth. Yeah, you could buy sites and put them through your regular process, but you only, you only have so much bandwidth. So for you to have a partner that can take part of that load, they already know, already knows what they're doing, right. They already have a process. It's so, it's so smart. And the other thing that's kinda interesting, I, I remember, I, I think it was an article or something, you posted something. You were comparing, this is me a couple years ago when I was just getting, kind of really going in, in, in, in building my brand or, or just starting to build my brand. It was an article comparing. Real estate to websites ba basically comparing websites to real estate. Yeah. And I read that and I was like, holy smoke. So it's so accurate. You know, buying, buying some bare bones of a website, you know, basically putting, putting energy and effort into it. And everything you just described is very real estate related Right. As well. So a seller coming to you. So I have a real estate license. I have a broker's license, and. Do real estate still. And so maybe it's just the way my brain works thinking actually about the, that industry, but it's, it's all related. So you doing a deal like that is very similar to a wholesale real estate investor. A seller needs to sell a property, they wanna sell it fast. They don't wanna go to the traditional route and listen with the real estate agent. So they come to someone that's got cash and they're like, Hey man, yeah, cool. I'm gonna buy it a discount, but I'll buy it. I'll do it really fast. It's a fast buyer. Yeah. And then that buyer can turn around and you can turn around and flip it. You can turn around and do a, a JV deal, you know, like a joint venture deal with someone. It's did, did you already have all of that knowledge? Did you get any of that knowledge from the real estate industry? Or

Mushfiq: 20:08

is it so no. When I did real estate, I didn't do partnerships, I think. Okay. Okay. I think it's very I can do a partnership in the website world with a handshake agreement and just gentleman's agreement and you know, just based on that. I have more to lose than Yep. Whoever I'm partnering with. So there's, yep. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna mess, screw somebody over. Right, exactly. But in real estate, you know, you gotta have all these agreements, LLCs, and banking. It's just, there's too much involved and, and the returns are, Not worth it, in my opinion today. But the structuring and all of this, I actually learned this from Jackie Chou who's active on Twitter. He has a podcast as well. So is that Indexy? Indexy, yeah. Indexy. Okay. Okay, cool. Yeah. Jackie good friends, we, we just talked. this kind of stuff. And he's the one who always offers since way before I did, whenever he buys size, just offers the seller manage it for me. Right. Yeah. I'll, I'll, I'll give you whatever. You know, He reduces the multiples. So if it's a 35 x, he gives okay, also give it to me for 27 x and I'll give you 20% equity. Right. And we manage the whole thing and the sellers. Happy to do that. So I learned that from him. So, no, I didn't, I didn't come up with any of these unique stuff, don't you?

Brooks: 21:20

I, I don't you feel like that reduces risk in the purchase as well? Because if that, if that seller alright, so, so I guess in my opinion, and, and I could be wrong, but if that seller was like, absolutely not, I'm absolutely not interested in that. Mm-hmm. I, I would actually raise my eyebrows a little bit more and be like, huh, maybe I should do even further due diligence or whatever. But I feel like if they're, if they're willing to do that you know, they're, they're comfortable with that. They're comfortable with the, the site itself and the process and all that. What are your thoughts there?

Mushfiq: 21:45

You are not wrong. Okay. But there's other, you know, other reasons. Yeah. I do due diligence regardless of Yeah. Except or not. Yeah. So, yeah, the thing. You know, some sellers just don't like the topic anymore. Yeah.

Brooks: 21:58

I have, that makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah.

Mushfiq: 22:00

They're like, it's not nefarious in any, always. Obviously they're, but in my due diligence, I would've caught any of the red flag before we even get to the discussion of equity.

Brooks: 22:09

Gotcha, gotcha. So maybe they're just burnt out and they're like, no man. I'm I'm done. If you don't mind, I'd rather just sell it to you. Yeah. And, and look and be outta here.

Mushfiq: 22:16

I preach. Buying and selling. So I don't even ask the seller why you're selling. You know, I might ask them just in, at a later stage, but, you know, everybody wants to cash up. I'm okay with that

Brooks: 22:27

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally makes sense. Man, so, so something you said earlier, I made, I made a note of this and it's actually something I was gonna bring up. I, I love it. You are not on, on, on Twitter. You will, you will. You will be, you will say exactly what you think about big brands like, like ATFs. You've been like, Hey man, this, this, this is down, this is this, this is trash. You gotta fix this. Ezoic, you'll call out Ezoic. I don't think you're a huge fan. And you've, you've had some conversations with. Brokerages too, about them not being, I guess being honest about who they're actually representing and what's your opinion is of that? I guess one I was gonna give you, give you props for that. I think it's pretty cool that you just kind of, you know, you just, you just tell it like it is. You're like, nah, man, this is what I think. Yeah. Probably need to

Mushfiq: 23:09

down a bit because I do go probably a little overboard and look, it's always, it's always that somebody has to, so before. you know, I'm not gonna say I'm that brand, but in the buying, selling space where you're transacting on a lot of money, right? This is not So, I, I purposely chose this kind of middle ground, which is there's a lot of people teaching people how to build sites. You have authority hackers, affiliate lab, you know, all these things. Beginners, right? The courses and human. income, whatever. Income income school. Income school, yeah. Yeah. Lot, right? I'm not competing with them. I, I honestly can't. They're, they have done a very good job. So I'm in the, in a factor of portfolios, right? You now kind of built a site up. You're selling, you sold one. Maybe now you want to keep doing this, and there's no, there was no education nor. Newsletter, anything for that middle ground. There's always at the other side, which is when you wanna sell, there's Empire Flippers Newsletter, which is great. You know, every, every brokerage has a newsletter, nothing in the middle. So I wanted to kind of get there. And then in the middle is where a lot of the money is. Right now you sold a site for 50 k. Now you wanna take that 50 k and buy a couple of sites. Now you're getting into portfolio building. You have to figure out your ad network that you really wanna partner with. There's a lot more money in the middle a lot more. And, and people's nets are kind of tied in that middle. And so I see myself as the unbiased. Person or brand who can call people out without any repercussion, but no one can do anything to me, right? I mean, I, I have my independent, I'm not tied to anybody. I'll call out a brokerage. I will off, I will promote a brokerage that I think is very good. I'll call out Zoic, I'll call out whoever in, in support that nobody else, because little guys can't do that because they're just starting their business up. If they piss off these, they'll cancel their account, let Right and. people who have portfolio of sites, right. If they say something against it, I mean, they're, their living is on tied to an ad network or an affiliate network. Yeah. So it's very hard for them to say anything. My living is not tied to any affiliate or ad network. Even if I like lose my account, which I have zero, I don't re generated revenue, I've kind of moved away. I don't care. It's okay. Right. So I, I, you know, I, I. Somebody needs to call these people out. Otherwise, a lot of scams can happen, or nefarious practices or weird structures that people do. You

Brooks: 25:32

are, you're like speaking out for the little guy. That's pretty that's pretty cool actually, when you think about that, that you're not, I mean, not that you're doing it for the little guy, but you don't have anything to lose like little guy might. So you're, you're, you're comfortable, you're comfortable with speaking.

Mushfiq: 25:45

Yeah. And, and, and it's fun.

Brooks: 25:47

the truth comes out the truth. Of course. It's fun. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not, of course. Yeah. And, and, and that for Zoic specifically, is that the, I feel like the, I feel like the CEO is pretty active on Twitter and he, he's, is is that the actual, the am, am I correct? I feel like he hops in conversations a lot. I know the marketing. I know the marketing CFO is, is pretty active from Ezoic, but I feel like the CEO or something like hops in there in some conversations too. Yeah, they're

Mushfiq: 26:10

very active. Yeah. I don't wanna really get into the ezoic situations. I'll keep that to social, but Yeah. Yeah, they're very active. very, I mean, look, I like Zoic. I'm not gonna complain. I like Ezoic because they allow little sites to make money. Yeah. There's exactly nothing wrong with that. I've used them. I will probably and continue to use them for sites with 50,000 page views or less. Look, I, I'm, I'm, I'm not saying I'm not a fan of Zu, it's just some little things. I've had issues personally with their premium programs and Sure, sure. That's what I call that. I'm not calling out that Zoic is bad. I'm just saying. There's some specific things that I don't like and no, it's not just me. There's a lot of people that don't like that

Brooks: 26:49

stuff. Yeah, yeah. Of course. Of course, man. So something something you did, it's kind of funny. Before we hopped on the call, I was like, oh yeah, I saw this I saw this tweet cuz you have an an, a potential newsletter course coming out. And I was like, yeah. I was like, you know what? I was like, I'll, I'll hop on there and buy it. And then I realized, I think you're done. I think you got your, your 50 50 pre-sales of your I guess, right. Was it 50 that you wanted, 50. maybe you can open up one for me, man. Maybe I can be 51 or something, but I Okay. One, one. That's brilliant. Have you, have you done that with every course or is that something you just started doing the, the, the pre-sale idea?

Mushfiq: 27:20

No, so mostly I have built first yeah. Okay. So later. And I thought this one, so then that was, that was because. I built first because there was a lack of confidence that Got it. Okay. If I pre-sell, it doesn't work. It's kind of like, oh. It's my ego, my personal, I, I, I I'll, you know, get hurt, and also it looks bad, right? And so I've always built, I have a age domain course, a website, flipping course. Easy wins, easy diligence. A lot of these digital products that I've always built and sold, I've, I've given hints. That I'm building this, but I never collected money first. Right? Yeah. With this, it was a course that my community asked, like I did a review of a deal in my newsletter and somebody in in a chat asked me, Hey, this is really interesting. Are there any courses out there talking about how to take niche site traffic, build a newsletter, and, and essentially a moat around your business? And look, I've done four of those now on different niches. It's is there any course like that? Yes, there's courses on email marketing. Plenty of Matt Gki. Yep. Lab has a very good digital email marketing course. Now, I'm not saying that can't be translated to newsletter. Newsletter is very, very different than email marketing. Email marketing is sequence based. Give three emails of value, one email selling something, and it's just that continuous process. Newsletters is really, it's just information all in your inbox and you can monetize with ads or, or whatever. It's a very different model. Yeah. And so, you know, I've only built newsletters. I'm not really an email marketing expert, so I thought, okay, there is no course on taking, building a niche newsletter. So I said, okay, I'll put one together, but because I have so many other things going on, I need to know there's demand for it, and people are willing to pay upfront at a discounted. and I can collect the money that will justify my time in putting it together. So that was the real, and I think I will continue doing that from now on because Right. Otherwise, I don't know. Right. I mean, Yes, most people will buy what I sell, but it's good to have the validation up front that I can justify putting in the week or two weeks is gonna take me to build that up.

Brooks: 29:29

You know, it, it, it also, it also rewards people kind of at a dis gives'em a discount for raising their hand and saying, Hey, I'll buy you know, it shows, honestly, it shows me your, your community's trust in you because on your page I read it, it was, it was literally like, Hey, if I don't sell enough, I'll just I'll refund your. You know, people obviously have to trust that you're gonna do that as a business. I mean, there's that. Another thought I'd say, even if there's like a dozen courses like this out there, there's not your course in the way that you do it. And it's totally cool if there's both a Harvard and a Yale. Right? Right. I mean, there's, you know, whatever. There's all these school. I'm all about man, the more options, the better. Like for me personally, man, just part of, part of my personal thing is like disrupting traditional education, however we can, that's just like a little piece of Sure. Little fingers. I try to poke and I'm like, man, as many people that are doing that, I'm all, I'm all about it. Yeah, for sure. Which I think is cool. So, yeah. So it's like, it's like your business is, is, is. ever evolving, right? All of ours are. Like, the fact that you did that, the presale for this course, and you'll probably do that going forward because it just, it makes sense, right? It just pre, it just pre proves the yeah, the course idea.

Mushfiq: 30:28

I had no intention of launching any more courses. I brainstorm. I brainstormed. Other things I could do. Really, it always came under the umbrella of website flipping or age domains, and I could just add a video to that or a series of videos to that to enhance that course. So there was no ideas that came to my own brain of, okay, this is a course you, you could start, right, because. Again, I don't wanna cater to the beginner, so I don't wanna make a course on how to build an niche site, like Right. I always refer people to Authority Hackers. Yes. You get commission kickback and I'm, I know those guys have done an amazing job and I can stand by that course, so I don't wanna replicate that. Yeah. So I was like, look, there was nothing came to me like, oh, maybe I should build. Discourse or something, it just always comes back to, okay, there's something better out there that I recommend. And so when somebody came to me and in a community said, oh, you know, newsletters for niche sites, okay, that's a very sub thing. There's not gonna be hundreds of thousands of people using it. Maybe. You know, two thousand people will buy it in the lifetime of that course. And that's good enough, right? It's, it'll only take me maybe, you know, 20, 25 hours. And I don't really do post-production or anything. I'm just slides. I'm just talking through it, right? There's no editing, nothing. Whatever comes out, comes

Brooks: 31:43

out. rough, rough cut, rough cut, rough cut course. Yeah.

Mushfiq: 31:45

Easier for me to put one together. So maybe like couple days of really heads down work. So yeah, I mean, and, and a lot of value

Brooks: 31:52

in it. I think it's great, man. for sure. Question, are there any tools that you use that you feel like you can't live without? Just

Mushfiq: 32:01

curious. Good question. Yeah. All the Google Suites obviously, of products. All right. Slack is where we communicate a lot. Facebook Messenger. Yeah. Lot of lot of deals happen through that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Twitter messages, a lot of new connections happen through that, whereas Facebook is mostly old connections. Trello used to be my management contact processes and all that, but we recently switched over under more Google sheets. Really Why,

Brooks: 32:27

Why the switch from Trello to Google Sheets.

Mushfiq: 32:29

for example, you mentioned I sold a site for 175,000 last February, and I want on Spencer's podcast to talk about that. That was one site that I, that was on my, honestly, last site that I sold in February 22, where I was very, very actively working on it. Where I was hiring writers. Doing the keyword research, doing the content plans out outlines everything. And so Trello was very active. So I had all my writers in there, a writer board, I had a strategy board, you know, all of that. And then I sold that and I realized, okay, that is not the best use of my time. I'm more. That it, I, I, it's better for me to hire a website manager an overall person to manage all my websites individually, and they can do whatever they want. If they want to use Trello, good. If they want. Got it. Got it. So I'm, I've kind of stepped away from that. So it's not that Trello is bad, it's just that I'm not actively

Brooks: 33:18

doing that anymore. Got it. You didn't, you didn't force the person into your process. You allowed them to have the process that works for. Yeah, I

Mushfiq: 33:25

shared my Trello stuff. Yeah. Some of them are using it. They're willing, they, they're smart enough to, to do whatever, you know, whatever process they want.

Brooks: 33:33

Sure, sure. Yeah. Cool. Is is twi, are, are, are Twitter dms and Facebook, is that like for you, literally the same as someone texting you or emailing you? Like for me it is, it's all the same. Like all the communication is literally the same.

Mushfiq: 33:47

Yeah. I don't want anybody with my personal phone number.

Brooks: 33:49

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a text, a text, a text for me is would be, Would be a pretty bad way because, you know, I guess s sms, the actual tech, whatever, you can't like mark it as unread if you're an Android user like me, if you're not, you know, iPhone, iPhone or whatever. And all my, all my Apple friends make fun of me for that. I, I refuse to be, I'm always the I'm the one, I'm the one dot that's not whatever, green or something. I'm like the one blue, the one blue.in the in all their text message chains. Yeah. Okay, and let me ask you this too, Twitter and have you, have you been on Twitter for a long? I

Mushfiq: 34:16

think it says, what'd you say? 20.

Brooks: 34:18

It's okay. Okay. 20. Yeah. All right. Yeah. I, I, I've had a Twitter account for a long time. It's only like the past year though that I've been like, man, this is a really useful. Mm-hmm. this is a really useful feed of information and you can find. You can find your crew. I mean, you don't even have to be there to, to post. You can just really find a great source of information and, you know, you can comment if you want to or whatever. It's it's, it's neat. It, it's probably my li little secret of 2022, I'd say. It's just been a great, great source of information. No, I love

Mushfiq: 34:49

it. Very, I'm not, I don't like to post a lot like threads, put a lot of time it used to. Yeah. But realize that. Doesn't really work that well, So it's, it's just now just randomly sharing interesting things like 17 x multiple deal with an operator. You know, I post that and say, ask me anything. That gets naturally a lot of engagement. Yeah. Or I do a partnership and I say the structure and the numbers and you know, people like that or I sell a site, you know, kind of updates on what's actively going on. And I feel more people engage with that than putting together thread. How to do keyboard research for your niche site. Nothing wrong with that, but I think there's a lot of that Sure. Invoice out there, but there's less of what

Brooks: 35:30

I'm saying. Yeah, yeah. You're, yeah. The stuff you're saying is just like stuff, active, active business stuff versus like kind of, some. Tactical like things or, or learning or education or whatever.

Mushfiq: 35:41

There's a lot of people on Twitter that are more high end, right? They're buying million dollars cup, several million dollar businesses. That doesn't pertain to us. Right. Even though, you know, I'm, My max purchase price is 50,000 still. Right? And I, the reason for that is even though I could afford more, It's risk management. And also it's very easy to take something that's 20 K to 200 k than it is to take something from let's say three, 400 K to a million. It's a different skillset. Yeah. You require a lot more hiring a lot more involvement. Whereas something at 20 k is probably a niche site making$500 a month. It's easy to take that to two,$3,000 a month. Right. And we see multiple examples of that happening. But you don't see something going from 20 K to a hundred. just by sitting there and doing keyword research. It's a completely different thing you gotta do then.

Brooks: 36:33

Yeah. Yeah. But that, that's, you actually being really, really smart, actually. Really a st like staying in your lane and knowing what has the greatest move without having to adjust like business models completely. Really. You can like, put it in the lane. So are you, are you still operating all the sites as normal? Except it's just not you, you just, you have people either partners or project manager that's kind of running, running

Mushfiq: 36:55

sites. Yeah. I have, I have my own portfolio of sites, but I have hired people now. Yep. That help a lot. Yeah, I'm not doing keyword research anymore. I am not hiring writers anymore. I am overseeing everything and ensuring quality. I do get in there sometimes and do some cro add some, you know, elements that's gonna increase revenues, but I immediately just do that. tell my guy to do it in the future. The reason with that is I, I, my, I can do something much quicker than I can explain it many times. So I'd rather just do it, see it, the results, and then just hand it off. So, yeah. Oh, I use a lot of Loom as a tool Loom video recording all my courses are Loom video. Really? Yep. Nice. Nice. Yeah. So that, that's how I put together. Instructions and hand it off. Yeah.

Brooks: 37:49

Looms a great tool. Press and play, right? Like it's so, so great for giving feedback to people and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. We use, we use Loom a bit as well. Yeah. Man, just the tools, the tools that are here like are, are crazy. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. And, and for you giving up keyword research and hiring writers, was it, was it hard for you to. Get key keyword. Research is a tough one. No, not, no,

Mushfiq: 38:08

it was hard. It was hard. It was hard. It was hard. Oh, okay. Cause I had to find somebody who has the same philosophy. Yeah. Keyword research and, and processes. Yeah. I'm, I'm more of a, you know, you can spend a lot of time doing keyword research and figuring out the very, very long tales. Right. And targeting those. I'm more of, okay. I know this will be success. I optimize for an exit. So here's something that a lot of people don't do, and once you get into that mindset, it changes. Some people say, okay, I need to bring cash flow in. So revenue from ads, affiliate, whatever. Yep. And then I'm gonna reinvest that amount. Back in. And if it doesn't make, it's gonna come outta my pocket, but I don't have that much money. So, you know, that's a, that's fine, right? There's, that's how you get started. You gotta start somewhere. But for me, it's, I know that if I take something from$500 to$5,000 a month, that's 200, 250 k on the back end when I sell it. So I know that, I know my skillset, so I'm willing to invest, I'm willing to forego all the cash flow and. You know, double the cash flow potential. If I need, if I'm making$500, I can put$2,000 in a month because I know that if I get it to 5K revenue, it's worth that much. I'll recoup my money anyways. Right? Yeah. And, and so that's, that's when you're building a portfolio. And you're competing with me in a niche. It's, it's, it's, I, I mean, not, not to toot my own horn, but it's more difficult, right? Because I'm willing to put 30 k, 50 k today versus over three years. Right. So, which another niche side builder might do.

Brooks: 39:45

Really interesting point you bring up because I I've had that conversation with some people and it's, it's hard even if you have even if you have the funds to do, it's harder for people to pull that trigger. Yeah. And just know, I, I feel like you have some of the experience of done, having done so many that you just have so much faith in the process and like in your abilities and Hey, I'm just, I'm following this routine that I know. So that's, that's a really, it's a really cool, it's a really cool point that you bring up. Yeah. Which actually makes me want to ask what, like AI chat, g b. Tools and stuff. I, I know, man I, I gotta bring it up. What are your, just, just thoughts in general or philosophies or whatever,

Mushfiq: 40:23

you know, it's going to disrupt something. I don't have any thoughts on what okay. And how, and you know, when I personally don't use any of the tools even from, you know, surfer SEO days when a lot of people were using those to optimize. You know, that's a sort of an ai. Yeah. I don't use those. I've never used those to optimize any articles. I've never used any of the AI tool, Jarvis Chat. G P T I only opened it once and now when I open it, I can't. It's too like I can't even get access

Brooks: 40:51

cause it's Yeah, sorry. We're busy. We're busy right now.

Mushfiq: 40:54

Yeah. So no, I don't use AI in my processes. Is that wrong? I don't know. And though my thought is that in the future it's going to calm down to more expertise, content. So this is what I said from another podcast that hasn't gone live yet, but, you know, the days of how many calories are in a piece of chocolate are gone. Yeah, totally agree. Can't rank for that anymore. But can I eat, cal, can I eat a piece of chocolate in my keto diet? Now that can't be answered without a nutritionist or some specialty, right? Yeah. As an example. So, and that's what I've always done since the day one. I have, I have never. Wrote content that's long tail and, and, and, and as can be answered in one or two sentences, even though I can rank for it. I mean, I might, I mean, I, for my portfolio of sites, I've never done that. It's always been enter a niche where it requires a certain level of expertise. So real estate. Yeah. I have, I have some sites in, in the dating relationship niche where you, you can't just. Those cannot be answered in one-liners. Right? Right. And so I'm willing to pay more for expert writers. For example, we sold a acne site and I was paying 15 cents a word to register dietary nutritionist. Right. And, you know, that's crazy where, where the average is like five to 7 cents a word. So yeah, in short it's gonna come down to that. And it's gonna come down to more of, okay, how do you take the existing visitors? Because everybody's going, let's say that, you know, chat, G P T and all these things get integrated search. We're gonna overall net. Traffic to all of our sites is going to decrease. Yeah. In general, sure. All of my sites, some of my sites will have decreases obviously just over across the board. And so how can you take more advantage of the existing traffic that comes to your site? Right? And that could be through conversion optimization, easy wins, newsletters communities, groups. I know those things. We can get recurring users. And so that's. My focus and has been for the first five years, so my, my thesis hasn't

Brooks: 42:57

changed. Yep. Which is, which is basically building a brand. I mean, is every, everything you're saying is like building an actual business with an actual brand, like not just a one, you know, 1, 1 1 trick pony kind of thing, right? Yeah, yeah. A hundred percent no. Yeah. Yeah, that makes total sense. If you're, so it's not part of your process do, do you? any of your, like the writers are using their own, whatever they're using to create whatever they're creating. And I mean, I, I don't know. And, and maybe it doesn't bother you. It's an interesting world that we're in, I guess is

Mushfiq: 43:27

Yeah. I don't have an answer for that. Yeah. If a writer comes to me some, it's an article. Yeah. I don't

Brooks: 43:32

know. Yeah, exactly. But Hey, this is a great article. Like it's perfect. The, the, it's, it's accurate. It's correct. It, it reads well. Yeah.

Mushfiq: 43:38

Like I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. Yeah. I, I, I, I don't care what you use to supplement because look. Yep. Grammarly. Microsoft Word spells check. These are all ai. All ai, exactly. All ai. Somebody, there's a computer behind figuring out what mistake you're gonna make and the proper way to say that sentence, right? Yep. All ai. So if somebody's just using a tool to find some information, I assuming it is correct. Right, and they are, they have the niche knowledge where they know that is incorrect or that is correct. That's what I'm saying. I'm hiring people who have the niche knowledge where even if they use the. they can get an idea of what to say, but then they can correct that idea because they have internal, you know, or ex knowledge of that niche. So I'm okay with I, I honestly don't care. And yeah, hopefully, you know, those dietary nutritionists that are hiring for 15 cents realize the value of AI as a research tool and can then reduce their rates to 11. Because it takes, or 10 because it takes less work. Right. That's as an industry will

Brooks: 44:42

benefit I, I definitely wanted to ask you pointed questions as, as if we're having a, having a coffee and, and meeting, oh, this is

Mushfiq: 44:48

good. Cause most appearances that I do are kind of, not really scripted, but they're always like my life story, not like my day-to-day yeah. What's going on today? Right. It's not what happened in the past.

Brooks: 45:00

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I like, that's kind of like, that's kinda my goal. I mean, obviously I wanna get to know people. I wanna make like real, real connections, but I'm like, man, I, I, I wanna chat with people that are in the trenches doing this stuff that are growing businesses. I'm like, well, what do I wanna know? right? Let's just network about what we're doing. So, that's kind of, that's kinda my theory, so that's good. Well, who so if people, if people did wanna link up with you, should they find you on Twitter or what, what do you think? Yeah,

Mushfiq: 45:21

Twitter. Twitter or the website flip contact forms, but yeah, that's the only way.

Brooks: 45:26

Perfect. Yeah. The website, flip.com or Twitter. Who, who do you think I should link up with in this industry that you think I'd have a, a, a fun chat with? Does anyone come?

Mushfiq: 45:36

Jackie at Indexy Jackie. So if you think, you know, I'm doing cool stuff, he's doing much better stuff. So, definitely talk to him. Yeah. Honestly, as a, as a somebody who's public, that's, that's, that's somebody you should, should talk to. I mean Got it. Obvious ones are always there. Right. But, you know.

Brooks: 45:56

Yeah. Yeah. The

Mushfiq: 45:57

all those guys.

Brooks: 45:58

I, I know that for every public person, there's probably like 10 private people that don't have anything public. I, if I had, I don't know what those ratios are. Like, do, do you have you have any idea that's It's a hundred to one. A hundred to one?

Mushfiq: 46:09

Yeah. That makes sense. My Facebook group has, Not many people. 1800 members, right? Yeah. That join on their own. And 99% of those people are private. Yeah. They don't even, some use fake names. Nothing wrong with that. It's okay. They, they don't like to post in the group because our industry is known. copycats, let's say. Yeah. So they message me privately and they're doing some really cool stuff. I can't even, no, they won't. They don't wanna talk ly. Yeah. Because they're busy, busy building and that's fine. Right? Yep. And so that's why I, my list of people I can recommend is like

Brooks: 46:45

one guy, Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I. I, I totally get that. And it makes sense actually that either, either one and, and also the nature of website building itself is kind of a lone, it's kind of a lone wolf sport. So people are probably a bit more private, maybe introverted anyway, like personality wise. Yes. So it's, it's a lot of variables. I think that, you know, plus like you said, The big dog's doing cool stuff. Most of them are just, they're building, so they're not like, out having chats and connecting over what I consider like a virtual coffee, you know? Yes. So, yeah. But exactly. Well, man, I man, I've enjoyed connecting. I know. You gotta roll.

Mushfiq: 47:18

Awesome. No, that was great. Thank you so much. Let's, let's do it again in the.

Brooks: 47:21

All right, MUFI. All right, sounds good man. Take care. Talk to you soon.