Email Einstein Ingenious eCommerce Email Marketing by Flowium
Email Einstein Ingenious eCommerce Email Marketing by Flowium
Final Episode: Business Lessons on Pivoting, Pausing, and Growth
12 - This is the final episode of the Email Einstein podcast.
After five years of hosting the show, Vira and Andriy reflect on their journey. They talk about how to decide whether to keep pushing a project or bring it to a close. You will hear why ending a project is not failure. It is a strategic decision.
Through personal stories, real business experiences, and lessons learned from projects that thrived (and others that didn’t), this episode explores how iteration, timing, and self-awareness shape long-term success. This may be the final episode, but the growth, learning, and connections continue.
Hello everyone and welcome back to the last episode of Email Einstein Podcast. Spoiler alert. I spoiled it from the very beginning.
Andriy:You spoiled it in the first 15 seconds.
Vira:First 15 seconds. But I wanted just like to start from this. But we still have prepared a lot of fun things for you guys today. So Andriy, say hi.
Andriy:Hey. Hey everybody.
Vira:I did spoil it at the beginning even though I did kind of didn't learn anything. Well, it's kind of like a bittersweet moment for me. I know probably for you as well because it's been five years since we've been doing this podcast. But we came to the realization that I guess it's a good time to wrap it up together. Put a nice bow on it. It's a Christmas time, end of the year, New year, New you kind of thing. But it's been an amazing experience and I'm like so, so, so grateful to everyone who listened to this podcast, to everyone who co hosted this podcast, to all of your amazing questions and Andriy, what are we going to be talking today on our last episode of the year and of the podcast as well. Introduce the topic.
Andriy:I don't even know how to call it. Like they're like short and sweet. But basically the idea here is when should you stop on any project or business or when should you continue? Because on social media there's popular not meme but cartoon where the guy is digging, digging like I don't know, tunnel. And one gave up and went back. Another is like inch from like, finding bunch of gold or diamonds. So the moral of the story, like do not give up too soon. Basically.
Vira:Yeah, I think five years we are not giving up, you guys. You're still going to see our beautiful faces on YouTube and stuff. It's just. Yeah, we decided to play a little bit with the format so we will still keep delivering all of the value, email marketing value to you. But you'll probably see us more on YouTube so definitely subscribe there as a business owner.
Andriy:So I'll talk from my perspective as a business owner. And it's not only about podcasts, it's about anything you do in the business. You're dedicating certain amount of resources. It's like money, time, people, some. Some other resources to certain things. And especially in marketing department we are like at this moment we have 17 or even more actually with AI things now we have more than 17 leads. Lead channels where people are finding out about us, requesting more information from us and we are closing them like in deals, in projects. So as a business owner, at the end of the day, it's not like what I like or don't like, but what makes more sense from business perspective because we have a quite a significant team of people and I'm personally responsible for each of them, like to provide enough work to make sure that like payment is on time. So it's not giving up, but it's just strategically shifting resources.
Vira:Cool. So let's play a little game. Andriy, you're a good storyteller. So let's play a little game. Tell me and I'll tell you later as well about the project. Maybe a few projects. We can start with one project or idea that did not work out or maybe it worked for some time but then you decided to consciously close it down. It can be anything.
Andriy:Actually this is how we met. Actually this is how I have a story about the project and from maybe financially was not successful, but this is how I met you through your husband actually how you met your husband and met you. So ImmigrantPorada was Ukrainian project that I was running for four or five years. I had like recorded like YouTube, podcasts, wrote around like 400 different articles on different topics for Ukrainian immigrants here in US how to like to adapt to this lifestyle. It was fun project. I dedicated a lot of my time there. Some money of course like it was around. It cost me around$500 a month to run it. But I dedicated a lot of my time. Oh actually and wrote a book in Ukrainian as well as part of this project. It took me two years to write that book and it probably was the hardest thing for me to put things like on pause. Actually it still exists.
Vira:I'm still a member of that group on Facebook.
Andriy:So we the most successful part of that was a Facebook group which one were the full scale war started Invasion of Russia to Ukraine started group went from like 20,000 members to 50 and now it's over 60 or 70,000 subs like people. And there's quite a interesting story. There are some people who moved to New York and they posted in the group. There's no work that somebody said, oh, move to our city like Rochester they moved to Rochester, met with other people. There are some people who met through that group and get got married. Some people like started businesses.
Vira:You created a machine, Andriy.
Andriy:So if we're talking about business, if we talking about like kind of financial gain, it was not successful and I had to support my family. At that moment I quit my job and this is basically how started Flowium started. So I, my, I, I shifted my time resource from that project to Flowium because I need to survive. So it's as simple as that. If I had money, maybe I will continue that project. But at that moment I had to shift to Flowium. But from social perspective there's a bunch of cool stories.
Vira:No, that's interesting Andriy, how it actually brought you to if you think about it that your first experience Immigrant Porada was actually what started Flowium in a way or you kind of had to start Flowium and now Dignitas is like kind of all makes sense. Like when you put puzzle together it somehow all works. But going back to new beginning yourself. Oh, I have so many stories. My first story of the project that I decided to close in like a day was probably when I was 8 year old. Me and my best friend, we used to live together in this like apartment complex. We had a bunch of kids growing up together and at one point we decided to open a bureau, like a detective bureau. You know the one that kind of like finds out the criminal and everyone. No, like for real. I was eight, I think she was seven. But we needed to have some kind of like crime to solve and we lived in a very good area. Not much crime was happening in our area but apparently one of our neighbors lost their cat and we thought that this would be our kind of like a big breakout, you know, that we will find that cat and become heroes. Turned out the cat was just like sleeping at home. And yeah, that thing didn't work out because the cat was just like sleeping at home. We didn't find it, it found itself. So we had to close that business in a day. On the different note though, how I found out about you Andriy, how I like learned about what you're doing and first got introduced to you. The reason I got introduced to you was because I was doing my own project back in the day called Viral English. One day I moved from Toronto to this little town in west Canada.
Andriy:Just don't tell me that you learn English from me.
Vira:No, Andriy, but I actually reached out to you because I needed some help with email marketing and I don't remember how, but from being your. From like a consultancy. You preached this to me and then we started working together. I don't remember how it all started, but basically you were. I first came to you with like email marketing questions and then a few months later I was like working with you guys. So it can all change very fast.
Andriy:So long time ago.
Vira:It was before Flowium was a Flowium. Actually it was when Flowium was email marketing nyc. But yeah, that was like one of my. Or even before that that was like one of my semi successful projects actually. And I don't regret having it. But long story short, English is not my first language and I ever since I remember myself I was trying to learn it but I was like the worst student. The grammar was not easy for me. Like learning English was so, so difficult to me until I learned about this method that I'm like still to this day is preaching like learning English like, like kids do, you know, not by reading the language but by listening, by memorizing things and stuff like that. And I'm like a big believer in the fact that this method works. And one day I was remember I was looking for a job in Kelowna, we just moved and I just sat with camera on the lakeside and recorded this video that surprisingly became so popular. It was back in the day when YouTube was still not a huge thing but it started being like big. It was like 2015 or 16 probably maybe earlier. And that video became so, so popular to the point that people started reaching out to me asking if I want to be their English teacher. And mind I still don't know English grammar to this day. I probably use most of the time correct grammar but I can't explain how it works. But at some point I realized that there is a need for a product like this and I recorded my very first online English course using this method that worked for me and I thought that it would work for other people and it was semi successful. I did have my first online sales and to do that I had to learn everything about like building a website and promoting your course and building this like platform and taking the payments and everything. And it was like what 2015, I was like so new to that I had to purchase a course. And that's how I started learning the basics of marketing. And after that that's how I reach out to you for help with email marketing. And that's how my previous job found me through that online course that I started. So it all worked out. I decided not to continue with that just because I think I gave everything That I had to that project and I don't have anything else to teach people. This is like so basic. I still have a lot of content online. People are still using it but I just don't didn't want to make it, you know like the. The thing of my life, like the main project of my life. But it was so cool that I get to learn a lot of things. I get to make my first online money. And this was like so exciting receiving that first 40 something dollars. It was like my first check ever. Best decision ever. So I don't regret it. But was it a flop? I don't think so. But at some point I realized that I do have to stop spending money and efforts on that and focus my attention on something else.
Andriy:So yeah, a funny thing I remember with that video at that moment years ago was around like 50,000 views and we were recording at Flowium. It wasn't even Flowium back then but we were like just few views per video and I'm like I have a personal YouTube channel. It's like random stuff. And the most viewed video at Flowium got maybe 25 to 30,000 views. At my personal channel where I'm repairing coffee maker is like over 60,000 views.
Vira:I didn't know about the channel. That's so funny. It's like my husband who became TikTok popular with video that was teaching people how to install that holder for Dyson it's like literally the content that you can find anywhere on the Internet. But he recorded it and he got so many subscribers and he spent maybe like two minutes putting it together. But yeah, you never know what will work. But that video is still online. It's like so cringe worthy to me like to watch it and I have a lot of videos. It's not like one video, it's just. It's like so weird looking back at yourself like listening to that. That like poor quality of video that like audio. But I think it's still valuable. So it got me to where I am today. So I'm very happy about it.
Andriy:Yeah. And even if you listen like you you still listening to us right now and you are at your. Is this business journey or like career journey? Freelancing journey. We are talking about like dedicating resources shifting. But if you decided to do something, let's say even it was email marketing. If you want to either build email marketing for your brand or provide email marketing services. If you're focusing you grinding you will succeed 100%. This is how Flowium started. Like nobody knew us but now we are at the top agencies. We're bidding on the world known brands. Right now. We have one of the biggest deal of our life. I would not say the name, but.
Vira:I so badly want to say it. I'm like so proud that we're part of that project. Like 10 year old doesn't mean literally celebrating right now.
Andriy:But people in Alaska and people in Zanzibar. Zanzibar. People like in India, like everybody knows that brand, so. Which. It's a huge. We didn't win yet, but I'm very, very confident that we will win that project. But it shows you that like grinding and like focusing on one thing gave us a lot of. A lot of opportunities.
Vira:Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's something that our trip to Kilimanjaro also taught me. Like one step at a time. That was like such a big lesson to me. And I started practicing it more and more because I was like one of those people who were scared of like grand and big projects to the point that I was like having an idea but not starting them because I didn't have an idea of how to get there, you know. But when we were at Kilimanjaro, they have this like famous saying meaning pole, pole, which means like slowly, slowly. They say, do not think about your final goal. All you have to care about is just one step, one step at a time. So just think about your next step. Do not overthink it. Take one step, take another step and trust the process. So that's pretty much something that I took from that trip. Yeah.
Andriy:What next question do you have?
Vira:For me, it's the same question just about the different projects. Andriy.
Andriy:Actually, it was before Flowium, me and my sister back in 2012, I believe, or 2013, we learned about mobile homes, which was like very new topic for us. We didn't know what mobile home is. How does it work? That moment my sister had like around$10,000 saved up. And our goal was to buy one mobile home and rent it out for I don't know how much, like$500 per month as rent. This was our idea. So we ended up buying our first, first mobile home for$500. At that moment, like, yeah, at that moment, like iPhone was like costing around
Vira:$700-$800 cheaper than the phone. Wow, that's crazy.
Andriy:Yeah.
Vira:Yeah.
Andriy:And we had this story where we bought one mobile home for a dollar. Why for a dollar? Just to make a transaction. 17 cats live there. No people. So we like, it was a lot of hard work. So to to make long story short, we flipped 40, 40 mobile homes. I can consider myself expert, probably forgot things already, but I can, I can consider myself expert in fixing mobile homes. Not flipper, but fixing. I know everything about mobile homes right now. Yeah. But even that I learned hard lesson of cash flow because we were selling things on terms meaning like we were giving people loan to buy those mobile homes. So we were fixing for maybe$10,000 and we were selling those for around $15000-$20,000. Like with small down payment, $1,000-$2,000 down and for five years $300. Like I'm not sure what the mass will end up, but basically people paying $300 and we're like on a paper we were like killing it. But what you have on the paper and what you have in bank account is like two different stories. And I'm like, theoretically we have money, right? Yeah, like theoretically we have a lot of money. But we are. Sorry, we are profitable and maintaining business. And then I realized that I will take cash flow over profit, basically both. But cash flow is number one.
Vira:That's true. That's actually.
Andriy:And we closed. Actually close. Four years, three years of my weekends I gave up. Not give up, invested. Because we were commuting from New York to Pennsylvania where we were doing this. So three years of my weekends, it I invested in this business. And then eventually we closed up that business and start investing in mobile home parks like where we. Buying land and renting the land.
Vira:Nice. Smart. Smart. Well, my business experience is not as big as yours, but one of the businesses that not flipped but kind of changed the format was the current business, the Fungus. When we first started it, it actually, I don't remember if you started if you remember or not, but the project I was working on originally was the Matcha for boosting your cognitive.
Andriy:Taste. That sucks or something pretty much.
Vira:So we spent.
Andriy:You told, you told me, you told me that.
Vira:I thought it was, I thought it was an amazing idea because I like matcha. Matcha is amazing. Maybe not everyone do, but it's like so, so trendy these days and it was just like getting popular. And I liked all of this like mushrooms and adaptogens and I was like adding them to my coffee sometimes and it was like still very new and still very like biohacking kind of thing. And we had this genius idea to kind of mix all of this beautiful adaptogens with matcha and we spend a lot of money. When I say we, it's like me and my husband. Oh, how much money we spend on our Side projects over the years. But we spend a lot of money with like professional scientists who like put together who sends you the recipe and the first recipe and the first sample we received. We got so, so excited about it. But it came a very weird color. Usually matcha is this like bright green, but ours looked more like dirt. It was like brownish disgusting. It smelled weird too. I mean we spend a lot of money, but when we tried it, it was like the most disgusting drink ever. Like I don't even know if there is a marketer in the world who can literally market this kind of product. It was amazing for your cognitive abilities. It was. To this day I still think the formula is top of the notch taste wise. We had so many iterations. We were flying to the guy who was producing it to Florida. We were trying to fix the taste. It was okay, but it wasn't there. So we decided to let go that project. That being said, a lot of brands actually did launch a matcha that was not as potent. So it wasn't as powerful but it had some benefits and it had like that Matcha cognitive aspect. Then I read this cool report about two of the biggest trends of the year 2020, which was gummies and another a trend with mushrooms. And we decided to combine gummies and mushrooms together and created a medicinal mushroom gummies which was a great product. It tasted great. We had a packaging that I still to this day think is like really, really beautiful.
Andriy:And I have the pack of your.
Vira:Gummies created, created by our friend, Ukrainian artist actually Sashko Danylenko. So shout out to him. He's always a part of pretty much all of our projects that me and my husband do. And it was an amazing project. But just at some point when we moved to London, my husband and I, we realized that we literally don't have enough cash to be competing in that business. Because supplement business is very cash intensive and it's not just about placing an order and you always have to be in stock. Obviously it's a lot of money that are just sitting there locked in stock. But also competing with this bigger brands, we just didn't have the cash flow to be able to compete. So that business that originally started from Matcha, that tastes socks, then turned into gummies. And right now out of all of the businesses that we've done, right now it's a business that sells children books, Believe it or not, we decided to keep the brand because I still think the name fungus is so cool. Fungus.com we kept the character that our friend developed for Us as a mascot of the brand, we kept the idea, we kept the vibe and now we're selling children's books under that, under this business. Who knows where it's going to take us? But for now, that's how it transformed and I, and I'm pretty happy with it. So yeah, that's another story of mine.
Andriy:You know, I had this not good idea to call it flops, but it's not flops, it's just. How should we call it? Like iteration, development, growth, innovation. You know, like you start with something, one thing, but you develop totally different thing.
Vira:Right.
Andriy:It's just, it should just grow. Probably in your 18s you would not be able to do this. But as you grow, as your life experience, you like business experience, professional experience, you're developing and shaping things. So you never know.
Vira:Probably you never know where it's gonna get us. So yeah, so these are my stories. Obviously I have a lot of them. I have a lot of passion projects that I started at some point and never finished and some that I did successfully finish. But yeah, I just like, like.
Andriy:But let me ask you this question.
Vira:Got me too.
Andriy:Yeah, let me ask you this question because I used to have the totally different question answer than right now. But I'm curious from you, like when, how do you know when to stop, where to continue, when to stop? How long time do you give yourself and what is your criteria for a project, let's say with those books children looks like?
Vira:Well, for myself, I decided that I'm going to have a book series. Like no matter what, even if it's like unprofitable. I want to finish this project no matter what to be like to know that I've done my all that I tried all in this book. So right now I have three books. I want to have five to kind of complete the book series. But I don't know. Usually it happens when I used up all of my money that I plan for the project.
Andriy:So this is usually like all world money, but let's say no.
Vira:Often it is, but not always. I don't know, it's just like some kind of like an internal feeling when you have energy for that or don't have energy or you see the future in the product or you see that people are still interested. Like the last month was so busy, I literally didn't even open my KDP account. But I received so many personal messages. I see that the books are selling especially around the Christmas tree, around the Christmas time. I have people reaching out to me saying that this Is like the favorite character of my 4 year old. That's what gets me going. Honestly. So little things like this, I'm like pretty emotional when it comes to this little businesses like this. So I don't have a formula. It just feels right at the moment. So yeah. What about you Andriy? Do you have a formula for me?
Andriy:I mean my formula for me is this is very personal. So if we're talking about business, I give myself personally myself a year to. To. To test something. If we're talking about to start business from scratch. I'm not talking one year business but some kind of side. Let's say I. I joined Klaviyo Meetup. So we were hosting Klaviyo Meetup here in New York City. They will continue joining. But also December is my last month when I'm co hosting this like I. There's a bunch like the, the most important probably that I don' kind of satisfaction. You know, like sometimes when I go on the stage I'm like I'm scared but I'm like that I'm like pumped here is like yeah, there's like I'm. I don't get that as you said, like that like gut feeling like I'm doing something that I'm. I don't enjoy much. So. So typically I give myself one year. If we're going back to business, let's say from marketing perspective we like testing things in three months chunks. Like if we church one channel for three months. If we still see it doesn't bring us enough either leads or deals, but it's still in our price range, will continue for next three months. But at least three months I need to give to. To see if it's working or not. So business three months personal like one year. So actually I'm starting a podcast. I believe I told you it's also would be in Ukrainian. So I. I'm giving myself year. I already recorded the recording the first episode. So I'm giving myself a year to see how do I feel and if I feel great, doesn't matter how many views or that actually views probably will fulfill my like desire to do it more.
Vira:So I'll just, I'll just put it on replay. Don't worry, I'll just put it on YouTube replay, you know.
Andriy:Thank you.
Vira:Thank you. It's probably YouTube like unique views. When are you launching Andriy?
Andriy:Actually I didn't have a date. I'm planning this podcast almost for a year and a half. I had some family loss so I just didn't have resources Honestly, like to dedicate any actually I didn't have exceed resources meaning energy to do it. But right now I'm very energized and pumped like waking up every morning that I need to put that energy somewhere in some project.
Vira:That's amazing.
Andriy:Would be one of those projects.
Vira:Oh, that's amazing. I'm so looking forward to it. Andriy. Thank you. I didn't realize you're at the final pretty much stages of like almost launching. That's so exciting.
Andriy:No, no, we already. Yeah. I'm actually before this podcast. I text as a guy like one will finish because it will be not this kind of style. It would be in person and it would be from in different scenes different like it would be always on the move. So it should be fun.
Vira:Oh gosh. I'm like so looking forward to it. Awesome.
Andriy:Thank you.
Vira:Well, I think anything else to add? That's a wrap up. Andriy, to be honest, I think we're wrapping this up. You know, like you get the Spotify wrap up, you get the YouTube wrap up, you get the podcast wrap up. By the way, Andriy, we talked about it. You are not a Spotify person, are you? No. You're a Google Music or YouTube Music, right?
Andriy:YouTube. YouTube Music.
Vira:Your YouTube Music. But like what, what Spotify did amazing this year that went like super, super viral. They did this like what is your Spotify age thing? It's so fun. It's like so clever that they did it. So I'm 44, you guys. Not in real life in Spotify, apparently. That's. That's my age.
Andriy:You're much, much, much younger.
Vira:Like so. So why. Much wiser than my years. Must be. Must be why Spotify decided. I'm 44. But that's a wrap.
Andriy:It's a wrap. But guys and girls, we are wrapping up this podcast but we are still here in case you need to reach out to us about anything about email marketing, SMS marketing. We adding additional services to our Flowium thing including WhatsApp, RCS, direct mail. Any questions you might have, like reach out to us. Also we continue our YouTube videos. There might be some other projects we'll be releasing. So yeah, stay tuned, stay tuned and.
Vira:Thank you for the amazing four and a half years. I think it was four and a half years. Thank you so much. You guys are the best. We'll see you on our YouTube channel. Happy Holidays to everyone. Bye bye.
Andriy:Bye.
