Interview: Lord Brar

Lord Brar is a 24 year old internet marketer, a domain investor and one of the guys behind UBot Studio Software. Originally from India he lives alternatively between Sweden, Germany and India.

Tell us a little background info about yourself. Where are you from? How old are you? How long have you been working in this industry?
I am a 24 year old Indian guy from the beautiful town of Jaipur and for now I am in Berlin. I started my first online venture when I was 13 years old and have been involved in various internet ventures ever since.

I prefer to think of myself as an investor and always try to make my ventures as self sustaining as possible — either by software automation or by delegation.

What accomplishments so far are you the most proud of?
The fact that I can travel to anywhere it takes my fancy without having to worry about day to day running of my business as it is all either automated or delegated.

But my best accomplishment ever has been the day I told my boss at Microsoft to literally “go f*** himself” and getting fired on the spot.

How did you come to learn about this industry? Why did you choose this career? When did you first realize the full potential in affiliate marketing? When did you first “hit the big time?”
When I started my first online venture back in 1998, I also had a free-hosting service which allowed people to have free webspace, email hosting and message boards hosting. While researching ways to commercialize the services (by showing advertisements — as charging for something back during the first dot com boom was a total blasphemy) I stumbled across affiliate marketing.

And like I have previously mentioned, most of my income came from domain names for a long time. My stint with affiliate marketing was basically to commercialize the traffic that my domains were getting by directly linking to offers. I never got into pure affiliate marketing for a long time as I had all my energies directed towards other businesses.

I “hit the big time” when I began setting up domains and attracting thousands and thousands of visitors to my websites. Okay I kid, I should not be making fun of retards in my own interview.

On a serious note though, my first big success was when I sold a bunch of my domains for roughly mid $xx,xxx. That gave me the confidence that I have taken the right decision by choosing this career path.

What do you think it takes to be successful as an affiliate?
I am going to answer this both as an affiliate and as a program operator who sees successful affiliates from the other side (for UBot Studio Software, along with certain other projects) — know your audience.

Really, the ability to understand your audience (either from data you collect, or from personal experiences, or from consulting an oracle or whatever) and pitching your offer in the way that impacts your audience the most is what sets apart successful affiliates from the not so successful audience.

And another thing which I see as a common thread in successful affiliates is that they consider their affiliate marketing ventures as a real business.

What is the single toughest problem you’ve had to face, and how did you get through it?
The biggest challenge is to always keep finding excellent people to be part of your team with smart people and keeping them onboard. I wish I could say how I got through it but I can say it is always an ongoing effort — you have to keep at it and keep your eyes open for new talent.

Is there anything that you don’t like to do, that you just hate working on?
I can’t stand doing monotonous repetitive tasks. So I try to either automate them or just outsource them. I need to constantly challenge myself with new ideas and keep experimenting.

What is the future of marketing?
Not very different from the past and present. To quote Felix Dennis, “Technology Changes. Tools Change. The Social Landscape changes. Human nature doesn’t.”

What niche has worked best for you?
B2B niches have been most profitable for me. I find it easier to deal with businesses than with end customers — but that could also be because I have always focused my energy on B2B stuff.

Which methods of promotion do you favor?
Whatever works for our target audience. Really it is very difficult to pin-point to one technique or method as a preferable-technique because there is no one-size-fits-all method for every target-audience.

What have you been up to recently? What projects are you working on?

Apart from the next version of UBot Studio, I have started a fashion-retail ecommerce project in Germany.

Do you think anything particular in your past prepared you for this industry? Your education? Jobs you’ve held before?
I got started in online business when I was 13 — so essentially this was my first “job” / business. I had always been fascinated by entrepreneurs since I was a little kid. The whole first dot-com boom and seeing all those success stories was enough of motivation to get started on something of my own.

My dad was a colonel in the Indian Army and my grandfather served in the British-Indian Army as an officer — being the first one in my family to start a business made it even more interesting and adventurous. However, I did have a small stint at Microsoft — that just reaffirmed that a corporate career was not for me.

What are your greatest strengths?
I’d say that my people strengths are my top strengths. I love meeting new people and working with people.

What are your greatest weaknesses?
I am very impatient and get bored with things really quickly. It is something I have learnt to rather use in my advantage than see it as a disadvantage. This one (dis)advantage pushes me to keep experimenting with new ideas and new-twists to the existing one – just to keep me interested in things. Once I find what works, I just try to turn it into a system, delegate it and move on to the next ideas in my list.

What motivates you?
Do boobs count?

What is the best advice you’ve been given and try to apply to your life?
I’d say that the best advice that I have ever got was from watching Gordon Gekko in Wallstreet when he says “It is all about the bucks kid, the rest is conversation”. Remembering this most definitely lets me separate the important from the unimportant.

Who has impacted you most in your career, and how?
Felix Dennis. His book “How to Get Rich” completely changed the way I think and the way I do a lot of things. Another person who has hugely impacted my career has been Jon Fisher, the owner of WickedFire. Talking to him over the years has had a huge positive impact on the way I think about things.

How do you like to spend your free time? What doe work-life balance mean to you?
Between working on my projects, working-out every day and meeting/networking with a LOT of people – I usually don’t have much of free time left. But if I do, and I am in Europe, I am clubbing. India doesn’t lend itself much crazy partying opportunities so I interchange clubbing with golf or try to take a weekend getaway to somewhere more peaceful than the crazy Indian cities.

My definition of work-life balance is to have an ability to do whatever you want to do at any given moment and not be constrained by anything.

If you could go back to being 18, what different career choices would you make?
I would have not wasted two years of my life in college. Well, I dropped out after two years but still it was two years wasted during which I could have progressed my business so much. If you have a true entrepreneurial spirit then college is an absolute waste of time and not really worth the effort and money — you learn far more valuable lessons by actually being in the business.

What is your greatest achievement outside of work?
All the amazing friendships that I have been able to build over the course of years – that is my greatest achievement.