Finance Magnates recently had the opportunity to sit down for an interview with Anik Singal, CEO and Founder of Lurn. Singal is an expert in marketing, having used modern digital marketing practices to launch and sustain his career as an entrepreneur. For other entrepreneurs looking to expand their businesses, he poses dynamic uses of digital marketing as the perfect solution.
In our recent conversation with Singal, we explored key developments in marketing, how entrepreneurs should be using digital marketing, and how the marketing ecosystem is constantly evolving.
First of all, thank you for being here, Mr. Singal. Before we begin, could you give us a short introduction to yourself and your experience?
My journey with entrepreneurship started back when I was in college. Although I work as an online entrepreneur, digital marketer, and affiliate marketer, my passion lies in information marketing. I love teaching experts and helping others to distribute their knowledge – whether it be marketing tactics or rose gardening.
While institutional education is great, I’m a firm believer that peer-to-peer education via the internet is the future. Overcoming any barriers that geography or physical location puts in place, online education allows people to connect with expert knowledge from anywhere in the world.
I’ve been in this industry for over 20 years now, having sold nine figures worth of informational products on the internet. Over the years, I’ve won awards, written bestselling books, and spoken on stages of Grant Cardone, Tony Robbins, and some of the biggest players in our space.
After graduating from the University of Maryland College Park, I never looked back. I didn’t even ever have a job, I went straight into entrepreneurship – and the rest is history!
You discuss the need for people to turn to the resources they have around them if they want to succeed. Could you explain how entrepreneurs can learn more about marketing if they’re still green in this field?
There has never been a better time to learn online than in today’s day and age. It’s easier than ever before, with books, podcasts, YouTube videos, online courses, and more at your fingertips. People can even use sites like Clarity FM, which lets them book a direct call with an expert on any subject in the world of marketing.
There are a lot of different ways of learning, but of all of them, I prefer what I call immersion learning. Within three to seven days, I immerse myself in everything there is to know about a new marketing skill or topic. I binge content, moving through podcast episodes, books, YouTube videos, and small courses if I can.
Beyond trying to create a map of information, I try and figure out what questions I have when listening. Be sure to allow yourself to follow new threads of information on a whim. Instead of following specific lines of thinking, you could watch a video that YouTube recommends to you, following one after another until you’ve suddenly built up a comprehensive understanding of a topic.
Once you’ve reached this level, it’s time to take a guided course. The course will answer any specific questions you have, helping you to create a more balanced perspective on the topic you’re learning about. Finally, if you have any questions at the end of this process, you can use Clarity FM or Upwork to directly consult with experts. Booking one or two hours with an expert over the phone will give you the space you need to really hone your skills.
Of course, at this stage, you’ve already got the foundational knowledge, meaning you won’t waste your time or their time with genetic questions. All that is left is the specific knowledge that you can’t get anywhere else. Across this process, you can make yourself an expert in almost anything in around a week.
In other interviews, you’ve mentioned how entrepreneurs can suffer from decision fatigue. With so many choices of marketing strategies out there, how should entrepreneurs make the right decisions and select the correct mediums for them?
In marketing, the lowest-hanging fruit always wins. Always look for the path of least resistance. For some perspective, there is a huge amount of advice out there, with people on the internet assuring you that you should be doing 10 different things across 20 different platforms. The simple fact is you might not have the energy to do that.
Personally, I love Facebook as a platform for social media. I don’t tweet, I don’t do LinkedIn, just Facebook. Now, I know I probably should do those other platforms and that it would definitely help my business. But the extra stress and anxiety it would create for me on a daily basis mean that it’s not worth it – those paths have too much resistance for me.
Over the years, I’ve learned that Facebook is the natural platform for me. I’ve been on it for 17 or 18 years at this point, and I still enjoy it. Knowing that I have an easier time with Facebook, I’ve used it as my #1 social media marketing tool and have built my audience on that platform.
In short, it’s always best to pick a platform that you have an easy time with. If you’re a calculative marketer, pick a platform with tonnes of data. If you’re more of a writer, then lend yourself to the platform that makes sense for you.
Find where your skills lie, and focus on where they fit best.
Of the skills that an entrepreneur can have, you’ve mentioned that the ability to get attention and sustain people’s attention is vital to success. Could you expand upon that?
No matter who we are, everyone is in the business of sales. Even if you’re not an entrepreneur, if you’re a wife, a husband, a kid, a parent, a sibling, a grandparent, whoever – you’re always selling your ideas. Everyone is always attempting to engage with others and get themselves noticed.
The two challenges in marketing are getting someone’s attention and then keeping it. If you have someone’s attention and can keep it, they’re sold; you only need to put something in front of them. But, actually getting that attention is the biggest battle. You can be the best in the world at sustaining attention, but if you can’t get it, then that doesn’t matter.
Great employees, great contractors, great vendors, promoters, whatever, are all able to get people’s attention – it’s that simple.
In your own personal experience, you credit a portion of your own recent success to the lessons you learned during a period when you lost money. How can entrepreneurs redirect moments that don’t financially go their way into growth lessons?
I’ve learned the hard way that there's a silver lining in every tough time we go through – there’s always a lesson to be learned. Think about it, you’re not going to train for the Olympics and win every race you participate in. Michael Phelps won the gold medal in the Olympics and has lost regional and national swimming races in his career. It happens, it’s part of the process.
When you’re struggling and going through tough moments, take that failure as a moment to learn and refine your strategy going forward. I went into near bankruptcy when I was $1.7 million in debt. That moment gave me the perspective I needed to realize what was going wrong and correct my mistakes.
From that moment onward, I was safer, more protected, and smarter in the decisions I made. My worst moment gave me a whole bucket of ideas and new thoughts that I could use to grow. As an entrepreneur, I won’t make those same mistakes again – I just keep getting stronger and stronger and stronger.
If something is going wrong, own it. You could sulk over a series of things or use them as momentum to figure out where your real issues lie. Your personal experiences will become the reasons that you succeed.
Now, we couldn’t close out this interview without mentioning AI. How do you think that AI will change how entrepreneurs approach marketing? Is this a watershed moment for productivity, or do you predict that the ease of generating new content will rapidly lead to oversaturation?
We’re definitely on an AI high right now, but I still don’t think there will be an oversaturation. I think AI is going to create a new movement in the world of marketing, one which focuses on personalization. It’s going to deepen the relationship that brands have with their customers. Of course, that’s a little strange to say, as AI is a robot, and robots have nothing to do with relationships.
But think about it as a way of driving customization into everything you do. With AI, you can customize journeys, marketing pieces, sales pieces, communications, customer support, and everything. By using thousands of pieces of data, AI can give you better numbers, accuracy, and figures than a human ever could.
I think AI is going to create more effective content and communication while also speeding everything up. Social media, Google, and all other content mediums will simply adjust instead of becoming oversaturated. When something becomes oversaturated, the market has to work harder to gain people’s attention. Once people realize that rapidly generating lazy content with AI isn’t getting any traction, they'll give up and stop because there is so much out there.
While there might be a period of oversaturation, what’s eventually going to happen is that the people who are oversaturating it will eventually stop. I actually see the biggest use of AI having nothing to do with content creation. AI will be all about personalization and customization, rather than just content generation.
We’re going to see Ai impact everything from transport and health to energy and more. Even in the education field, we’re already seeing the impact. AI will be absolutely everywhere in the next few years.
