Thanks to its size, diversity of offerings, and relative ease of access, the digital economy has become one of the go-to wellsprings of economic opportunity.
From traditional employment to freelance and solo work and even starting companies – the digital economy can accommodate all of it and then some.
And there’s no better proof than Nathan Nazareth’s entrepreneurial career.
Surprising Success Story
Nathan Nazareth has achieved great success in several years with several businesses working in different fields, including online marketing, online education, business development, and eCommerce.
While it was the success he was hoping for, it was not the success he expected.
“I am still sometimes shocked about how far I’ve come and how much the businesses have grown,” he says. “I understand that it’s still very new, this opportunity for people to start a business and scale it up quickly. It’s crazy, really, but it’s the Internet.”
To someone looking on the outside, Nathan Nazareth’s spectrum of businesses could look as if someone simply searched for “ways to make money online” and then tried a bunch of the methods featured on the list. And that's not too far from how he got his start.
“I was in my first year of college at the time, and while I had enough money to get by, I was always a bit anxious about my expenses and being able to afford the full college experience,” he recalls. “The money I saved up doing part-time jobs before college wasn’t going to last, and since I have an entrepreneurial spirit, I started looking into different ways to make money online.”
After looking into Forex and cryptocurrency, he quickly found that some types of digital entrepreneurship have a costlier entry fee. So the choice for Nazareth's first foray into digital business turned to social media marketing.
Looking for Potential
The client foots the bill for social media marketing. For his part, Nathan Nazareth had to develop the skill set for successfully managing his potential clients’ ads. That was a major draw for him as well.
It didn't hurt that he saw plenty of potential customers in and among the businesses in Victoria, Canada, where he was going to college.
Many of the smaller businesses had virtually no internet presence, and Nazareth decided he would be the one to bring them into the 21st century.
He learned everything he needed to offer complete stack services, website building included, and he began cold-calling in search of his first client.
“Getting that first client wasn’t easy. I had at least a hundred rejections before someone decided to take a chance and accept a meeting with an 18-year-old kid with no portfolio but plenty of enthusiasm and a competitive rate,” Nazareth recalls.
“But after getting that first client, the ball started rolling. The first client referred me to my second client, money started coming in, and before I knew it, I brought on a couple of students I went to college with to come and work with me.”
Side Hustle Shift
After generating life-changing sales for one of his clients over a very short period, Nathan Nazareth became aware of just how powerful online marketing can be. He decided to employ those skills to sell his own products. To do that he opted to move into a very popular form of eCommerce, dropshipping.
Dropshipping wasn’t a smooth ride. The business model is lauded as a get-rich-quick scheme, but it requires a lot of patience and money to find and promote that one product that does well.
When he did find it, Nazareth soon learned that the success wasn’t lasting, and his first winner died down within a couple of months.
So he adapted. He found ways to fix some of the common issues with dropshipping, including product quality issues and slow delivery times. Then, he started thinking about product research and development, planning store evolutions and successor products and developing systems that worked.
“I developed several stores to six-figure sizes, and two of them are running to this day,” Nazareth explains. “And I wanted to share my story, so I started doing TikTok and YouTube, and soon enough, people were asking me specific questions to help them out. That’s not something you can do when you have thousands of followers. There’s not enough time for it. So that’s how I started charging for mentorship.”
From mentoring people who found him online, it was a short jump to developing his video course. He paired it with private support from coaches who finished his program, and that’s how OutrightEcom was born.
In a very short span, Nathan Nazareth went from making other people money, to making money for himself, to making money teaching people how to do the things he does.
He did it all by leveraging skills he didn’t learn in college – although he did find valuable things to learn there, too. Still, he feels a glaring lack of understanding about social media platforms, the creator economy, and influencers in the curriculum for a traditional business degree.
Nathan Nazareth sees more of his latest venture in his future. “I’ve been working with my agency with some YouTube names, content creators, influencers,” he says. “I know I owe dropshipping a lot for getting me here, and I still do education and online marketing. But I have dreams of working with some of the most prominent influencers in the world for the next five to ten years.”
This article was produced and syndicated by Wealth of Geeks.