Hello! The Gambling.pro team is with you. We continue to invite cool and interesting guys to our place. Today we are with Sasha and Vera – the owners of the Traffbraza team.
There is an opinion that it is better not to do business with friends. It’s not just friendship that unites you, I would like to talk about it right away. How do you manage not to quarrel?
Alex: This is an interesting question. I also think that doing business with friends is not a good idea. Except when friendships come out of business, that’s okay. But Vera and I are not friends, we are a couple. Therefore, this is a slightly different story.
What is the difference? If two friends run a business, then the income from it goes to different budgets. Because of this, more often than not, there are some disputes: who did more, who did less, who worked more, who earned how much money. We don’t have such a problem only because all the money earned goes to the family. We get to know each other from different angles, not only as a couple, but also as entrepreneurs. We see ourselves from different angles, get new experiences, and get to know each other better. This is cool.
Vera: We are also developing in this direction. Not only as partners, a team, but also as a couple, because this is actually a development in a relationship.
Tell us what you have now. You have a team. What is this team?
Alex: Almost all of our team is located in Kiev, with the exception of the guys who work remotely. Now the team has about 80 people.
How many employees do you have remotely?
Alex: About 20% of employees work remotely, everyone else works in the office. We have guys from Moscow, Chelyabinsk, St. Petersburg, Ukraine, and the Czech Republic in our team.
Basically, are all employees in Kiev?
Alex: Yes. We believe that office work is still better than remote work. This makes it much easier to organize all the processes within the team.
Sasha, before Vera introduced you to online business, you worked offline. What plans did you have, what did you do?
Alex: I ran into entrepreneurship not so long ago, about 5 years ago. I worked as a lawyer and my sister worked as an economist. We were good specialists, each in his own industry. Once she called me and said: “Let’s participate in the tender.” Philip Morris launched a new product in Ukraine. We prepared a tender offer, won the tender and became the first to launch IQOS in Ukraine.
We launched the first 10 stores. But I cannot call it entirely my business. Yes, I was the founder of this company, but I only did a certain kind of activity. I was involved in legal activities and part of the operational activities. It was not entirely my business, but, of course, I wanted my own. I was just getting experience.
Then I started an outsourcing company. When I was a lawyer, I worked with restaurants and understood how this area works. I understood that there are ways to optimize. It was possible to optimize taxation and other points.
This prompted me to create an outsourcing company. I hired people who were in the restaurant business on my staff and gave them to outsourcing and outstaffing to restaurants. This was my first independent business.
What year was that?
Alex: That was 3 years ago. Then there was a dark kitsch project. This is food delivery. We had no seats, there was only food delivery. I launched the Dark Kitchen restaurant chain with my partner.
What was the concept? We prepared and delivered food that could only be tasted in good restaurants. We cooked in the kitchen and delivered food. The quality and price were higher than other deliveries. Everything was delicious and beautiful, but there were no seats.
All these businesses are working now, but without me. I left IQOS. I sold the outsourcing to my friend, and 3 months ago I left the Dark Kitchin` project. I sold my share of the company to a friend. I completed all projects completely and concentrated on affiliate marketing. For me it is more profitable and more interesting.
You could have kept these projects for yourself.
Alex: Business needs attention anyway. When there is a partner who is involved, and I cannot devote my time to this, this is not right.
And now a question for Vera. As far as I know, you introduced Sasha to affiliate marketing?
Vera: He saw what I was doing, because I was constantly at work. This gave him the idea to create his own team.
Alex: We live together. I saw her leaving for work, arriving, bringing money from there. I wondered what was going on there.
Since when did you start living together?
Alex: We worked together in a law firm as lawyers and met there.
Vera: We have a fairly long relationship, about 7 years.
Vera, how did you get involved in affiliate marketing if you worked as a lawyer?
Vera: This is a very interesting story, it may sound strange. Before I turned 25, I wanted to radically change my field of activity. I also had a business with a partner. We were engaged in the import of vegetables and fruits to Ukraine. We supplied vegetables and fruits to large chains and delivered them to shops.
I wanted to radically change everything, to do something new. I wanted to learn something from scratch. I thought that now everyone is working in the IT field, and it would be nice to try something new too. I read a book on the topic and realized that it was not mine.
What kind of book?
Vera: It was a book for beginner programmers. I realized that this was not for me. I realized that I could not read the book and pass the test.
I remembered that Sasha has acquaintances who once talked about affiliate marketing. I didn’t understand what affiliate marketing was and started learning more about it. I started looking for information on the Internet. I found training for a week. I passed it for 2 weeks with tears in my eyes.
Alex: It was tough. She teaches something, then claps her laptop, runs out, smokes IQOS, gives up, then comes back and teaches again. I was drawn to this process.
Vera: I asked him some questions, he tried to help me, he didn’t succeed. If I like something, I start to delve into the topic. Then I may not like something, like something else. And then I realized that the obstacles I face do not scare me. It becomes interesting for me to study, and my interest rises, not falls. This is how I became a partner.
You went through training in two weeks and then started looking for a team, right?
Vera: Yes. I need not just theory, but also practice. When you practice, the information is absorbed better.
Are you attracted to affiliate marketing because there are challenges to overcome?
Vera: I didn’t know in advance what difficulties there were.
It usually takes a long time to find a job. Lucky you?
Vera: Yes, I was lucky to find a job the first time. I was offered to become a junior specialist team lead. In the technical part, I did not understand anything, but they said that they would teach everything. Then they didn’t have a team, and, accordingly, they stopped working. Therefore, I became a regular affiliate manager.
How long have you worked?
Vera: I was a partner for six months, then I became a team lead. General experience: about 1 year.
What was your first impression of your work?
Vera: At first I did not understand how you can make money at all. Nothing worked for me. We worked remotely, only after 4 months we came to the office.
Alex: There was a small team of 3 people.
Vera: Yes, there were three of us. After we arrived at the office, the situation began to improve.
The team in which I was supposed to become a team lead broke up. I moved to another team as a partner.
Alex: Vera had little experience, we can say that she practically did not have it. But she had fire in her eyes. They liked it and decided to get started.
Watch the full interview on our YouTube channel. There is even more interesting information about the team, statistics, payment models and much more!
