Jan Koch

You still work in the corporate world in some way correct? But what made you want to go to the entrepreneur route and why marketing?

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I work with corporates. That's right. I have corporates set up email marketing strategies, build email funnels, built automations and things like that.

I became an entrepreneur in 2013 because I had a burnout. So I was back then working as a business consultant. Also studying for master's degree in IT, security on the site. And I burned out in that phase. And I decided rather than building somebody else's dream, I want to build my own dream and build my own business because my situation couldn't be any worse. I couldn't work anymore with a business instead of the masters.

I dropped out of the masters. I built my business on the side. Thankfully my employer back then allowed me to do that. And I decided to become an entrepreneur. Built it on the side and then left the job after seven months in 2013. Why marketing? Because I believe that when you are able to say people and inspire people to take action.

In an ethical way, you will never run out of cash flow.

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What can be more profitable, bad product, but good marketing or bad marketing, but good product. Why?

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I think the bad product, but good marketing is the better position given that you can improve the product. So with good marketing, you can run people through the first iteration of the product. Tell them, it is just a first version. You will improve over time. You give them a discount, give them bonuses for being able to take the risk, being willing to take the risk with you.

To buy the product, even though knowing it might not be perfect. And then you iterate it. On the other hand, having bad marketing, but a good product from my experience does not work because the product can be as good as you want to be. If the bad marketing doesn't communicate that clearly nobody will be trusting you to give your product to try.

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From your experience what is a product that requires more work to sell and what requires less? Or it all depends on the plan that you set ?

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I don't see how a specific type of product would require more or less work to say. It boils down to complexity and to the price point in the end. So I can have a service that I charge $29 for one time gives you excellent results .that will be an easy sale.

On the other hand, I can also have a service. It is $30,000 upfront. But it gives you $300,000 in value, right? So that would also be quite an easy sell. Because for the right person, they can invest 30,000 to make 300, depending on the price point. It depends on the audience that you're going for. And it depends on the value that you ultimately deliver.

Two other factors. I recommend Alex Hormozi  "$100 million offers" . He has a value equation in here. So in that value equation, he says, You have the dream outcome and the absolute security of achieving that outcome. And then you have also as a counterpart. The effort it takes for the client to achieve that outcome and the time delay. So how long will it take me to create that outcome? Those are the four factors you want to increase the upper two. You want to increase the dream value. You want to increase the perceived security of your client. Getting that outcome. And you want to reduce the time for your client. It takes to create or to experience the outcome. And you want to also reduce the effort your client has to take to achieve your outcome to work with you.

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Can you talk a bit more about your course?

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Yes. So I do have a course. On email marketing called email superpower. It's a course where you learn segmenting your email list, building up subgroups or segments of people on your email list, based on the point of, of the buyer journey, they are at It's proven to work. It's a really affordable price point. So, if you want to really supercharge your email marketing, that's my best pick.

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What are the business models for your products( course and coaching)?

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I do not focus as much on the course these days. I focus on coaching and I'm focusing on "done for you services". So I help B2B businesses build up email sequences, improve, then use a new setup. And integrate the email marketing into an overall content strategy that effectively caters to the buyer journey. And increases the effectiveness of inbound marketing overall.

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What about marketing strategies?

I'm a big fan of doubling down on marketing strategies that work. And I also am a big believer in not every marketing strategy is a good fit for every business all the time. For example, right now, even though I sell email marketing, it's not my core focus, outbound and networking is my core focus right now.

It's not about for me at this point about emailing my list every day, because my list is not relevant for the offer that I have. So you have to be mindful when you shift things in your business, like I'm doing right now. You have to be mindful of where can you validate your hypothesis of what is a good offer?

What's a good price point? How do you sell that offer with the least amount of effort. Right now, for me, that's outbound cold calls, cold email networking. It's not so much emailing an email list that I've built over the past 10 years.

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How can AI affect email marketing or marketing in general? Or how is it affecting already?

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It already is. You have  like Chat GPT, Jasper AI, copy AI, Synthesysfor video. You can essentially create an entire business on AI. I think AI helps bad copywriters create better copy and it helps great copywriters get even better results because human written copy outperforms AI copy all day, every day. In my opinion.

Because you just connect better on an emotional level. You can do better research. Usually AI doesn't have the most recent data like Chet GPT is trained up to 2021 and yes, there will be eventually versions, where AI is trained in real time data. But I think for those who can use AI to create content, to create ideas for content. they will have a massive advantage. Don't sleep on it. But on the other hand also don't make AI the single source of truth for your marketing

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Do you have a next project coming on?

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Yes. As I said, I work with many B2B businesses right now, building funnels for them. But I also have Scalefest, which is an event, the only event I'm running this year  As Event Success Director. And this is a startup and scale up conference. We started with the conference and turning it into a community where we bring together a seven figure, eight figure, nine figure entrepreneurs to share real-world experience for scale-up owners. So if you have a startup, if you have a company and you've secured 1, 2, 3 rounds of funding, and you're not sure what to do next. this is where you should be this year. It's on April 27th and you can go to the website.

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Is email marketing effective as outbound (example cold email)?

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Yes, it's a volume game. So cold email can be very effective, but you have to do it right. It's very easy to burn your domain with cold emails. There's a good training from Uptics on YouTube. It's also a sales pitch webinar for them, but they cover the basics of email marketing as outbound strategy. In terms of how many different domains you need, how many inboxes per domain, how many emails you should send on a day? How do you get into the inbox more often than not get flagged as spam as much? Can you have links in your first email? Can you have attachments? And all those questions get answered there.

It's a way more complex than I can answer right now. But in a, in a nutshell, yes, it is very effective.

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Favorite tool and why?

That's a good question. It has to be Notion for me because Notion, especially within an AI feature recently becomes even more of the baseline for all my business. I have my tasks in there. I have my documentation in there. Clients can log in and access their own information. It's just the root of where I track stuff and where I manage my information. But otherwise, mybusiness would also not work If it wasn't for an invoicing tool or if it wasn't for a shopping cart tool. If it wasn't for WordPress or any website builder for that matter, my business wouldn't work.

One could argue LinkedIn or Upticks or seamless AI would also be essentially, so it always depends on the angle you're coming from.

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Word of advice

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Believe in yourself. And I know this sounds cheesy, but you really have to understand that entrepreneurship is a lonely game. And you have to be able to go through extended periods of really hard work. Really frustrating days, sometimes for weeks without a pause, without a break, you just get hammered in the face every single day with issues and things you thought would work, but they didn't. With projects going wrong with clients turning on you, like be prepared for a really hard time, but also be prepared for a lifestyle that gives you the choice of what you want to do, when you want to do it and how you want to do it. And with whom.

So it is obviously a very aspirational journey and it's in my opinion, the best way to live that just for me personally, not telling everybody to start a business

In fact, I would say 90%, maybe 99% of people are better off being the number 15 In a startup or the number three in a startup or just working for a corporate and they can thrive there with stability, with predictability. But if you are really striving for freedom. If you're striving for having a lot of responsibility and for being in control of your own outcomes and of your own results I think entrepreneurship is worth a shot

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One book, one person to follow on Twitter, and one music?

One book, the Daily stoic by Ryan holiday. One person to follow on Twitter I would say Justin Welsh. If you're learning, if you want to learn entrepreneurship study what he's doing,m odel what he's doing. One music. I'm not so deep into music. So some, happy hardcore. but I also listened to Metallica, ACDC Ramstein. I listened to some lo-fi when I'm working. Um,

Yeah, I don't really have a style of music that I would share here.

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