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Editor:
Today, we are joined by Alan Clayton, a prominent figure in the world of digital marketing, particularly in the realm of affiliate marketing. Through his platform, Clayton Digital, which you’ll find on Facebook, he mentors aspiring entrepreneurs, helping them to transition from traditional employment to a thriving online business. His courses and resources aim to simplify marketing and provide actionable strategies for achieving online success. Alan, welcome. It’s great to meet you.
Alan Clayton:
Nice for having me here. Thanks. Thanks. Appreciate it.
Editor:
Well, it’s good to have you here. Maybe we could start with just a little bit about your journey from offline to online business.
Alan Clayton:
Well, it’s quite a story. Not easy to keep it short. But overall, we all know what happened back in 2020. I used to be in the restaurant business almost all my life. Then, COVID came, and it just smashed my offline business, like my restaurants, completely. I just had no other choice than give it a shot online because, back in the days, we all know. We were in the lockdowns. The only thing that was truly working was the internet. It came natural to me to look into online stuff and give it a shot there.
Editor:
You’re in the restaurant business for how long?
Alan Clayton:
Oh, for two decades, I would say. That’s what I was doing.
Editor:
Wow. I mean, that’s such a transition as well to go from the restaurant business into online marketing. How did you decide to make that transition? What was the pivotal moment for you?
Alan Clayton:
Aside from COVID… I live in Paris. We all know what happened here in the past years, all the problems we had with terrorism, with the street riots and everything. There’s always something happening in the city.
As a local business owner, you’re constantly impacted by these things, see. I was sick of it. I wanted to dive into a business model where, no matter what’s going on out there/outside of my door, I could be fully focused on what I was doing. I found that online business is perfect for that. We really have full control around things, and it’s just between us and the screen. I definitely went for it. The transition was tough. Nothing to do what I was doing back in the days. But when I saw it working and how it worked for me, it gave me that confidence and that validation that the concept was working. I just went for it, all in.
Editor:
Had you dabbled with online business before leaving the restaurant trade?
Alan Clayton:
No, no, no. Not at all. Not at all. I barely knew that it existed, specifically Facebook, where I am. By the way, facebook.com/allen.clayton.official. That’s how you find me. Well, I was never using Facebook for my personal life back in the days. But I was introduced to this opportunity. Although I was a complete newbie back in the days, I just reached out to someone who was two steps ahead of me. I told him, “Hey, just show me how things work.” That’s where things shifted for me. Only six/seven weeks since I started from scratch, I was able to close my first high-ticket sale. I was blown away when I saw it. I realized back then that I was actually dealing with a real business model. I decided to go all in once again.
Editor:
That’s great. I mean, it’s one of those businesses, isn’t it, where a lot of people think it can be quite tough to get started. It’s going to take years to get started. I guess you’d set yourself a bit of a challenge right from the start to go… Again, the restaurant business has closed down because of the pandemic. I need to make this work. Was that motivation for you?
Alan Clayton:
Well, the motivation was feeding my family, basically. I’m going to be straight up with you. Once again, the situation was critical. But I was always intrigued with this. I just never thought that it was for me. See, I always viewed online business as something that was reserved for those IT guys with some heavy technical skills. As it turned out, nothing’s further from the truth.
It is about skill., but I wasn’t using any tech. Until this day, I don’t use much tech. My entire income is coming out of my Facebook profile. I’ve never spent a dime on traffic, see. Also, what gave me the confidence was this quote that I heard from Brian Tracy, one of my favorite business people, who kept repeating that all the business skills are learnable, see.
It’s something that people need to hear. Talent has nothing to do with it. Everything is learnable. Even the most difficult thing, stuff like coding or… I don’t know, something that feels completely strange to you, you could become expert at it if you put your mind to it and you fully commit to it, see. That was my choice.
Editor:
I think one of the interesting points here is the fact that you’ve chosen to use Facebook primarily as the base for your business: that you’ve built an entire business now on the Facebook platform. I guess that means that you’ve not had to get too involved in the tech side of things. How easy did you find it to get started?
Alan Clayton:
I wouldn’t say easy. I would say simple, see, which is not the same term. Well, there are not 150 ways how to drive traffic to your offers. Either you pay for it… In that case, it’s a paid advertisement, or you do it organically. In both cases, there’s a cost involved to it. There’s this massive myth online that you can do something for free.
It’s a myth. The quicker people understand it, the quicker they will start making money. What I preferred, given that there still is that budget, that upfront investment in order to get started, I would rather put that money into my knowledge rather than blowing it on ads, see, because, in this case, you can literally say that money goes down the drain. See, it gives you some results, but it’s only temporary. Whereas if you’re invested in your skills, well, the skills end up paying your bills, see. That’s what I’m seeing. I did heavily invested in myself. But I’ve never paid for traffic.
Editor:
Amazing.
Alan Clayton:
I strongly advise everyone to take this route, honestly, because it’s working.
Editor:
Absolutely. I mean, you’ve stumbled across something here that does seem to be working for you. Maybe you could tell us a bit about how your business looks now. Obviously, 48 months in terms of the life of setting up a business isn’t a huge amount of time. But most businesses maybe can last a couple of years and then disappear away again. You’ve now built a successful online brand within the last four years. What is your business looking like these days?
Note from the editor:
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