Graham Michael Byers grew up in Los Angeles and eventually moved to the Bay Area to attend college. When he graduated, his first post-collegiate job was with a corporate company. Graham reflects on it as being a great corporate job. While he was working at my full time job, he was also working on his first online business – a supplement brand. He did that for about a year then eventually sold that business which provided him the funds to get into direct response marketing, which is what he still does today.
Once Graham sold his first business and got some capital, he quit his job and moved to Las Vegas to pursue internet marketing full time. It was about a year of working. He often reflects on the fact that he had fun. Graham eventually moved to Puerto Rico to reap the benefits of the Act 60s – it used to be called Act 20/22 – Because “as your income grows you want to really look for ways to maximize your profit and what you take home.” Also, an innate thing, maybe it is with internet marketers and the world was looking for that one simple trick and loopholes to make more money. To Graham, without renouncing US citizenship, Puerto Rico is just the best option.
What advice would you give to your younger self?
Don’t be afraid to take risks, especially when you’re young. You want to put yourself in those asymmetric environments where the risk and the reward outweighs what you’re giving up. Taking risks and taking action and putting yourself in the middle of things is the quickest way to get experience. I would tell my younger self, “Look, you don’t have time.You don’t want to be a millionaire when you’re 65. You want to be a millionaire when you’re 20 something, 30 something.” I hate it when people say, “Oh, the KFC guy, he became a millionaire when he was 80 something.” Who wants me to be 80 and a millionaire, right?
So, my biggest advice is, look, you don’t have time. You need to take action now. You need to take as many losses as you can upfront so you can enjoy wins later on. Right? So, my biggest advice is don’t be scared to take risks, take action as soon as you can and execute. Right? Execution is, I think, the greatest gift as an entrepreneur you could have.
What business books have inspired me?
I’ll be honest, I don’t really read that many books anymore. Right? I’m not really like these Gary Vee nerds and Tai Lopez guys that say, “You ought to read a book a week.” Honestly, reading is too slow for me. I’ll listen to an audio book every now and again. But, I don’t really read much now. Back when I first started, I was reading all the time, which I think is important. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying don’t read. What I am saying is for now, your time is valuable. For me, I don’t really have that much time to put into reading.
When I did get first started, the book inspired me the most is by Felix Dennis, How to Get Rich. It’s not like a blueprint step by step how to get rich like the title says. What it did for me is plant in my mind the type of lifestyle you could have and the type of mindset and thinking you need to have to really get rich. When I say rich, I mean multi-millionaire rich, not making a 100K a month rich. So, I definitely recommend, pick it up. It’s a fun read, a quick read. It’s just an amazing book. Felix Dennis is really great character, someone you should definitely look into and read the biography on his life.
How can someone contact me?
Instagram is probably the best. It’s @grahammichaelbyers. Feel free to shoot me a DM, asking me about Puerto Rico, what it took to move there. Any Puerto Rico questions, happy to answer.
How did you start your entrepreneurial journey?
Starting out on your journey in internet marketing and really entrepreneurship in general, you definitely have doubts on whether you’re going to succeed, you’re going to make make money and you’re going to lose money, which definitely happens to me. It happens to me to this day. Even though maybe eight out of 10 times I launch a campaign, it’s going to work, I still have those doubts, especially when I first started. I can’t really pinpoint a specific time when I had it. It’s been throughout my whole career. But, the one thing that kind of kept me going – and if you ask any other entrepreneur I’m sure it’s the same thing – is when the pain of you not having what you truly want, which is financial freedom, tons of money, whatever, outweighs the pain of failing and losing money, then you’re kind of unstoppable. That’s really what’s kept me going for all these years.
How did you find your first customer?
Well, it was really simple actually. I found an offer, a product that I wanted to promote, I made an ad, and I put it online. It’s simple, not easy.
What I did was find a product, made an ad, and put it online. In this case, I was using Google as my traffic source. I invested money into it and within the first day, I had my first customer. It wasn’t profitable and this was years ago. I had no experience. In all honesty, I was horrible looking into the past. However, I had my first customer. I had my first paid traffic online money. The earnings were at a loss but what it did was open my eyes that if I can make $10 online I can make millions. Since then, I was addicted.
What does the future hold for your business?
We’re actually in the middle of developing a few more online brands that we hope to grow and then maybe eventually exit and sell for a few millions. We’ll see, maybe not. But more importantly, what I’m even more excited about is I really want to help entrepreneurs make the move from wherever they’re living to Puerto Rico and really reap the benefits of Act 60. For me, it was one of the best decisions I ever made and I really want to show that to other entrepreneurs. I want to show them the way. I want to show them that it’s not a difficult thing to do. It’s not a big change in your life. It’s probably going to be the best thing you ever did. So, what I’m really excited about is broadcasting my message of how Puerto Rico opens its arms to business and entrepreneurs.
How did you get started with helping people learn about Puerto Rico in Act 60?
Honestly, I started one by doing it myself. I would never recommend something I haven’t done on my own. As an entrepreneur, you’re always looking for new ways to make money, make greater sums of money. I decided to move to Puerto Rico. Limiting your taxes is maybe one of the easiest things you could do. Act 60 – it was Act 20/22 when I started – was a means to accomplish that.
I didn’t have to come up with some innovative new product or some crazy new marketing strategy. I just had to move somewhere new – which I didn’t mind, especially being young. After doing it, I just realized how awesome it is and amazing it is to live within an environment of a tropical island.
Many of my friends began asking me how it was. I’d been telling them how easy it was to get set up and how not really a big change to your lifestyle it is. I showed them the many advantages of living there. Then first when some of them moved there with my guidance, I realized, okay, this is definitely something people are interested in.
So I thought to myself “how can I do this at a 10X scale?” I really had the motivation to become an ambassador for moving to Puerto Rico as an entrepreneur, as a digital nomad.
How do you make money online?
I do any of the marketing, which I know is a broad spectrum. So, how I like to explain it and narrow it down is I do direct response style marketing. I do that as an affiliate, promoting someone else’s product. I also own a few of my own brands that I promote online too. We’re just actually a two-man team – me and my business partner. We do millions a year as a two-man team leveraging the internet.
How did you get started?
It all began when I was in college. I was a broke college kid. I had no money. I was on my own paying my rent, groceries, all on financial aid. I had a job. It was okay money. But then, I did something stupid and I lost my license. I don’t mean I lost my ID card. I lost my ability to drive.
Being a digitally savvy millennial, what do you do when you don’t know something? You Google it! So, I Googled how to make money online and that’s what took me down the rabbit hole. From there, I found online courses and programs. I took them all.
To all the internet marketing OGs, the first one that worked for me was Google Sniper. If you guys didn’t know, it was a really well-known program It was about ranking websites and getting affiliate sales. It was my first foray into internet marketing. Being persistent I kept on researching – Googling – and took it from that.
What is the best marketing strategy that you have to attract business and customers?
I don’t know if it’s a strategy, but maybe more of a mindset. To me, it’s direct response, which is for every $1 you put in, you want to bring in, at minimum, two. This isn’t brand marketing. I’m not a company with millions of dollars behind it where I can take a loss. I’m just one dude that wants money now.
I don’t want to be a millionaire when I’m 65. I want to be a millionaire now. So to me, direct response is the best method, which is nothing new. People have been doing this for years. People aren’t really taught this. What’s taught in school is like brand marketing. Honestly, I don’t really even know. I never listened to my marketing classes in college. I didn’t understand any of that. It didn’t make sense to me.
What I knew is I wanted to make money now. So direct response marketing, the best type of mindset you could have, and, obviously, being on the internet, which is the most leverage-able tool out there. Right? It doesn’t matter if you’re in Facebook, YouTube, Google, even TikTok. Pick a platform, stick with it, master it, and use direct response tactics. It wins every time.
How long did it take for your company to get profitable?
When I started I Google searched “how to make money online.” I was about a junior in college. Three to four years later I started having success of earning good internet money – profitable internet money. Anyone that says this is a get rich quick type of thing likely has no experience. To me, internet marketing is not for the faint of heart. You could lose your thousands of dollars in seconds.
Now, with the influx of new knowledge and drop shipping, or whatever, you can definitely cut that learning curve in half. When I first learned it there wasn’t as much info out there. I took a lot of falls. A good three, four years into the game I started making some good revenue and my business finally became profitable.
What’s been the most satisfying moment in your business career?
Well, it’s definitely sitting on a beach Monday afternoon while I know my friends are working in an office and I’m chilling on a beach, sipping on a Mai Thai, showing them a video of a beautiful Puerto Rican beach saying, “Wish you were here.” To me, that’s the most satisfying. But, I’m a little vain.
When I say satisfying, I don’t mean shoving it in your friend’s face. What I mean is enjoying the fruits of your labor. The most satisfying moments in businesses is the lifestyle, especially as an entrepreneur, especially as an internet entrepreneur, where you can live anywhere in the world.
What’s the toughest decision You’ve made in recent months?
Well, a few months ago, I actually launched a new product, put a bunch of research into it, bunch of money into it, thought it was going to be a huge winner. I don’t even know how much money I sunk into it, but too much. I did all my research, did all due diligence, launched it, and it turned out to be a big flop. Right? The big, tough decision is knowing when to cut your losses, which can be tough for an entrepreneur. Because almost every new venture you do, each product, it’s like your baby. Right? But, you really need to know when to cut your losses and to just walk away. I know a lot of people preach, “Oh, never quit, never surrender, blah, blah, blah.” Sometimes, honestly, quitting is a smart thing to do. You really need the perspective to know that what you’re doing is going to pan out and if it’s worth your time or not.
What do I think makes you successful in business?
I definitely think it’s the ability to take on risk and be okay on a dealing with risk. I’m relatively young. When I first got started, I was much younger obviously. I think it’s important when you’re young to take on – I don’t want to say as much risk as possible – but to put yourself in risky situations that have a large upside. You’re young. You can fail. You have time to recover. For example, moving to Puerto Rico X amount of years ago, I had no idea what it was like over there. I honestly never even visited before I moved. But, I knew through Act 20/22, now called Act 60, that this is a once in a lifetime thing.
It’s a cool thing to do. Not many people could say they live or have lived there and I get these amazing business benefits. It’s really a no brainer not to do it. The risk is asymmetrical. The upside is promising. The downside is limited. So, I took the risk. It’s something I’ve carried throughout my whole life. As you get more skills and experience, you know how to manage that risk. So, my biggest success tip is take on risk. Don’t be scared of it.
Can we find you on Youtube?
Yes, at https://www.youtube.com/grahambyers.