We recently connected with Chris Orzechowski and have shared our conversation below.

Chris, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?

I just wrote more than anyone. I published more blog posts, took on more clients, and pumped out more deliverables than anyone I knew. I did this for years on end, not taking days off. I wish there was a sexy story behind it, but I just wrote and wrote and wrote until people started paying attention to me. It wasn’t some exciting montage with Push It To The Limit playing in the background. It was a guy in a room, fingers on the keyboard, 8-10 hours a day for years on end.

Success isn’t hard. But like Ronnie Coleman says, “Everyone wants to be a bodybuilder… but no one wants to lift no heavy ass weights.”

Everyone wants to be a successful copywriter, but nobody wants to pumped out 2,000 – 3,000 words a day, every day of the year.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I got into the marketing industry because I hated being a public school teacher. I wanted to work for myself and make a lot of money. I wanted to build something of my own. So I built up a copywriting business and left my job as a middle school special ed teacher in 2017. Five years later I hit just shy of $1,000,000 in yearly revenue. My clients hire me to help them grow and scale their brands. I cut my teeth as an email marketer, generating millions of dollars in revenue for a number of clients. I had an email marketing agency and do some consulting work now.

Today, I have an e-commerce incubator where I help Founders scale their brands. I’m on a mission to build the next generation of iconic, 100+ year American CPG brands.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

My side hustle eventually became my full time business. I had a mentor who “made money on the internet” and I was intrigued with how that was even possible. So I tumbled down the rabbit hole. Started a few blogs, didn’t get much traction. Then I discovered this thing called copywriting and I was hooked.

I whored my way through low level clients so I could build up a book of work. I was doing sales letters for like $200 at one point, truly insane. I didn’t care about the money, I treated my copy business like a start up. Acquisition was more important than monetization.

I knew I needed lead flow, deal flow, and cash flow if I was going to be able to quit my day job. I needed enough of the right people to know who I was. I guess you could say my first “big break” was when I landed a retainer with John Assaraf’s brand, NeuroGym. I wrote almost all of their copy for 2.5 years. It was a tough experience – I worked 30+ hours a week, all nights and weekends, to ship work. I used my sick days to write copy for 10 hours straight. For the four years I was building my copy business on the side, I can count on one hand how many “vacation days” I took off from writing. That’s not an exaggeration, I wrote copy every single day. I usually took Christmas off. I wrote on my birthdays. I told myself I was going to do whatever it took to make myself successful so I could get out and do this for real. Failure was not an option.

My next big break was Filippo Loreti’s 2016 Kickstarter project. We raised $5,170,445 in 30 days – it was the 18th biggest Kickstarter project in history, at that time. Plus, we did another seven-figures worth of post-campaign upsells… but not many people know that.

Anyway, after that – people knew who I was. I arrived.

People knew my name. They knew I was a guy who could post big numbers. I could handle large scale launches and monetize lists better than most.

It gave me the momentum I Needed to go full time.

Once that happened, things accelerated even faster… because now I was able to dedicate my BEST “40 hours” of the week to my business… instead of my “worst 40 hours.”

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

When Mark Ritz came to me with the concept for Carnivore Snax, I knew in an instant it’d be a winner.

Today, Carnivore Snax is on track to hit $12MM in sales, and growing fast.

But back in 2019, it was just a Kickstarter campaign. It wasn’t even a business yet, Mark and his partner were pre-revenue.

I told him I’d do the entire launch on spec. I’d just take a small percentage of sales if and when it was successful. I was so confident it’d be a success, I even hired one of my proteges (up front, out of pocket) to help me ship some of the copy deliverables.

We wound up doing $200,000 in sales with that Kickstarter in 30 days. More importantly, it gave the brand momentum and a solid customer base. They grew and grew and grew from there and I think they’re going to continue to be a successful brand for a long time. We’ve been working together for four years now, and it’s been an awesome ride.

I’ve worked with hundreds of products and I’ve found one thing is true:

A hit is a hit.

There are winners… and then there are losers.

If you can’t assess which products and brands have the potential to be winners, you’re in for a mediocre career.

I got the same feeling when I worked with Filippo Loreti – I knew it’d crush. And, it did.

Not every client or brand will be a hit. Not every investment that Buffett and Munger have made have turned out to be home runs. But when you concentrate enough effort into those rare products and brands that have the potential to be big… you can create some amazing campaigns.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://100yearbrand.co/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/100yearbrand/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/100yearbrand
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-orzechowski-b5531823a/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/chrisorzy