Kimberly & Danny de Vries - The Awesomes

"This Married couple works together while raising seven kids (one is a newborn). We're in awe, and you will be too, when you read their story. That's why we picked them."

BASED IN THE NETHERLANDS and having just welcomed a new baby to their Family, Danny and Kimberly de Vries were gracious enough to grant us an audience to discuss their respective paths into the online marketing industry.

Danny and Kimberly had plenty of insight to share, including how their business partnership works in relation to their marriag, and how Kimberly's relocation to Europe from her native United States of America impacted her working life. Read on to learn more about this fascinating power couple.

​

DANNY DE VRIES, like many successful online marketers, endured the corporate world before realizing that lifestyle simply did not suit him. “I schooled in professional finance, so I was an auditor and CFO for a stock-listed company. After that, I started in metals and mining. I lived in Monaco for two years managing a trading company there, and responsible for mining companies in Africa. I traveled the world, seeing my family every other weekend, and I got fed up with that corporate lifestyle. So, I went back to the Netherlands and started working with start-up companies and I went online to see how we could market their products.

In the corporate world, you always end up working for somebody else. Maybe that is a bunch of Shareholders or owners of the company that have their own vision of progress. I put in a lot of time, and at the end of the day, you’re building expertise but not an asset for yourself. I want to be in control of my own life, not have it run by other people, and I thought that internet marketing be the easiest was to do that, applying my skills.I always enjoyed computer stuff, graphics, video, as a hobby, and now it’s part of my daily work.

I was looking for quality of life, so to say. I earned more as a corporate executive than I do right now, but the flip side is that we have so much more freedom. That freedom really pays off. We can come to our house in Spain, visit family in the United States, and return to the Netherlands. The only thing that holds us back is our kids’ schooling.”

Kimberly, meanwhile, began her career with her dream job before circumstances made her change direction. “I come from a background of television news. My degree is in broadcasting with a minor in sales. I became a single mom, so it became necessary to find a job that allowed me to earn enough money to look after my family. I turned down a couple of jobs in news, in order to get a job as an account executive and make more money. I couldn’t do what I loved because it didn’t pay enough.

I went into account executive work. I worked for a couple of technical companies before that, AOL and Prodigy. When Danny and I met, we started to look at something different.  We had moved, and I was all set to go look for work as an account executive; but he said he didn’t think I should. It became clear that he was interested in working together.

Internet marketing was mainly Danny’s thing. I didn’t have a problem with the idea of getting a job when I relocated to The Netherlands. I enjoyed corporate work and I’m quite social, like to have colleagues. I’d also just moved to a new country with one of  my sons, so I  was really starting my life all over again.  I was looking forward to getting  a job  but  it just  wasn’t  legal,  as I didn’t have a visa yet, and we had to look at different avenues.

By the time I got my visa, Danny said he really thought we should do something together—which surprised me. Before this interview, I asked Danny what he thinks of us working together, and he said it was always his dream. Danny really was the driver of that, and he said that comes from the fact that he’s a twin.”

"I put in a lot of time, and at the end of the day you’re building expertise but not an asset. I want to be in control of my own life, not have it run by other people..."

Danny confirms that growing up his fraternal twin brother has had an impact on his approach to business.

“For me, it’s very easy to spend a day with someone for twenty-four hours. That’s how I grew up, with a twin brother. Of course, you’ll have disagreements, but as a twin you become an expert in resolving them, as you have to live with each other the next day! I understood that Kimberly wasn’t used to that.

When she first came to the Netherlands, she couldn’t work, as she didn’t have a permit. So, I suggested that she use her presenting skills to find an income online. Doing stuff on Fiverr, she got so many gigs for doing videos for product launches and the like, that one thing led to another and she eventually joined the business.”

It took Kimberly a little longer to adapt to working from home alongside Danny, however.

“I needed my own time, my own people. Now I wouldn’t change it for the world, but it was quite an adjustment. In order to work together, you need a stable enough foundation so that one disagreement doesn’t ruin the relationship. I often say to friends that most of the things that we argue about in our marriage are business-related.”

This slightly complex beginning to their business relationship ensures that Danny and Kimberly are an ideal couple to question about the difficulties and dynamics of working together as a married couple. Danny has some insights to share.

"Whether you are in a marriage or not, you always have to look at what you contribute to a  relationship. We are very fortunate that Kimberly’s talents complement mine, so we don’t have conflict. She enjoys doing what she does best — which is what I’m flawed at and would  fail if I attempted — and the other way around. In any business partnership, you look at  the  talents  that you need and see if you have them in-house. If not, you can outsource. You don’t have to start working together, although it has benefits.”

Of course, any partnership will have its moments of disagreement. Kimberly is no stranger to them, especially since Danny is a person who wants to get things done fast.

“He’s a workhorse! I’ll say that I’d like to get something done and he’ll go ahead and start on it, where I’ll want to wait a minute and plan it. To me,planning is really important, but Danny is ready to get going.

Danny agrees.

“For me, you have to take action to get somewhere. Kimberly is more, ‘We should have thought about that! Why did you do that?’ I prefer to take action and learn from any mistakes.”

Thankfully, this difference does not cause irreparable damage to their relationship, as Kimberly explains.

“It doesn’t cause a true breakdown, but we do have yelling disagreements like any normal married couple. There’s something amazing about being able to work together and have a strong enough foundation that we can disagree, whether that’s business or personal, and it won’t ruin the relationship. There won’t be a breakup over our different opinions in business.

I think that we complement each other in what we do. His expertise is not mine. I’m not going to deal with the things that he does, and he doesn’t deal with the things that I do. Together, it makes us a really great team. We both feel very fortunate that we can work together and have that freedom. We could be living separate lives, with him going to work  and me going to work, and just reconnecting at the end of the day. We have both lived those lives with other people, and now we have a completely different life.”

Obviously, Danny and Kimberly have roles within their business partnership that complement each other. However, as Danny explains, the arrival of their latest family  member  does change things a little.

“It’s about finding that balance every day. Now that we have a baby, our days are different. We do not control when the baby needs attention! Sometimes I have to take something over so Kimberly can spend time with the baby, and vice versa. It's also about    taking it day by day and finding the best option for right now."

Overall, though, if we’re looking at product launches, I do the copy; I do the page building; I do the scripts for the videos. Kimberly does the presenting and the affiliate management. She builds the relationships with the affiliates, letting them know that something else is coming and creating a buzz. I’m more in the background, so they won’t see me as much. Therefore, we’ve branded Kimberly in our business as the spokesperson and face of quality product and excellent service.

The copy side is interesting. In my family there is a lot of dyslexia. I have it, as well, though you’d never know. It’s actually a benefit because, when you’re writing sales copy, you have to keep it simple. I write speeches for my mom. She is in politics in the Netherlands, and I write copy for all the launches, all the promos and videos. You see that it converts very well if you just keep it simple and have a good flow. I actually never knew that. I come from a financial background, working with numbers rather than words, and now I’m developing a skill I didn’t know I had.”

Kimberly elaborates on the subject of partnership, and on and Danny’s copy writing prowess.

“We base our tasks on what we enjoy most, too.  The first launch we did, our own solo launch, was on JVZoo. I remember Danny did all the copy, all the behind-the-scenes type of thing, and my whole job was to get relationships. I had to get to know people who could promote our product. That was what I enjoyed doing, especially because I was lonely in a new, foreign country where I didn’t speak the language. That was the only human interaction I got. I could operate all over the place on the internet. I do the presenting  and the communication with people, but I hate scriptwriting. I just don’t enjoy it. It’s partly because I’m a perfectionist, as is Danny, and that's where we work well together.

He’ll write a script that will need editing, which I can do; so one can’t work without the other. It’s an amazing match.

English is not Danny’s first language, but he writes fantastically well in English. You would never know that he has dyslexia; he just blows me away. It’s funny, though, because he has learned a kind of British English, which is different from American English. I prefer that all of our products have American English, so we tweak it. He doesn’t proofread anything, though, so he writes the copy and then has me to look at it. If he sends something out without me editing it, we have a problem!” 

Sharing their business and personal lives means that many working couples struggle to find time for themselves. Danny is acutely aware of this consequence, but he remembers what is truly important to Kimberly and himself.

‘There’s always work to do. You could work twenty-four hours in this business and make money, but at a certain point, you have to make a conscious decision to do something else today. You can promote a product every day, prepare a launch every day, but that would take away from the whole reason we’re doing this in the first place — the family. Kimberly has three kids, I have three kids, and now we have a baby together. Seven kids are a handful!”

Kimberly agrees that striking the right balance can be tricky. When you love what you do, it’s hard to take a break from that. In the corporate world, it’s very defined. You go to work and do work things; you come home and that's your time. It’s not like the at all now, and we allow work to take over before we realize we have to manage other areas of our lives. It's been an experience of stopping and taking personal time. We just finished one launch and Danny is already working on the next one, but I have said that we need to stop and take a break. You need to be able to pull back and make time for yourselves.”

Another key element of the internet marketing business is travel, including attendance at live events. Danny previously described Kimberly as the face of the business, but he admits that he is beginning to build recognition for himself.

“For a long time, Kimberly was very visible, and everyone knew her, and there was this guy hanging around her. That was how people thought of me. Now, though, we have done some scripts and presentations for other people, doing deals with people that have good products but don’t have the skills to market it. That’s when they notice that the copy comes from me and the presenting comes from Kimberly, so they know who to contact for what topic. That wasn’t the case a year or two ago, when everybody came to Kimberly for everything.”

That is a relief to Kimberly, who was growing weary of single- handedly representing the business.

“It’s a weight off my shoulders, as I would always have forty messages waiting for me overnight. It was constant pressure to check my messages, as I wanted to make sure that people were answered, and we were paying attention to our partners.”

The mention of events causes Danny to reminisce about previous attendance.

“Events are so important in this business because you need to build relationships. Yes, you can do that online, but seeing and speaking with somebody face-to-face takes a relationship farther. If you ask what the success of our business right now was based on, we would say the relationships that we have built over time. and the list, of course!

The first year that we did a launch, we put it on JVzoo. It was a great product that raised $10,000 in revenue through one affiliate, but that also pointed out our problem — we did not know any affiliates! We booked Kimberly a ticket to an event in the UK and she  called me when she arrived, saying she had no idea what to do. People that did not speak her business language surrounded her!”

Kimberly remembers the event well.

“I was out of my element. It was my first time in Liverpool, and I didn't know anybody. After I warmed, though,  it was a great event. The people are really nice, and it was a great experience. I agree with Danny that meeting face-to-face is  great,  but it’s also amazing that you can build relationships without ever meeting. One of the greatest partnerships we have, we still haven’t met. That’s the great thing about a platform like JVZoo — it’s really set us up to feel safe in the internet marketing space. That’s what I love about JVzoo. It has made our lives super easy in this business. We don’t have to hire an attorney. The contract is all set up, and the money is directly separated. We don’t have to deal with any of that.

JVZoo was the first platform that we launched on, and it’s taken time to get to know it. There’s a learning curve with every platform, and others have asked us to launch with  them, but we quite like the JVZoo interface. We’re very happy with it and have never sought to go elsewhere.”

Danny is also keen to point out his positive relationship with the platform.

“One thing that JVZoo has done is become a reliable partner in our business. We know that the system will work, and  that’s very important in this industry, especially dealing with affiliates. They want to be sure that they’ll get paid, and JVZoo makes sure that happens.

The other thing is that, even if you don’t have great technical skills, JVZoo makes it easy to sell digital products online. We haven’t done anything in the physical space yet, but in the digital space it s very easy — and it’s easy to integrate with other platforms. Where we deal with a developer of a product and we market it, there is integration needed for the payment platform, and JVZoo knows that. Also, because it’s been around for so long, there are so many other people on the platform. We all feel secure that our products will do well. The investment in time that we put in will be repaid in terms of profitability.”

As a couple that has left behind the corporate world and built an online empire from nothing, Danny and Kimberly are worth listening to when they share advice on the industry. 

Kimberly has some words of wisdom for anybody expecting instant results.

“This business is a learning curve. It’s going to take time. Invest that time to learn what you need to know, make the relationships that you need, and don’t give up. We have  been doing this for around three years now and I remember many months of frustration, feeling like all of this work we were putting in would never pay off; but it does. You just need to hang in there.

So many times, I told Danny that I couldn’t wait until my visa came through, so I could go back to work and get back into my comfort zone. But working online and doing internet stuff has allowed us both to expand in ways that we wouldn’t have, otherwise. We’re not where we want to stay, though. We want to continue to grow. So, don’t give up, be prepared  to work hard, and set your sights high. Continue  to  achieve,  and  don’t  think that you will have arrived someday. Once you get there, you’ll just have to set another goal.

There are people that want something for nothing. They want success overnight, and they want to be a miracle story. The  truth is, that doesn’t happen. People might win the lottery, but they end up losing it all again because they don’t know how to manage their money. There are certain steps that you need to take in order to achieve success in business and life, and if your habit is to come home from work and watch TV, change that  to getting online for a while and learning something. Change that mindset of just hoping it happens overnight, because that isn’t going to happen.”

To conclude, Danny has some similar advice.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day. My main advice for users getting on the platform and seeing all the success is that you have to remember some people have been at it for a while. It takes effort. I wouldn't recommend somebody quit their job and throw themselves into internet marketing, as it takes time to learn the strategies, tactics and techniques. So, I would suggest doing what we did - transition in gradually, while you're still doing other things. If you hav a day job, it's very easy to spend evenings gradually building a business for yourself, and that's what JVZoo allows. Build your relationships, because those are what will be important going forward.

We’re doing digital stuff in terms of software, but the easiest way is to sell your knowledge. Everybody has knowledge that they have accumulated over the years. Monetizing that knowledge is easy on this platform. You can do that in the evening while having a day job, learning the tricks of trades as you go forward. You have to learn how to list your product. You need to have a website developed so that you have somewhere to lead people to; then you get into the marketing stuff. There are a lot of elements that you need to look at before you can drive success in terms of cash flow.

What I can assure you, though, is that your effort will pay off eventually. It may take one year, it may take two years, but once you get there you will never lose that momentum again. It will build and build.”

"This business is a learning curve. It’s going to take time. Invest that time to learn what you need to know, make the relationships that you need, and don’t give up."

KEY TAKEAWAYS

ABOUT YOU

• When writing sales copy, remember that a product converts very well if you just keep it simple. Let the

words flow.

• Be patient with yourself and your learning curve.

connections and don’t give up.

• If you don’t know where to start, start with selling your

knowledge.

• Have a website as a place to send your traffic, once the

sale has been made on JVZoo.

ABOUT YOU AS PARTNERS OR A MARRIED COUPLE

• Even if only one of you is the face of the company, both should share the responsibility of customer service and interaction.

ICYMI

• JVZoo helps many users around the world stay out of hot water with legal issues by providing contracts for working with affiliates.

• The JZoo platform is set up to help users feel safe in the internet marketing space.

​