A Lead Generation Success Story
What's up, ya'll. Ippei Kanehara here!
First name pronounced "Epay."
This is a story of how an average guy went from being broke to pro-athlete money.
After four years of college at Michigan State University, I found myself stuck at an insufferable office job making about $2500 a month.
After all the hard work and money of college... I just couldn't accept a life behind the bars of the office purgatory.
While working my 9 to 5, I've tried so many online businesses, including:
- Amazon FBA
- Dropshipping
- Affiliate Marketing
- SEO & Paid Advertising
My biggest breakthrough came upon finding the Lead Generation business model.
In a nutshell, I build, rank, and then license out websites to local businesses. These are digital assets that I own that generate leads for businesses. I help them get more customers and in return they pay me every month.
I've created this site to continue to share my research on all the best online business strategies and tips.
Over the last seven years, I've been involved in various forms of digital marketing. I've listed my peak gross income for each below.
I was fortunate to have found success in many forms of digital marketing. There were many ups and downs. It was anything but easy.
But after years of hard work, Lead Generation was the clear stand out, bar none. To be honest, no other form of digital marketing has even come close to the efficiency, consistency, and scalability of the LG business model.
The best part about Lead Generation? It offers long-term passive income.
With Lead Gen, you rank your sites to the top slots of Google. This increases their value to a point where you can rent them out to local businesses for a monthly fee.
I have 50+ lead generation websites like above that earn me anywhere from $500 to $2500 a month.
There is little to no maintenance once a site is ranked, meaning I have been able to enjoy a lifestyle that only
passive income can afford.
Up next, I'll tell you a bit more about my life - and we'll go over some of my accomplishments.
I got used to saying "no" to things when I was working in cubicle world. Got to the office at 8am and left at 5:30pm, which provided me with roughly $2200 a month and 5 days of vacation each year. Partaking in activities outside of work was next to impossible. I was literally selling my time for cash.
Lead Gen changed everything. It gave me total freedom in the way I spend my time and the way that I live my life. The best part? If I decide to go to a music festival, or travel, or go camping, or do anything I enjoy. I am still making money in my off time because the income is entirely passive.
What I do in my free time is a direct reflection of the successes brought to me by mastering online businesses. I realized the secret to making money passively and consistently online is the ability to create assets that generate free traffic.
Whether that be putting a listing up on Amazon FBA that ranks, or YouTube videos that rank organically for keywords. Those provide much more consistent results versus relying on paid ads like with dropshipping or getting paid ads clients.
I've been documenting my life and my experiences with Lead Generation for the last few years on Instagram.
If you're at all interested in what we're doing here at LG, then click the button below to follow me.
Travel
Been to over 25 different countries, Japan being my favorite (it also happens to be where I was born).
Dublin, Ireland
San Francisco, CA
Winter Kayaking on the Pine River, MI
Cliffs of Dover, Ireland
Ireland
Dublin, Ireland
Park City, Utah
Manistee National Forest, MI
El Dorado Hills, California
In 2018, I got to enjoy a slight upgrade to my car...
Went from a 96' Acura to a Tesla P100D (the fastest model available).
I also moved into a new pad in California, which was a massive step-up from the apartment I was living in while staying in Detroit.
1996 Acura
2018 Tesla Model P100D
I joined Lead Generation in 2016. It changed my life in ways I could never have imagined.
Purpose
My former career had me confined to 9-5 office purgatory where I sold my time for cash. I wake every morning with a reinvigorated purpose, knowing that, ultimately, I am working for myself, the LG community, and working towards empowering local businesses.
Community
The Lead Gen business model has changed many lives, but our community is what defines us.
Lead gen live
Spoke about my experience in Lead Generation to an enthusiastic crowd of over 500 people in 2019 at the Lead Gen live event in Vegas.
san francisco apartment
In March of 2020, I moved into an incredible downtown apartment in San Fran.
dan
Dan, the brain behind Lead Generation, is my friend, mentor, (and since 2018) my business partner. We are the summation of all those who inhabit our lives - and few people have had more of an impact of my own life than Dan. It's hard to imagine what my life would be like without this dude. More info on Dan.
My journey of getting into multiple businesses over the years!
We've all taken personality tests before - and love them or hate them, they can definitely provide some insight into one's strengths and weaknesses. Being aware of one's self is quite valuable in the business world.
Anyhow, two years ago I was introduced to the Enneagram Institute by one of my mentors. They offer a comprehensive personality test, which I would eventually take.
The test results revealed that I am a "Type 7" as seen below.
The results, dare I say, were spot on.
I've always been adventurous.
I've spent much of my life in pursuit of variety; in pursuit of the many experiences our wonderful world has to offer.
This was one of many "ah-ha" moments that ultimately led to me realizing that I should leverage my innate curiosity and passion to diversify myself in the business world.
Below, I'll show you a quick timeline of how and when I got into various online businesses.
~ Timeline of Success ~
2007 - 2012
My college years at Michigan State University (go Green)! I worked hard, drank a lot of cheap beer, and got extremely good at Halo and Smash Bros.
Oh, and I also managed to get a mostly useless advertising degree.
2012 - 2014
Got a job working for an auto parts company. Was working 45 hours a week, making $35k a year, which was approximately $2200 a month after taxes (a mostly unlivable wage had I not been living in Detroit at the time).
My time spent there was dreadful. The clock moved excruciatingly slow as I waited for it to hit 5:30pm when I could go home.
I remember thinking... 5 years in college all for this? To be a slave in a cubicle just to scrape by? There had to be more to life than office purgatory.
September 2014
In a move of quiet desperation (while sitting in my cubicle), I signed up for the Lead Generation coaching program and started working towards those first few dollars made online.
April 2015
After just 7 months of the Lead Gen program, I had built up enough digital properties (and online income) to surpass what I was making at my job. Putting in my two weeks (in an effort to focus on LG) was one of the most exciting moments of my life.
2015 - 2017
I saw the potential in Lead Generation and made it my sole focus. Build. Rank. Rent. Repeat. I grinded the process to the fullest extent that I was capable. By the end of 2017 I had surpassed $25,000 a month in residual income.
To celebrate, I took a 3 week vacation to Europe. Went from London > Amsterdam > Prague > Germany > Barcelona > and then finished out with an epic few days of partying in Ibiza.
In 2016, I made my first moves to diversify my income steams by getting into Amazon FBA. Since the income I was making with Lead Gen was passive, it allowed me ample time to focus on testing the FBA waters.
2017 - 2019
Continued to build out my business portfolio. Grinded hard with Amazon FBA, but also ventured into Shopify Dropshipping. I would even launch several affiliate marketing sites and spent major ad spends (nearly $100k) through my FB marketing agency.
2019-2021
Coming back full circle - and having experienced the full offerings of digital marketing, I decided to double down on my Lead Generation businesses & stick to building sites using free traffic (something I had full control over).
While I enjoyed my time with Amazon FBA, Dropshipping, and FB Marketing, the income was not as passive as I had thought and did not make nearly the amount of money that Lead Generation was bringing in.
2021-2024
Fully becoming more and more involved with Dan Klein and the local lead generation coaching business. Now becoming part of the training plus getting involved with many of the backend stuff of helping to run the coaching program. Dan and I have become great friends and started hanging out regularly at his house in Las Vegas.
Like many people, I have been devouring personal and business development material for years.
But for a long time, I was stuck making $35k a year at a job I despised.
What was I doing wrong and why were other people around me finding success?
The most critical lesson I learned in my transition from hourly wage worker to entrepreneur was this:
Before starting your business, you need to develop high-income skills.
When I learned the skill of lead generation with free traffic, I was finally able to begin seeing tangible results (my ability to make money).
"Skills pay the bills..." as it is often said.
"Mindset alone is not enough, you need the mindset and the skillset."
The Key to a Great Business
- High Income Skills - You want a business with high income skills because this is what creates barrier to entry. A business that doesn't require high-level skills means tons of competition and saturation overtime. This is why a brain surgeon will make more money per hour than a carpet cleaner, and his business is more future-proof because that skill is significantly harder to acquire. The skill of ranking in Google and generating free traffic is much harder to master than running paid ads, which is why lead generation wins longterm.
- Unlimited Scalability - Building our lead generation properties costs few hundred bucks as opposed to being in a brick & mortar business or real estate that requires big upfront capital to scale. That combined with the fact that it is all online means we can be anywhere in the world and build our digital assets anywhere we choose. One lead generation site can profit just as much as a single family real estate property that might cost $50K to $100K in down payment to get started.
- High Return on Investment - This is the key to being in a business where you don't get burned out. When you have high profit margins you're getting paid more for your time. In Amazon FBA profit margins are around 10% - 40%. Shopify dropshipping the profit margin is around 10%-20%. In lead generation, your profit margins are 95% since you're generating free traffic and there's no cost of goods since you're selling information (leads) as opposed to a physical product.
Let me explain this with an example:
This one tree service site above has made me $2000 per month since 2015.
My client is happy to pay me every month because this site is generating over 200 phone calls per month.
I spent 15 hours on this site, to build & rank it.
This means after 7 years this site has made me $168,000
If I divide that by 15 hrs I spent on it, this was a $11,200 per hour activity. 
And this hourly rate is only going up overtime.
Our mentor, Dan, says it all the time...
"Just follow the process."
The formula works - and with time, you'll learn why it works.
But at this very moment, what matters is that you take action.
I hadn't the slightest clue about how to start a business when I first enrolled. I just did it, followed the process that was laid out for me, and produced results.
From there it was a matter of "rinse and repeat."
The Lead Generation coaching program took me by the hand and forced me to follow the principles of building a business with leverage.
It changed my life forever - and for that, I am eternally grateful.
Meet my mentor
About Dan
He's been coaching local lead gen since 2014, he's responsible for changing my life and the lives of countless other students over the years. Currently this program has over 7400 students. I started working closely with him 3 years ago and have been fortunate to spend a lot of time & get to know him on a personal level. I made a brief about page about Dan that you can check out by clicking below.