#113 - Nick Penev Shares A Simple System For Vetting Founders And Sparking Partnerships

Most e-commerce people don’t have an information problem. They have a signal problem. We talk with Nick Penev, co-founder behind Extreme Power Brands and a builder of one of the more unusual operator networks in the space, about how he engineers signal on purpose through a free WhatsApp community, a partnerships agency, and a growing newsletter media business.

Nick breaks down the one rule that keeps his WhatsApp group useful: he meets every potential member first. That simple filter changes everything. The room stays full of decision makers like Amazon agency owners, Shopify agency founders, SaaS operators, and partnership leaders who can actually act on ideas. We get into why he avoids over-moderation, how introductions and self-promotion can work without turning into spam, and how consistent value creates referrals that compound.

Then we shift into a concrete LinkedIn lead generation play: lead magnet posts that trigger comments, drive reach, and convert into newsletter sign-ups, emails, and booked meetings. Nick shares how to structure the hook, what to ask people to comment, why you should connect before sending the asset, and how consistency beats chasing viral wins. We close with his five-minute webinar hack series model, where multiple operators share tactics in rapid succession and the audience votes on the best hack, creating a win for attendees, speakers, and sponsors.

If you care about ecommerce community building, B2B lead gen on LinkedIn, newsletter growth, partnerships, and repeatable marketing systems for Amazon and DTC brands, you’ll walk away with a playbook you can test immediately. Subscribe, share this with a founder friend, and leave a review with the one tactic you’re going to try next.

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Transcript

Quick Banter And Why Nick Shows Up

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Okay, thanks, Pete. I told you, man, I don't almost ever speak on any podcast. No, just an exception. I only do like repeat podcasts for people that have spoken in the past. Right now I just do my own webinars. I'm lazy. I'm just trying to work less and make more money. You're exclusive. And of course, give more time for vacation. You know, that's it.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Right. I respect it.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Okay, but so so okay,

The Business Stack Behind The Community

SPEAKER_01 0:35

man. So just to kind of introduce myself, I'm Nick Pennif. I'm the co-founder of like Extreme Power Brands, Ecom Hot Sauce, and uh 10x5, 15x5 as I call them hacks webinars. So, long story short, I have a community of like 1000 Amazon Agency, D2C Shopify Agency, SaaS service provider founders, and a lot of like brands and aggregators. In other words, they have a community for Amazon, Shopify brands to kind of collaborate, get help for anything operational, bus def, whatever. You know, I'm joking that it's like GPT, but real people are answering the question. So it doesn't matter what you need. You know, we have somebody who can help out. We usually have the biggest, the best expert. So, and of course, we have some fine. I don't have any rules in my community. The only rule is that I need to meet you to join. You don't pay anything to join the community, but unless they meet, you're not gonna join. So it doesn't matter if somebody tells me you're great. I mean, I don't care if you're great or not. Book a meeting, show up. If you know, show you're not great, you're not joining. So it's simple as you're out. Uh so obviously we don't make money from the community. Community is free. So we make money from our business, like the partnership agency where we help companies to grow for partnerships. So this hasn't changed since what last time we spoke. We just started more services. We also right now have a newsletter media company with like four newsletters, uh, with like over 100,000 subscribers, like 80% Amazon, 20% like D2C Omnichannel. And of course, we have weekly newsletter that we send out, we get up to 78% open read per issue. We're doing very well there. So, in other words, we we give value to servers, and of course, we monetize that for sponsors. The last thing, the other thing that we're doing, which we did not do when we last spoke, we I start to actually organize this monthly webinar hack series. No, so what we do, I get like 15 to 20 speakers, operators from the space, like agencies, SaaS founders, like sometimes like brand owners. They have five minutes to share a hack, and the audience is actually voting for the base hack. So we usually get over like 2,000 people who sign up for those events. The last one we got probably close to 500 people live. So, and of course, I make money from sponsors, I don't do it for free. And we grow the newsletter like that. So, one month we do for Amazon, that one month we do for Shopify. In other words, I mean I'm using other people to create content for me, and of course, everybody gets value from that, sellers, speakers, etc. Right, and people like it because it's very casual, I don't do anything special there. And we also have a LinkedIn agency right now. So that's that's the last thing we do. We finally cracked the LinkedIn Legion game because a lot of people claim that you can generate leads from LinkedIn, but we finally figured out how to do that. Right. So that's pretty much what they do right now. I have some other stuff going on, but I mean a jackal thing.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

You got a lot happening, which is great. Um, no, it's exciting to chat. I think this is a very you're a very unique guest because normally we'll have people on and they'll tell me all about X, Y, and Z on Amazon, or they'll say this, that, and the other thing about this specific part of um uh of Shopify

How The WhatsApp Community Stays High Signal

SPEAKER_00 3:50

or of a of a of a marketplace, but you have a much more unique uh expertise and a more unique experience. So it's lovely to chat always about this. Um I'd love to get into more about the community and more about how either sellers and other agencies can take advantage of this um and talk to me more about the experience of of talking and and and meeting with thousands of different people to either allow them or not allow them into your club or the community, really, is a better way to put it. Um but yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Okay, I mean it's very simple, by the way. I mean, anybody can join this one because you're kind of like a founder and you run like an agency or a SaaS company, it might be you might be super super small just starting or big, I don't care. I mean, and what you need to just meet me now, you're gonna tell me what to do, and then I'm gonna make some connections to help you out. And of course, once you join the community, you introduce yourself, you can promote yourself, you can engage with other guys. So it's simple as that. I mean, it's nothing casual, I don't have any rules. Uh, anybody who is a fit and you want to meet people, you can join the community. It's simple as that. And and like I told you now, the only vetting process I need to meet, you know. So if you don't show, show up, I mean you're not gonna join. If you show up and I don't like which rarely happens, no.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

Uh what is the you're not gonna and like what is the demographic of people? So you've got mostly sellers, you've got mostly other agencies, like what kind of founders.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Mostly founders, mostly like okay, founders, you like uh decision makers in companies, like some partnership managers, but the idea is people who can call the shots, right? So so uh I mean I for of course I have some sellers, some aggregators, founders, but generally I don't have that many sellers. There's too many community for servers, so I just keep it kind of exclusive for like the service provider sites, like agencies, like SAS. So and the reason why I build the group, it's really funny though, because uh I've been obviously I meet like 20 people per week, and all the time they tell me, Nick, let's connect on WhatsApp. And I said, Okay, what's up with WhatsApp? Everybody asked me for WhatsApp because I I I know what's WhatsApp, but I didn't use it for whatever reason. So, and I actually checked, I Googled, okay, WhatsApp they have three or four billion users. Okay, man, that's why everybody's asking me. And then I went in and obviously like set up WhatsApp, but not on my phone. I mean, I don't use my phone for anything, you know. So on my desktop, right? I joined some like WhatsApp group in the industry, and what I noticed that there is a lot of people there, but usually only the admin can post. They have so many rules, you know, they kind of kick out people, but generally, no, it's kind of quiet, boring, you know, nothing happens. And I said, Okay, man, I don't like that. I'm gonna build my own group, but I'm gonna do it in a different way. I'm gonna meet anybody who joins, I need to meet them, I need to know them. So I and kind of I evade them when they I let them in, and even when they join, I tell them, hey guys, welcome to the group. Introduce yourself. You can pause, you can promote, you can do whatever you want. I consider you a smart like a founder. For me, a founder is a smarter than the average guy. You build something, so you should know how to behave. I'm not gonna tell you what to do, what not. And I've only kicked out like four guys from like 800, so right.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

That's a pretty good ratio. Um, no, it seems it's it's very fun. You know, we're in there, Velocity Sellers is part of it. Jake, our our founder is in there. Um, and we we enjoy being part of the big community. Um, and you as have referred me amazing podcast clients over the over the past couple of months, past couple of years here now. So I always appreciate that. It's it's definitely just based on the people that I've met from there. Um, it's a very, again, it's a very unique community. You know, it's very different than just uh a Facebook group. Um it's much more than just uh, oh, I'm in a group for people to share their ideas on this. It's much more evolved than that. It's it's it's really is a community, which is very, very neat. Um and I'd love to hear more about some of these different hacks or um even getting into some of the the LinkedIn specifically the LinkedIn stuff on what you're doing there and how that's uh how that's working um and how that could maybe benefit some other sellers or potential people to sponsor uh these types of posts.

LinkedIn Lead Magnets That Actually Convert

SPEAKER_01 8:06

I don't think it's for sales, no way. The LinkedIn is mostly for like agencies, service providers, and right obviously I've been posting like a watch for like since they've been doing this stuff like for fears, you know. I hear like almost like 20,000 followers, but of course, you know, you get impressions, but you get no leads. And then you know, uh I met a guy like probably like last year who was doing this so-called lead magnet posts. Uh okay, lead magnet. So I'm just gonna explain for those that you don't know. You you can see those on Twitter. Sometimes I think you can do them on Facebook, but I think they work the the best on LinkedIn and Twitter. But Twitter, Twitter, you know, you cannot connect with anybody once. So LinkedIn is better. So what you do? Let's say what is hot rate now. Okay, so on Amazon you have this new stuff called Amazon MCP or whatever, where you can use you can chat with your ads uh for GPT or quote or whatever. So we have like a client now who is doing this kind of stuff. So what we do? We set up a post, hey guys, you know, do you want to start chatting? Stop whatever. I mean, start do you want to start chatting with your ads? Stop managing, start chatting with your ads. And usually what they use is funny pictures of Jeff Bezos or something, for example, with anyways, or whatever you do, try to make it funny because you know people like this kind of stuff. But the main thing is you're telling them, okay, do you guys know about that? So you have this hook. Most of them don't know. Do you know that you can actually do this and this that this is how you're gonna benefit from that? Do you want free access? Command MCP. So you it you could you could use your like brand name or company, or I'm just like whatever you choose. Sometimes I one once you know we had a company who wanted to rank on LinkedIn, and I just made it okay. Command rank forest rank is the so everybody needs to start commenting rank forest rank, rank, forest rank. When they do that, obviously no LinkedIn is pushing your engagement because they comment on through their profile, so you get more impressions. But the but how you actually get leads. So whenever they comment, you tell them, hey man, thank you for your comment. I'm gonna send you whatever I promise to send you. So what you do, right? You send them a message, of course. You tell them you need to like, comment, and you need to send the connection request. So once they do that, they're connected. You can send them a message and you can tell them thank you for your comment, Pete. You can grab your lead magnet, you can grab this stuff that I'm giving away here. So what happens? I send you like a link, it's usually to my newsletter or any opt-in form, and then you know you go there and say, Hey man, please put your first last name, an email. I'm gonna give you that. So you give this stuff, you provide your information, and you get an email with whatever I'm giving away. So I know guys from the group which are getting like two, three thousand comments per post, and they do it weekly. You know, I I know a very close partner when we're doing that as a service, but you can do it yourself. Yep, of course, it takes time, you know, and you can build a huge newsletter list and you can get a lot of fleets because what happens? No, people provide their information, you can see what is the company, you can go and check them out on on Amazon, you can definitely see what they do, and of course, then you can do like a few you can send them an email. Hey, thanks for commenting. Here is your giveaway, whatever we're giving away. Guess what? We're gonna give you another cool stuff if you book a meeting. So you kind of make them comment to get it, so they push your engagement on LinkedIn. Is a second step, you know, you send them the stuff, you know, right? The free stuff that they commented for. A lot of times it should be valuable, otherwise, I mean it's just not gonna work out well. But then you tell them, okay, you want to go get some some heels, some heels that you got, okay, book a meeting. So, because people say LinkedIn is not good, actually, LinkedIn is great because all the big brands on LinkedIn, like Shopify, um, Amazon, D2C, it doesn't matter now. Uh, and you can actually target those guys if you have if you want to have a long-term strategy, you can do the following add like 80 of those brands per week as connections, don't do anything. Then you start actually posting valuable content. So you can do like at least like five posts per week. Four of them should be just informational stuff valuable for brands, and you should do one or two lead magnet posts. Hey guys, did you know that Trump is gonna increase the tariffs? He's gonna recruit, anyways. Any stuff which is relevant, usually it should be something trained. You give them some information, and they of course they they comment like crazy. Right. And of course, no, and for one thing you can get lead, second thing is you can grow your newsletter, yep. And then you can use the newsletter to kind of monetize those uh elites eventually.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

Yeah, so no, it's fascinating, and then the LinkedIn hacking LinkedIn is is very it's not always, I think, the easiest thing to do to use it, but it sounds like it's not that complicated either.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

It's not hacking. I mean, you just need to post like daily now because you you're not gonna get viral. I mean, for example, like a week or so ago, we had for my WAS hack series, no, because I I don't post for for my stuff, usually the paid posts, so people PS and I post on my profile. Right. Uh a client who was giving away some Amazon SEO guide, he got like 1200 comments, we got like 100,000 impressions, and he got probably like five, six hundred leads, you know. Yeah, I'm not sure what he what he did with that, but he said, Nick, I want to sponsor every three months, not every quarter. So I guess they got value. But the thing is, and I it didn't sound like something so so super cool innoy. I made it with a funny picture, but what I mean is that you cannot expect all posts to go viral, but you need to be consistent, you need to post like daily, like Monday, Tuesday, Friday at the same time, in the same time every day. And of course, once a week you should have this lead market. Some people don't like, man, I don't like to give my information to send us okay, man. Whatever. I mean, don't uh I'm not forcing you to do anything, but usually you get a lot of value from for just sharing your email. And and I I give my email to anywhere. I mean, so right, anyways, nobody can force you to buy stuff, you know. Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:09

If you get value out of it, then it's worth it. You're right, you gotta sell the value on there.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

So yeah, sometimes so I think I I see some posts which are so valuable that it's crazy that people are sharing those stuff, but no, usually the people who give so much value, they got like thousand plus comments. And I told you a close friend of mine, she's in the group, she has a newsletter for AI. She gets at least one or two posts with like thousand plus comments per week. And and just in one year, just by doing this kind of stuff, she she grew from like 10,000 to 5,000 impressions, and she has like a 50,000 uh email thousand like email like newsletter. Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

So

The Webinar Hack Series Playbook

SPEAKER_00 14:47

right. Well, I want to finish up lastly, just talking about the uh hack series and tell me about this latest one that just came that just happened and talk to me about the hack series in general, about what's what's going on there and and what uh what can people expect from that.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

Yeah, I mean, uh, I didn't event this hack series, I mean, like Kevin King and some other guys have been doing them, you know. Uh and I just uh want to do it or how I do it a little different. Mine a little a little longer. I mean, they're like five minutes. Uh so and I let the speakers also promote their show. I mean, in other words, I mean I keep it like my community, you know. I'd give you five minutes. If you want, you can do nothing, you can stay silent, you can so but of course everybody who participates, they need to promote. So the idea is that you give value, you share a hack. Sometimes you know, people share some super cool hacks. For example, one guy who who participated in the WACHAC series, he told me that he got white touring signups just from his presentation because he was giving away some again, some AI stuff, how to create images or videos or whatever, and he got white touring signups for his like offer or whatever. So uh, but you know, it's really simple. You know, usually I don't just invite anybody, you know, I need to know them, or they I came across them, you know, they hear some cool stuff, but the goal is no, they share like five-minute hacks, like 15 to 20 hacks, so we get like probably a lot of like elevator pitches for some really cool stuff, and of course, not all of them are great, which is normal, right? But you're gonna get like five or six great hacks, and then you can get in touch with the speakers after that, and they can share you the whole deck, right? And of course, you know, they send you for ups on this kind of stuff. So it you're kind of giving some free value, you know, and you're just paying with your time, you know, like 90 minutes of your time, you're gonna get 15 hacks. I mean, if you implement some of them, you know, you're gonna make a lot of money because the people who I invite are operators, so those are not people who just they've been doing that for a long time. Some of them are actually doing that for like 10-20 years, and they're always kind of willing to share stuff. So I'm kind of using them as a channel to distribute value to my community. Of course, they get value as well, but uh pretty much you know that that's what we're doing. Now we're gonna start doing it for shop if I've heard this one.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

So love it. Love it. No, it's very cool. It's it's a very neat, like I said, it's a very unique community and a very neat couple of things that you've built here. And it's very interesting to see. It's why I always like to have you on and and chat and talk about this. So no, I appreciate you coming back. I appreciate you talking to

Where To Find Nick And Wrap

SPEAKER_00 17:15

me about it. Um, would love if you could give uh uh a good place. I know I'll have your LinkedIn down below, but tell the people where they can find you, where they can find this stuff, and I'll also include the links.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

Just LinkedIn. I mean, just LinkedIn. I mean, yeah, just connect me LinkedIn message means we can chat, you know. Sounds as simple as that.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

Cool.

SPEAKER_01 17:33

Nothing special.

SPEAKER_00 17:34

Just the LinkedIn. So, Nick, I appreciate you being another guest. I appreciate you coming back on and and chat with me. It's been a pleasure. Thanks, Pete. Thanks everybody for watching. I'm your host, Velocity Pete, and we will see you next week.