Eric: All right. Hey everybody. This is Eric Y Chen from the Y-Factor Podcast. Today I have my guest star Anthony Bui Tran all the way from Houston, Texas and I’m actually having him come out to speak at a seller Meetup that we usually host once a month here in the Bay Area. I’m super excited to have him because he’s actually one of the figures that inspired me to get started on Amazon and I watch a lot of his YouTube videos and so he’s been a good friend throughout my entrepreneurial Journey. So I’m super excited to have him here and so welcome. I’ll have you introduce yourself.

Anthony: All right. Thanks Eric for having me here on the Y – Factor, so it’s only been what a year since we met?

Eric: Just a little over a year.

Anthony: just over… *both talking*

Eric: We met in August, but I’ve seen your videos like prior to that and stuff through YouTube and, and the Amazon Facebook groups and stuff too. 

Anthony: Yeah, it’s cool. It’s it’s been a real interesting like thing to like see your journey from like when we first met, you know on a yacht in Seattle for Seafare and then you know, I’ve seen you a couple times. Now I’m here in San Jose the bay area, which is where I’m originally born and I haven’t been back here in three years, so thanks Eric for giving me an excuse to come back here. 

Eric: Yeah. Yeah. No. Definitely. I’m sure your family is happy to have you back here as well. And it’s just a good opportunity to continue expanding your reach and I know a lot of people are super excited to hear you talk as well.

But yeah, it’s a super exciting opportunity just because you yourself and you just mentioned like seeing my journey over the course of one year. I mean you yourself you’ve been doing some incredible stuff throughout this year. let’s take a step back and give a little background on your history of kinda what you do before I even get into the exciting stuff. 

Anthony: Yeah so fast forward present-day Anthony Bui Tran. I am basically a this is going to be I think my third year or maybe going on the fourth year selling on Amazon for the last two years I’ve been doing private label, which is where are you manufactured products from like Asia and then you sell them on Amazon. Before that, I was doing some other methods that got me introduced to private label, which was basically Retail Arbitrage is where you go into these stores you buy toys or whatever and then you just flip them online, but then I realized I was like why am I flipping other people’s products when I could just make them and manufacture them on my own and then sell them at a better margin, right? 

So it was kind of just working my way through the supply chain and that’s what I do full time now in addition to an education business called solitary craft that I started with two other friends Fernando and Nick which I believe you interviewed them.

Eric: You guys will recognize those names as I also have had them on the podcast here where they started their entrepreneurial journey through Amazon and they’ve met up or linked up with Anthony and have become business partners and some exciting Endeavors as well. 

Anthony: Yeah and their great dudes, but you know like this this whole like journey just kind of stemmed from just trying to start my own business, right my family, there is a couple entrepreneur in it. My grandma was one of the first entrepreneurs in our family and she has like the convenience store. It’s kind of like a Home Depot in Vietnam

Eric: Okay.

Anthony: But think of it like really small like his not as big as Home Depot, but they still have…

Eric: the type of supplies that they sell.

Anthony: Exactly and she named it after my mom but my parents are divorced now *laughter* kind of funny, but my mom helped like give them the seed money, right? So my family’s always been like very interconnected with like business and wanting to do that and you know when I looked at my family, I always realized that the people I thought were cooler in terms of like uncles and aunts were the ones that were able to like just pick me up from school, right? Because most people work a 9-5 but they could just come pick me up at three o’clock, four o’clock from school and I was like, how did so awesome and I don’t have to take a bus.

Yeah and like that was one of the defining factors believe it or not to make me like really think about like why do I think they’re cool versus like maybe someone else in my family? Right? 

Eric: And I how old were you when you even like had that thought process. 

Anthony: Yeah, so I was actually in middle school. I remember me and my cousin went to the same middle school and her dad was coming to pick her up from school and I was about to get on the bus and she’s like, oh, why don’t you just come with us and then we’ll just drop you off and I was like what and I was like I have to take a bus. I was like hell yeah, I was like, this is cool.

I’m gonna get home way faster. Yeah, and that’s all I thought of it right, but it wasn’t until like way back, you know, looking at it now that I realize like oh, I thought that was cool and this is how that moment impacted my life now, right and looking back at my whole entrepreneurial journey in the first place right before I even started my own business my own side hustle.

Like there’s all these little things that impacted my decision of like why like I wanted to become entrepreneur and why I wanted a certain like lifestyle right? But I do think a lot of people aren’t possibly like honest with themselves are like are not ready to have a conversations with themselves sometimes to just be clear and upfront and say like, you know, it would be nice to have that so why don’t I try to go get it? 

Eric: Yeah, so you’re saying for you it wasn’t like one defining moment, but it’s an accumulation of just all of these realizations just over the course of time. And as you continue to work through this you’re like, oh wow.

Yeah, like I realized that this, you know just these little moments that you get a little hint of like this is why having the freedom of my time, you know to do this or my uncle ran his own business, so he had a more flexible schedule to spend more time or have the opportunity to pick up his daughter and his nephew from school and then go from there.

Anthony: Exactly and you know, I’m 26 now, but you know another moment right I can kind of start with is when I got the opportunity to study abroad. So I you know, I got the opportunity to study abroad in Australia. I got a couple scholarships and most of it was covered. So I had to ask my mom.

I was like Mom, you know, I like got 80% of this trip covered, can I please borrow some money to go study abroad in Australia. This was the first time I had ever asked my mom to really borrow like a large sum of money. It was about maybe like eight thousand dollars to pay for. It was a big ask the biggest ask I ever had but me studying abroad in Australia like changed my life. 

I just remember I picked up surfing but I realized that because I was a student I was able to go surfing when it wasn’t crowded right when the lineup wasn’t crowded at the beach and like there wasn’t like 50 other surfers trying to catch the same wave and I would be able to go start at like 11 o’clock, 2:00 p.m. whatever time I wanted. But I realized that there were older guys out there or like other surfers out there on the line up that could also surf whenever they wanted to right? And I was a student before I even knew what I wanted to do, I knew that I wanted to be in control of my time when I worked right?

So that was one of the factors of just like, you know me wanting to become more of an entrepreneur, but I didn’t think I can just start a business like in college or anything so, my goal has always been to before now I guess it was to have business by the time I was like 30.

Eric: Yeah, like graduate get a job save enough money and then start some business once you have the capital in the means to.

Anthony: Right exactly exactly the safe route and like my other goal was like when I was in college, I was like I want a six figure income by the time I’m 30.

You know?

Eric: Move up the corporate ladder. 

Anthony: Yeah, exactly and I hit that, you know past six figures like my first year doing my corporate job and working the side business on Amazon uhh.

Eric: did you start a side hustle during college or?

Anthony: Yeah, also in college I was doing the whole eBay thing because I didn’t want to work a real like a part-time job.

Eric: Yeah as like a normal college student like working at the coffee shop or yeah, just something or the bookstore.

Anthony:  at the bookstore. I was like I don’t want to do that, so I just starts flipping stuff on eBay like going the stores and flipping on there.

But then I realize that there’s this thing called Amazon FBA. All right, and the reason I looked into it was, I was going to the post office every single day and driving there and dropping off, you know, at least I can packages a day. Yeah and I was like I just don’t want to drive here anymore and just drop it off. Like I know it’s making me money and it’s like could be worse but you know, it could be better. That’s what I told myself and that’s when I looked up like eBay. I don’t know. I was looking up something on the Internet. That’s when I realized that with Amazon’s FBA thing and their warehouses, right?

Actually, they don’t like calling them warehouses. They like calling them…

Both: Fulfillment centers. 

Anthony: Yep, right is that I can ship like a boxer like 50 like hats to Amazon and they’ll distribute to all my customers for me because on eBay I was you know, each time someone but something…

Eric: You got to print out the label, package it yourself, drop it of,f and if you only have one cell a day you start to drop off that package that day

Anthony: exactly

Eric: Either you have one sale or ten sales. 

Anthony: Exactly and you know, I was living on campus at the time. Some of my stock was at my house, which was like 45 minutes away and you know, sometimes I was just like I do not want to drive home just to fulfill one order.

But so, you know, I told my customers on eBay that there’s a 3-day handling time, so like that was known and my metrics wouldn’t messed up, but that’s how I got introduced to Amazon and I started doing Amazon the last semester of my college career and I made $10,000, right? You know and then luckily for me like I was graduating college and I had a job with a company called Protivi lined up.

However, I thought I was starting in January, but they’re like we’re actually going to start you in like June or something like later in the year. 

Eric: Oh wow.

Anthony: Yeah. I was like what am I gonna do for six months right? Like but I was like well I made like ten thousand dollars like on Amazon and you know, I think most people right now are going to think like oh so you just kept selling on Amazon? No, I didn’t do that right?

Eric: So, what did you do? 

Anthony: I took that money and I went on a four-month road trip to the West Coast. 

Eric: Okay. 

Anthony: Right, so I went from Texas and I just drove through like it was supposed to be the entire West Coast. It just ended up being Arizona California for for four months, but I went to go visit like all my fraternity brothers from Sigma Chi.

All my friends and family all my study abroad friends and you know for these four months, I was just I never paid for housing once I slept on couches wherever like at my friends places this whole time and I’m super thankful that they let me stay and all my family and everything, but…

Eric: There’s a broke college kid, he doesn’t have a job and just Couchsurfing the right after college. 

Anthony: I had well, I mean that $10,000 I use it to fund all the trip myself.

Eric: Exactly

Anthony: A lot of gas I paid for, a lot of food I paid for, but I got by by not paying the housing because I stayed with people. Oh and I went camping sometimes right and I went camping with friends and everything and that was that four months like really made me realize that I don’t know if I want to be in Corporate America forever. 

Eric: But this is before you even had a corporate job. 

Anthony: Yeah this before I even started. I did have an internship. Yeah, right, but I did I realized like during this trip. I was like, you know just working out at like 11:00 a.m. You know going out to meet friends at at lunch at 12 p.m.

Just doing whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. Right? And I really enjoyed that, but I also noticed just like other people on the street, you know, just like going about their days going about their lives and I’m like what are all these people doing? I mean I still don’t assume that they’re all entrepreneurs out there.

But yeah, but people just have different professions and everything, but I realized again that one of the things I really value in any job is the flexibility of kind of working when you want and so that kind of got ingrained in me.

Eric: I mean that could be seen as a dangerous pitfall in a sense like that could be defined as irresponsible, right?

Anthony: It could be

Eric: Just be working when you want to right? So, how did you decide or know what is being responsible and being will control that freedom for yourself? 

Anthony: In terms of like when I was working or now? 

Eric: Well, yeah. So like you had that exposure to like wow. Yeah. I want to be able to do anything that I want at anytime and then like yes throughout this whole journey, because now you run your own business, like how do you still maintain that sense of responsibility and that that freedom.

Anthony: Okay, so I’ll explain two different situations: one how it was when I was at corporate and how it is now. So when I was in Corporate America that feeling of freedom was something I wanted, but the annoying part was there’s very many times where I would get a lot of stuff done at work, but because we were in a client facing position, I was asked to stay to five o’clock. 

Mmm and this happened repeatedly.

Eric: which is normal but you’re making it sound like oh wow. You guys are yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. 

Anthony: Yeah, it is normal. Yeah, you’re right. It is normal but me I was like look, I got all my stuff done like I could go like get my stuff done with my life and like, you know run errands like when it’s not crowded, beat traffic and I got everything done, right?

But no like you just had to stay there and that was one of the most like frustrating things for me as I don’t know, just as a person. I just kind of felt like I wasn’t in control of like just like what I wanted, right and that was a big defining factor of like me deciding to leave work amongst like other factors into like starting a business.

But now, fast forward to now it’s actually something I do struggle with right it’s is gotten to the problem where now I have too much freedom. *Laughter* Yeah, right, you here like all these entrepreneurs they wake up at like 5 a.m. 

Eric: Yeah, like seizing the day!

Anthony: Yeah, seizing the day, do a lot of stuff like I don’t do that all the time. Like I maybe like how I’ll have a good streak or something where I would do it like three days in a row, but for me lately, it’s literally been like I wake up at 10, but I have more routine that I go through. I’ll wake up at 10, I’ll meditate, I’ll put oatmeal, oh before I meditate, I put oatmeal in the microwave so by the time I’m done meditating and brushing my teeth, the oatmeal’s like cooled down. Yeah, then I eat my breakfast and then that’s usually when my day starts. All right, so just that and then usually I’ll either workout after or I’ll have my daily stand up with my team because I have a virtual team, so I think it’s like really important for us to like just meet often. 

So we just meet for 15 minutes max every single day. I forgot what book I was reading like “Scaling Up,” really good book. I recommend it if you’re looking to understand how to scale up your business and then the reason we moved you like daily stand-ups versus like weekly meetings is because if you have weekly meetings like essentially it’s because there’s 52 weeks in a year.

You’re only going to have 52 touch points with your team, but if you move to like daily stand-ups, you’re going to have I don’t like 200 or 100 touch points with your team. That means that you can work faster. You can identify problems way faster, right?

Eric: Yep

Anthony:  everyone’s just on the same page and then for me like it kind of like built like team morale, which is another big thing that I realized that I like in life.

And I also translate it into my business and what I mean by that is, growing up, I’ve always been an only child. my mom she moved when I was 16 to Puerto Rico to start her own business, but when she moved she left me the house and car so I kind of was always like there to like fend for myself, but I always enjoyed having like my close friends over, cook something. Let’s do something together, right. I knew I didn’t like being home alone. So like I joined the tennis team. In college, I joined a fraternity and then once I quit my job, I joined an entrepreneur Mastermind called Mavericks.

Yeah, right and then all these things like all made sense to me. I was like, I always really liked I guess I Brotherhood.

Eric: Brotherhood and community and camaraderie and…

Anthony: Yeah, yeah camaraderie is huge for me and then I realized that within that first year of like working for myself. I had one team member that was in the Philippines but always felt lonely, right?

Because I mean I was working from home, I had one guy in the Philippines. My only interaction of going out during the week was to the gym, but like I remember one of the things I love most about corporate, right and this is what I miss the most about it is like my friends at work. 

Eric: Just hanging out with your colleagues.

Anthony: Yeah, just hanging out shooting the shit, you know, like bitching about projects together. Oh, yeah, things like that. 

Eric: complain about their manager at happy hour. 

Anthony: Yeah, complain about my manager…I like

Eric: I kind of miss that *both laugh* 

Anthony: and like I missed that like and but it was because it all ties back to that community and camaraderie aspect and you know for me it took me a while to like really realize that and that’s why when Nick and Fernando approached me to start a business with them.

I was like, yeah. Oh, well, first of all, their business is 10 times the size of mine and like two, I always have heard stories of people having partnerships where it doesn’t go well. People do not say do not build a business with your friends or family, right and Nick and Fernando, they’re like the exception to that rule, right?

Eric: Yeah.

Anthony: I like I see them day in and day out of like man, like these guys were best friends and now they’re business together and they’re still good friends like that to me is like beautiful, right?

Eric: I think they had mentioned like it is the perfect partnership and like the girlfriends complain that they never get to see them and those guys hang out with each other more often than not and but yeah, so like you being able to be part of that partnership too I think it is very fortunate that these guys are just like super good to work with as partners.

Anthony: Yeah. Yeah, so it’s nice being able to be in a partnership where you know everyone carries their own weigh in their own way and like I’m very comfortable now with saying like certain things like Nick can you please do this? Like you’re just like a little better at it than me and like it just stresses me out trying to do this,  right? Like right now we’re trying to raise money for our Elite Solar Summit which is gonna uh, planning for like a January launch, but basically, it’s just an online Amazon summit.

And we’re trying to get sponsors for it right now. Right and we signed up so many sponsors, but it was because of you know Fernando’s background and just like closing clients and…

Eric: He’s a salesperson. 

Anthony: Yeah, his sales person mentality. And then Nick is just great at like talking to people on the phone too and closing deals and like, I’m like guys, I personally don’t want to do this like I’ll help if you need me to, but like it just drains more energy out of me doing this.

Eric: Yep. 

Anthony: And they did it, you know and then like I pick up the slack where I like they don’t really like doing it, so like I like I don’t mind doing more of the like social media stuff and just being more involved with the community because I enjoy it a lot more. I mean they enjoy it too, but I just enjoy a lot more and they’re like, all right, so you kind of just focus on that.

Eric: Yeah

Anthony: so it’s nice being able to divide and conquer and it’s interesting; someone asked would you ever go into business with a partner or without a partner like now and then like I’m like, I don’t know if I would you know, like I really do enjoy having like camaraderie and having someone I can count on during the hard times and the bad times because winning is more fun when you win with friends.

Yeah, right. 

Eric: So that is a good, good point you bring up. I know we’re talking about Nick and Fernando as well and I think one of the questions like when they do have a problem, they mentioned that you know, they have each other to fall back on right and so even with with you technically you have your other side of your own business as well separate from them.

So like when things do go awry in like in that context of like wishing you had a business partner or not. Like how do you even deal with those, those obstacles? 

Anthony: what I’m going to bring up is going to apply to any industry that you’re going to be in or whatever business.

Eric: Regardless of the Amazon, eBay, Shopify.

Anthony: Yeah regardless of Amazon. We live in a day and age where we’re very interconnected right with social media like whether you’re on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, whatever it is. If you put yourself out there, people will find you. I mean, that’s how you found me right?

Eric: Yep, Yep!

Anthony: And you attract people that are like-minded.

Okay. So what I did was when I started selling on Amazon, I just shared my journey. I wasn’t a hundred percent trying to teach people, but I was like just telling people like hey, this is kind of like how I launched the private label product like 10 of them and this is how it all worked. And you know for some reason that really resonated with a lot of people and they’re like, “oh I’ve been trying to figure out this problem for like a long time1”

So when you start sharing stuff in your community, right so say whether it’s like Amazon or a SAAS company and marketing you start becoming a thought leader people start reaching out to you for advice and people also start giving you advice, right? So before I met Nick and Fernando, but still even now like I think last week I was asking a question on how to email these people that are like hijackers on my Amazon listing because Amazon is now limiting the number of 

Both: messages 

Eric: to go out

Anthony: yeah that get sent to these people. I’m like, how do you get around this? So I’ll just ask my community right?

I just posted in my Facebook group, which has grown from nearly zero to over 30,000 members in the last two years, which like blows my mind, but you know people help you right? So if the more that you kind of give the more you get back every time you ask for help too.

Eric: so I when you bring that up, I think a lot of like these people who want to put themselves out there, they’re very like scared of like, well, I’ve already built up this image that I am a thought leader. I am a guru and for me to ask a question in the group when I’m supposed to be the one to know things. Like how do you like get around that fear? 

Anthony: No. No, that’s good. I actually I do have a problem with this sometimes, you know, like people do think that I know everything but at the end of the day, I know more than people to a certain degree, right depending on what stage you are. It’s all relative because there’s plenty of other Amazon sellers that are way bigger than me, right? Yeah, you know, they’re sometimes people I approach but when I realize, you know, I have a question and I do do my best to like look it up myself. I am very adamant on like people within my group using like the search function. 

Eric: if you have a question, it’s been asked before. 

Anthony: Yeah, most likely right most likely and for you know, growing up, you know alone at 16, Google and YouTube were like my best friend.

Yeah, you know, like for I think one year I was eating just frozen meals and fast food for an entire year and I realize I was like, I can’t do this. I got I like I’m kind of sick of it. I just want to cook my own food and the way I went about it was I went to go research on like Google and YouTube how to you know cook food.

And you know, that’s what a lot of people have to do with like in business right? Look in my opinion like there’s good questions to ask when you need advice and when people ask me, you know, how do I start an Amazon business? I don’t think it’s a great question in my opinion.

Right? I think…

Eric: That all of that information is out there. Yeah, so start it and when you do actually stumble then come ask those more direct questions.

Anthony: Yeah, the more direct questions, right? So say, you know, you’re like starting your YouTube channel. You don’t ask like, how do I start a YouTube channel?

You like figure out what your problem is right as we’re going through this you’re like, okay, like I’m starting a YouTube channel, but I realized that I don’t really have any good examples of how the intro or the ending should be right? I realized that some YouTubers have a certain style like or have certain tips that I should do.

Right? And when you ask more specific questions like that you get specific answers, so my recommendation would be like, okay, when you start to video you have to have a hook that really engages someone right like that makes them want to watch until the end of the video right? Because YouTube rewards you if you retain a viewer throughout the whole video and then at the end of the video and throughout the videos you want call to actions you want like the user to comment you want them to like you want them to subscribe. So those are things you have to mention right? 

Eric: But if a person who hasn’t even started they’re not going to even understand what you’re even talking about at that stage of the business. 

Anthony: exactly

Eric: the channel itself

Anthony: exactly and then within every business you have to understand the industry’s lingo, right?

So within like the Amazon community like if I asked you when an asin is right. This is like standard 101 Amazon like 

Eric: terminology 

Anthony: terminology that you should know. It’s like the equivalent of… what’s an example of this in like another industry. It’s like   you’re a mechanic and it’s like

Anthony: a wrench

Eric: Like a wrench, yeah. 

Anthony: Yeah.  *laughter* it’s like if you didn’t know a wrench was and you were a mechanic it just wouldn’t make sense. Yeah, so make sure you do your research. Make sure you like do you like your own investigation and when you do like ask people for advice realize that you know, there’s possibly like a hundred other people that have either asked the same question or there’s also a hundred people that are trying to get advice from the same guy too.

Eric: Yeah. 

Anthony: So like my phone every day now literally gets blown up from people asking questions and you know, like while I do want to help everyone. I do have to take care of my business first before I can start helping out everyone else too so…

Eric: Yeah, and I think yeah just hearing you mentioned all of this just like, you know asking these questions and people probably have the same question.

This is always been my mentality at school like in high school and in college if I didn’t understand I like whatever the professor or teacher was saying, I didn’t mind putting my hand up and asking for clarification because my whole thought process like if I did not understand that hoping that I’m not the only one out of like, you know, a hundred kids or 500 kids that you know understands the professor. I’m sure like someone else will appreciate you asking that question.

Anthony: For sure 

Eric: right?

Anthony: For sure. 

Eric: And so then you know for them to either clarify or your peers to chime in and help you right and that’s just being there and after that and yeah, there’s no problem after like your fear is gone, right? And so that’s how I look at that as a mentality to ask questions, right but it can’t be like oh, like that question has to be a direct question to the professor can’t be like well Professor can you explain that entire thing again, or start over and then yeah, that’s when people get pissed you’re like, well you weren’t listening at all or you didn’t even do your homework prior to that right?

So I do want to ask you like like what, what are some like pitfalls that you know, you’ve had yourself within the entire journey like were there points in time where you want it to give up or quit? I mean you sound like you have a good you had a good momentum going into it by flipping some stuff on eBay.

But like at what point like did you ever want to quit this and like go back to corporate or because it is easier. I miss my water cooler friends and yeah. 

Anthony: Yeah, so I’ve been you know, I quit my job for I guess two years now and it’s been super interesting right and I’ve never felt more alive right like compared to I guess to kind of like the rest of my life.

I feel like every day I wake up and it’s like all right, what am I going to do to improve like my life right or improve my business? And then the first year I went to all these conferences. I was trying to meet people and that was a pitfall. I was trying to do too much and I had just started this community where it just kind of blew up.

And all these opportunities started flying towards me and I kept saying yes to everything. I was like yes to this partnership. Yes to like me helping you source this project yes to this project

Eric: And I think that’s like a sweet spot like when someone is just starting their journey and that person’s super excited, you want is you want to say yes, everything’s it’s new to you to write in your like business opportunity business opportunity to write everything that comes your way. 

Anthony: Yeah, and then now I realize, or maybe I’m just fortunate, that opportunities are always knocking at my door, like just last week, this guy was telling me I don’t know how a hundred percent true this is, but he seems like a very credible guy. He like messaged me and emailed us telling us that he is one of the few doctors in Canada that has like some sort of license to sell online to start an online pharmacy and like it’s very few licenses are given out every single year and you can sell worldwide – their medicine and he’s like looking for help on marketing and Amazon and he was like, giving me these like number breakdowns like this company, you know, last year they were doing this much but they got eliminated because they were doing like some fake drugs or like I don’t know they were doing something with their drugs where it was not legal, but even if they were they, you know, would have had all these margins, right and he’s talking about these companies making 300 million per month and it’s just like these opportunities come your way, but you have to realize and understand at the end of the day like what you’re going to be committed to and what we’re going to be focused to right and that was one of my major pitfalls of my first year of Entrepreneurship like not figuring out what I want to do and I kept like just travelling. I traveled a lot my first year like I was like all over the place.

Like it was fun, but I realized I didn’t get a lot of stuff done because you know, when I’m in the airport like I got some stuff done, but the day you back nothing gets done. 

Eric: Yeah. You gotta jet lag, you gotta… 

Anthony: Yeah, and when you’re traveling like for me, it was always about meeting people, right which was good because now I have a really solid network, but I think I overdid it. It’s about balance and then the second year right? I said no to a ton of things which like has totally like increased numbers in our business, increased my happiness, decrease my stress levels of like of just like trying to switch from project to project to project.

Eric: Basically your yeah not stressing about putting too much on your plate. 

Anthony: Yeah, exactly. But you know, my mom who I care about a lot, so she became single right and she’s like now has a business in a foreign country and she’s like living by herself, which bothers me. 

It pains me to see that my mom, the person have always looked up to in my life right, the one person that has been like a leader someone I could count on is going through this right now and this was the first time in my life earlier this year that I was like depressed right?

I couldn’t before this I could never have like related related to like people being depressed before. 

Eric: Yeah

Anthony: but after just like my mom and then like me going through cash flow issues in my business just everything got really affected. I have like way more gray hair according to my girlfriend and then I was just like stressed out like hell like for entire month, so as of right now, I’m just trying to move forward and it’s nice because like I finally feel like I got over that hill of like depression where it’s like I would literally sleep or like just lay in bed till like 3:00 p.m. and then be like I have to do this on my Amazon business right in order to keep it going but I was doing the exact bare minimum for my business and luckily I like really focused on building a team this year after being inspired by Nick and Fernando, so most of my team was doing like the day to day and like I could get by just like slacking and just being depressed in bed til 3.

But yeah, I mean like when you go through business like it’s not business that might be the worst part of it, right? It might be just things in your personal life.

Eric: The outlying factors in affects your life in and so yeah, I mean, I think most people are afraid of the stress of having that business and then all of a sudden some outlining factor then comes in and kind of throws you a curveball.

Anthony: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I’m glad I guess it wasn’t like health problems and at the end of the day, it’s like sort of like only money, but you know, like I always I’m a pretty optimistic guy and I always…

Eric: I mean that’s why I’m surprised that you you got to go through this as well.

Anthony: Yeah. Yeah. It’s something like actually have haven’t talked about between outside of like a very close group of like friends because I just really didn’t know how to deal with it. I was like it was the first time like I did open up to like some of my friends I’m like, yeah like this is happening and I don’t know what to do, you know, and I still really don’t know what to do, but I’m doing my best. Yeah, and that’s what entrepreneurship is going to be a lot of the time right? So it’s just you’re going to have to deal with these hurdles you’ve never dealt with before, but it’s up to you to ask for advice from like people that have been through it and then just be like, all right, and just push through

Eric: Yeah, there’s no there’s no playbook really to like walk you through this whole entrepreneur life and the things that, like you said, a wrench gets thrown into into the machine and then all of a sudden like you have to figure it out. Man, so, you know, I’m very glad for you to share that with me and I’m glad to hear that you are just getting over the hump and I hope things all work out.

I know you had mentioned before like, you know, your mom is an inspiration to you to even you know work on this business, right? Like she’s been the motivator for you to create this financial freedom in essence to you know, help support your mom and your family and everything, right?

So. Yeah, I mean I believe in you like you’re a super talented and smart guy and in the business world as well, so it should be it should work out.

Anthony: Yeah. Yeah. I’m just kind of clarify that like my mom so, you know, I was telling you guys like she kind of went to Puerto Rico when I was 16, but I’ve always felt a little guilty because that one, I think she felt like she was leaving me and  felt like she did want to be there for me. Right but she knew she had to be there financially for me so that’s why she left and I’ve always felt guilty like take her and taking her money doing like college taking her money during high school and all these things in order to just financially support me.

Right? So now, like the goal is to bring my mom back home from Puerto Rico and now if I’m able to do that then I think it’ll just make me man I always wanted to be you know, like I’m like that guy. I like took my mom home. Like I said it and I did it right? And I’m still on that journey and there’s a little things I’ve done to like help along the way like last Christmas. I actually paid off my mom’s house, so took some chips off the table.

Eric: huge milestone

Anthony: Yeah, huge milestone for family, which is cool. I live in my mom’s house. So I was like, okay you know, here’s rent money.

Yeah, so that’s, you know, like one of the milestones and I’m just still on this journey to just really improve my life and then the lives of people that I love so yeah.

Eric: So I mean, I think with  that motivation behind you it has also like I guess developed you to also help out the community that you’ve built right and bring along pretty much 30,000 other people within your Facebook group on an entrepreneurial journey to be able to have that ability to pay off your mortgage or to support your family, right? And so I think it’s something super great that you and your team have been able to build out, you know Seller Tradecraft as a Facebook group where over 30,000 people are there. People are asking questions all the time on you know, how to how to run the Amazon business how to scale and all these things and I know you’re very involved. 

You’re always creating value content and I think that’s why you know when I did stumble across your YouTube channel your content was, you know more genuine than most people were you weren’t trying to sell a course at the time, right?

And and now because well, it’s technically you guys are running a course now, it’s only because you’ve built out, you know, a huge following of people who trust you and know that you’re genuine with that content. 

Anthony: Yeah. Yeah and for me, it was just more of I was getting the same questions asked all the time and people are just kind of wanted the course people like ask for that like can you just organized all this information so it’s not scattered anymore.

Eric: And we’ll pay you for it. 

Anthony: And you know, that’s when it felt right to me and I was like, okay now like we can do this like together and that’s how the courses start. 

Eric: Yeah. Is there anything else you want to add or share with the audience?

Anthony: Um, you know, I think the hardest part of being an entrepreneur is or at least selling on Amazon is getting started. Right? So a lot of people get caught up in watching courses, listening to podcasts, watching YouTube asking for advice, but they never actually do it, right. And I will tell you that you will learn a hundred times faster when you go through the process than when you just sit there and you try to consume content and you just like imagine it all in your head.

It’s a good process, right but at the end of the day there should be more doing than there is learning. In my opinion. 

Eric: Because you’ll learn a lot more in that doing process too.

Anthony: one of my friends, his name is like Sterling Griffin and he is, he’s another guy in my Mavericks community and he’s just crushing it. I mean doing like 250,000 net per month and he’s like online fitness coach for online fitness coaches, right? 

But he’s super good at it. He like brings all this like energy all the time and one thing I was listening to his podcast just last night and he was just saying that you should be spending more time creating content than viewing content.

Mmm, and I was like, oh my God that makes so much sense. I’m spending like, you know, an hour or two or three like just like surfing like Facebook and Instagram and YouTube all day when I maybe it should be a shift right? Being a creator instead of a consumer and I’ve seen my life changed for the better because I made YouTube videos because I like started a Facebook group people come to me and like I learned so much more because people correct me now like if I say something wrong people shut it down real fast, but I also learn really fast. So I’ve learned to appreciate you know what I am wrong, but I just learn a lot faster and I appreciate that. 

Eric: So I think the basically it’s a baking in the doing into the process. It becomes like a litmus test. Right? Like if you go and study like if you’re in school and you’re studying you’re studying studying, but you never test yourself if you really know the knowledge, then you’ve only just read books and maybe it’s just gone out the other ear right of what you’re what you’re doing. So, I think that that’s a huge point to basically like yeah, whether it is content whether it’s a YouTube channel, whether it’s the Amazon business is just do because you can soak up all that information, but how much information do you really retain exactly so you won’t know until you actually share that information, right? 

Anthony: Yeah, and it’s so there’s a reason why people pay more like in Corporate America for people who are experienced than people who have like a doctorate. 

Eric: Yeah. It’s because they proved that they’ve done it through that experience.

Anthony: Exactly. Yeah. 

Eric: Awesome. Well, I really appreciate you coming on to the show Anthony, sharing your story and you know being able to help out all these other entrepreneurs. Definitely check out the group that Anthony’s built out on Facebook called Seller Tradecraft. It’s a phenomenal group, especially if you’re interested in getting started on Amazon and check out a lot of good resources there.

They have their course, they’ve built out software’s as well to help elevate people’s businesses and streamline a lot of things so go check it out. I’ll have the link provided below on the website at yfactorpodcast.com.

Anthony: All right, cool. Thanks Eric for having me. Yeah, when you guys join the Facebook group YouTube channel, whatever, just let me know you guys heard me from Eric’s podcast, and I would love that. 

Eric: Awesome. Thank you guys. See you guys.