422 – This guy failed and failed and just wouldn’t quit: Tom interviews Anatoly Spektor

Episode 422 – Anatoly Spektor
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody it's Tom here with Episode 422 of Screw the Commute podcast. I'm here with Anatoly Spektor. And this guy is a serial entrepreneur. He's a six figure Amazon seller, an I.T. consultant, and he's host of the Ten Million Dollar Journey podcast, where he shares a journey as he scales his e-commerce business to ten million dollars. And and I kind of messed that up for him a little bit the other day because he asked me how he should do it. And I said, don't do it. It's a mess. We'll tell you about that later. But I said, no, I'd rather have 10 one million dollar businesses than one 10 million. But we'll talk about the pluses and minuses of a giant one time business. But he's a true lifestyle guy because he lives anywhere he feels like in the world right now. He's in Bali and each every couple of months he moves to somewhere else. And I thought, man, that's pretty good. You just don't pay the rent and move to some other country and you can get away with it. They're never going to chase you anyway. Can't wait to talk to him in a minute. So how would you like to hear your own voice here on screw the commute? Well, if the shows helped you out at all in your business or giving your ideas to help you start a business, we want to hear about it. Visit screwthecommute.com and look for a little blue sidebar that says send voicemail, click on it, talk into your phone or computer and tell me how the shows helped you. And hey, put your website in there so you can get a big shout out on a future episode of Screw the Commute. And while you're over there, pick up a copy of our podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app. And you can put us on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road. One more thing. While you're there, we give you a big freebie for listening to the show. It's my automation e-book. Just one of the tips in this book has saved me seven and a half million keystrokes we actually estimated a couple of years ago. And it's powerful, powerful tips to automate yourself. And we sell this for 27 bucks. But it's yours free for listening to the show. You can grab your copy at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Now, of course, the pandemic is bugging everybody around the world. Either schools are open, schools aren't open. It's just crazy out there. But I got to tell you, it's not crazy for me and my students because we can sell from home. And so if you learned how to do that, like I've been preaching for twenty three years, OK, I've been selling on the commercial Internet since it started twenty seven years ago and preaching and teaching for 23 years, you wouldn't be so frantic over where's the money coming from and do I have to quit my job to watch my kids or do I even have a job? You know, all those things are out the window when you can sell from home. So about thirteen years ago, I formalized this training with the only licensed dedicated Internet marketing school in the country, probably the world license to operate by SCHEV, the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia USA. But you can be anywhere in the world that you can speak English and take this school because it's good quality distance learning. So it's I am Tikvah Dog and a little later I'll tell you how you can get a full scholarship that you can either use yourself or gift to someone. And it would be the best legacy gift you could ever give to a young person because you know, they're going to four year colleges. All they're doing is learning how to protest and then competing for jobs at Starbucks. Well, that's doesn't fly around here. Every business on Earth needs the skills of email marketing and blogging and chat bots and shopping carts and everything else that goes along with the things that I've been doing for all these years. So check it out at IMTCVA.org and a little bit later, you'll see how you can get that full scholarship if you're in my mentor program.

[00:04:29] Let's get to the main event. Anatoly Spektor. He's from Eastern Europe, but he he said I'm going to move to Canada at 21 years of age. So he he changed his career from business software development. And he got a great focus in three years to get a position where he works in some of the world's most successful I.T. companies. And he earned a six figure salary. But you know what wasn't good enough for him? So he says, you know, I'm tired of working for somebody else. So he started a side hustle and agile. Consultancy, and I didn't know what the heck adger was until I have a student that's a 20 year agile guy, and so I happened to be fooling with this and he's writing books and online courses now. So that's the company that Anatoli started, was defined agile. But then he figured out I'm sick of working for other people. So he started an Amazon business with his wife. So this guy is just awesome, just perfect for this show. We'll get into a lot of the other stuff he's been doing. But, Anatoly, are you ready to screw? The commute? Wake up over there in Bali.

[00:05:46] Just laid back easy life and Bali. Oh boy.

[00:05:50] Screwing the commute already to be honest for five years now.

[00:05:54] Five years. Wow. So tell everybody what you're doing now and and then we'll take you back and see how you came up through your entrepreneurial journey.

[00:06:04] Yeah, so just to give you a sense of the life I'm living in, I guess I'm right now in Bali where in this three storey villa with a pool. So how the day is going to go today, I'm going to record this with you. I might get some on a call with my team and then we're just going to plunge in a pool with my little son. We're going to just hang out. Then we're going to go to the farmer's market drive scooter there with my wife and son, buy some fresh fruits, eat them, and then I'm probably going to go with some friends and do some barbecue. So that's that's a day for today. So it wasn't always like that, but but that's how it is. And definitely building passive income and building assets helped me to do that. And it's it's having been a smooth ride for sure. I'm still struggling. I'm still building my businesses, but I'm in a much better place now.

[00:06:52] So I wouldn't call it struggling too much. If the sounds of your day to day doesn't seem like you're worried too much or the next nichols' coming from. But so tell us about your journey, because you immigrated to Canada right from from where

[00:07:10] You are from Latvia. I feel that many people don't know what we're Latvia. So it's it's an Eastern Europe, it next to Ukraine, Belorussia, Russia, post-Soviet Union countries. So imagine Soviet Union as you watch them in the movies like Breedar, people are wearing the same clothes. It's a little bit depressing. So when I was born, it collapsed. Soviet Union collapsed. So there were more opportunities in Latvia. But still, the mindset of people that we are just we need to be engineers. We can be entrepreneurs in Soviet Union. If you're entrepreneur, you'll probably get go to jail because you're doing something illegal. There's no free market there. Just all you do is you work for like governmental structures. I guess you have those factories that you work for and produce something for the common good communism. So, yeah, when I was growing up, it was still like this flare of communism around and it was pretty grim. And to be honest, I haven't seen good entrepreneurship examples. My dad entrepreneur, but he's like he's in logistics business, something I did not ever understood. But other than that, I would not see a lot of entrepreneurs around the world, people who are working for someone being employees. And it was not very popular to do your own business for sure in Latvia. And I was just partying and I would just like living life because I didn't know what to do was completely lost when I was when I was growing up.

[00:08:36] And at some point I was like, you know what? I need to change something in my life because I don't know where it's going. I party, I do nothing. I waste my time. I don't learn it. Just it completely depressed, to be honest. And I was like, OK, what can I do? In two years prior to the event of me moving to Canada, me and my dad visited our aunt in Toronto and I thought, this is a nice place. People smile, people are nice, everything is developed. They should try it out and see how it works. And at that point, I was studying management in in Latvia because in Latvia it's cool to be a manager, which is funny because when we went to Canada and I went to university for management in Canada, people asked me, who are you going to manage? I was like, that's a great question. I never asked myself back in Latvia that we are going to manage who was going to hire me from school to be a manager. And this is this is weird. But in Latvia, people are like, oh, I'm going to be a manager and probably they're going to work in their parents, parents enterprise and stuff like that. But I didn't thought it will be a path for me. So I decided, OK, I moved to Canada.

[00:09:44] They know English very well, but I'm like, I'm going to I'm going to still figure it out. And slowly but surely I. I did this management thing. It wasn't very good at some point in university that said, you know what, you either go to this the the, the other courses because you're so bad that we're going to either throw you out or you just go to the worst course because I'm like criminology or something. Some people don't like something that people don't understand. Even the words and I'm not saying anything against about people who do criminology. I think it's amazing. But in university that I was that was that it was like the lowest rank of people joining. So lots of response. And like, I think I'm failing again. And I was really afraid because I'm going to go back to Latvia because I really enjoyed Canada. So it's like, OK, can change something. What I like and what I thought, what I really like. And at home, I would just I'm introverted. So with party, party, party when I go home and I would sit the computer, maybe write some code or build a website or do something, not for money. I never thought about making money from it, but it's just something I did my free time. So I thought about, OK, I was just going to be a software developer. Why not? So I dropped out of university.

[00:10:53] I went to college where you just code. You don't have any theory because I didn't learn like Teria. I can't focus for long time either. So I started like doing this coding thing and. It went really well, I was the top of my class, so in management university, everybody would love that I would be the worst student ever, like my grades would be so bad that it was like unimaginable. But here in this in this school, I would be finished with honor. So I would be like the top of the top of the school. Wow. I would be like presence on her list. I would be the best. And a company like a big software company just hired me for internship. And then they I stayed with them for about two years. So I was making about sixteen, seventeen dollars an hour, which is for student a lot of money because people work on like Starbucks for like I don't know, ten bucks or something like that. So I'll actually these guys are paying me sixteen and then they were paying me like twenty five for something like that, like crazy amounts of money per student. So in like a second year and I would like I would for was a part time or sometimes when like a summer heats, I would work with them during the summer and they loved me and from there I want to go full time with them.

[00:12:06] They said we don't have any sports yet, so maybe wait, I'm like, I don't want to wait. And then somebody hired me right away for like eighty sixty or seventy thousand dollars just from a school because I worked with this company and it started like I was working on the startups, like I was working for a government that was working for small startups, big startups. The thing that annoyed me a lot, that I would invest all my soul into this company that would work, and I would do like cool things for them, build amazing software, and then they would like then get funding or they would go bust or they would like start. It happens with startups all the time. Right. Or it would be so boring. It was like a big company would be so boring. I'd be like, I need to leave. So I never thought I loved the development side of things, but I never thought that I would do it all my life because you just building somebody else's assets and then they just make decisions that out of my control. Right. Eventually what happens will be they'll make wrong decisions and they'll be out of a job over and over again. At one point I'm like, I don't know, I think I'm done with it. We need to try something else. So I transition from.

[00:13:11] How old were you at this point?

[00:13:13] About twenty six, twenty seven. All right, so at some point I was like, I need to start some side hustles or do something. So at some point, I transitions from being an employee to being a contractor, which was much better, like I was treated much better. And I stopped doing software development because something that I was really good at was organizing teams and making sure that people in a software teams working much better together. So everything's transparent and they can adapt to changing stuff like that. So I started doing Agile, which I did from from the day one. We worked in the agile way, but being like officially an agile coach, it's called for scrum master comes a framework for you work together. I started about that time and officially because I was scrum master part time, like also developer and scrum master. But then I moved like full time doing that and helping teams. And then I open a consultancy. I started getting like some clients that that liked what I did. And it was also amazing. But the not amazing part about this one was that you have to be in the office. You have to work with clients full time. It's a very active job. Right. And I'm the kind of guy who likes to take time off. He likes to explore himself. I like to do some crazy things sometimes. Like a run marathon alone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do Ironman like I like to do some things outside of job, like work is not everything for me. I like to spend time with my family. We like to travel some like this is not how it's going to go for this consultancy because it's very active and you have like all those clients all the time and you need to be otherwise limited.

[00:14:52] But it was lucrative, right?

[00:14:54] Oh, definitely. Definitely, yes. I was making I was making a lot of money, but again, it wasn't satisfying. I would still come home and I'm like, I don't know, somebody controls my time. It's not something that that I that I can live with. Um, and at that point, I'm like, I need to try something else, try something more passive. I can other people can do for me and I can just be there and support them. And this idea of ecommerce started we started with one guy I was working with. We did a run with him during the during the breaks and he told me about drop shopping. It's like the model, the e-commerce model where you don't hold any inventory, you just find some wholesaler and then you say, can I sell your product essentially in my store, my online store? And then you promote it and you sell it and then they ship it to the customer. Right. And we're like, amazing, let's try that. It's like it doesn't require any any upfront capital. It's cool. We're very naive at that point. It's sort of entrepreneurial journey. It's like, OK, what are we going to sell? So then we lose the course. There is one person that they like, sell something very expensive and so they can get great margins with and we're like, OK. And for some weird reason, I don't know why, but we ended up choosing a storage sheds.

[00:16:12] I don't know, it's like a huge thing they need to assemble and you stole your boat and or something. So we're like, OK. Door shuts Why not? They're big. They're good margins. Let's do it. We need a couple of months to find manufacturers. We create a Shopify store. We put store shelves on a store, and then we just waited like nobody came. Nobody wanted to buy it. We tried Facebook ads. They wasted all the money. Nobody bought it. And then at some point, people start buying them. But the margins were so slim that we don't make any money. I remember somebody bought it for like six thousand bucks or something and we made 50 bucks each. And it would be like so disappointing. We're like, what's happening? And then the other side of this wrong decision came. People start calling us. They're like, Hello, you're starting associates. We're like, yes, how to assemble the shit? Like, say what? Or can I put the boat in the shed? My boat is this size and this size. Will it fit? And I'm like, I have no idea because I mean, if you ask me to assemble IKEA furniture, I would never do that because, like, my mind doesn't work that way. I, I don't understand those those parameters. Nothing for me. Like, I don't understand that. That's why my wife does assembling a furniture and I just don't touch it.

[00:17:26] Unfortunately I wish I would, but it doesn't happen with me. So I'd be like, I don't know. And then they would be like a regular just like are you like who are you. And I'm like, yeah, we're legit. But I don't know, let me let me call someone else and check it out. So it's called the manufacturer. And I'm like, that's cool, those questions. And then sometimes they would buy some for like fifteen thousand like yes, it's happening. They'll manufacturer I want to put in order for fifteen thousand. Somebody bought the shit and they're like, no, we don't have it. I'm like, what does that mean. We're a lot of stock and I'm like when they're coming maybe tomorrow the probably next year it's like, well what do I say to the customer? They're like we we might have something else. They would call them out and explain all this. It would just be. And for me, working with customers is very hard. My wife is good at that. I'm better. That's so I'm not even doing this. And I was so stressed out, this was like much more stressful than anything else I did. And I'm like, I don't know. I know if I can do that. So we close we parted ways with the business partner that we we did runs with because we just had to we didn't have, like, complementary skills.

[00:18:34] So it was very, you know, like we did not have this partnership. He did the same with me. We just sat there and just felt overwhelmed. That was our job every day. So on top of that, we did still have some some jobs and some consultancy. So it was like nightmare. So it's like, OK, let's try something else. The guy left, we started selling T-shirts as well, like doing print on demand where you put a T-shirt on like some good find some good quality designs, like I'm a patriot, something like that. I think that was a good one. Sold well for us. What was it I was doing? The the short we had a design like I'm a patriot or I'm like a cat mama. Oh, find us does niches and put those designs on T-shirts and we create Facebook groups and then we would like invite people. And so it was better we would understand marketing better at that point and some people would buy it. But then it requires so much time and we're not creative people. It was me and my wife at that point because she is like, I need to I need to supervise you because you're not doing well. So essentially, yeah, it was it was not good, to be honest, because we have a design who would design stuff.

[00:19:49] We would always have to look for new designs. And then he would go out of, um, like people will stop buying things. They would buy it for like a month and then we'll stop buying it. So we'll have to find other creative new design. We're very involved. I'm like, this is too much. I'm not that creative. I don't want to do this kind of thing. So the models are also slim. And at that point we would at that point, we would look at the course online and the courts would say, OK, you can sell things on Amazon. Essentially what you do is you create some product or buy some product from China. You would import this product from China and Amazon will fulfill it. No, no need to deliver returns to reduce customer service. I'm like, that's exactly what I need, because I'm prepared that you just put your product in and then it sells like sounds easy for it sells great tagline. So but of course was about five thousand dollars. Good course. It taught us how to put stuff in and the course for like find something that sells and then sell this. We're like amazing, let's do that. Yeah. So we looked for some product and then we found those green binoculars, toy toy green binoculars for kids were like, oh yeah, amazing. And again, we're very young entrepreneurs made lots of mistakes, but the logic and pure people listening don't don't do that software.

[00:21:11] Why, but my logic was green is a color that sells well, so we should do green binoculars, the design that sells well there, we see that we should do exactly the same thing that everyone else. Maybe add something to it and then sell because it sells the Greens a good color, et cetera, et cetera. So we're like, what can we add to it? And then we manufacture. What do you have there? Like we have this small magnifying glass. You need that. Like, amazing. Let's add this to the kit will have a kit with called Explorer supplies for little kids to use small, small magnifying glass with like black magnifying glass. And I was completely out of out of touch there. So we spent about five months to get this to Amazon. And then at some point it appeared like, yes, now we're going to be a millionaire. We will listen to all those stories. People just start selling the first product, make a million bucks like I'm quitting job tomorrow. We'll sell so well. And then you might find a pattern here. Same thing happened, nobody bought it or like, why all those stores online? People like making millions and we're just like we did the same thing for the court is exactly what we should do and nobody buys it.

[00:22:23] How the hell what are we doing wrong? And then I was like the I would start like doing pipsqueaks people click advertising for Amazon and it sold a little bit, but not too much. And then yeah, I've done at one point I remember I was waiting for ski lift in Whistler, Canada. I was going like I want to, I was going skiing. So I was like and it was long line up for for a ski lift. So I looked at my app on the phone for hours and I was like seven sales. And I was like, wow, finally we just need a little bit of time. This came like the light came and now we're making money. And the next day I was like five sales. And we're like, yes, finally we're going to be rich. It's our time. So we only ordered two hundred units from the guy. We paid about 4000 bucks for like two thousand bucks on only one hundred or two hundred units, I don't remember. And then we're like, we're going to run out of stock now because people are buying so much more. So in like three days of sales, we decided to make this decision and buy more. So I took savings out of our account. We didn't have much at that point and I invested ten thousand dollars was a lot of money for us. So I invested bought some more units.

[00:23:36] And then I remember vividly I put an order and in a week after those sales, they just went back to zero. I know what happened. Maybe our manufacturer went out of business or went out of stock. Maybe Amazon sent us a promotion. They sometimes do that, but sales just dropped again. We're like, dammit, now we're going to have ten thousand dollars down. It was crazy. So that was that was devastating. And we're like, OK. And then the middle class came. They did not sell very well. They might sell a couple of day. And then thankfully, I think in Q4, which is like when everybody buys toys, lots of people went out of stock and we would sell. So we would probably sell out, but in a year and very cheaply. So we I think we lost about three or four thousand dollars. So it wasn't that good. And looking back, I understand why, like all the buyers, intent is the most important thing for people listening, for people who are doing brands or physical products. You need to understand why would people buy yours whenever you come up with any product, look at your competition and ask yourself the question, why would people buy yours? We had the same dream with anyone else. We had zero reviews. We had a shitty magnifying glass attached to that. We'd never even check the people need or not.

[00:24:49] So we wouldn't they didn't do good market research would launch the same product. You would just failure because, yeah, people buy other other people's products because they have more reviews and it's the same thing or probably even cheaper. So that's that's a first step I want to give to everyone in this room that I learned myself. And then what we're doing those binoculars, we're like, OK, we need to we need to figure something else that they don't go well, we didn't want to quit. We want to try something else. So one of our friends had this issue with us with his ballistic syndrome. So essentially, this is like a female issue. Lots of females have this and we're like, OK, what, what? And she was taking a supplement for it. Actually, two supplements. One was called me and acetyl, and the other one is the Cairo. And I said, those are two things that just taking to help her with this. This was like supplements. We're like, OK, we'll look at the market and read it. There were sixty thousand people in this group, holistic syndrome. So like, OK, there's a big market for it. We're looking at Amazon. People are selling this, but they will. But they were selling this separately meal. And the Kyra and I would look at like autocomplete on Amazon and I would say my the current my deal with it will always be the carbonised.

[00:26:04] I would also do it on Google. I would show that they bought them together, sort of like, well, you know, we should do we should combine them into one single bill so people don't have to take two pills. And we're like, amazing, let's do that. And then delistings also looked really weird. They were like very pharmacy, like so like white and the blue text. We're like, we should target women because for women we made it very pinkish. We made the amber color bottle. So it's like more naturally looking. So it looked really, really nice. And then at some point we so we combine them together because we knew the proportions we were taking. When you it's OK. We found them in affection. United States at this point, they made it for us and about a month and then in about a month and a half, we're live on Amazon and people started buying it right away. And this is like a completely different from binoculars because it was popping out. It was new. It was innovative. People like I understand this. It speaks to me. It's pink, it's great. And people are buying it. We're like, finally now. Now we're making money, so we're actually we're making a lot of money. I mean, for us, it was selling about maybe 15 a day. So you can

[00:27:18] Make your own in a free pair of binoculars with every

[00:27:23] Frolov. Yeah. So we're making about 15 a day and 15 a day. It was very good. And we're like, OK, finally we're making it. That's great. And then at one point we got an email and I remember vividly again, this was just my ups and downs of the personal journey where we're relaxed. We're like, OK, everything's going well. We're making you know, they're making about Antion maybe. Ten, twenty thousand dollars a month, so it was pretty good and then we would get an email and email would say, you're listing got suspended, you're using claims that are using structural claims, you're listing, get removed and please remove your inventory. You're done or or explained or remove or remove the claims and tell us, like, how are you going to improve it? We're like, dammit, what are we doing? I think we use the word PCOS and the title. And then I mean, we're new again. We did not research it very well. And if you're selling supplements, please do not use any health claim with you don't have proof for so supplements. They don't treat diseases they might. But this is this is not that there's not enough studies for that. And this is not like a medicine or some medicine. They can have claim supplements. You can have claims. So we would get suspended and we're like them. So we removed this PCOS more than we send it back to Amazon. We're sorry, we're sorry. They're like, no, you still have claims. We're like, we don't have any claims.

[00:28:47] And it's always goes back and forth and takes them about three to four weeks to reply. And we're losing all this money and we're very stressed out. We're like we removed against some things and they're like, no, no. You still have claims then what people do sometimes. And it took us three or four months to realize that what people do, they write to Jeff Bezos is like Jeff at Amazon.com. You write some message and then some some of his executive team might reply. So I remember we would write to him like what's happening, removed everything. And we had a lawyer at that point. They reviewed the listing. There was no claims, nothing. This is like totally legit. But we but they still say there a claim. So I don't know. I think he bought Taghrid and then they could not release it, stuff like that. Now I understand that. But at that point, I did not see we're off to Jeff like Jeff. What's happening? We're so annoyed, blah, blah, blah. And then one person on his team replied, like, you'll never be able to sell this again, blah, blah, blah, because there's a claim to move everything. We're like, oh, man, they don't understand anything. They just there's different people. The department don't work with each other. It's just like ridiculous. So we're like, OK, I guess we're going to Amazon Journey here. But before I do that, I just removed the whole description, all the bullet points, everything, and just said, OK, let's try again without anything.

[00:30:00] Just empty listing. I just just images. So I did that. And then in like a week they're like, OK, you don't have any claims anymore. Here you go it back and look at what's happening with us. And I put everything back the same day, everything we had at that point without any claims and they never touched us again. But the problem was that at that point, about ten different competitors, similar looking to us, appeared and they gained the momentum and then the price got down. And then we're like, we're not selling as good as we were because we lost the momentum because of this. So when we were back, it wasn't something that will anymore, which was very devastating. Um, so, yeah, that happened. But then at some point we're like, OK, I understand how this works. You need to create something unique. You to create something that pops into the main image. You need to bring people new value combined, maybe something so create something that doesn't exist yet, but the people need and we're like, OK, let's do it. So I wasn't going to tell what we're saying now because we're still in like a process of building the brand. But we found a similar product with a similar way. And yes. So two products, each of them are now selling about 100000 a year and they don't require any actually even paper click because they are just unique, different and they're selling well.

[00:31:21] All right. So don't let me jump in here. So. Up to this point. What I what I like about this story, although I'm sorry you had all those losses, but but you just didn't quit, you know, you just kept going and going and learning and learning and you wouldn't give up. That's that's a lot of people would never, never made it that far.

[00:31:48] Yeah, I guess so, but the problem for me is that I, I think why people quit because they don't have the vision. I always had a vision that I want to travel the world. I don't want to be sitting in one place. And I want to be I had this vision that I want to ski every day, let's say, because I loved skiing. But you could go skiing only maybe one or two times a week because. Well, you have to you have to work. Or if somebody gets if I get sick, I don't have to just go to work or like my wife had this issue or she was working for some company and she was sick. She was really sick. I remember she had like a flu, but she didn't have enough vacation days or she had maybe two that we were planning to go on a trip, like a small trip. And she would write in her office saying, I'm really sick, I cannot come. She was office administrator. And this lady, which I don't know, this lady, she listen to this. And our lady, I don't like you. If you're listening to this, I'm not going to name your name. But she replied like, OK, I understand you're sick, so take this from your vacation days. So she was really sick lying at home. And instead of just giving her a couple days off, which were normal, people would do, and there was a huge company so they could afford that, they would just say, we'll just we'll just have you have less vacation. And she was so devastating. I didn't have that because I mean, I think when you're a software developer, they treat your Elbit better, but it doesn't really matter what thing is that people can do that to you.

[00:33:12] Drives me nuts. And I had this vision that I don't want to be this slave. And I understand this like modern day slavery. People just pay you for your time, but they underpay you and they give you some rules. You have less vacation days to do this and you do that. You need to come in a certain way and close this all this never, never sit, sit well with me. So that's why I knew that there's no way out. And still I'm in I have so much issues these days. Like, it doesn't mean that right now with two products, I'm doing well, like I can. I have issues over and over again. We had like manufacture. We launched a new product recently manufactured, took the money and just ran away with that. And then we never get we never get the the the product one of our products melted and then it will melt the product will go to customers, leave us wants to review. So there's lots of issues happening still. We're launching new brand now because those two products where we want to sell them out of Amazon because Amazon doesn't like them, I'm sure, or launching other brands. But the thing is that I understand that. I just don't want to be. I don't want to be commuting, I don't want to be being in the environment that dissatisfying, I want to instead go to yoga and instead hang out with people.

[00:34:24] I want to have long lunches. So I want to spend time with my son. I want to teach him stuff. I want to be with him so that that's exactly why I'm doing this. And on the personal story of this, as soon as we start launching those two products and they were a little bit good and that consultancy was also doing good. I remember I moved from Agel Consulting because our goal was to start traveling. So I decided that we need some cash flow. And I found a company that allows you to do remote work. And it was pretty easy what I did before. So I was working on software developer remotely as a contractor with them. So I had some money coming and they were OK, whatever it were. So me and my wife decided to she was pregnant at that point, actually. Now she was on maternity leave because our son was three months old. We decided, OK, we're going to get rid of the apartment in Vancouver that we had at that point in Canada. And we're just going to go and travel the world because I can work remotely. And then we have this Amazon that we need to build. It also lower expenses because, well, Vancouver is one of the most expensive cities in the world. So we drove the apartment and then we just went traveling. So we went to Toronto a little bit, met with the family, with my aunt and my brother and sister live there now. Then we went to Latvia. We showed our small Santa, everyone, because he was born with three months.

[00:35:48] We showed him we went to Israel, then we went to different France. At that point, I was studying one. And my my my dream was to go to Burgundy. Burgundy is like the having a wine. And that's what I was also doing aside. I was doing some studies for wine. I was now I don't drink. But at that point two years ago, I was I was big in wine. So we went to Burgundy with some of the best wines of Burgundy, then went to a Malaga, Spain, like it was winter, but then was like summertime. There not summertime was very warm there saw swimming in the ocean in a pool there and was having fun eating seafood. And then the next month went to Portugal. Where did surfing there? We just lived and the friends were there to hang out with them for three or four months, then went to Latvia. Back to I think we're planning to go to Bali a year ago, but then went to Latvia and they closed the border. So I had to spend five months in Latvia. But even though it was a problem, money wise, it wasn't a problem. I still had work and we could spend time with family and it was good. So I was location dependent. I was living the life I wanted to. And then when they when they open the borders, who went to volunteer Spain and went again to Portugal. And now we are in Bali, Indonesia, which is also really, really cool. Lots of entrepreneurs here spending time. And yeah, it's been it's been a blessing. I guess I've been blessed.

[00:37:14] Wow. Yeah. We got to take a brief sponsored break. When we come back, we'll get you to tell us about your marathon. It seems like you're on an airplane marathon. Have to run the folks by. Twenty three years ago, I kind of turned the Internet marketing guru world on its head. And the people like me were charged in 50 or 100 thousand dollars up front to teach what they knew to small business people. And I knew a lot of these people they'd be hiding out in Latvia if you get fifty thousand dollars up front. So and they wouldn't help you. But so I turned it upside down. I charge an entry fee and then a percentage of profits that was capped. So you're not stuck with me forever. But you also know that I'm not going to disappear on you because I will get my fifty thousand for me to get my fifty thousand. You had to net two hundred thousand. And so people love this. And seventeen hundred students later in twenty three years, it's still going strong. It's the longest running, most unique, most successful Internet marketing and digital marketing mentor program ever.

[00:38:21] And I triple dog dare anybody to put their program up against mine because they will do it. But you also if you're in my mentor program, you get a scholarship to my school, which you can either use yourself for extra training or gift it to somebody. So we have people making money a few months into the school long before they even graduate. So check that out at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com, very unique program. Everything is listed there, all the crazy stuff we do for you, including an immersion visit at our state here in Virginia Beach where we have a TV studio. You actually live here for an immersion weekend and lots of other perks to the program. So check it out. GreatInternetmarketingtraining.com, and give us a call. Well, very easy to get a hold of and we'll talk about. Your future online, and we'll try to make it a little less rocky than an is so, so sorry to tell you. Tell us about these marathons and triathlons and Ironman stuff you're doing. What do you have time for that?

[00:39:28] Yeah, so that the the marathon started when I was working full time because I needed to I guess I need to get away. I need to and I need some place to get my thoughts. And actually my business, my intrapreneurship journey I think started when I started running because that's when I started spending a lot of time with my myself thinking about things and realizing my world. So I remember one day before that, maybe five, six years ago when I when just came to Canada, I was watching this event on TV and it was called Ironman Canada. So essentially it's a big triathlon. People would people would swim for four kilometers and they would ride a bike four hundred eighty kilometres, and then they would jump off the bike and then they do a marathon forty two kilometers. And that would be like, this is ridiculous. I don't understand. It's impossible people nobody could ever do that. I think this is just simply impossible. And then at some point I was like, OK, I started running because I was sort of depressed. I didn't know what to do with my life and I was changing those jobs. And I would be like running was like an escape for me. And I was pretty good. I was like maybe five, six kilometers a couple of times a week, but never anything longer. And then at one point I was like, OK, actually me and my wife at that point, she was running as well. We were running together and then like, let's sign up for a marathon training program. So we signed up the most around maybe 10 kilometers before that. And then we were running with a group about six months and in six months we were able to run a marathon. So we did like she didn't run a marathon. I did run a marathon. So that was amazing. And Vancouver is amazing. Like when you when you run a marathon there, it's such a nice scenery. There's like mountains there is that you run along the water. So it's really beautiful. I like that.

[00:41:23] I do have uphills or is it all flat.

[00:41:25] Yeah, uphill. Downhill. It was it was pretty, it wasn't that bad. Like I would run

[00:41:31] Flat with it for sure.

[00:41:33] Yeah. Yeah. So in a couple couple of months after that I'm like I'm ready to run another one. So I was crazy like that. I think I'm addicted. Like if you give me a piece of cake, the whole cake. So I done like I stopped smoking for that reason because I would smoke like two packs a day. So I stopped drinking because I like the wine, like would travel to Burgundy, would drink like a glass of wine, then they would drink a glass of wine every day. So I'm, I know my personality and predictable. The same happens the marathons in a couple of months. I started running, I went we went to Seattle. I would run another one. Then in about six months, I'd run a marathon in Portland. And I'm like, this is like, OK, but I already run three of them. What should I do now? And then in New Year, so would be like Ironman thing, it seems impossible because I don't know how to swim well and I don't know how to bike, but I think I'm just going to do it. So I just and I just decided to sign up. I paid I think it's six hundred dollars. I paid six hundred dollars, which was a lot of money for me to sign up for the Ironman Canada, which one of the most brutal races in the world, because it's in Whistler, which is skiing like skiing place where people ski, it goes up and down.

[00:42:44] You go just down the hill for 90 kilometres on the bike, then you go up the hill. It's crazy. So this is like the craziest thing you can imagine. And I'm like, what? I going to sign up and figure out how I'm going to do it? I had no idea how to do it. So I hired a coach who trained people for this. And every week you just do small things or just try swimming a little bit, try biking a little bit. And then I would do this. Do this. I believed in what he like. I just gave him the full control of it. I trained that aid the way he said it should be done. And then, yeah, it seemed impossible until the day it happened. But in actually not six, I don't think in six months, I bet seven months, seven to eight months and seven to eight months. I was on a course and I was doing it and it felt OK.

[00:43:33] Swen was very good because I was learning swimming was my weak points were swimming so much. I was swimming with this group called Dolphins and there will be like professional swimmers. That would be the guy who they put on like wrestling. I would come and I'm like, I'm here to swim. They're like, are you triathlon triathlete? I'm like, Yeah, OK, go to the last lane. And now people in wrestling will just swim like five laps over me and they'll be like the slowest turtle there. I did it day in, day out and it was always it like five a.m. I was like crazy. And you hate going to cold pool at five four. I'm like the worst thing you can do. But I would do it like day in, day out, day in, day out. And I believe in a. And yeah, I, I did it, so I did in 15 hours, which was not ideal because, like, the cutoff time was about 18 hours, but I still did it. I'm very proud of it. This was the biggest achievement and this allowed my mind to switch. I don't think it is are impossible anymore.

[00:44:31] I was going to say that that's exactly the lesson here, is that something that appears totally impossible is not if you get a coach and you work towards it, you work and you dedicate yourself to it. So now we're back. How about an extreme marathon? How about one of those?

[00:44:48] Yeah, I was thinking doing that.

[00:44:50] I figured you would.

[00:44:52] Yeah. I and I still considering it like I don't. Yeah. Again, I understand that with good training I can do those. But I also understand that for me it was more like a escape route. I'm working a lot on myself and understanding what caused me to do things. I understand that it was mostly because I was very stressed out. It caused me to to do extreme things. I have to do extreme things to be happy. But I thought I need to achieve what you achieve to be happy. So I don't know, I might do it at some point. But right now I'm happy where I am. I don't need to prove anything, anyone, anything. And I'm really. Yeah, I'm in a different state. I think I'm going to do another Ironman at some point just because I need to. I like it. I also want to I want to try a different location and I want to say to myself, yeah, you can do it again. And when you understand what's involved, about 40 hour hours of training a week, I want to understand what's involved is much harder to to accept it when you don't know, when you're exercising, doing it first time you're like, OK, I'll do it. Seems like businesses when you don't understand, when you're getting yourself into, you'll see her say yes to everything. But then when you did a couple of them, you understand what what you need to do. Well, you don't always want to do it. And speaking about that, and I'll go a little bit back to my Amazon journey because I think it has a well together.

[00:46:15] At some point I was like, OK, I'm doing this crazy things. And I think I need to also bring my business to the next level because I think it's important. So I'm like, what? I need to be accountable because I'm getting a little bit lazy. The things are going OK, what could I do? And I understood the best accountability tool is to be public, like with retirement out of the people on Facebook of what I'm doing every day. That's helped me because people are following my journey. I thought maybe should people follow my journey in business as well and I need to set some goal that is a stretch for me and try to reach to it. So I thought what's the goal would be to stretch? Like, right now I'm doing two hundred thousand. I need some some goal that would be a stretch million probably is not a stretch because well if you're doing two hundred thousand can figure out how to the million but ten million. Ten million. When you're doing, when you have a ten million business in an Amazon space, that's considered a really big achievement. It's like I'm finishing now. So I was like, OK, so I would I would commit to the ten million but I would also I need help. I need people who understand everything. I need smart people, let's say like yourself, who can give me advice and different.

[00:47:25] Every single voice I gave you is don't do it.

[00:47:30] I know. But I also need to I need it to be public because that helps me and it gives me it gives you more

[00:47:38] Time to use that trick. I've been using that trick since before you were born. It's I announced what I'm going to do to the world, and then I'm too embarrassed not to do it so that anything that gets in front of me, I just blast and crawl through and fight it. And because I don't want to be I don't want people to say, oh, he's just a dreamer. You know, dreamers are terrible. It's good the dream. But then you got to take the step like you did to get where you're going. So I used to say the same exact trick.

[00:48:10] Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, like, how would I do that? Because I did blogging before I did a bunch of things. But I'm like, I need I need I need something, I think to connect with people. And I also I think I understood that networking is one of the most important things because people can definitely it will be much faster if you have the world class network that they are good people that can help you out and you can build friendships and stuff like that. So I was like, OK, I'll do a podcast. I'll call it Tom million, Jurnee, because I'm getting my my goal is to get to Tom million will be Amazon or not. I don't know. Will be one business or not. I don't know. I just one I know that I need to get the ten million in revenue because this goal allows me to be free. Like if I get the ten million in revenue, I can invest my funds wisely, which I also do right now. And I can be financially free and I can my family can be safe so and I can continue traveling the world. I can I can also bring a change, but. I'm really interested in social impact, how can I make big changes in the world so all of this can be also achieved when I have enough resources and I'm like, OK, so called Tamilian Journey. I'll do it one hour every week. I'll update everyone on how I'm doing with my business and share anything I learn. But I also going to interview people who are on top of their game on different areas will be speaking like in your case or I just talked to the guy who has the best networks or like he he's like a business partner.

[00:49:45] Tony Robbins. And he has like all those world class networks, he creates mastermind's. Or some day I would talk to a person who makes a hundred million Amazon and they have like a huge company and they would share how they started. Or I would talk to a person who, like, I had this guy who works on people understanding them that they are enough and look at mindset and strategies. So we're talking to people from all different areas of life. Most entrepreneurship understand how they achieve that. We also go for their story. And at the end they always ask, this is what I'm doing, please give me an advice. And I try to follow those advice. And like right now, I have advice from about 100 people who are just like cream of the crop in the Amazon space, in the world space. And I would never be able to connect with these people if I did not have the podcasts or the podcast lives their own life. I'm doing live podcast now. I'm doing out there podcast. I'm planning to do a live audience podcast here in Bali. And it's just been such a blessing. It just it lives. It lives a long life. The podcast called 10 Million Journey. If anyone can check it out, it's really good. I really enjoy doing it.

[00:50:57] Yep, yep, yep. And and so we've got to wrap it up here. But I want to ask you one important question before we quit. So if you had a choice between doing the extreme marathon and by fifty thousand dollars worth of binoculars, which would you do?

[00:51:17] Mirfin is definitely a marathon. Yeah, I'm fine.

[00:51:21] All right. So tell everybody how they get a hold of you, how they find you.

[00:51:25] Yeah. So tell 10 Million Journey is the podcast.

[00:51:31] 10millionjourney.com. Yeah, you can get a hold of me, leave me a voicemail there and there's a link to how you can find podcast everywhere if you are stuck and you want me to talk to you. Also, send me an email. Anatoly@10millionjourney.com. I help people as well because I understand this journey is long. The journey is hard. So I'm happy to to to support you. And right now, yeah, I'm helping people. I'm doing accountability groups. I'm doing some consulting. So I'm available even though I enjoy my time in Bali and I don't do a lot of it, so. All right.

[00:52:10] Well, thanks so much for coming on. It's been good crossing paths at the end. He said we don't do a lot of people that are doing amazing stuff. But, you know, one of the reasons is a lot of them don't want to go through all the stuff you went through to learn how to do it. So, you know, everybody everybody is teaching it is saying, oh, yeah, like you said. Oh, yeah, you get a product, put it out there, you'll be rich and then I'll sell it for you. Well, you found out that there's more to it than that, that's for sure.

[00:52:39] Yeah. Thanks for having me. And hopefully was valuable for your audience because yeah, I really enjoyed as well.

[00:52:45] Awesome. All right everybody. We'll catch y'all on the next episode.

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