From Dud to $250k Per Month: How Justin Turned A Failed Project Into Over $2m Per Year

We need to find a purpose and we need to find something that people who buy our products, they want to buy from us. Again, why are they even coming here? Trying to answer that question. And so when we launch those next two products, we really try to pay attention to what does a customer want?

You're listening to Freedom fastlane presented by capitalism.com this is the show about building businesses and investing the profits so that you can live life on your terms.

And now, your host, the future owner.

Of the Cleveland Indies, Ryan Daniel Moran.

Oh, hey, fastlaners. What's up, guys? Ryan Daniel Moran here. Welcome to the show. Hey. Today we're going to be joined by Justin Dyson. Justin runs a physical products brands called Kids and such, which is mostly based on Amazon.com and does a few million dollars a year and has allowed he and his wife to be full time entrepreneurs, full time parents. And I wanted to bring him on the show because I wanted to tell you his story because Justin has been an interesting case where he's dealt with a lot of roadblocks and challenges like all entrepreneurs do. But in particular, his first go at this didn't go so well. Now today, Justin is part of our back room and he's building a $10 million empire which is the focus of the backroom, getting to $10 million and beyond and being ready to sell for a big payday so that you never have to worry about money or work ever again. But when Justin started in this business, he picked a couple of products that did not go well at all. They were complete duds. He was selling products, not building brands, which you hear me talk about that difference all the time here on the show. Justin just sold products and it was a dud. He lost money, he lost self confidence, but he kept on going. And you'll hear this theme come out through the show several times where Justin hit a roadblock and he just kept going. He felt self doubt, but he just kept going. And that theme has led Justin to build a multimillion dollar a year business. It's something that he's going to be building and scaling over the next several years. And when he looks back on his life, he'll see that. And you experience this on the podcast. He looks back on his life and says, my life is so much different. It feels like a different lifetime ago. Even though it was just a couple years ago that I was scraping together the money for that first inventory buy, which was just a few hundred bucks and my mom was helping me pack up the stuff and ship it out on my own. So if you're just getting started or if you run a multi million dollar business, you will benefit from this time with Justin where we document what it looked like when he was starting, how he got the first million and how he broke through that million dollar plateau and where he is going next to be able to take it from two to $3 million a year to $10 million a year over the next couple of years. You'll notice that in this show we talk a lot about failure.

So.

So this is not a rah rah episode. This is a true to life story of what it looks like to build a seven and an eight figure business. I wanna give you one heads up that the audio in this episode isn't quite the best. But I think you'll really benefit from hearing the story of the grind and the climb to a million dollars and beyond with Justin Dyson.

Hey everybody, welcome to Freedom Fast Lane. This is Ryan Moran and I am joined by the legendary Justin Dyson. Justin, what's going on, dude?

Oh, not too much, man. Just living the dream.

Tell me what the dream is because you've had quite a ride the last few years.

Yes, I have. So I would say the dream that I'm living right now is the fact that I can work from home with my kids, which is not always very pleasurable, but I can live at home, work at home, and that's all I have to do every day. I don't have to go into work, I can wear my pajamas and make money.

You could not be wearing pants right now and no one would know it is what you're saying.

That is exactly right.

Well, why don't you tell us a little bit about the business as much as you're comfortable sharing.

All right. Well, my company is called Kids and Such and we're a brand that primarily sells products for moms and their babies, primarily new moms. So all of our products really revolve around that space. And we've been in business for about two and a half, almost three years now. And we've grown a lot. So we started out, I guess in 2014 with ASM4, I believe. And I actually started selling iPhone cases. And what ended up happening is that failed miserably. So In June of 2015, me and my wife found out we were pregnant with our second child. And we thought it'd be a great idea to actually sell some baby products. And that's actually how this business came to be. So we've pretty much been doing that ever since.

So is it fair to say that you started off selling something you didn't care about, you weren't the market for it, and then you changed over to something that you knew a little bit about because you were going through it and that allowed you to make better decisions. Is that fair to say?

Yeah, that's exactly right. And we still do that today actually.

What did you do before you had the business?

Oh man, I did all sorts of stuff. So I was 23 or 24 I think when I started this. So before that, I mean, I graduated from high school in 2008 and I was told to, you know, find a career, which I had no idea what I wanted to do. So I ended up going to school to be a firefighter and I got certified to do that. I got certified to be an EMT shortly thereafter. And that was in 2009. I couldn't find a job anywhere because I was only 19 and no one was hiring anyone under 21. So I ended up working for an electrical company and the construction area of that company and I did that for about a year. And when I realized that was just like the worst job ever, I ended up going to work for my father in law who owned a beauty distribution company in Plano, Texas. And I actually worked there for about four years and I ended up doing being the manager at that company. And that's when I started going to college again at that point and then found ASM and then quit college and my job.

I didn't realize you had quit college. That's quite the story. So you had worked kind of jobs you weren't passionate about and you were going to school for things unrelated to business. So what was it that prompted you to decide that you had to make a change and you needed to go in a different direction?

So that probably started when I was working for my father in law. We I kind of reached the top rung of the ladder at that company. I couldn't go any higher up unless I own the company, which, you know, they're younger, only like 50. So my in laws, there was no chance of that happening anytime soon. And I wasn't super happy making, you know, 40, 45,000 a year. And I just felt like I could do more. So that's why I actually went to college. I started to go back to college and I was going to be a mobile developer, which is like the complete opposite of selling physical products. I actually never even considered selling physical products as an opportunity because it seemed like, I don't know, a bad idea. So I Ended up going to college and thinking this was, you know, the path for me, because they tell you to do right when you don't know what you're doing. Go to college, learn a skill, and then, you know, pivot from there. And then about halfway through my degree program, they changed up the degree itself. So I was going to be a mobile developer for iPhone and Android. And Apple just announced at the time that they were no longer going to use Objective C, but switch to Swift, which is the code they use to develop all their products. So basically, at that point, I find out that my entire past two academic years have been a complete waste. Cause all I've been learned that is obsolete now. And about that time, I was part of Robert Kiyosaki's email list, and he was promoting the amazing sewing machine. And so I watched the videos, and I remember sitting there in my bedroom talking to my wife like, I want to do this. And, you know, it was $3,500 at the time, and that was a lot of money. We didn't have that. I was going to college, so I'm paying for that out of my pocket and working that other job. And so not only didn't have the money, I didn't have the time either. But I told her I was like, I'm going to do this. So I ended up buying it. And at that point, I guess, is when I made the shift to really invest in myself and what I want to do with my life. Not so much just what other people tell me I should be doing.

That's a big shift and a big decision to make. But things didn't go well for you. Out of the gate, you had a couple products that were duds. And then when you finally built a brand, which is what we preach, that's when things started to shift and to change in the right direction. But I'm curious, if your first couple products were a dud, how did you keep the momentum to keep going when things weren't going as you expected them to?

A lot of that has to do with, I think, paying. You feel kind of worthless when you work at home. You don't have a job, you're not going to college. And you told your wife like six months ago that you were gonna make this work and we were gonna be rich, right? That was the goal. We're gonna make all this money, and it just hasn't happened. So I couldn't fathom the idea of going and getting a job again after I had, like, you know, turned my back on that idea altogether. So really, I mean, it's just. It's the realization that I didn't have any other choice. Like, there is only moving forward. There is no going back. I mean, that pain and that uncomfortableness is probably one of the biggest motivators, especially early on.

And what did you end up doing with the other products that didn't go as you wanted?

I actually destroyed them all. We got a trademark complaint from. I can't remember who it was from, but we ended up getting a trademark complaint, which at the time, I didn't know anything about trademarks and why they were so important. So we got a trademark complaint, and that was kind of like the last straw. Like, screw this, I'm done. So I had Amazon destroy all of our products, and we started over.

My goodness. How much of a financial loss was that? That couldn't have felt good.

No, I don't know the exact number, but I was thinking about it earlier. I think it was somewhere in the range of 1 to $2,000 in inventory. Not to mention the past months of other tools I bought to help grow that business that didn't pan out.

And how were you feeling at that point?

Pretty shitty, to be honest. But at the same time, it was a big relief. You know, you spend all this time trying to make something work that you can't get to work and then just throwing it away entirely and then be like, okay, we're gonna take what we know. We're just gonna move forward with that. That. It was actually a big reliever of stress on that front because I'm no longer trying to make this thing work. That isn't.

That's amazing, because so many people would just give up at that point. Like, they took a risk, it didn't pan out, and they would just, you know, pick up their ball and go home. But you didn't. You started another brand. So tell me about that. Tell me about those early days.

Well, now that I'm thinking about it, we actually started the kids and such brand before we had all the inventory destroyed. There was probably a month or two kind of overlap there. And it was interesting because we'd only had our first product from kids and such out for, like, two days, and we had our first sale. I think it took over a month and a half to get my first sale on those iPhone cases. And even after that, it was one or two a month, maybe five if I told somebody about them, which I didn't know you were supposed to just, you know, do a product launch either. That's an Important thing to know. I didn't know those were a thing. So there was that one or two months of overlap. And that's kind of when I, you know, we ended up getting that trademark complaint. And that's why I was like, you know what? Just screw this. We're done with those. They're not even working. This other product that I just started is starting to take off. And we were very lucky with that product, too, because we found a supplier that actually had stock on hand. We went with those. So I was able to get into that space for very, very cheap. You know, I think my first order with them was like, $150. So that. That helped a lot because otherwise it would have been a lot more difficult to make that transition. But, you know, that obviously didn't last very long because people knock you off. And there was a few other people on Amazon selling that same exact product. Then, you know, we had product quality issues. Probably three or four months later, the product has a lot of buttons on it or has three buttons, and they were breaking off. And the company wasn't willing to work with me. And so fortunately ended up finding another supplier who was cheaper, who would package everything for me. Oh, that was the other thing I forgot. I was actually packaging everything myself in my kitchen. I would get all these car seat coverage is what they were. I would get them all in, they would ship to my house. I would go buy poly bags. I would put them and, yeah, it was just such a terrible thing. I remember my mom was helping me out, and I had a buddy that helped me out then, too. And I didn't have anything to pay them, but they would help me out, you know, wrap up these 200 units of car seat covers that weren't branded. We literally just bought a sticker from. Was it vistaprint? And we just put that on the poly bag. And, like, that was our branding. So I know it's so dumb now that I talk about it or think about it, but that. That's how it was. You know, it was just trying to bootstrap my way through it because, you know, we didn't have a lot of money, and that was the cheapest route to go. And I didn't have a job, so it's not like I had. I was strapped for time. I had all day. So that's what we did in the beginning. And eventually we found another supplier that would package everything, you know, sew our logo on the product, and they were. They were a whole lot better. And they didn't have the Quality issues that we had before. So that was kind of the big turning point that took us from, you know, just these few skus that, you know, we're selling, you know, five to ten units a day. We found the new supplier that could maintain the quality and we took it from there. And then probably six months later, I think we launched our second product. And then a few months after that we launched a third. And then the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh within the next year.

Hey guys, this is Ryan. We're gonna take a quick break and.

We'Ll return to the show in a second.

If you've been listening to the last few episodes of the show where we featured entrepreneurs who have crossed the seven figure mark and are on their way to eight figures, then you undoubtedly have heard us talk about the backroom. The backroom is a group mentoring program where we cast the vision for getting to $10 million a year and beyond and being ready to sell your company because ultimately that's where the big payday is going to come from. We also open up investment opportunities so that you can put your profits into places that give you more wealth and potentially more cash flow or even help you save on taxes. We have some pretty cool places where we put cash that give you sometimes all three. Plus you're in a room with people who are the best in the world at what they do. We bring in my team of advisors that help people get into retail. They help people get clean up their systems, they help people clean up their books. They even help them reposition their companies so that they can be sold for more money. We also talk about what's working right now on Amazon and on other channels. But the focus of the group is on casting the vision to get to eight figures and beyond and clearing all bottlenecks that stand in your way while also opening up other opportunities for you to enjoy a life of freedom. Because that's what we're after here. We're not just after this to work hard and work 16 hours a day. We're doing this so that we can have freedom. And we get freedom by making enough money so that we can invest into places that allow us to never have to work again and then building empires with people that we love doing business with. And that's what we're doing inside of the back room. And I could also tell you that we're looking to buy and buy into some of our students businesses through something else that we're doing pretty cool in the back room, but I will save that for another day because that is still in process. But if you have an idea that you're not sure how to bring to the marketplace, if you've got an audience that you know could be the fertile ground for a really profitable seven figure physical products brand, or if you're selling enough product to be able to say, you know, I could step on the gas here if you've got that million in sight, or you're beyond the million and you know that it's time to accelerate the process to get to that eight figure mark. Because you're playing the review game, you're playing price wars. You're tired of sacrificing profit margins, you're working way too long for too little result. And you want to clear those bottlenecks so that you can grow faster and have a sellable company. So one day you can have that ideal freedom lifestyle, we can help you inside of the back room. It's one of the more expensive things that we do. It's also the highest ROI thing that we do. So it is application only. You need to be ready for it and you need to be ready to move when you join. So you can go to freedomfastlane.com, click on backroom and see the application, see all the pricing details from there. Working with me one on one starts at about $100,000. Joining the back room is a little bit less than that. So just know going into it that it's a serious investment and it is only for people who either have funding, have sales and are ready to go once they join. So if that's you, go over to freedomfastline.com, click on the back room and you'll see the application and full details there.

There's a member of our backroom who reached right around the $10 million mark. And when he tells his origin story, he was literally, he didn't have any packaging, so he would. But he had this ugly product. And so he would go and find generic products off the shelf, open them up, put his products in, and then ship them out. So there's kind of a common story of people just doing whatever they had to do at the beginning in order to get product out the door. But what I think I heard you say was when you found the right supplier who could consistently deliver the quality that you were looking for on time, that was the turning point where everything changed. Is that right?

Yeah, because at that point it became more about how can we get more done instead of just like what can get done? You know, does that make sense? We started to think about things in terms of like, okay, well this product is selling. What. What do we need to do next? Because this probably won't last forever and it didn't. Obviously that product isn't even one of our best sellers anymore. So that is kind of when things changed. You know, that other supplier also had other products, so that kind of played well together. So they only make baby products. Right. So there was like, hey, you know, Justin, we sell. I don't remember what. There was like a list of things and there was like one or two things. I was like, okay, let's pick this one and this one and see how it works. And one of those actually didn't work out at all. I think it had an average rating of two stars on Amazon. So that was another failure right out of the gate with that supplier. But that was my fault because I didn't get a sample made, which is really dumb. But I was trying to speed things up and I guess that's where the transition happened. You find a supplier that can maintain quality and then you can focus on something other than making the product yourself, which is what I was doing prior to that. Packaging everything and trying to figure out how to advertise on Amazon.

Yeah. So once you got that out of the way, what was the reason you were able to grow so quickly? You launched a few products, eventually, you know, you got to the million dollar mark, which we'll talk about. But what were you doing during that time besides just getting a good supplier? What did you focus on then?

A lot of different stuff. So most of it didn't even work. So we, we focused on Pinterest ads. You know, I follow Ezra. I followed him a lot closer at that time and I didn't realize the difference between, you know, supplements that could be purchased on a 30 day reoccurring basis versus our products, which someone bought every time I had a baby, which is nine months at least or more. So I was trying to follow his model of advertising on Pinterest and do the give them something away for free and then they'll buy again later. And that obviously didn't work out. We found that out real fast. So tried to do Pinterest, we tried to do some Facebook ads and ultimately what it came down to is just throw all that crap out. I literally had to unsubscribe from everybody who was sending me emails to teach me these new tips, these new tricks and tactics and all this stuff. I had to cut all it out because it was just distracting because I wanted to buy it. I'M in this stage now in the business where I'm like, how do I get more, how do I get more sales, how do I get more reviews? And ultimately you can only do one thing and that is to just get more sales. Quit focusing on how that happens and focus on, you're on Amazon, that's the only thing working. So I cut out Pinterest, I cut out Facebook, I focused on ppc. And then it wasn't until we launched that second product that I realized when you have something that relates to your other products, like in the way they do it with brands, when you have, you know, one product that they can buy with the other product, that's when you start to see that people buy one thing, then they buy the other. They tell their friends and then they tell their friends and that's kind of how the things get out and a part of it too. Like a lot of our products, they all have patterns and we do a lot of variations. And so it's really important too to stay up to par with what's going on in fashion because that's really what you're selling, or what we're selling is what's fashionable for new moms and nurseries and things like that. So when we made that connection and we started launching products that related to one another and that people could buy more than one of, that's when, you know, sales started to ramp up and that's when things started to look really good for us.

So things were looking really good at that point. But tell me when it didn't look so good, it can't be like once you figure one thing out, it was a straight line up. What was the worst day on the route to the first million?

Oh man, there was a couple bad ones. You know, that second product we tried to launch in the brand, that didn't work out, that was kind of like, man, I just think I might have hit a one hit wonder and I can't do this again. So that was, that was a pretty crappy, that wasn't really a day, that was more like a month. Just kind of sitting there trying to start over. You know, what are we going to do now? Because the first product's doing okay. Second product was a complete failure, but again, you know, I didn't have any options. So find the third. And the third one worked out and that actually became one of our top sellers for the better part of six months to a year. So that was probably the worst month we had. There was another time where we got a copyright Infringement. So funny, like, things come up like that. Trademarks, copyrights that you don't even think about when you're just in the grind. But sure enough, there's this brand. We were using their brand name in the back end search terms, which they didn't like. I don't even know how they found out because I don't even know how to find out. But that shut down six of our listings and three of those were our top sellers. So things really sucked for about two weeks when that happened. Yeah, we didn't have anything that was just like, man, this is really awful. Everything that did happen that was negative was. I wouldn't say it's an easy fix, but it was fixable and we were able to keep pushing forward. So there was no big, like, man, things never went flat, I guess, until we hit a million.

We'll get there. But what was the, probably the biggest challenge you had to overcome in order to get to that first million?

Probably understanding that when you're growing, you're not making any money. So I thought that for whatever reason, as the company grew, so would the amount of money I could take from the business. And I could never take any money out of the business until we hit about 75k a month, which is, you know, the trailing number for a million dollars almost per year. So that was a really hard pill to swallow just from a momentum standpoint because I've already spent the first six months losing money and then the next six months to a year after that were spent. We were making money, we're making. Our revenues were going up, but we weren't. I wasn't able to take any money home. So, you know, there was a period of time, probably a year and a half, almost two years, where I just. Making no money, even though on the surface things look great for the company. So I think that from especially a momentum standpoint, like, that was a really big thing to overcome and to see past. And one thing I try to tell people when they start out, because everyone always asks, like, well, how long, you know, before you can replace your income? I'm like, really? That depends on you and how fast you can grow and whether or not you have the margins to support launching new products and paying yourself. And for us, that just wasn't the case at the time. I think it was like 30, 40%, which isn't great, but it's not, you know, 10 or 20, which I see some people trying to do now. Honestly, that was probably the biggest struggle we had, was getting over the fact that we couldn't take money from the company and we were just going to have to keep sticking to our guns, keep launching new products and just keep moving forward. Even though we don't actually know where we're going. We just have a general idea.

Boy, can I relate with that one. I have no idea where I'm going, but I know the general direction I'm going. So tell me about the million dollar mark. Do you remember about the time that you hit the first million or you were pacing your first million?

I do. And when we did hit it, I wasn't excited at all. And my employee that was working with me at the time was like, dude, why aren't you happy right now? I don't know. I didn't even consider it because I thought a million dollars was a lot of money. And when we hit it, it realized it wasn't a lot of money at all. And I don't know, it was actually kind of a sad day because we reached this goal. That was the biggest goal I had was to try to get to a million dollars in sales. And once we hit it, I didn't have anything after that. So it was almost like the end of my journey. But the fulfillment wasn't there, so. So that probably wasn't the answer you were looking for, but that.

I love it.

Let's keep going there. So you were sad the day that you hit the first million because nothing really changed.

So what happened next really just kept moving forward. So that was about the time I think that I started kind of following what you were teaching and trying to figure out, like, where should I go next? After we did hit that first million dollar mark, I think I spent the next three months not doing anything. You know, I maintained what was going on in the business, but I. I couldn't really do anything that promoted the growth of the company. I didn't. I stopped launching new products. We just kind of. We stagnated. And so for the first part of 2000, I think it was, yeah, 2017, like the first three months, like we were completely flat. We didn't grow. And I actually, I was so depressed. And it's really kind of crappy to think about because that was supposed to be like super exciting time, but it didn't bring the fulfillment that I wanted. And I think that is kind of when I first realized that the point of this business and the point of any business isn't necessarily about making money as much as it is about solving a problem and identifying what the problem that you're solving. And then being the best at that.

And did you make a change then that ultimately brought more fulfillment, or did you just keep growing?

A little bit of both. So even realizing that, it still didn't know what to do, you know, now how do I get fulfillment out of something or how do I change the reason why I'm doing something? Just, you know, at the snap of your fingers. Right. So the flatlining of the revenues, you know, that was probably the biggest pressure that I felt. So we, you know, started launching products again. Our next product came out in June, and then we had another one come out, I think, in July. And the different or the approach we made that was a little differently with those is we really wanted to find products that solved a problem, not just we're selling well on Amazon, you know what I mean? Because when we first started, the whole point or the name of the game was just find these products that sell well and then put your brand on them and stick them on online. Right? So making that shift and kind of realizing, like, we need to find a purpose and we need to find something that people who buy our products, they want to buy from us. Again, why are they even coming here? Trying to answer that question. And so when we launch those next two products, we really try to pay attention to what does the customer want? We started reading Facebook posts from our competitors, actually started looking at the things that they were saying and just reading the responses from their customers, because their customers are our customers type of deal, you know, so we started reading what they wanted. And so from then on, all the products that we launch relate to that. Whatever the customer is saying they want, we're trying to fulfill that need. And it doesn't always work out, you know, in terms of revenue, because just because they want it doesn't necessarily mean they're buying it on Amazon. So that was kind of the shift that we made there. And it has helped. You know, I don't think I'm over that yet. You know, here, a year later, I still don't think I've quite grasped the concept of personal fulfillment. I guess I should say I made the mistake of thinking money was going to solve problems, and only it only amplified the problems that you already had. And so I guess that is where I'm still stuck. I would say. I wouldn't say by any means that I've overcome that.

How would you say that it amplifies problems that already exist?

Well, your problems don't go away. And you can't just throw money at problems and expect them to Go away. But just in terms of business, I mean, like, early on, so we lost one to $2,000 in inventory with those iPhone cases. So this past year, yeah, we made $2 million in revenue. But I still made so many mistakes, and I still, you know, messed up all along the way because, again, we have a general idea of where we're going, but things break along the way that you don't anticipate. So, like, one of the two biggest mistakes I think we made this past year, one revolved around advertising. We decided we were gonna do this big old campaign and cast a wide net and then reel it back in with, find out, whatever works, and we ended up losing, like, 30 grand in a month and a half or something over that. So, like, just because you have more money doesn't mean your problems go away. If you still don't know where you're going, you're still gonna make mistakes. They're just gonna be even bigger. And so, you know, that was one of them. The other one, we thought we could grow just as fast by launching variations, which me and you have talked about. And so that was another big mistake we made. And again, it comes back to the fact that you don't know where you're headed. You're just going to keep making mistakes, but because you're making more money, you're going to make even bigger mistakes because you have more money. You're throwing at something.

I totally get it. It's almost like every time you make a mistake, you're back in the house selling iPhone cases again, getting kicked in the teeth. It's amazing how our brains keep those painful reference points, and every time we make a mistake, it's just amplified and it triggers this exact same emotions.

Hey, guys, this is Ryan. We're going to take a quick break and we'll return to the show in a second.

I get a lot of questions about what I think of some of Tony Robbins investment strategies, especially the ones where he talks about assets that. That can go up in value over time, but don't participate in any downside. I don't agree with all of Tony's investment recommendations, but I do participate in investing in insurance, which is one of the things that he's describing in that strategy. Now, I wanna give you a warning. When I went into that investment strategy, I got schmoozed over by a slick salesman. And I wish that I had used a sophisticated firm that was actually dedicated to that. That's why I had wealthpoint on the podcast recently. And I'd encourage you to go listen to that episode about infinite banking. Now, infinite banking isn't the proper term to describe what they do. They actually use a modified version which is called capital warehousing. But what it basically allows you to.

Do is park cash like you would.

Put it into a bank, participate in the growth of the market without participating in any downside, and you still get access to that capital so that you can put it into other investments. So if you've got money sitting on the sidelines, you might want to use capital warehousing as part of your strategy. So you can go over to gowealthpoint.com freedom to learn how the strategy works, or you can just listen to the episode that we had with Sam Prentice from Wealthpoint here on the podcast. It's called how the Rich Use Infinite Banking for Tax Free Wealth.

So what I'm hearing you say is like, you know, you've run into these roadblocks time and time again and they've made you question yourself, but you've kept going. So what is it that has kept you going through dud products and self doubt and hitting sticking points and days you wanted to quit? What has kept you going through, you know, now more than $2 million a year in revenue?

I think I'm just really optimistic. It doesn't really sound like it over the stuff we just talked about, but at the same time, like I spent when I worked for my father in law, I had weekly breakfast meetings with my brother in law who also happened to own part of that company. And he really, I don't think he meant to do it on purpose, but he basically instilled in me this idea that I'm, I'm a powerful individual and if I would only reach down and take action on how I. And based on just even just the feeling like if I want to go do something, go do it. Quit waiting for someone to hand it to you. So from, from that aspect, I feel like I'm a very optimistic person, mostly because I don't have anywhere to go back to. There is nothing for me there. So it's very easy for me to say, yeah, that didn't work out. Let's just try again and see what happens. Because I'm confident that I can figure it out. I don't think I'm incapable of figuring it out. So I'm just optimistic that way. I guess I just keep moving. I don't have a reason to go back. I don't have a reason to go get another job. I don't have a reason to stop what I'm doing. And I want this to work. You see people like Elon Musk trying to figure out life and the stars. My vision is much smaller, but it's the same concept. Like, just because people say it can't be done and just because you feel along the way doesn't mean you stop. It doesn't mean you give up. So I guess that's where I'm at. I'm just. I'm not going to give up. I'm going to keep moving forward.

So tell me about that vision. How big of an empire do you want to build from here?

You know, that was the question I actually had to ask myself when we got to the million dollar mark, because that was my big vision. It was a million. So now it keeps moving, the target keeps moving. You know, as we've talked about in the back room, you know, $10 million or getting to $10 million in revenue for your business is kind of the goal. But at the same time it's like, why does that have to be the end of it? Why does that have to be the end? All, be all. So. So for me now I really want to kind of take what I know and I want to do it again and I want to teach people how to do it. So whenever ASM7 came out, I had several people who I convinced to sign up. And I get a lot of fulfillment from that, from helping other people do what I've done. And then you have to do exactly what I'm doing. But just going after whatever your dream is, whatever your ideas are, just going after those. So I guess one of the bigger goals that I have is to get to a point where I have some clout. In other words, I've hit that $10 million mark where I've sold my business or whatever, and now I can go and teach other people to do that and actually have some research that I obtained myself that can help those people, because ultimately it is about people. And that was the biggest shift that I think we made when we stopped looking at money, started looking at the people. You realize that's what it's about. So if I have any vision at all, it is that how can I help people do what I've done? Not necessarily launching an Amazon company, but just how can I teach them to go chase that dream and chase that reality that they could have? All they have to do is go after it. And so really I just want to help inspire people to do that, because I think there's so much more that we can accomplish in the world if we would just simply take action.

Amen to that. Justin, looking back at your life, you got started in 2014. Before then you were in college and working jobs you hated. How is your life different today than it was just a handful of years ago?

It feels like a lifetime ago. To be real honest. I was talking with someone about this the other day. Things are just easy now. Not, not because everything's easy, but there's a lot less stress in terms of, you know, like, what am I going to do tomorrow when I get up? I'm trying to get this company rolling. Or even before that, like, I'm working at this dead end job. When I worked at construction, there was plenty of opportunity in that company, but I hated the work. Now things are just easy. I like what I do and I enjoy talking with people. And I hate to say it, I still talk to customers. I know you're not supposed to, you're supposed to pass it off. And I have, but I still occasionally log in and I just talk to the customers. So like, I enjoy what I do now. And I think that's the biggest difference, that everything comes naturally. There's no confusion about what should I be doing. And I think that's probably the biggest difference between then and now.

And I know you have a family that is the center of your life. Tell me about them. How have their lives been affected by both the highs and the lows of being a seven figure entrepreneur?

So it actually kind of did a complete 180 when we first started. That was in 2014, 2015. Elite. We started the Baby brand because we were having another baby. And at the time, my oldest son was five. For the first five years of his life, I wasn't really home. I worked, you know, a regular job, 9 to 5 or 7 to 3, however you want to look at it. And I didn't see him other than at night, which I will say life was a lot simpler then because if you know you've got that guaranteed job or that feels guaranteed, right? So if you've got that guaranteed job and all you have to do when you get home is just play with your kids, like life is really simple. So from that aspect it was nice. But my oldest, like, didn't know me very well, you know, for the first five years of his life, just because I wasn't home, I was at work. And now I work at home. I'm never gone. And our second son, he's two now and I'm his favorite and that is freaking awesome. And it makes my wife so mad because, you know, when she comes home, he says hi and all that, but he still comes right back to me. And so like that I think is a really big thing that changed between, you know, and I think that's really cool. And then also too, I get to see my oldest son more often, I can coach his baseball team and we get to hang out more. I will say it's really difficult though, working at home with a two year old, even though we do have a nanny that helps out. It is still very difficult to get things done when you got this kid who wants to just hang out with you all day. So that is the only drawback. But other than that, man, everything's great.

I understand the difficulty of working with a 2 year old.

I know we both understand that.

So, Justin, you run a successful company, you have a pretty cool life story, you have a beautiful family that you get to spend time with. How would you say that you want people to think of you? How do you want people to remember you? What do you want your legacy to be?

So I think I would have this backwards, but I have this idea, and I kind of talked about it earlier, that the only way you can do something big and influence others to do big things as well is by first accomplishing something big. And I don't know if that's entirely true. So when I think about like my legacy and how I want people to remember me, a lot of that hangs on the fact that I have to pretty much practice what I preach. So if I'm telling people that I'm gonna go be a millionaire and essentially retire or be financially free before I'm 30, then I have to actually do that. So when I think of legacy, I guess probably the big. The one thing that I hope people remember from me about me is that I influence them to greatness. I influence them in some way form or another to go out and do something great with their own lives, regardless of whether they like me, know me, whatever. That I think would be a fantastic legacy to leave behind. Now obviously, you know, in terms of family, it's a little different. I want my kids to know me as someone who did what he said he was going to do. I think honesty is a big. It's a big driver for me. I get. Me and my wife argue all the time about how to discipline our children because I'm very much like, if I say I'm going to do something, I do it. Even though if I instantly regret it, I still have to go do It. So I guess I don't have any, like big dreams as far as like, you know, being a Bill Gates or an Elon Musk or anything like that. But I just want people to know me as a good person, as someone who inspired them to be better themselves. And if I can live a life that models that, then I think I've succeeded well.

Justin, the fact that you have overcome so many challenges, the fact that you keep going in the face of adversity and are building a multi seven figure business on your way to eight, I think we can comfortably say that you are a good person who is inspiring a lot of people around them. So keep on changing the world, buddy. And thanks for hanging out with us at Freedom Fast Lane.

Of course. Thanks for having me.

After we stopped the recording, Justin said, hey, you know, I feel like I didn't do it justice because I feel like we talked a lot about sad things in this episode. But what impresses me about Justin is we spent a lot of time talking about the hard times of being an entrepreneur in this episode. And this theme of I just kept going, I just kept building was a recurring theme. And I can resonate this a lot with my life. You know, you build, you have an exit, you build, you kill it from stage, you build, you make a million dollars on a launch and that doesn't really fix any problems. But we're entrepreneurs and we keep growing and we keep building because that's what we're wired to do. We are in this game to see how far we can go. That's the point. I said this on a recent podcast.

Episode, a solo episode, where I was.

Having dinner with Tim Ferriss and I asked him, do you ever wonder if it's all worth it? And he said, you know, I've discovered there are a lot of things not worth pursuing, but the pursuit is. If you're in this game because you want a better life, you can have that. If you want to be in this game because you want to make a lot of money, you can have that. But the end of the day, being an entrepreneur is about seeing what you're capable of and building as much as you are capable of building. That's the point and that's the game that we are playing. If part of that game is getting to $10 million and beyond and opening up investment opportunities, that will give you the possibility of upside wealth or cash flow. That's what we help entrepreneurs do inside of the backroom. We help people go from 1 to 10. We help them get beyond 10. We create relationships and opportunities that will get you into retail, that will get you new sales channels, that will get you plugged into very closed door investment opportunities. We even help you sell when it's time for you to exit and have that big payday. That's what we're focusing on on in the Backroom and you can find out more@freedomfastlane.com backroom thanks for listening to the show. We're going to be doing several features with entrepreneurs who have built seven and eight figure companies over the coming weeks, so make sure you are subscribed to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for supporting the show. You're the reason I keep doing this stuff and I'm excited to help you discover how far you can can go. Talk to you on the next show.