He Has Created Over 27 E commerce Millionaires & Manages Over $100M In Annual Revenue

And, you know, one of the biggest challenges we came into, Eric, is we started making so much on Amazon that our tax liability went up. The first time I had a tax bill, I almost vomited. I was like, you got to be kidding me. I'm going to give about 40% back to the government. This is insane. I worked so hard for this. And I wasn't prepared for it. So that's when I really started studying what does accounting mean? What is managing your finances? And here's a little cool tip that I think your audience will really appreciate. We took the profits from our Amazon store. and we would start investing into real estate. Now, you technically can't use that as a tax write-off because real estate investment is considered a passive income entity according to the IRS. But an Amazon store is considered an active income entity according to the IRS. These are literal terms with the IRS in their lingo. So what we did is that one day I called my wife and said, look, if you're willing to work a few hours a day, you're going to get a title called a professional a real estate professional. This is not the same as a real estate agent. You don't need a license. All it means is you have to work a minimum number of hours per week in order to, for us, because you're my spouse, to qualify for our real estate company to become an active income entity. And she's like, Seth, how much is this going to save us? I said, oh, a little more than a million. She's like, I'm in. So, she started doing research on these properties and then we began training people how to sell on Amazon while selling on Amazon and then started building Amazon stores for people. And when we had a massive profit on the Just One Dime side, we would take it and we put it into real estate, which lowers our tax liability and literally, literally, Eric, saves us millions of dollars every year. Because instead of giving that to the government, we're putting it in real estate and now it's safe. It's like a tax shelter, but it's a legal one, which is awesome.

All right, everyone. Today, we've got Seth Kniep, who's the co-founder and CEO of Just One Dime, which is a coaching company for Amazon and e-commerce sellers. There's a lot to unpack here. So Seth, I just want to first welcome you to the show. How is it going, my friend?

Good. It's a beautiful day in Austin, a little chilly. When it's about 60 degrees, everyone thinks it's snowing, so they throw on these big woolly Eskimo-type coats. But apart from that, I'm doing quite well.

Amazing. Well, let's talk about, I mean, I guess let's talk about the company a little bit. Just One Dime. A, I mean, you know, for the marketers here, I guess, what is the story behind that name? Yeah.

So I started with a single dime. I was broke. I was $24,000 in debt. I worked for the richest company in the world named after a fruit. And I hated my life. I hated my manager. My manager did not treat me well. And I was living the corporate dream. And I say that in quotes, but I was miserable. And so I came up with this crazy idea. What if I just took a dime and I doubled it until it was $100,000? And it blew my mind, Eric, when I realized you only have to double it 20 times to blow past $100,000.

Got it. And so this is, does this relate to the Dave Ramsey teachings around crushing debt? Is that, are they tied together?

Kind of, although I would love to get Tom Wheelwright, Robert Kiyosaki's CPA, who's also my CPA, and Dave Ramsey. We're working on getting them in my podcast so they can debate this because Dave Ramsey does a great job, in my opinion, of teaching defense. how to get rid of debt and live safe. Whereas in my opinion, Tom Wheelwright under Robert Kiyosaki teaches how to live with calculated risk and grow your wealth. So Dave Ramsey got me started, but Robert Kiyosaki definitely helped to scale that much faster.

First e-commerce store, you failed and you sold it for $35 on, of all places, what?

eBay.

I've never heard that before.

Eric, I am proud to say I sold my first company. Yeah.

Yeah. It was tough.

We were selling e-cigarettes and vapes because what I would do is I locked myself to a chair and every day I would call a bunch of suppliers and ask a simple question. I found this huge list online. I would say, what is the best-selling product today? And then as soon as they'd answer, I'd write it down. Then I'd say, what's the second best? What's the third? And the vast majority at that time were saying e-cigarettes and vapes because that was blowing up. So I thought, okay, I'll start a vape e-cigarette company. Not a great strategy because a lot of these suppliers, they're going to tell you what they also want to get rid of, not just what is selling well. But in my mind, I was so new to entrepreneurialism, all I knew is I have to do something. So even though it was a terrible plan, it still got my feet wet enough to fall on my face, sell the company for $35, and realize I needed to find a new path.

That's such a good headline. He sold his company for $35.

Okay.

So you learned a lot from that, obviously. Let's not discount that. And I think, so what did you parlay that or what did you parlay the $35 into next?

Yeah. So that's when I was, at the same time, I started doubling my dime because my dream was if I can get this dime doubled 20 times, it'll go over $100,000. And I got up to $400 just for asking. At some point, it doesn't keep an equal, an even number divisible by 10. So I just switched it to the, rounded up to the next 10. And every day when I got back home after talking to just random people, And I would share my dream with them. I would stick the money in a little envelope in a drawer next to my desk. I got up to $400 just for asking random people. In fact, the guy who doubled me from $200 to $400, the first time I met him, he was the owner of a hot dog shop in the Austin area. And he and his wife had just left the corporate world. So he really resonated with my passion to build a business so I could get out of the 9-to-5 death-by-paycheck cycle. So I took that $400 and I started researching how to sell on eBay. And that's when I found cremation urns. And I noticed they were selling really well. I'm talking about these little tiny urns that hang on a necklace around your neck. And they didn't sell well on eBay at all. Then I switched over to Amazon FBA. Well, first it was FBM, fulfilled by merchant, and then they started selling. So then I switched it over to FBA where I shipped the product into Amazon's fulfillment center and we started selling up to 10 a day. At around $10 profit, I was making $100 a day. And Eric, to me, this was huge money. This is when I knew there is something significant going on here.

Talking about, I mean, one phrase just caught my attention, buying new profits. What do you mean by that?

Buying new products. So, in other words, we would take— Oh, my bad. Yeah, no problem. Yeah, sometimes I talk fast even though I'm not from New York. So, we would take the profits from some of the profits on Amazon and we would use it to buy a new product. And usually, we would find like an accessory item. Let me just give you a really cool example. So my wife and I started getting into reselling where we would go into Walmart, we would go into Kohl's, we would go into all Bed Bath Beyond or even Goodwill. And we would find products. We would use a scanner to see how much they were selling on Amazon. We realized, oh, there's a profit. And we would start doing what's called arbitrage. When we found a product we liked a lot, we would come up with a customized version of it. We contact a supplier in China, have them build it out, have them ship it to Amazon's fulfillment center. And now we have our official brand. And that's how we would grow these stores because we would start getting repeat customers. We would start building something out in a certain niche or category. And that's what I meant by using the profits to buy new products. In other words, taking the money and putting it back into the company. What happens, though, is my knowledge in accounting had to grow. I never thought I would need to understand it. And it doesn't mean I have to be an accountant or a CPA. But man, I needed to know it well enough So I could be smart with my money and reinvest it and then continue to grow that capital as we get to bless more people and then grow our brands as well.

Got it. So before I move on from this tax thing, because I love talking about this stuff. So what resource, you mentioned Robert Kiyosaki, you know, his CPA, like what resources, what's one or two resources you could share that for people to get better at this stuff?

Yeah, awesome question. So I would recommend Tom Wheelwright. He is the CPA and the tax counselor, legal lawyer for Robert Kiyosaki and his team who also does our taxes and gives us counsel for planning and building our wealth. If you just search Tom Wheelwright, you're going to see multiple books by him as well as a podcast. His podcast is absolutely phenomenal. And I highly recommend it because it's going to inform you. You will learn stuff that the vast majority of CPAs will never tell you. And vast majority of loan officers don't even know. Like you'll be smarter than them with like within a few weeks and be asking questions like, what does that mean? And all of a sudden, you're like, wait a minute, I need to get a better CPA who understands this. Because as soon as you start growing wealth, you need a great mind to help plan that out so that you are saving it and, you know, using it smart. I love helping people. And I don't just— that sounds oh so altruistic and nice. But literally like this is what we do. When my wife and I first started our business, I remember where we were driving over this hill on the 45. We said if someday we're wealthy, we want to use this to help people. Not people who are looking for a handout, people who actually will use the help.

Yeah.

So a percentage of our donations, of our profits, 15%, go to organizations that fight child sex slavery, which is a huge issue today. Most people don't talk about it. I know it's uncomfortable, but that's a huge part of it. As parents of 4 children, we get that and we know how serious that is. So one reason is I love it. I love doing it. Second, I make money and it's fun. Third, we're changing lives and there's nothing more satisfying than changing lives. So for us, we really are a hybrid. We sell on Amazon and then we teach it. And we also build stores for people on Amazon. All of it makes us money. Total transparency, Eric, one year we made no money coaching. Made a lot of money on Amazon. None. Some people said, well, why? Well, we built out an office. We built a studio. We hired a bunch of staff. Why would you do that? Because my long-term goal is not just to make money. Yes, I want to make money. Absolutely. But I want to build a brand that lasts, that outlives the gurus running around. I'm not against Lamborghini, but you know what I'm talking about. You know, I drive a Tesla for a reason. Like I want to outlive those guys. Like I've had so many people come to me and say, I'm so tired of buying a course and what they promised, they didn't deliver. Like that motivates the heck out of me. So many people have been burned. And so even though some people are still going to group us in that, it's going to happen. It's natural.

Yeah.

We're going to outlive that. We are here for the long haul. That's why down the street Eric, right now we're building new headquarters. We just purchased land. We're building a coffee shop. People from around the world come visit us here in Austin. It's so awesome. This coffee shop will be the downstairs and the upstairs will be our new training center for Just One Dime. One of our goals is building training centers where people can literally sit down and we can sit next to them and show them how to do it. Is that the best way to make money coaching? Heck no.

It's a lot easier to sell a course.

But we're doing it because, Eric, the long-term return is Amazing. And financially, when you literally change a life. Daniel Alvarez, he's a millionaire today. David Lopez, our 3rd student, he went from Cuba, which he hated, to Miami, Florida. He is a multimillionaire. He is our 3rd student. He talks about it. He shares the screen. Like we have millionaire students because of the training. And that gets me fired up. If I can help them but also make money doing it, like that, I'm living the dream, brother. But it didn't start that way. It was hard at the beginning. And it's still hard some days.

So, Seth, this has been great. What is the best way for people to find you online?

If they just go— you know what? They can send me an email. I'll respond. seth@jod.com. seth@jod.com or jod.com, which stands for justonedime.com. And I just want to share this last thing, Eric, for everyone listening. Even if you're starting with something as small as a dime, you can turn that into something way beyond your imagination if you simply believe. Take action, and are willing to fail along the way.

I love that. All right, Seth, this has been great. Thanks so much for doing this.

Absolutely, man. Thanks for having me, Eric. It was really good to meet you, man.