RG 292 – Side-hustle Millionaire with Tony Whatley
Today, we have the pleasure of speaking to Tony Whatley, more famously known as the “Sidehustle Millionaire.” Tony learned how to build his own empire from scratch—no inheritance, no rich parents, just hard work and passion–and he is here to tell us how he did it.
So, who is the “Side Hustle Millionaire”? Tony Whatley is an investor, entrepreneur, speaker, and executive coach. He is the host the 365 Driven podcast and the Founder of 365 Driven, a community of passionate entrepreneurs that aim to turn passion into profit—regardless of one’s backstory. Tony is also the author of the Amazon #1 bestselling book the “Sidehustle Millionaire”, which has sold over tens of thousands of copies since its release in 2018.
Tony has been an entrepreneurial soul ever since he was a young lad. However, the Life Script kept him in the corporate world for twenty-five years while he built his own path in business. Through hard work and perseverance, Tony has built multiple successful side businesses that brought and continues to bring in more money than his career ever did.
In this episode, Tony tells us all about his journey through entrepreneurship while working a 9 to 5. He walks us through how he started building his side hustles, as well as what fueled him to write the Sidehustle Millionaire. Tony dedicates his time sharing the how-tos for success to other people that want to break out of their day jobs—and he is here to share that value with us today.
So, what are you waiting for? Press that ‘play’ button and learn with Tony and I today.
Key Takeaways
Learn skills that can be monetized.
You may on be a “teacher” type now, but don’t take that skill off the table.
You master your craft through teaching others how to replicate the success that you’ve achieved.
- When you’re planning to start a business, you have to think about its viability.
LINKS
www.linkedin.com/in/tonywhatley/
365driven.com
Be Bold, Be Brave and Go Give Life a Crack!
Listen to Podcast
Podcast Transcript
Reed Goossens (00:00):
Goodday good day, guys. Now, before we dive into today’s show, I want you to let you know that some of you may be aware that over the past eight years, I have built a substantial multifamily real estate portfolio here in the US worth over half a billion dollars. And in that time, my passive investors have received fantastic double-digit returns. And now you can invest directly into my deals for as little as $50,000. So if you’re an interested investor, head over to Reedgoossens.com to find out more that’s Reedgoossens.com. Now back into the show,
Tony Whatley (00:40):
Most people that are new to entrepreneurship, they have, they carry a lot of stress and a lot of demand on themselves to be successful at their first time at the bat. You know? So they, they think they’re gonna step up to the plate, hit a grand slam, and they’re hoping to, and then when they don’t, they sometimes unfortunately they quit and they never come back again. Right? They think like, oh, I guess it wasn’t meant for me. I, I’m not gonna be Jeff Bezos. And you know, I, I tried. So I’m just gonna go back to my job. And guys, you have to realize that you learn the most from your failures and your challenges. I would never hire a coach or learn from anybody who’s never had failure even within that industry or that business a few times, because man, we have to have those failures to really find our blind spots. Sometimes we don’t think about things and things happen and they cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars. And you realize like, holy crap, like how do I not have that happen again? And you build in your processes and systems and your risk management, and then you become better as a result.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Welcome to investing in the US, a podcast for real estate investors, business owners, and aspiring entrepreneurs looking to break into the US market, join Reed as he interviews go-geters risk takers and the best in the business, out their journey towards financial freedom and the sheer joy of creating something from nothing
Reed Goossens (02:08):
Good day. Good day ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another cracking edition of investing in the US podcast from Los Angeles. I’m your Hosty Goins good as always Abby with us on the show. Now I’m glad that you’ve all tuned into learn from my incredible guests and each and every one of them are the bringing the crop here in the United States. When it comes to real estate, investing, business, investing and entrepreneurship, each show, I try and tease out their incredible stories of how they have successfully created their businesses here in the us, how they’ve created financial freedom, massive amounts of cash, and ultimately created extraordinary lives for themselves and their families life by design. As I like to say, hopefully these guests will inspire all of my cracking listeners, which are you guys to get off the couch and go and take massive amounts of action.
Reed Goossens (02:55):
If these guys can do it. So can you now, as you know, I’m all about sharing the knowledge with my loyal listeners, which is you guys. And there’s absolutely no BS on this show, just straight into the nuts and bolts. Now, if you do like to show the easiest way to give back is to give us a review on iTunes and you can follow me on Facebook and Twitter by searching at Reedgoossens.com. You can find the show, every you podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, stitch, and Google play, but you can also find these episodes up on my YouTube channel. So head over to Reedgoossens.com click on the video link, and it’ll take you to the video recordings of these podcasts, but you can see my ugly mug, but the beautiful faces of my guests each and every week. All right, enough outta me, let’s get cracking and into days show.
Reed Goossens (03:43):
During the show, I have the pleasure of speaking with Tony Whatley. Now Tony became known as the side hustle millionaire. After his book with the same title became a number one best selling on Amazon. But this book isn’t just its in fiction. He’s based on an actual true story. Tony once led a successful corporate a career for over 25 years, but this is less interesting than the side business that he created, which generated millions of dollars in profits. He’s an active entrepreneur himself today and he still owns a few active businesses which helps him produce passive income. But his real passion lies in teaching entrepreneurs, how to start scale and sell their business with his podcast and consulting brand 365 driven. I’m really pumped and excited to have him on the show. Daddy share his incredible insight and knowledge with us, but enough enemy let’s get him out here.
Tony Whatley (04:28):
Get, Hey Tony, welcome to the show head. Didn’t you say, mate? Hey Reed. Thanks for having me on man. I’m looking forward to this opportunity and I know we had a pleasure of connecting on my show. Few episodes, go and looking forward to bringing some equal value to your audience. Well, well mate, I, uh, I was just saying in the green room, before we press record, I was like, man, I’m gonna get you on my show. But our podcast assistant already had it looked up in the same week. So for those listeners, uh, definitely check out 365 driven on iTunes. It is 365driven.com. I was on, uh, Tony’s show about couple days ago. Um, so these, these shows are probably gonna launch in the same time. So if you are, uh, interested to, to check out Tony’s show, jump over there. But Tony, I like to ask all my guests when they dive on the show is rewind the clock.
Tony Whatley (05:11):
And tell me how you made your first ever dollar as a kid, man, I was a broke kid. I lived in the crappiest houses in the crappiest neighborhood cause my parents really valued us having an, my sister and I. And so we lived in a really low income. I, I would say lower middle class neighborhood and we would buy the crappiest house on the street. And I remember going into these houses and just thinking like, why are the carpet bright, purple and why are the walls painted green? And why is our wallpaper? And that crappy wood paneling on the walls and things like that. You know, and over the period of time when we’d live there, the four of us, we would just end up redoing the entire house while we lived there inside and out. And eventually it became one of the nicer looking houses on the street.
Tony Whatley (05:55):
My mom was always a green thumb. She liked to do the gardening and landscaping and my sister and I, we pushed a lawnmower and did all the labor, right. And my dad, you know, he worked in the chemical refineries to help pay for all these things. So we listed, we literally lived in flip houses, so I didn’t have money. I didn’t have allowance. My birthday is in November and Christmas is in December this time of year. So really like two months I was getting gifts for being a kid, right? So the rest of the 10 months a year, I had to figure out how to do things on my own. And for me that was just figuring out what it took. I, I was 10, 12 years old. I was knocking doors and mowing yards and walking dogs and raking leaves and washing cars. And, and a lot of times I just wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Tony Whatley (06:35):
I was like, Hey dad, see your, you, your grass is kind of tall. Uh, I’ve got my mower here and my gasoline and I’ll mow it for, for $10. And they say, oh no, no, we don’t need that. And I was like, well, I’ll be happy to wash your car for five
Reed Goossens (07:09):
I was always willing to laugh at myself, but that’s how I was able to buy skateboards and bikes and video games and things like that. So, you know, people call that as entrepreneurship or kid entrepreneurship nowadays. But to me it was just like, this is how I buy things. And it was kinda a means to do that, right? No, I, I, I had a very similar upbringing where it’s like, I didn’t get an allowance. It was like, if you, if you wanted something, you need to go out and get it and earn. And I didn’t by the sounds, but you were working from a young age. I remember being 13 and a half years of age and walking down the, the local cool cafes with, you know, ripped up piece of newspaper with my parents’ landline on, Hey, give, gimme a call. If you need anything to sweep in, you know, whatever it was sweeping the floor or setting the tables up.
Reed Goossens (07:48):
So I, I love talking to people like that because it, it gives us a perspective of what your childhood was like. And it brings back a lot of memories, nostalgic memories for myself as well, like having the, the lemonade stands and just trying to create a couple of bucks for yourself to buy the skateboards or the videos or do whatever it is with whatever you had
Reed Goossens (08:31):
So similar, similar type of upbringing. So I love it, but walk us through your background and, and, and how you’ve got involved in entrepreneurship. Because I know in the introduction, I mentioned did 25 years in the corporate industry. So you’ve had a long time in a space that ultimately you walked away from. So, so maybe talk a little bit about that. And then when that aha moment came for wanting to do more with your life and, and, and have that freedom. And I honestly never thought that business ownership would be something that I would entertain or be a part of. I mean, I grew up in that era where education was what you had to go get. I mean, literally I would remember looking out the window and my dad and mom would see like the garbage man would go by, for example, and the back of the truck.
Tony Whatley (09:14):
And his said, if you don’t go to college, you’re gonna end up hanging on the back of that truck, just like them, or you’re gonna be working labor jobs. You know, basically what my parents did. My mom was a cafeteria school worker and my dad worked in the refineries after he got out of the military. So they knew the value of hard work and they didn’t want that for their kids. But back then, you gotta realize that, you know, early 90 said, we didn’t have cell phones or internet, and we didn’t have access to information. So information nowadays, very readily access accessible. And you could literally learn anything by reading books or watching YouTube or buying courses. Now we didn’t have that. So if you needed to get education or information, you went to school and, and when you have someone that’s pushing you, especially my mom, Japanese, and she’s really hard on education.
Tony Whatley (09:58):
And, you know, getting an a minus was might as well fail that kind of scenario. I mean, literally Reed, I, I did not miss a single day of school from kindergarten all the way through graduation. I didn’t miss one, one day of school. That’s how consistent I was. And, and I remember hating that early on. Cause I would see my kid, my friends skip and things like that. Wish I could do that. I wish my parents were cool, but after a few years, I started to become that. I started to become my identity. Like, Hey, I have perfect attendance. I show up, I’m gonna, I’m going to be here unless I’m dying. Right. And that became a really an affirmation of a goal for myself. I’m just gonna get perfect attendance all the time. Why can’t I, why no one else is doing it? Why not me?
Tony Whatley (10:38):
Right. So competitiveness kind of becomes your identity and you start to live up to those standards. Now going into this, as I understand entrepreneurship, I used to ride my bicycle and see the main street and town. And it’s always at some kind of shop with a service with someone’s last name. So it’d be, you know, goons pull and hardware, just something. So you always realize like, well, I’m broke. So doing this simple math, I can never afford that building much less the sign on the front of it. So therefore I don’t have money. My family doesn’t have money. Therefore I’ll never own a business. Cause that’s what we think about main street America. And what I started to realize is after playing around on the internet more were in the late nineties and the university, when I first got on, I didn’t have it at the house.
Tony Whatley (11:21):
I had it at school. Most people were using the information on the internet really back then just to kind of learn things or just to see things like newspaper, you know, information. And I started wondering like, how can I make money from this? Like, there’s gotta be a way to sell stuff on here. There’s a lot of people looking at it. And we started to see more people in getting online every year, starting have this exponential growth. And so there’s gotta be a way to make money. And I think a lot of people in that era, which was the late nineties, was looking at ways to monetize things. How do you build a website? How do you make someone able to buy something? How do you process a credit card online? Like all these questions, right? And while I was working in engineering or entry level project management, I, I was tired of being told to wait my turn.
Tony Whatley (12:02):
So this is kind of, kind of goes back to that. Just watch me, you know, like, like I’d already been working in the field, literally welding and grinding pipe and doing the takeoffs and working as a pipe fit for seven years while I was attending school at night to pay for my own degree in engineering. And when I graduated, I got these jobs and they would treat me like I was just some fresh grad that never had any experience. I was like, guys, I was actually the ones out there building this stuff for a long time. That’s how I, it took me seven years to graduate. You know, it took me that I was doing that, but they would look at me and go, or 26, 27, like you’re too young to manage. You’re too young to, to, to be a project manager and manage 1 million.
Tony Whatley (12:39):
And like it’s a lot of risk. And so I, I really just got told, tired of being told, wait, my turn, pay your dues. You know, it’ll come for you. When I knew I could run circles around a lot of these peoples, especially my peers that had never worked, who just graduated. And they were in their early twenties and they were kind of the, the bright eye bushy tail engineers that didn’t know anything applicable. Right. And so I started looking for external ways to be creative, external ways to make my own decisions, to take my own risks, to learn new things. And, and for me, that was a, a genuine curiosity I had about making things on internet. I said, okay, I wanna make visual stuff on the internet. So how do I do that? How do I put a picture that’s in my mind and make it on the screen?
Tony Whatley (13:22):
And I remember just buying books at the bookstore and just teaching myself how to do graphic design with Photoshop and stuff like that. And I would flip page by a page and I would build something and I would practice it and it would get a little bit better. Then I, soon enough I could do graphics. I said, so how do I make buttons? And things like this? Like, how do I make it interactive? And so you need to learn how to do HTML how to code a webpage. It’s like, okay, I’ll go buy a book on that. And so I went and bought that and I practiced it. And back then I started building these little one to three page websites. It’s like a side hustle and I was a car guy. Like we touched on a little bit of, I love cars, I’m are fanatic.
Tony Whatley (13:55):
And I said, man, I need, I need parts for my car, but I don’t have a high paying job. And I need to figure out how to make some extra money to buy car parts or wheels or exhaust or things like that. So what I did is I got these car magazines and I would look through them and I would see the advertisements in these magazines. And I said, Hey, there’s no website shown on this ad. So they probably don’t have a website. So let me just call them or email them and go, Hey, do you have a website? And if not, then say, Hey, I can build you a website if you’ll trade me some car parts. So for a long time, was this bartering system, not, not really a whole lot different thing. The childhood thing of just getting what we want. Right.
Tony Whatley (14:33):
But I had the skill. I was able to build websites, really SIM bull took me three or four hours to build something and I’d make $2,000 in car parts essentially. And eventually I ran out of needing any car parts. I said, well, maybe I should just start charging for this. And that’s kind of what it did. So, you know, entrepreneurship for me was just a way to learn new things, be creative, take my chances and also earn some money doing that. But I had to go learn a skill. And I think that’s where most people get this wrong is they, they don’t go learn a skill that could be monetized well, and I think also out of that is not necessarily learning a skill that can’t be monetized, but continuing to learn a skill or skill is plural. Because as you stumble across a problem, you’re curious enough to go and say, Hey, I’m gonna go, I need to go learn this.
Reed Goossens (15:18):
And I’m not, I, I, I’m not, I dunno, my ego is not getting in the way that I think I know everything I need to go and start again. So, so going to the library, picking up the, how to code and, and build a website like that’s, that takes a certain type of person who is humble one. And, and, but, but also two extremely curious about what, how to, how to, you know, build something new. So, and I love what you said about waiting, you know, earning your Jews and not being able to get that promotion because that is what the corporate world is all about. Right. I remember coming into that exactly the same thing. Um, and, and not having that, that sort of the bill to, you know, promote from within or whatever that might be. And so I think that is so important for so many people listening to this show, that the difference between someone who’s in a W2 job and that person who’s an entrepreneur or wanting to be an entrepreneur, is actually going out and taking action to learn that new skill to go monetize it.
Tony Whatley (16:07):
So, so, so, so, so well done, but how did you then go into monetizing a website? Because instantly now the, the business brain and me would go, why don’t you go start a, a search website for car parts. Did you think about that back then? Now I’ve always been this community builder. I’ve always been a leadership type personality, even in career where, uh, I would mentor younger people or new people to the staff, even if it wasn’t my roles and responsibilities, it’s just who my nature was always wanted to be a teacher. And even for a period, a couple of years, while I was in the university, I was substitute teaching at local high schools, but I would only teach the upper advanced classes. I wanted to teach kids that wanted to be there. So it would be physics and calculus and things like that.
Tony Whatley (16:47):
Things I had interest in. And so I didn’t want to be a teacher man, just the income level. I was like, dude, I’m, I’m not gonna give, go to school for four or five years and get out and make $45,000 a year. It’s just not gonna happen. And, and so here we are, now I’m a business coach and, and a mentor and I help people start business. I’m a teacher. I, I took that same passion or energy and love, and it’s something I’m still doing today. Just like you’re doing, you’re teaching people with your podcasts and your books. You are always a teacher. You just didn’t take that as a profession. And I think that’s also important to point that out to people that are listening, that you may be that teacher of that mentor type, that coach type. And it may not be what you’re doing right now, but don’t take it off the table.
Tony Whatley (17:23):
It may come to you later on it may material materialize in ways that you don’t understand at the moment. But for me, dude, it was just all about how do I learn something and apply it and then get a result. And then I’ve always been that one that would be really excited about teaching somebody, as soon as I get a result. I think a lot of times people skip the results part. They skip the proficiency or expertise part. They go read it and they try to teach it, but that never sat well with me. And it still doesn’t. I want to go learn it, do it, get some really demonstrateable results and repeatable success, and then I’m excited to go teach it. So that goes back to even like childhood dude, like I would skateboard. I was a skateboarder. I was sponsored by a local surf shop and I was really good at learning tricks really fast because I would just do the reps and not afraid to eat crap, you know, falling on my face a hundred times and figure it out.
Tony Whatley (18:11):
But as soon as I mastered it, I could not wait to teach my friends how to do it. So it’s kinda that same process, right? And for business, it was always that same way. It’s like, what can I learn? What can I do to get better at it? And how can I teach other people? And I realized that even early on that, the more people that I impact, the more people that I, or give them knowledge or advice or support or accountability, or, or they start to see their own results, it always comes back in a financial reward for me. I don’t do it for that, but I see it as a scorecard, as a value that we create. And I think too many people focus on themselves. They just wanna make themselves better. They wanna learn something for themselves. They wanna make the money for themselves.
Reed Goossens (18:47):
And they become maybe an expert. It can be a highly compensated expert at that. But until they start to teach that to other people, it’s not going to grow and exponentially scale to make you the millions of dollars that you really dream about. I completely agree. And it sounds, but not everyone. And, and it sounds like you are just, you have an innate ability to want to give and help other people, but not everyone, not every entre entrepreneur wants to do that. Right? Like
Reed Goossens & Tony Whatley (19:31):
You, you, you, you have started, you’ve got your own podcast, you’ve got the book, but what is the lessons in that book that you’re trying to teach and help that person who is sitting in the W2 job right now, who is, is sitting in the cubicle to think more curiously about it, uh, something that they’re passionate about, you know, I’m glad that you specified the person so well in that case, because here’s the situation I saw from 20 plus years. I mean, I was making a lot more money in my side businesses than I was in my career. I was a multiple six figure earner late in my engineering career. I was making about 240,000 a year. But my side businesses were making three to 400,000 a year. And people would see hints of my lifestyle, maybe the car I drive or the things I wear, the, they see the vacations on Instagram or whatever.
Tony Whatley (20:19):
They’d just see something. They were curious. And they would always come up to my mind and talk about my colleagues, my coworkers, some of them would just ask out of just nosiness. And you could tell the difference between the people that were just wanting to know, like, you know, where you Warren rich, or did you inherit money, or they’re just, they’re wanting some way to validate why they don’t have it. And they’re hoping that you’re gonna give them that. Right. And the other people were more curious and they would ask the right questions. They would ask, you know, what does it take? What would you recommend for me knowing my, what I do with the skill sets I have, like, what would you recommend that I look at? How would I benefit this? I have this really good idea. What do you think about this?
Tony Whatley (20:54):
Like, they were really specific with their questions. And I could tell that some people just ask, some people just really wanted to improve, right? So I like that you specified that because I’ll tell you nothing frustrates me. People like you, more than people that just ask you for advice and they don’t do anything with it. And you see them five years down the road, 10 years down the road, and they’re in the exact same situation and they haven’t done anything with the advice. Right. And you’re like, what the hell? So I used to take that more personal, but now I started to realize in later years that I need to quit wasting my time with people that don’t raise or hand that are willing to go do something to take action. Because as much as I like dogs, I couldn’t save every cute little puppy in the dog pound mm-hmm
Tony Whatley (21:36):
I mean, we we’d love to be able to do that in an ideal world. That sounds great. But we really have to be focused on the people that want to make changes. So that was what the book was. It was okay. How do I take these people that would have these conversations around the water cooler at work, or maybe in the cubicle farm? And they would ask me how to do things and what, what were the steps? You know, what were the steps to go from ideation to building something that’s actual business to some man, pretty common sense. And it’s funny that when I wrote this book read, you know, as entrepreneurs were always jazzed about the latest and the greatest things that we’re learning. Right. You know, because we’ve been operating for so many years, we’re like, oh, that old, basic stuff, like background stuff.
Tony Whatley (22:16):
It’s subconscious. Now I don’t even think about that. I wanna talk about the new shiny stuff, the cool stuff that we’re playing with right now. And so that’s what ego tells you. Like, go, I’m gonna write a book. I’m gonna talk about the new shiny, coolest things that are groundbreaking visionary. And you, you think that you’re gonna write this book. So I’m smart enough to understand product knowledge and also market analyses. And so what I did is I went on, on my social media. I said, Hey guys, I’m gonna write a book. What would you think that I would write about? And just saw the feedback. And some people were like, uh, leadership, business owners, entrepreneurship, how to make your car go faster. Like you start see all these things that people perceive you as an authority and an expert in, right. But there’s always gonna be the Gian curve, you know, for us nerds of, of how you’re gonna see this a hill start the form of this one subject or two subjects that people really think that you’re an expert in.
Tony Whatley (23:03):
And for me, it was how to start businesses and how to become successful in business. I was like, good, cuz that’s what I wanted to write a about anyways. So I was still thinking high level, you know, advanced strategies. And, but again, I I’m good at product knowledge and market analysis. So I said, okay guys, I’m gonna write this book on entrepreneurship. What questions would you like answered? And this book, that’s what I’ve put out there. Just really big. And again, you start to see the questions form. Lot of ’em are very similar and what I’ve found, it was this very basic stuff. This very basic stuff, like very beginning, starting how to get your business going. How do you name it? What’s an LLC and S Corp. What, how do you get the money? Where do you get the website? Like all the basic basic stuff, like year one startup stuff like, you know, non non-entry capital, like start at home type businesses.
Tony Whatley (23:52):
And you know, if I would’ve had a big ego, I would’ve said, well, yep. That’s such basic stuff. I’m, I’m too good. I’m too smart. I’m too successful to write the basic book. I’m not gonna waste my time, but no, you build the product or the service that people ask for. And so I said, okay, I will commit to writing this book. And I realized in that moment that if I just look at these questions and I answer every single one of these beginner level, basic questions at a high level of detail, give tangible examples, mindset strategies, and give them the goods. Like here’s a resources. Here’s where you’re gonna improve in all these as specs. Then I will write a successful book. That’s kind of how I build my books. And it sold over a thousand copies. The first week it became a number one bestseller in the small business category.
Tony Whatley (24:35):
And I took the screenshots where it passed all these people that I admired and read all their books. I mean, Gary vainer, Chuck Simon, CEK Trump grant are known my little self-published book. It’s because I’ve built the book people wanted. And so it’s the real simple answer is how do you take your idea for your businesses? Like if you have more than one idea, how do you evaluate those ideas against each other to give you the best odds of success? How do you name it? How do you brand it? How do you market it? How do you find the funding or bootstrap it? How do you do all these things? And first two chapters, really the mindset and getting over the objections of why you’re not doing it. And one of the biggest mistakes, other entrepreneurs that I surveyed shared with the book. So it’s a, it’s a startup book.
Reed Goossens (25:15):
It’s how to get you really to a, a first seven figure business is what I would say for those of you are interested in staying up to date with all the latest happenings in my business, or to learn more about passively investing directly into my multifamily value ad deals, then head over to Reedgoossens.com and sign up for my monthly newsletter by signing up, you’ll automatically be notified about my new up and coming investment opportunities. You’ll be able to stay up to date with all the latest real estate news here in the United States and much more so head ovr to Reedgoossens.com and sign up today. Now back into the show besides mindset and mindset. So important. What are the other given we’re both engineers. What are the other steps in the book that are more tangible and practical to someone listening today? You know, they’ve got, they listen to the show.
Reed Goossens (26:10):
I wanna start a business. I wanna, I wanna do it. I wanna break outta the day job, but I just I’ve got the mindset there, but I just don’t know the practicality because you know, we’re both engineers, right? I’m, I’m, I’m very much like a break it down into its parts, like a, a math equation and you’ll be out the, the some, you know, you’ll be able to sum it up a lot easier once it’s in its parts. So, so, so what, what else is in the book that really could someone could say, boom, I can do that tomorrow. I could work for that on, towards that for the next two or three months, because it is a little goal that I know that will help keep moving. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s very overwhelming and a lot of anxiety for people when they look at the tasks like the entire task lists as a whole, right?
Tony Whatley (26:53):
They, they see this big pile of things that they had to go accomplish to make a business. And usually the first question is like, where do I start? Like, oh my God, this is so much stuff. And I got this guru over here telling me things and my, my best friend telling me this and my mom and dad telling me this. And it’s just, it’s just, all this chaos creates anxiety. It creates overwhelm and they don’t start at all. See that’s where most people sit. They just, they, they just like overwhelmed. They read all these books and they don’t. They take any action. So you described it like I do. I’m a project manager. I look at the objectives. What is the goal? What is the level of quality? The, the target income, the target time, freedom, perhaps that you can build into these businesses, like what are the I wanna achieve?
Tony Whatley (27:34):
And once the goal is established, it becomes really clear of the path of the steps that are required to get there. Then you start to understand like, just like project management, cuz it is a project. How long does it take to do this task? Which tasks do I need to complete before I can do these next two tasks? So understanding the sequence, the order where you need to add in more resources or money to escalate the result or where you can do things and learn on things on yourself and save some money and maybe escalate the time. So there’s just ways to get back to that. And the, the tasks, I think that the most important early in that book for the non mindset chapters is how to evaluate your ideas because you and I both know hundreds of people that walk up to you and go, Hey Reed, I got this business idea.
Tony Whatley (28:13):
You got time to listen. Like, yeah, lemme hear it. And I tell you, and you’re just like shaking your head. And you’re like, oh man, like, do you not see like where this is going and what the limitation is or that there’s not even a market for this or the price point that you’re trying to think about is not even gonna be really worthwhile. And then no, one’s gonna buy this thing. Like you have to see what the, what the viability of the business is. So it’s really gonna be potentially successful or is it just something you’re holding onto? And when the problem is that you find that most people hold onto these NOST ideas are just something that makes them feel good, but they don’t really think of it from a business perspective. Right? Like, think about this. If you’re really good at hand building widgets and you’re really good at building whatever this widget is, but it takes you three hours to build one widget and you make a profit of $30 because that’s what the market allows like, is that really a good business model?
Tony Whatley (29:05):
It takes a lot of time. You don’t make a lot of money. Maybe that’s some idea. That’s just an idea you should walk away from. Most people are unwilling to walk away from dumb ideas. So, and one of these chapters, I give a real simple step by step process of how to analyze these ideas. Like, and it goes into what is your real interest level? What is the potential income level? If you were to estimate, what is your lifestyle? Look by selling that and what does your look? What does it look like? The market? How many people really want that servers to that product? Or also what are the resources or the advantages that you have, whether financial or knowledge or access to special equipment or apps that most people don’t have. Like what are the current resources you have available that are giving you a distinct advantage of others right now to get this right?
Tony Whatley (29:48):
So it comes into a little simple formula. And when you multiply it out, you get a ratio. And with that ratio, it kind of gives you a ranking. Now you can judge all five of your ideas and go, well, these two actually have the highest, you know, goals that meet my criteria. I want, I wanna make this amount of income. I wanna have this amount of time, freedom, flexibility. And I actually have the advantage in this. So that might be the answer. You know, it might give you some clarity finally, like these other ones, they’re just ideas, but those need to be shelved wasted. My time wasted, my money wasted my resources, because I think read with the BI, especially startups is if you go waste a year, doing the wrong business, without understanding that you really wasted two years. And I was, and I say that is because you wasted a year on that one, but you also wasted the year.
Reed Goossens (30:34):
You didn’t spend on the one you should have been building. So you wasted two years. But one thing I wanna say, Tony is that sometimes when you go slow down these paths of maybe not a good idea, you may not know it’s a good idea yet, right? Or you think you have an idea, it might be good. Sometimes those leads, you need to go down that path in order to lead you to what is a good idea case in point, I’ve got a friend back in Australia, um, started a betting app called punter for people to bet against each other, you know, like, oh, I bet you can’t jump that fence. Oh yeah. Well here’s, here’s 20 bucks and I’ll do it right. It’s called pun. You know, you’re a punter. You’re, you’re, you’re a gambler mm-hmm
Reed Goossens (31:19):
And it’s actually betting on eSports, like, you know, you’r, um, you know, your online gaming stuff like that. I’m not in that community, but there there’s a big need for it. So it’s gone from an idea of, Hey, let’s bet, few mates over a beer or something stupid, or, you know, whatever into a, more of a refined market that in there’s a demand for. So what, what’s your comments on that? Because sometimes you need to go down those paths to eliminate these ideas that could ultimately bring you to the idea that you really, really want. You know, that that will, that will be the thing that you end up going and doing, creating millions of dollars from actually, I have a, a pretty funny example of that, cuz you reminded me of this punter, right? Only fans, only fans was related to eSports and, and building things where people could tip you for doing a gaming thing where people get to watch you and see you in livestream.
Tony Whatley (32:12):
But then it became the adult industry mm-hmm
Tony Whatley (32:57):
Like it’s, you know, is, is it illegal? Is it doing something that’s unethical in your core values? Maybe then you sell it. Or maybe you just build an offshoot brand to capture that market itself on a different name. If you wanted to preserve your branding. Right. But the flexibility I think is key. And we also understand that most people that are new to entrepreneurship, they have, they carry a lot of stress and a lot of demand on themselves to be successful at their first time at the bat. You know? So they, they think they’re gonna step up to the plate, hit a grand slam and they’re hoping to, and then when they don’t, they sometimes unfortunately they quit and they never come back again. Right. They think like, oh, I guess it wasn’t meant for me. I, I’m not gonna be Jeff Bezos. And I, I, I tried.
Tony Whatley (33:40):
So I’m just gonna go back to my job. And guys, you have to realize that you learn the most from your failures and your challenges. I would never hire a coach or learn from anybody who’s never had failure even within that industry or that business a few times, because man, we have to have those failures to really find our blind spot. Sometimes we don’t think about things and things happen and they cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars. And you realize like, holy crap, like how do I not have that happen again? And you build in your processes and systems and your risk management, and then you become better as a result. And you know, even large corporations do this. So you think about that. And, and most people are just really hard on themselves. Man. I see people that start a company and I always recommend starting a low risk company.
Tony Whatley (34:24):
Like if you can do something that’s gonna maybe lose you $10,000. It was worth the lesson. It was definitely worth the lesson. But if you build something that requires a hundred thousand dollars of your life savings invested into to buy all this infrastructure and building and all that, and you’re taking high risks with your money without an understanding the process first, so start small, be comfortable, build something that kind of learns as you go and you’ll become a better entrepreneur as a result. I completely agree. I think starting small is so important for that risk. And I think for the mental goes back to your early point, the mindset, when you say, okay, well it’s not, you’re not gambling. I don’t nothing’s gambling because I’m remember when I bought my first property, I pay, I paid all cash for it. 38,000 bucks mm-hmm
Reed Goossens (35:12):
And if you’re okay with that, you’re willing to take that step. It was, it was a calculated risk. So to your point, when you’re starting a business, 10,000, you start small, you know, I didn’t build what I built today with starting with a thousand units I built with by buying one property mm-hmm
Reed Goossens (35:57):
You should definitely go get your hands on it if you haven’t. But he talks about the analogy of a, of a surfer, right? And I love surfing. So I’m gonna go there. But when waves break, they don’t just break in one area or, or, or break one way. They, they break all over the place and you have to learn how to ride the wave or right. Like, like riding a skateboard. And if you’re not moving and riding that wave of change and you’re becoming stagnant, you’ll get wiped out. Yep. That’s that’s so that’s the important part of having that mindset around, keep moving, keep evolving, because that is part of the journey and that’s okay that you pivot or you change, or you do a business that doesn’t doesn’t really work out, but you learn a ton of values from that to go create business number two or three or four.
Reed Goossens & Tony Whatley (36:39):
And then finding people, mentorships that people who have failed in the past, because they can help protect you of your blind spots. They really think that’s an important piece of advice as well. So, um, Tony, you know, we’re coming towards the end of the show here, but what, what do you got planned for, for 2022 and, and beyond with the business, with what you’re building with 365 driven your, your branding company, your coaching company and all the rest. Well, 365 driven is a entrepreneurship community, cuz I’m a community builder. I mean, I build these large communities and I just wanted to pull out the same leadership principles, the guiding support, the knowledge, the accountability, and really just the comradery of entrepreneurs. Cause I realized that most people that are business owners are sometimes the only business owner in their entire family. So they don’t really have anybody that understands ’em and they don’t have the same conversations.
Tony Whatley (37:25):
I mean, nothing eats us up more than we go to a social setting. Here we are in the holidays recording this and people are sitting around the table, talking about television shows and what their sports or kids are playing and just things like that. And we’re like, man, I just wanna talk about the future. And then you go, you go hang out with your old friends, like people, you went to the university, your high school with, and everybody’s talking about, Hey, remember when, Hey, remember when they’re they’re peaked, man. They think that they peaked already back then. And they think that life is on the downhill slope. And I wanna surround myself and build communities and people that talk about, Hey, imagine when not remember when, but imagine when like what’s it gonna be? So I love that. You just talked about that question here you are.
Tony Whatley (38:02):
You’re asking, what’s coming next for 2022. You’re literally saying, what’s imagine when. Right? So for 2022 I just signed a television show deal. It’s gonna be, they just filmed actually last week they came and followed me around for a documentary series and that’s gonna air sometime, maybe in spring. And we put on our live events, we do these destination type getaways for entrepreneurs or usually three day events. And we do two of those a year. Kinda, always looking for things that are like bucket list items or destination VO vacations. And we keep it small, less than 50 people because we like the speakers to hang around for the three days and interact and have meals with each other. And we really be least strong bonds. Uh, coaching is always gonna be something that I’m interested in doing. I’ve got one-on-one clients, I’ve got mastermind groups of eight people, each of those.
Tony Whatley (38:47):
And that’s just something I really give my gratitude and my, my give back. I love the coaching thing. So again, I, a teacher kind of fulfills the eat. It’s the scratching that checking the box of that. And next book I’m be writing also, I’m writing my second book. I’m gonna push myself a little harder this time. It’s gonna be more of a fiction book. That’s narrative with loosely and entrepreneurship, but we’re gonna have some good diversity and bad characters and good characters. Cause I’m a creator, man. I love to be creative and it’s gonna really just push my creative envelope, push me outta my comfort zone. So those are some of the things I’m working on for 2022. That’s awesome, mate. What, what about personally? I’m sure it’s all fulfilling you personally, but is there any personal goals like health wise or family or relationships, anything like that?
Tony Whatley (39:29):
Now I just turned 49 and I’ve been consistently exercising at least six days a week since I was four. So nine years and I’ve hit a lot of records. I’m actually physically stronger than I’ve ever been in my life. And one of my goals is to, to deadlift off the ground 500 pounds before I’m 50. So I got basically a little less than a year to achieve that. I’m, I’m pretty close. I’m at 490 pounds now, but it’s taken me a couple years to get to that level. So it’s just a little things like that. And to me, it’s just, it’s an improvement thing. My brand name’s 365 driven because we always want to incrementally improve every single day, whether that’s knowledge, relationships, health, wealth, mindset, like always trying to improve, to become the better version of ourselves to see who we’re gonna become the next few years.
Tony Whatley (40:11):
And the people that I coach, the people that are in my community, we’re always really aware of that. We hold each other accountable. We push each other to do that because I realize that yeah, we can be multi-millionaires and have all this money. But if we’re not physically health healthy, then what does it matter if you’re not, if you’re not happy, what does it matter if your relationships and your kids and your spouse hates you? Like what does it matter? Like there needs to be some level of balance. And I’m very fortunate enough to work around the world and go to some different places like Africa, where I’ve spent months and realized that gratitude and perspective come a long way. And most people unfortunately live in a bubble and they think that there were things like bad. And they’re, they’re complaining about first world problems within a bubble, within a bubble, within a bubble.
Tony Whatley (40:49):
And you know, that’s why I like that conversation. You and I had on my show, but perspective as immigrants, I’m a, I’m a first generation American myself. And just understanding like most people don’t know how good we really have it in this country. And it takes, it takes people like you and I, to be more vocal about that to point out like, Hey, you need to be grad, have some gratitude. Mm-hmm
Reed Goossens & Tony Whatley (41:32):
So I completely agree. And I love that you got the little goals for yourself. Don’t throw that back out, mate. 500 pounds, my foot hope you’ve got a squat belt on
Reed Goossens & Tony Whatley (42:10):
I love it. Question number two is who is the most influential person you your career to date? I would say that the most influential person is still my mother, because she was a big dreamer, Japanese immigrant. She came here and she used to say things like you could be the president of the United States. You could be an astronaut, like all these big things, because she realized that coming to United States had a lot of opportunities to be whatever we wanted to be. And as a kid, you kinda roll your eyes and go you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mom and you know, I grew up with what we now know as a vision board. We called it a dream board. I had a cork board above my desk and she would tell me to cut things outta magazines that I like and Thumbtack those up there and hang my awards on there.
Reed Goossens & Tony Whatley (42:46):
And I just thought that was normal, man. I grew up that way and I realized that unfortunately, most people don’t have that visionary or the manifesting type thing. I grew up with that thinking that this is how everybody is doing it. So she had to influence a lot of the things I think about now. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. I, I, I had a very similar upbringing with, with my parents. So, so kudos to your mom. Um, question number three is what is the most influential tool in your business? And when I say tool, it could be a piece of software or it could be a physical tool, like a journal or a phone that you just can’t run your business without. What is it? I’ll keep it really simple. It’s the Google calendar. Mm man, most people come up to you. Hey Reed, man, I’m wanna do this.
Tony Whatley (43:22):
I wanna start this. I don’t have any time. And so when you say that to someone like me or you, we say, Hey, well pull out your calendar. Let me see. And they’re like, what calendar? I don’t use a calendar and say, well, do you not have, am are you just not managing the time that you do have cuz we all have 24 hours a day. And are you saying that the highly, highly successful people out there don’t have a calendar and they don’t have time either. They’re doing all. They’re running hundreds of businesses sometimes, but they don’t have time, but you don’t have time. Like Google calendar guys, it’s on your phone. It syncs with most of the productivity apps that are out there. Get in the habit of putting things on your calendar every single day, time, slot those things. And soon enough it’ll become your routine.
Reed Goossens & Tony Whatley (44:03):
It’ll become your habit. Even my wife, when she wants to go to dinner or we want to go on vacations, she knows that I have a calendar and she’ll say, Hey, what does your calendar look like on January 29th? You know, we, we kind of, we schedule things out months and in years in advance that way we make time for the things that matter. That’s right. And I, I always say if it’s not on the calendar, it doesn’t exist. Exactly.
Tony Whatley (44:43):
And, you know, there was no non-compete and you know, things were good. The transaction went well, everything was well. But within the two year, we decided that they were really holding back some of their, their earn outs on us and within their control, they could have helped. And I, we started to call them on that say, Hey, you guys, aren’t collecting this revenue. That’s why it’s not hitting our, our bonus targets here, you know, for this earn out. And they said, well, you know that you can’t prove it. And I said, well, can I just, the money that’s outstanding. So we hit our goal, right? It was a lot bigger goal, right? No. So I realized that even though things are in writing and contracts that are existing in place, make sure that whenever you’re getting paid, that you have ways that the performance is not always on the other party.
Reed Goossens & Tony Whatley (45:27):
It needs to be something that you can still manage to, to correct in those situ. So don’t just trust people with them hitting their, their objectives or financial objectives with your money. No, completely agree. Yeah. That’s friendships and relationships, as I said, can evolve and that clearly people have different, um, agendas compared to what you asked. So really, really agree with that mate, question number five. Last question is where can people to continue the conversation there would be in your sphere? Where do they go? My website 365driven.com. And you’ll find links to my book, my podcast, the community, everything at one website. Keep it simple. I love it. I love it, mate. Well, look, I wanna thank you again for taking some time outta day to jump on the show, just wanna reflect some of the things that I took away from today’s show.
Reed Goossens (46:11):
I think obviously mothers who big influence on where you are today, but I still love how you even through your high achievement mode, your typical type, a type of achiever, you were still curious about things and you never ever had an ego. That was big enough to say, I don’t know, I already know everything and I don’t need to learn a new skill. I think constantly upscale is such an important thing as entrepreneurs we need to do because we never know it all. And if you think, you know, it all, that’s when failure starts to occur. And, and, and so continue to be curious and continue to challenge yourself to learn new things, helps build breed and build new opportunities. Um, and I also like the fact that you’re, you’re a teacher at heart. That’s what you wanna do. You wanna share the knowledge with other of people and you created a business around that that really probably helps you fulfill a lot of personal needs, uh, for you.
Reed Goossens & Tony Whatley (46:59):
So, uh, kudos to you, man. Um, did I leave anything out? No, man. Uh, you touched on that same subject twice about having the humility to learn new things. And, uh, I wanna stress that. I say it a little bit more abrupt. I say you had to be willing to suck. You just, you have to be willing to realize that you’re new at something you’re going to suck. And that people that you see to have a proficiency are doing things they’ve been doing it longer. They put a lot of more, put more work into it. And I’ve seen this time and time again. I mean, even when I was joining Toastmasters, I used to have stagefright and people would come in, be on their executive clothes. And I said, ah, I don’t really need this. You know, I’m a, a CEO of this fortune 500 company, but my board of directors recommended I come in here.
Tony Whatley (47:40):
I’m, I’m, I’ve been leading companies for 20 years. And you know, within two meetings they would be humbled. They would be humbled because they realized they weren’t as good as a effective communicator as they thought they were. And those are the kind of people, unfortunately re they would actually have their ego, keep them from showing back up after they were humbled, the good ones would be like, I thought it was pretty good. I I’m a leader. Look at this company. I realize like I have a lot to work to do. And they would show up, they would take the tie off and actually come in and normal clothes and value and become a member. And then they would get the amazing results in a few months. So you have to be willing to suck. It’s not a lateral move just cuz you’re good at something doesn’t mean you’re automatically gonna be regarded as good at everything.
Reed Goossens & Tony Whatley (48:19):
So you gotta be willing to start at the bottom. That’s awesome. No, I think, and thank you for summarizing that succinctly
