Below is the transcription for this episode:
Matt: Greetings everybody welcome in Happy Wednesday. It is Wednesday, August 25 We're live. It is 10am Eastern 7am Eastern a minute, or 7am, I guess it's, I don't know what Phoenix call is like Mountain Daylight Time or some random crap I don't know. But anyway, it's over here on the west side of the country, it's 7am. So, and also for our guests so we're pumped that you're here and excited that you were able to make it in with us live if you're here live with us, tell us where you're tuning in from we get people from all over the world that's pretty crazy actually, all sorts of different countries all over the world. Tell us where you're tuning in from, and we're gonna bring on our guests right away. He's joining us live from San Diego, and if you could give us all a little clapping emoji to sort of welcome him on the show. What's happening is it is it. I actually didn't test your name beforehand, so I was about to say it, I think it would be Fadi.
Fadi: Yeah, That's right.
Matt: Is that exactly how you say it. Cool. Awesome, well how are you?
Fadi: I'm doing good man doing good. Cool. I'm excited that you made it. So bring us into your world a little bit. Tell us a little bit about what you currently do. Like for work or just kind of tell us a little bit about your lifestyle and I also am very curious about, you know, take us back to how you sort of got into drop shipping in Amazon or just looking around for something, right, I'm always curious what sort of got the wheels turning for people on on here's why I started looking for something online.
Fadi: Yeah so I pretty much started when I was younger, going to school to become a mechanic or a technician in the automotive industry, pretty much. So I did that for about 10 years. And then I moved up to becoming a service advisor and service writer, which is what I do now. So that's my full time job and basically I'm the guy that you talk to when you take your car in for service or repair at a dealership. And I've been doing that for about eight years now. It's really good, but it is a job that you always have to be on top of. You don't really know how much you're going to be getting paid every month. And you kind of have a limit to it because it just depends how busy the dealership is, you know how many hours you work. And you're also working, you know either 10 to 12 hours a day pretty much all the time. It's long hours, pretty much every day, but again it's something that I'm used to now I've been doing it for a while and I do like it, you're helping people with their cars, answering questions, it's not a bad job, but I've always wanted to try to do something else where I can make more money where I can have more freedom pretty much to where I can travel, take time off, do things my family where, right now, if I want to do that I have to try to figure out if I can move things around, you know, switch days with somebody or try to have vacation days. So it's not that easy because of that and I'm still pretty much living paycheck to paycheck, with my, with my full time job. So a few years ago, when everything was kind of going crazy with apps online and everything I started looking into things online, I kind of figured out, I gotta find something to do online because that's where everything is at right now. So, trying to think oh man, what app can I come up with or what can I do online with a website. I really wasn't creative in that sense I really didn't do anything. And then last year I pretty much started looking into affiliate marketing. I was watching a lot of YouTube videos and I found people talking about affiliate marketing, and I just started a YouTube channel. It wasn't really about anything specific, but I just put some Amazon affiliate links on there, and nothing happened. So right after that I pretty much. I just wasn't doing it the right way, I didn't really know how to do affiliate marketing, I didn't have the skills to do it, and it failed, but I knew that there was something there I knew people were doing, making a business out of and making a lot of money. I just didn't have the right skills to do it. I found dropshipping. And I got into that and I said well maybe I can drop shipping. And same thing I watched a lot of videos I did tutorials on YouTube, I actually did start a dropshipping store for my girlfriend. She sells beauty products. And we did a few sales but we ran into so many problems, one after another. We're trying to find the right products, trying to deal with shipping times and there's so many things that it just came harder than we actually wanted it to be. And with that we can handle it because with our full time job and trying to deal with all those problems we couldn't keep up with it. So then I said well maybe I'm gonna do Amazon FBA. So then I started Amazon. And again, it was a lot harder than what I was expecting. You know, I spent a lot of money on equipment to get started. It took a long time to get approved with Amazon too so you have to buy things to be able to pack your products and different things. So I spent a lot of money on that, and then you got to get approved on different categories on Amazon to be able to sell categories or different brands and it was just, again, one problem after another and more money and more money. So I was trying to find something where I can actually make some money and have some free time and it was kind of just the opposite. So while I was doing Amazon FBA or while I started trying to do Amazon FBA, I found a video on tick tock about affiliate marketing about the 15 day business challenge. I figured man I spend over $1,000 trying to start Amazon What $7 To try to see what's what's up with this course. I took this course and it was pretty much the best thing that I have ever done. It explains everything really well and taught me the skills that I needed to get started right away, which is what I wanted. You know when I tried Amazon. It took me months to just get approved. So it was frustrating. I was ready to go and spend money, but I couldn't do anything. I was just waiting, the 15 day business challenge is stuff that you can start while you're doing the 15 day business challenge you can start, you know, following step by steps, you know, things that you can start building your online business. So for me that was something that I really liked, I mean I think I did the 15 day challenge, in like four days. I just got into it right away and I started it. Yeah, that's pretty much how it started with affiliate marketing. I found them on TikTok, and then I joined it.
Matt: Nice. That's awesome. Well that's cool thanks for saying that about our challenge to and yeah I do think that it's, it's funny that. Yeah. The Amazon and E-commerce method and all that stuff. I mean, not only is it tough, and a lot of money, I don't actually downplay it all the time, though because it is a fit for some people, but it is quite a bit of money. I do find that most people do really well with it. Have at least in my experience have really good jobs, or have spouses or something with really good jobs they have a ton in savings, and they're able to sort of eat the costs up front to sort of break even at a high amount of ad spend, and a high amount of cost, and then eventually kind of break through, but even then, you know, You run into issues with fulfillment and you run into issues with Amazon and your account getting shut down and just kind of stuff, but I do think that, I do think that I've become a little more numb to the whole like let's compare apples to apples to oranges really but, You know, because every business is going to have sort of these difficulties these struggles, right, it's just that, I think in affiliate marketing those difficulties and struggles costs a lot less money and have a lot less inventory, a lot less on the line, you know, especially if you're going to purchase a $7 product which is like, you know, in the grand scheme, it's just, it's, it's honestly a little bit funny that you know some people need to be sold so hard on purchasing a $7 product I get it, I, you know there's conspiracies about, you know, Oh, are they going to steal my money are they going to run away with my money, you know, but it's seven bucks it's like seriously it's like I've spent more than $7 at Starbucks before easily like people walk into a coffee shop on a weekend and spend 25 bucks on pastries and coffee and it's like, he can spend seven bucks to invest in something that might change your entire income for the rest of your life, you know, and help you build skills. So, back to consider it as a side rant but back to your point about, like, the whole model of thought, one thing that you pointed out throughout the whole, that whole little introduction was how, at every stage, it was kind of like there's more money required. Oh, and now there's more money required and suddenly it's like man like I'm in this deep, and like, it's hard to sort of navigate the waters and my guess is maybe you didn't have a good day, well maybe the no mentor at all, but a good mentor who could really predict those kinds of things for you.
Fadi: Yeah, And the problem It was just like I found affiliate marketing online, I found drop shipping and Amazon FBA so I was going off of, you know, videos of people talking about those businesses trying to save as much as I can. To get started, I wasn't paying for a course, or anything like that because most of the courses that I found were on those topics or on those businesses. They were 1000’s of dollars to start with. I don't mind investing in myself, but I wanted to just make sure that it was something that I actually liked and that's something that I can do. But a lot of those videos to get you started, or to get you in. They talk about how it is easy it is you can just sell anything and you really can, but that doesn't mean you're going to actually make money and you're going to be able to kind of grow that business just selling anything to you have to find the right products you have to find them, have the right tools even software like apps to help you figure out what products are selling what products are not. There's so much that you have to spend time on, and money, which again, I don't mind doing that. If it's something that I can actually do at that time you know but like you said, if you have savings and, and you can use that money to put it into that business and grow it, then that that might work for people you know, for me at the point when I started I didn't have that to be able to spend as much as I wonder as I needed to kind of keep going. So once I ran out of money as well now I can't do anything because I ran out of money and I got to spend more money to do the next step, you know. So, the marketing was a lot clearer on what you have to do and how to get started and yeah you got to spend a little bit of money to get started, but you know what you're spending it on and once you do that, you're pretty much set, then it just depends on you on if you keep marketing if you keep making content, but a lot of stuff is automatic once you have it set the first time, then it's automatic and that makes it easier for you to just keep going.
Matt: Yeah, exactly. And part of what I do at my job. Occasionally I don't do this a lot but is, I'll look into other business models, right, so like, we also understand that business models and what's working best changes a lot, you know, from time to time we generally have four core business models that don't really change a lot or how we haven't seen change a lot over 10 years, which makes it a little easier and more predictable, because it's not as much. The models we teach, you know specifically affiliate marketing is a big one or more so like you're gonna have to adapt and change about where to market products and services, but there's still products and services that people have been marketing online for the last 10 years. And, five years is probably more likely, But still, you know 10 years in the internet world is like 100 years in the real world. I mean, you wake up in three months, and suddenly, the social media platform that you were really hot on is like now kind of like, you know, not as hot anymore and there's this new hot thing you've got to learn, but I think when people get perspective, I think that helps a lot, for instance, like, you know, when I talk to people, for instance like at one of our masterminds. One thing that I'll explain is like hey, you're doing great today on Tik Tok or on Instagram or on YouTube or whatever you're doing, but just know that there's a day where that might not happen or that might change a lot. Right, and so once people have perspective and I give an example for instance like back in 2008 People ran a bunch of Google ads for affiliate marketing and got really really wealthy because they barely paid anything for those Google ads, and, and I saw that slowly go away I saw affiliate marketers get kicked off of Google because everybody started going on it because they heard it was hot, and that included a bunch of people who were very inexperienced marketers who had no idea what they were doing and made a bunch of baseless claims and then like, they're just like these weight loss people go on there and say lose $100 and lose 100 pounds overnight and they're like, and then do some digging and it's like, oh these are a bunch of like affiliate marketers no need to own a business, really, you know, and so they start throwing affiliate marketers off the platform and that really started a way Facebook has done this. And so what I usually tell people is, is like a just expect this to go away at some point in the game isn't that you get on and sit on one platform and write it out, because that's it, it won't serve you over the long term in big, big, big perspective it's like your, you'll be able to do basically the same thing with all your sales funnels, but the main variable of affiliate marketing is where and how you get your traffic. Where do you get clicks basically is the big one. But when you have respected that that's your main thing, your main problem solving that you have to do. It's a lot easier, a lot easier than applying to Amazon for 45 or 100 different products, and in different categories and niches because, yeah, I, I went through that when I was looking through different business models, you know, for our company even. And I was like damn, I don't think so.
Fadi: The crazy part is that now that I know affiliate marketing, I kind of know the skills that I need. And a lot of things that I learned. The same thing that I learned with affiliate marketing, I would need for Amazon FBA and drop shipping anyways so it would be it would help me out in those businesses if I learned how to build an email list how to set up a sales funnel to have my email automation set up that's going to grow pretty much any business, whether it's dropshipping or Amazon so that's why I think affiliate marketing is so great because you can use those skills for so many other businesses, too, not just affiliate marketing. So that's why when I learned it. Not like I did last year when I was just putting links on a YouTube video. It just changed everything because it's not just about putting links up it's about, you know, solving somebody's problem showing them different services or products that will benefit them. And with your system set up like the email list, you know, sales funnel. You grow that into a real business, you're not just collecting $20 here on a commission here and there on the video, you know, totally.
Matt: I do know. Yeah, and it's, yeah, it's, that's a really interesting way. Yeah, I do feel well. I'm curious about your thoughts. So, do you feel like it's sort of an objective thing that affiliate marketers better did it? Do you feel like it fits who you are in your personality better or, you know, I'm just curious if what you feel about like matching sort of business model to personality or is there anything there.
Fadi: I would, I would say it does just because of what I do so, my job, even though it's technically like a sales position, so I sell services in my full time job. You know, for people that are coming in to repair their car if they need brakes I sell a brake job to them. But in reality I'm solving their problem, you know, their brakes worn out. So I explained to them what they need to do to fix that problem. So I don't really tell people that I'm a salesperson cuz I don't see myself that way. People come in because they have a problem they're either due for maintenance or they have, you know, some kind of noise on their car and I figure it out and I solve that problem for them. Yeah, they're happy when they leave because their cars are fixed you know, and I kind of see affiliate marketing that way now where I just got to find the people that I'm looking for that have this problem and I helped them solve this problem. And if they buy something, then great, it helps them solve that problem, you know, and I had to learn that affiliate marketing is pretty much that helping people solve a problem. He's got to figure out what problem you're going to solve. And that's how you take your product or your service that you want to promote. And once you figure that out, it ends up being pretty easy because you're not trying to sell anything, you're just trying to solve that problem and anybody that means that it's going to come right to you, though, just like me at a car dealership and somebody has that problem with their car they're gonna come to me, I don't have to go, but they know that I solved that problem for them, you know, so I think marketing is perfect for me for what I've done in the past to. I just didn't realize that that's how it worked and that's what it was before. Or else I think I would have started a long time ago on Affiliate Marketing.
Matt: That's really cool, because I do feel like that makes such logical sense to me about how, you know, It's, it's a recommendation but also I mean if you think about it in the mechanics world I've made this, I made this sort of argument before, where like, a lot of times people go to an auto shop or mechanics with a bit of skepticism and doubt right. So even just that feeling and even just that, you know, general sort of sense that people have going into an auto body shop they come to the online space with that same thing, or they come with, you know, if you're recommending a product as an affiliate to somebody, they, they're going to come with sort of that same exact skepticism. And my guess is, you've probably developed some skills on how to ease those feelings right.
Fadi: Yeah, and it's something you got to work on because even when I was a mechanic and then I moved up to become a service advisor. Even though I know how a car worked. I didn't know how to explain that to a customer right away. So once I heard what their problems were, or why they didn't believe me for whatever reason, I found a way to change my wording or explain something. And now I have it dialed in, pretty much, somebody asked me something I know how to explain to them I don't even think about it, it's just, you know, it's just automatic. But at first it wasn't like I had to figure out okay how to explain this. I know how it works but how do I explain it to somebody that doesn't know anything about cars, you know, and I think it works the same way that with affiliate marketing when I first started affiliate marketing. I didn't know how to explain anything. I knew how it worked after I did the training, but now I had to figure out okay how to explain everything. And that's where I think the community that we have is so great because there's so many different people back in different backgrounds, and everybody has a different point of view, and we kind of started seeing the same thing from everybody, even though it doesn't matter where they're from, or what they do as a full time job. Everybody kind of talks about the same thing you got to help people solve a problem when you get started You also pick one product and one platform. That way you get good at that part of it, you figure out how to explain it or how to do the content the right way. And once you get better at that then you can move up for, you know, different products and different services and different platforms. But when you start off I think that's what you kind of have to focus on. And like I said for some people it might be super easy when they started affiliate marketing, on how to promote it. For me it wasn't like that it was something completely new to me so I had to figure it out, I watched a lot of videos. I watched other people that were doing it to see how they were doing it too. And now I think I'm getting more comfortable where I can explain it. I think it took me a little longer than it probably took other people, which I'm okay with as long as I feel comfortable and I know I can keep going this way so that was my main goal.
Matt: Yeah, that makes perfect sense to me. Yeah. What, um, what, when you're creating your content ? Have you created content before because you're on TikTok here with about 10,000 followers? Was that newer free how, how did you go about sort of getting on there and did it feel okay or what did you, what was that like,
Fadi: So for me, TikTok when I was on TikTok before I was just doing funny videos with my family. Just to make each other laugh, you know, and that's all we did really so and then we would be on it for a month and then next month we wouldn't be on it at all. It was just on and off we were just doing that, when we were bored and we just didn't have anything else to do pretty much. So if you actually go all the way down on my TikTok you'll see some of my like home videos and it was just dumb things you know. Yeah, I hate the way I sound on video talking and explaining things. I just hate the way I and I think most people do. I think when they start off, though when I did my first few videos that way, I just, I hated them I didn't want nobody to see them. But I knew it was one of those things again. I had to do it enough to where I got comfortable and I got better at it. And even though I still hate the way I sound and everything, I don't think about that anymore. I feel more comfortable. I think I know what I'm talking about now. And I think it shows that too. I think one of the videos that I put up yesterday, I think just hit 10,000 is not a viral video, but it's a pretty good number for something that I wasn't doing anything special I was just, you know, explaining something. So little things like that then told me that I'm also doing a good job you know I'm getting better at it compared to when I first started where I wasn't getting really any traction but I knew people that didn't know me for affiliate marketing either they didn't know me for what I'm just starting to promote. So once they do see you doing that more and more and every day, then they know you for that, they ask you questions, they go to your tick tock to actually watch your videos. They look for you, like I mentioned before, and that's pretty much I think the key, but at first I had a hard time because I wasn't doing anything like that at all. It was just the little dances that they had on TikTok before you know, just funny skits and stuff like that with my, my girlfriend and her daughter and I just switched it over into affiliate marketing, pretty much.
Matt: Yeah. Dang. That's cool. Yeah, cuz I do feel like sort of the, well I know a lot of people who started TikTok that way, and got used to the platform, but I do feel like for most people, they're sort of this, you know, gradual movement towards like, how do I conduct business here and it usually is a little bit kind of awkward or a little tricky. I mean you're up to, what's your what's your content creation strategy like I mean how often do you post what's, like, how often do you try to post a year, you're out about 10,000 followers, and even getting to 10,000 is tough. I mean it's really hard. So big props to you, because that first 1000s tough, and then the first 10,000 is really tough. So where a lot of people sort of quit. And, but after 10,000 traction picks up a little bit, things start to pick up a little bit. You know what's the journey to 10,000 been like?
Fadi: So for me, I'm not trying to focus that much on followers. I do look at that, of course, sometimes but my main thing was just trying to get better at affiliate marketing. And like I mentioned earlier, I work long hours a day, I have an hour commute to work so it's not, you know I'm working 10 hours a day, but then I'm also driving two hours every single day. And then when I got home you know my girlfriend wants to spend time with me and her daughter too. And I want to spend time with them also so you kind of have to try to balance that I think that's the hardest thing for me, and nothing else with the affiliate marketing business is seems hard for me as much as that is trying to find the time, because when you have a full time job and a family, you got to try to find the time, you know. So for me that's the hardest thing so what I do is if you watch a lot of my videos, I'm actually in the car like I am right now. I don't really have a quiet space at home really where I can do videos, the few times that I do I try to make some as quickly as possible, because I know I don't have a lot of free time at home, or I can actually do that. So most of my videos are in the car, I'll either point to things that I'm writing on the screen, or I'm explaining something, and I've been trying to change it up a little bit to where I can do some other types of videos, but I'm also not going to stress out too much about it, I wanted to make something that doesn't burn me out. Yeah. So what I do is I drive to work. I get there a little earlier, I'll make a TikTok video in the morning. I'll try to do one for lunch and then before I get home I do the same thing. And when I was doing that consistently, that's when I started seeing my tick tock account grow. But a couple of weeks ago, actually more like a month ago, we got really sick, my whole family and myself, and that kind of slowed it down a little bit because I wasn't able to be as consistent as I wanted to. But at the same time, I was trying to get better at other things in the back end so I was working on my email list, I was working on my sales funnel. I was trying to see what else I can do to make you know the backend of my business better. So you know that slowed down and I didn't see it as anything bad, just because I'm still working on it in another way. But that's pretty much how it's been with my TikTok. I honestly have not figured out tick tock yet. I know there's a lot of people that have done viral videos and their account grows right away. That's not the case with me but again I'm okay with it because even with the followers that I have now less than 10,000. I'm still making money. I'm still doing well with this business. So I just think Man, but it does grow eventually, then even better. So it's not something that I'm worried about too much.
Matt: Yeah, totally. I love that outlook too. It's like it's very. Yeah, it's just a very realistic sort of heads on straight kind of outlook, so I appreciate that a lot. That's cool. What, um, well I'll let you have the last word to our listeners and everything, what. So imagine, you know somebody who's kind of in your situation, feeling it out, or maybe you could speak to the dropshippers and Amazon people who are looking at doing physical products whose I mean heck we had somebody on the show the other day, who's like, gonna get into that kind of thing. And there's just, you know, there's different people out there thinking about doing different stuff. What would you say to those people if they're, you know, considering maybe starting affiliate marketing versus that or maybe they're just considering different business models, what was helpful to you and what would be your encouragement to them.
Fadi: Yeah, I think everybody's situation is going to be different, like we mentioned there, depending on how much money you have saved up or that you can use to invest in a business or some kind of training. For me I think affiliate marketing is one of the best things especially with Legendary Marketer with this company, just because the training is so great. The community is great, and the training that you get, like I mentioned before, you can use for any other business also. So, even if you want to drop shipping or Amazon, what you're going to learn with this training or by starting affiliate marketing with Legendary. It's something that you're going to be able to use with any other business later on so that's why if I can do everything all over again I would honestly start with affiliate marketing. From the beginning, and I will probably just stick with that I probably wouldn't do anything else. But like we mentioned before, they're not bad businesses, there's people that are making good money with E commerce with drop shipping and with Amazon FBA, they're legit businesses, but I think you just got to look into what you're really getting into before you start if you're not ready to spend that much money that much time, you know probably affiliate marketing is gonna be the best route for for them, you know, it's like I think that that would have been the best thing for me if I started with, I honestly would have saved a lot of money. If I would have just started with affiliate marketing from the beginning. And just the one thing that I wanted to mention because I haven't grown to the point where I think a lot of other affiliate marketers have not allowed but a few where they started and just had crazy success, you know, when I talked to Sarah the blonde affiliate. I think she made platinum over 100,004 months or something like that. So I talked to her one day and I told her, I kind of just asked her, Hey, what would you tell somebody like me that's not making, you know, a crazy amount like you are. But um, you know, I'm making some money, I'm kind of like in that starting point still I'm starting a little slower just mentioned something that kind of stuck to me and I just want her to mention that she did say, you know, you're probably not making as much money as I'm making now, but doesn't mean that in the future you won't make more money than I will. And that just kind of made me think it is not something that is not a business where you're gonna make money or get rich quick. This is a real business that if you set it up the right way, and treat it like a real business you're gonna make money in the future, and it's going to be something that's going to make you keep making money consistently, you know, and there's a lot of people I think Sarah, she started doing this and she quit her job and she's, you know, doing this full time now. So, and there's so many other people that have gone through the same thing. I haven't reached that yet but that's definitely my goal and if somebody is trying to work from home, trying to find a way to have financial freedom I think this is the best thing for them.
Matt: Cool man, and I agree, 100%, with everything you said. I think that's really, I think one of the best things that you have to offer it seems to me is really good perspective, and I appreciate that a lot. Well, thanks for coming on, hey if you'd ever need anything, hit me up, I'm always around, always available. I can help you out. But, yeah, have a good Wednesday. Thanks for coming on.
Fadi: Thanks man. Have a good one.
Matt: You too. Alright guys, have a good rest of your Wednesday, I'm back here again tomorrow for Wake Up legendary again same time same place 10am Eastern Hey, and by the way if you're still here. We're still here, and you are ever, geez, I don't know if you can hear my dog, losing her mind back there but on the screen I'm going to put a little thing right here on the screen, it's a website it's Be Legendary dot shop. If you guys want any merchandise from legendary we've got a bunch of new shirts and hats and sweat pants and just different merch that I feel like it's pretty cool. If you want to grab any of that you can go to the Legendary dot shop and find it there and have yourself a great rest on Wednesday. We'll be back here tomorrow and Friday for Wake Up legendary, and then we'll see you again on Monday, peace.
