When Corporate America Isn’t Enough with Corey Ganim

Dustin: [00:00:00] All right. Welcome back to the seven really podcast. I have a very special guest, someone who's in a business that we've not featured a business style that we've not featured here on the podcast. Someone I've got to know really well over the past six months or so, because he's an alumni of our podcast profits accelerator program.
Dustin: he's here today to like, Practice the craft. He's being a guest on my podcast, which is always a fun full circle moment. So Corey Ganim, is awesome. He is going to tell you his backstory and, the really cool things he's done with an Amazon business and then beyond that, and some of the stuff that he's able to do to empower other entrepreneurs to grow their own businesses.
Dustin: So, Corey, it's really awesome to have you here. I'm really grateful that we're able to highlight your story for the audience, and I know I'm going to learn a lot more about you in the process. So. First of all, thanks for being here. Second of all, I want you to like hand the mic to you, man.
Dustin: Let's you start your story, wherever you think is most appropriate. So the audience can kind of pick it up and we can start on your entrepreneurial journey and start to unpack all the cool stuff you've done.
Corey: Yeah, Dustin. Thanks so much for having me, [00:01:00] man. I'm looking forward to it. I've been listening to your podcast for quite a while, ever since I think it was Brian Guerin that introduced us originally. He's the host of the Millionaire University podcast, and I think it was like August of last year. He just was like, Hey, man, hey, Corey, you need to meet Dustin.
Corey: He's he, you know, he teaches people about what it is that you're looking to do, which at the time I was looking to be on more podcasts and we went from there. So, which is great. And as far as my background is concerned, so I always like to start. Right around the college graduation phase. So I graduated in college.
Corey: I graduated college May of 2017. And now I had about a two month gap between college graduation. And when I was set to start my first full time job out of school, which was going to be in data storage sales for IBM. So I had an internship with IBM going into senior year. It went great. You know, they, it paid well, they promised me a job after college and I locked that job up during my senior year, which was great.
Corey: So I kind of got to enjoy my last year of college. But [00:02:00] come graduation, like I said, 2 month gap between, leaving school and starting that job. And I don't know about you. I have a feeling we're on the same page when I say this, but I'm definitely not the kind of person who can just sit around And, you know, waste two months and just play video games all day or whatever.
Corey: So, you know, I'm getting a little restless. I start scrolling YouTube and I find this video. I actually found this video months before this. But this is when I actually started taking action. It was some guy online who, a guy who is now a good friend of mine, his name's Reezy Resells, but he was just going into.
Corey: Marshalls and TJ Maxx and Target. And he's just, he has this barcode scanner. It's literally like a, you know, a physical barcode scanner, like taped to his phone and he's going around and just scanning different products in the store. And he's like, Hey, look, you know, I, this is on the shelf for 11, but here it is on Amazon for 30.
Corey: If I buy it and I list it on Amazon, I can make seven bucks or eight bucks. And I'm like, what? Like I, cause at the time it blew my mind because I just [00:03:00] assumed up to that point. And I'm sure a lot of people think this, but I thought that everything I bought on Amazon, I was buying from Jeff Bezos, right? I had no idea that Amazon was this marketplace in this platform where, I mean, no exaggeration, millions of people are building a business, selling products to people like you and me. You know, I find this video, I've got this two months between basically two months to kill before I start this job. And I remember I started going around to thrift stores in my town in Greensboro, North Carolina, and just started looking for used books. Because what I learned during my research is that you can buy these books for 50 cents.
Corey: 1, 2, and you can flip them on Amazon. Some of these textbooks, no exaggeration. You can flip for like 100 plus, right? Not many things you can buy for 1 and turn it into 100. So that's how I started. I was looking for these books and I was turning around and listing them on Amazon. And if you fast forward another couple months, I took my full time job and I ended up having
to move to [00:04:00] Chicago for this job.
Corey: So I get to Chicago and the Amazon thing was interesting. I still wanted to pursue it, but I didn't have a car when I got to Chicago. So I'm like, okay, there's, and there was actually a thrift store, probably a half mile from my apartment in Chicago. And I, I walked to it all the time and I bought stuff there and I flipped stuff from there and it was great, but I'm like, okay, if I want to scale this thing, I either need a one by a car.
Corey: But I didn't really like the idea of just driving around the city of Chicago, you know, driving all these thrift stores. And the 2nd option was to find a way to pivot in some way. So it was around this time. I'd say late 2017, early 2018 when I pivoted to a model called online arbitrage. Which the difference is I'm just buying products from like a target.
Corey: com or a walmart. com and then turning around and flipping them on Amazon. So it's same model except instead of going into stores, I'm buying stuff online and did that for about a year, year and a half. And if you were to walk into my apartment in Chicago at [00:05:00] any point during this period. You literally couldn't walk.
Corey: I mean, there's, there's Kohl's boxes in this corner. There's Target boxes in that corner. There's Barbie dolls over here. There's, you know, Rice Krispy treats over there. It's, I mean, my, my room was essentially like a convenience store because I was selling. Anything and everything, right? My motto is, if it makes dollars, it makes sense.
Corey: So I was selling anything from toys to candy to like tampons, like seriously, anything. And, and so obviously you get to the point where you kind of run out of space. I was in a studio apartment there in Chicago and I'm like, okay, how do I scale this thing? How do I, how do I do this at a higher level?
Corey: And I, again, always kind of scrolling through YouTube. I find this video of this guy. Talking about this business model called wholesale, and I'm like, what wholesale like I've heard of wholesale. Is that kind of when you buy in bulk? But how does, but how does it work in the context of Amazon and what he described?
Corey: And it really resonated with me. He's like, okay, if you were [00:06:00] to sell wholesale on Amazon, the way that it works is instead of going to walmart or to target or to these other retail stores and just buying stuff off their shelves, We're going to the suppliers that Walmart's buying from or the suppliers that targets buying from, right.
Corey: And instead of buying five units at a time, 10 units at a time or whatever we can pull off the shelf. Let's go and buy 500 units at a time or 5, 000 units at a time and get better pricing and better terms and make it more of like a B to B business to business transaction instead of just some, you know, faceless side hustle for lack of a better term where I'm just going to a store and try to, you know, pull stuff off the shelves.
Corey: And so he's saying this in this YouTube video, and it really resonated with me because. It struck me. I'm like, Oh, this, this is literally just B2B sales. Like I'm having to cold call these suppliers, cold call these manufacturers, cold call these distributors and essentially pitch them on why they should sell to me.
Corey: Right, because they've got all these customers. Why would they sell [00:07:00] to some random guy who's like 23 years old, you know, in a one bedroom apartment in Chicago. And so this was the very beginning of 2019.
And I, I was like, you know what, I like this business model. It really resonates with me. I'm just going to kind of burn the boats and go all in.
Corey: So about six months into my wholesale journey, mid 2019, I actually ended up leaving my corporate job at IBM. So I was working for IBM this whole time, ended up leaving halfway through 2019, threw all my stuff in a Penske truck and drove it from Chicago back to Greensboro, North Carolina, and like nine hours flat, you know, nonstop and, and just threw it all in my mom's house, basically, and just, and, you know, moved in with her and went, went about the whole entrepreneur thing full time.
Corey: And, you know, there's. More to the story, of course, but I, you know, I think that's a good start. Yeah, yeah.
Dustin: times. There's this stuff in here that I can so relate to that Corey doesn't know. And I'd probably [00:08:00] never shared with hardly anyone, but it feels relevant. So I got a couple, a couple of things to add to that one. The Chicago, like.
Dustin: Your apartment with Barbie dolls and tampons. Like I'm picturing Corey's dating life. And he brings a girl back from a, from a date night. And she's like, what in the hell? Like, who is this guy? So I thought that was just a funny visual, but, probably around the same time as you, maybe, maybe a couple of years earlier, I actually had forms of this business model myself.
Dustin: We were, I was a full time engineer. It was purely a side hustle. And the first form of this was arbitrage, but with golf clubs. And
Corey: Oh, I think I've heard you talk about this.
Dustin: Yeah, I sort of like stumbled into this thing where I bought a new drive. I bought like three drivers because I wanted to try them out. And then I got rid of the two I didn't want to keep.
Dustin: And I'm like, I actually sold them for more than I bought them. Like, this is pretty cool. And so I got into this whole thing for like a year. My kids got involved and my whole basement was just full of golf clubs. And I would go. Usually in person and usually on a Craigslist, which, you know, I did survive, but I wouldn't recommend.
Dustin: And I just go to Randall's houses and like buy golf [00:09:00] clubs and then polish them up and I got really good at copywriting and I would sell them on eBay and make a spread. And we made a thousand, 2, 000 a month doing that. We paid off debt and it like was really important to our family. So that was like version one was sort of like straight retail arbitrage.
Dustin: And then on the wholesale side, again, sort of stumbled in. I had this crazy video kind of go viral on YouTube about shin splints and I had shin splints from running a marathon. It was 2014. I actually, cause I know when I ran the marathon and I figured out like how to make my shin splints better. And I started, people started asking me like, where did you, you know, I had like a, a elastic strap and some ice packs and like these different pieces of the kit.
Dustin: And I ended up making the shin splints kit and I learned wholesale cause I started calling like the manufacturers and be like, Hey, I want to buy like boxes of your ice packs and they would give me a great price. And I was able to like basically sell it as a package for cheaper than people could buy the individual components on Amazon.
Dustin: We got tired of packing boxes and, and, and gave that up at some [00:10:00] point, but I love it. I just love the scrappiness and the, if it makes dollars, it makes sense. That's an awesome motto. So, so I think we get a sense for. The entrepreneurial spirit that maybe you didn't know was there. You're planning to do the corporate job and you did it for a while, but the whole time you're like hustling and side hustling.
Dustin: And we're going to talk at the very end of the podcast, sort of about your view on personal finances and. Like how to feel bigger goals with these, smaller wins. But I think this kind of sets it up. Well, it was like the early days of Corey's entrepreneurial journey and the things you would do to make this work.
Dustin: So yeah, let's get back to your story though. So you wholesale B2B, you're really getting traction enough to quit your job, move back in, move back home, come back down to North Carolina. I know you've done a lot since then. So yeah, go ahead.
Corey: not to cut you off, but I think a key, a key point there that, that you missed. So you said like you were getting traction and you quit your job. That's the thing. I didn't have any traction. Bye. people think, you know, it's like I was [00:11:00] doing wholesale for about six months before I quit my job and people think like, oh, you must be doing great, right?
Corey: You quit your job with IBM. You go move home to do this thing full time. And it's like, in reality, I think I was making a few 100 a month in profit, but I just didn't have proper bookkeeping in place. I just didn't know my numbers. I just didn't know what I didn't know. The only thing I knew is that I don't like corporate America, but I like this Amazon thing.
Corey: So I'm just going to give it a try. And my mindset the whole time is like, well, I'm You know, if this completely blows up and it goes south, then I have to get another job again. If I'm somebody interviewing me and I see this kid who took two, you know, a year, two years, however long off to go try this thing and it didn't work, then, okay, that's somebody I probably want to hire, right?
Corey: Somebody who like took initiative, who, who wants to get it done. And another. Point that I wanted to make is, you know, I was talked about being in corporate America, working for a huge company, IBM, like 400, 450, 000 employees, something like that. But there was one point in particular that. [00:12:00] Was the turning point for me where I was like, I've got to get out of this, not just IBM as a company, but just the corporate world in general.
Corey: And it was, we were at a, like a happy hour event in Chicago and my team was based all throughout the Midwest. So a lot of them have flown in for it. Some like my manager is based in Minneapolis, got guys in Ohio, whatever. So everybody's here for this happy hour. And also at this happy hours, this guy named john.
Corey: And so john is. My second line manager. So he's my manager's manager. But John is based out of somewhere in Minnesota, right? I knew he had to fly in for this event. And it was just like a regular Thursday happy hour. So I'm like, why is this guy here? So I'm asking one of my team members. I'm like, like, why is John?
Corey: Why is John here? Like, why did he fly an hour and a half here for like a happy hour? It's just we're not even with clients. We're just hanging out. And he he made a comment. I swear is burned into my brain. He's like Corey. He's like, you probably see John more than his own kids do. And I was like, what? I
was like, and, and, you know, he's probably like [00:13:00] 42, maybe he's like early forties.
Corey: And I know he has kids. He's got like two or three young kids. And, and I just remember being like, yeah, he's at like, if I see him so often, like, there's no way his kids are seeing him that often. So I remember at that point, I'm like, all right, I can't do this longterm. Like, I've got to figure out a way. To make this not my future was kind of my, my, decision in that moment.
Dustin: I love that. I'm glad you glad you interjected that it wasn't like you had found success, but you're willing to take this risk. Try something realizing that you can always go back and do the corporate life. And you weren't just motivated by making a few bucks on Barbie dolls. You were you saw a future that you were rejecting and saying, like, John is very successful in this world.
Dustin: And I don't want to be like John. So I got to go find the Corey path to success. Right? I like that.
Corey: Yeah. Well said exactly.
Dustin: cool. So, so pick us up from there. So I know you, you still have a wholesale, Amazon business and then you now teach other people how to do this, [00:14:00] you know, at a more scalable way and all the lessons you've learned, I guess, in the last six years.
Dustin: So tell us a little bit about that journey from. I guess 2019 to 2025, like sort of what was the, the quick version, but what was the evolution of what you did with your own business and at what point you decided I could actually be teaching people this and impacting a lot more people in a positive way with what I've learned.
Corey: So I'd say the summary of that, that, you know, starting wholesale and beginning at 2019 right now, we're beginning at 2025, some six years into this business model. And about, I guess, may will be eight years of selling on Amazon. And I would just categorize. The whole like selling on Amazon journey, really the whole past eight years to be just one big.
Corey: Learning lesson, MBA course and business, right? Like I, if I look at where I was even two or three years ago, compared to today, it's, it's just, you know, the amount of the amount you learn, not just about business, but about
yourself and about how to manage people and manage money and cashflow and taxes and just all these, you know, all these [00:15:00] different moving pieces.
Corey: I mean, it was just one huge learning experience. And as far as the Amazon business itself is concerned, so. Started off going directly to manufacturers looking to partner with brands, look to add value to them in order in return for being an authorized reseller of their products on Amazon. And we still do quite a bit of that.
Corey: But now we will buy directly from large distributors as well. So a lot of times manufacturers will kind of push you off to their distributors. So yeah. We've really been able to form some good relationships with suppliers over the last six years of doing wholesale specifically to where nowadays the Amazon business doesn't really take a ton of my time.
Corey: I've got a team in place that manages that. We've got really strong relationships in place, multi year long relationships so that I can spend a lot of my time. Kind of like you said, teaching other people about the business, creating content, running our community, right. Which I'm sure we'll get into, but yeah, it's really, it taught me the foundations of business.[00:16:00]
Corey: And then now is kind of my support system to go off and do other things that I want to do in business and in the space as well.
Dustin: That's awesome. Yeah, I want to talk from this point forward, mostly about the current business and the wholesale network and what you do there, but maybe bridge that gap a little bit for people who maybe are. Either specifically considering, you know, or trying to optimize a wholesale business with Amazon, but in a more general sense, a wholesale business and building a team and having something that really runs without you, because that's kind of the big takeaway.
Dustin: You built that up to the point where it was profitable. You're able to hire people. Develop relationships with the distributors, suppliers, manufacturers to where it became its own standalone business, which freed you up to go try new things, be a creator and do this new business model. So before we leave the wholesale behind any sort of like key learnings or takeaways, you know, and doing that for so long about.
Dustin: Like an example question that comes to mind, did [00:17:00] you niche down and you're like, I'm only doing wholesale in one specific industry so that you could become a specialist in that? And did that then, you know, allow steps 2, to follow. So like, tell me some of the lessons learned from the wholesale business.
Dustin: Then we'll talk more about the coaching teaching business that you do now.
Corey: Yeah. So lessons learned on that front would be in terms of niching down. I, mostly what I teach is to niche down to a degree. Now I feel like When you start to niche down in our world of Amazon wholesale, meaning, Hey, I'm only, I'm really going to try to only sell tools. For example, well, you find you'll get into the tools niche and then you'll find some really good adjacent opportunities and say, automotive or industrial and scientific, which is another big category on Amazon.
Corey: And what I tell people is Niche down really do focus on tools. But if you come across a good opportunity as a result of you niching down, don't turn it down, right? Because it's, it's all widgets at the end of the day, we're just buying and selling products. So, but what I think people find and what [00:18:00] I found is that by simply committing to niching down, you just, you'll find more adjacent opportunities as well.
Corey: And then I guess another big takeaway would be, because this was really my first. Legitimate serious business that I dedicated, you know, all my time and effort to for many, many years. I had to I didn't have any much of the business knowledge or the background, so I had to do everything myself at first, had to wear every hat, and then I was only able to delegate once I really mastered that task.
Corey: And I used to. This is what I used to teach people. I'm like, Oh, you can't really hand something off until you yourself have mastered it. Right? But now that I feel like I have more just general business experience, like if I were to step into a brand new business today, I'm I don't think it would be wise of me to do to learn every aspect of that business before delegating it.
Corey: Right? Like, I think I have enough general knowledge now where I could step into a brand new business. And let's say it's like an HR task, right? That maybe I have no experience doing myself. I'm not going to go learn that and then [00:19:00] delegate it. I'm just going to delegate it from day one. I'm going to like, I think I know how to find people who's better at that stuff than I am now.
Corey: But I had to learn that from the Amazon business. You see what I mean? So a lot of it is just like skills acquisition and then now knowing where those skills translate and when they translate because some, and sometimes they don't, you know,
Dustin: Yeah. And I hear some. Really rich business lessons in there and some parallels, even to your experience, like in our accelerator program, as an example, like oftentimes people come in and, you know, they're say they have a coaching offer and they know there's a general, I use the analogy of a dartboard.
Dustin: They have like a dartboard that they work on. Like, I work with, you know, executives or whatever. Right. And I'm always like, well. To make this work a lot faster and to get you clarity and get your message dial in, I'm going
to kind of force you to pick the bullseye, right? And realize we're not only ever going to be in the bullseye, but like we need to start with the bullseye, get much more specific.
Dustin: And then kind of like you said, pick an industry or [00:20:00] pick a tool and then go out to an industry and maybe an adjacent industry. Like you actually get more freedom to do more once you start really specific. And so I think that's a really healthy way for people to think through. Their own offers and their own target market selection is like pick the bullseye and then have the
freedom to go one rung out two rungs out even choose a whole different dartboard at some point, you know, like that's okay, but it's really hard to like, look at all the dartboards and be like, I might throw a dart and it might hit some of these, but I don't really know which one that focused effort of picking the bullseye first and then giving yourself the freedom and autonomy to expand from there.
Dustin: I think is really smart. So I love that that that's sort of the path that you found yourself through, even though you didn't know that to start. And I certainly didn't know that to start. But now I'm in a position where I can advise people that way. Awesome. So I
Corey: And one, one thing I want to just. Quickly elaborate on there. So, and that's one thing that I feel like your accelerator program did a really good job of for my, for our community business, right? Which I know we'll get into [00:21:00] next because again, on the Amazon side, it's pretty easy to niche down because it's like, okay, you choose a category and you just really focus on that category.
Corey: But what I struggled with before the accelerator was really getting clear on our I get, you know, some people call it ICP. Some people call it, you know, whatever you're, you're basically your target customer. And before the accelerator, I had an idea. I'm like, well, we're targeting existing Amazon sellers, but we don't really care where they come from.
Corey: As long as they're already selling on Amazon, then they're a fit for our community. Right. But when we're going through the exercises in the accelerator and you're like, well, can you get even more granular? Not only. What are their demographics? Right? A. K. Amazon seller. But what are there? What keeps them up at night?
Corey: What are they struggling with? What are their bottlenecks? And so that really kind of taught me to look at at least the community business at multiple levels deeper when it comes to our the type of person we're looking to serve. And now I know with complete clarity, it's like, all right, well, we're no longer just targeting Amazon sellers were [00:22:00] targeting me.
Corey: Amazon sellers who have been on the platform for at least six months, who are doing at least 10 K a month in revenue with arbitrage. And they're looking to add wholesale to their business, right? Like that's, it's just so much more granular, but it, it doesn't really degrade our like Tam, right? There's still tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people out there who fit that criteria, but because we're more targeted and because.
Corey: All of our most successful members fit that mold. It's an easier sell.
Dustin: I love that. Yeah. It's, I appreciate you bringing that up. And so ICP, ideal client profile, TAM, total addressable market for those that, aren't, aren't using the acronyms. Yeah. And I think what's cool about that too, and you, and you hit on it is maybe that total addressable market seems a little too tight.
Dustin: It's like, well, am I going to be able to find enough of those people? Well, keep in mind, again, you can expand that out whenever you want and every day there's new people. I don't know. And they're gonna maybe thousands or at least hundreds, if not thousands of people moving into your total addressable [00:23:00] market because those criteria, the criteria can be set.
Dustin: But you know, the population that starts to meet that criteria changes over time. And so you always have kind of fresh blood in a sense, coming into your total addressable market, even if you're really niche in who you're serving, in the way that you just described it. And I hope what people here to is, yeah.
Dustin: As Corey started to talk with so much clarity about who this is for, you immediately know it's for me. It's not for me. If there's anyone in your life, he immediately becomes preferable because of specificity by which he said, I'm looking for this person with maybe this pain point, or they're at this stage and they're trying to get to this next stage.
Dustin: Like it's, it's so powerful, that clarity. So I love. I love the kind of live demonstration of that. So tell us more about the business today. So like, we've got a great background. I think I understand a lot more about what makes Corey tick and sort of your values. And, and, and we're going to talk more about finances, which I think will even, you know, bring us more clarity on.
Dustin: On how and why you do what you do, but [00:24:00] tell us about the wholesale network. So the, the current evolution, what you're doing today, who you work with, the offer stack, people always love to hear sort of behind the scenes. What's what are other people doing? So I'd love to hear you express a snapshot of today's business.
Corey: Yeah. I'd love to share that with you. So first and foremost, the wholesale network, it is our community of Amazon sellers who are actively participating in the wholesale business model, right? So like I mentioned earlier, there's people that are doing arbitrage, which is where you're buying from retailers and selling on Amazon.
Corey: There's people who are doing private label, which is when you're creating your own brand from scratch and launching it on Amazon. And then there's people doing wholesale, right? Which is. Our community, we're buying in bulk from brands, from distributors and selling on Amazon. And so as far as how this community came to be, so about five years into my Amazon journey, I finally wised up and realized, Hey, I should probably meet some other people in the space, right?
Corey: At the time I'd been in the business for five years and I could count. On one hand, there were two people I [00:25:00] knew that were also Amazon sellers. One of them who's now a good buddy of mine and is also a mastermind member of mine. I'm so close with the other one. I, you know, I couldn't even tell you who they were at this point.
Corey: So I ended up joining this, this paid community of Amazon sellers as a high level community. You had to be doing seven figures a year in revenue to be a part of it. And there was like six or 700 people. So I joined this community and it was incredible. Everybody was like, I was by far the dumbest person in the room.
Corey: Right. And I don't consider myself a dumb person. So that just shows the kind of the quality of people that, you know, you pay for access, but now you've got access to all these people who are so much farther ahead than you.
And I, I was a member of that group for two years. And I remember thinking, I'm like this.
Corey: Group is fantastic. Like I, but the only issue is that they were 90, 95 percent of these people were private label sellers, right? So same, you know, same business they sell on Amazon, but it's just a different model. And you
know, there's just so much nuance and so much, so many things I deal with as a [00:26:00] wholesale seller that they don't deal with as a private label seller and vice versa.
Corey: So it's just a bit harder for me to relate. So what I said to myself, I'm like, you know what? I'm I want to copy that. I want to start that community. Copy it. Everything they're doing. We're copying it But for wholesale sellers,
right and that's kind of exactly what we did. So in october of 2023 I was october 23.
Corey: Yeah, or no. Yeah october 2023. I'm getting my years confused, but So I, there was 25 people I knew, or I knew more than that, but I was like, all right, I'm going to make a list of 25 people who I know are selling at least a million dollars a year on Amazon. So that same high level requirement. And I'm just going to DM them and ask them if they want to participate in a paid mastermind that I'm putting together.
Corey: Right. And my pitch was basically, Hey guys, there's nothing like this out there that I'm aware of vetted everybody that I'm inviting here. If you want to do it, it's 250 bucks a month, and I promise you, if it goes well, I will raise the price over time, but not on you. And if it doesn't go [00:27:00] well, then, you know, we, you made a bunch of friends and it is what it is, right?
Corey: And that was my pitch. So I sent that to 25 people. I think I sent like individual voice messages to 25 people. And I was shocked that of those 25, I think about 22 people. Said, yep, I'm in like paid we're, we're on the first call. So right away I'm like, Oh, there's, there's a big need here. Like people are willing to be a part of this.
Corey: And I remember when I priced it, I was like two 50 a month. Like, I don't know. That seems kind of a lot. I originally I was going to do like 100 or 150, but I'm like, you know, these guys, a lot of our software subscriptions in the Amazon space are more than that, right? So if we can provide more value than a software tool, I think people will see the ROI.
Corey: And so, you know, that was October of 23, we're in February of 25 and of those initial 22, I think we have at least 17 or 18 of those that are active and I mean, a few of the ones that have fallen off of that original group. Like they've
just no longer in the business, right? They quit the business. So, [00:28:00] I mean, I think retention for that long is really solid.
Corey: And ever since then, you know, we've raised the price significantly. So today. If somebody were to join today, it's 9700 a year. So those people that they joined initially are in at a very good price and have stuck around, you know, because of the value now that, so that's our mastermind community, right?
Corey: And the wholesale network is essentially split into two tiers. So that's our mastermind community. And then we have what we call our network community, which is people who are selling wholesale on Amazon and they want to get to that mastermind level, right? They're not quite yet at seven figures per year.
Corey: So the idea is to get them into the network, which is essentially a coaching program, a group coaching program, and, you know, get them to help, help them grow their business and then ascend them into the mastermind. So once I hit that seven figures in revenue, then they upgrade to the mastermind, then they can participate in those mastermind only calls and those mastermind only events, and, also get access to our buying opportunities.
Corey: So that's. One of the big value adds that we offer [00:29:00] to the mastermind is we have a full time staff dedicated to working with and negotiating with large suppliers to bring vetted deals to our community to offer to our members. So they not only get an ROI on the network and the relationships and the events and all that good stuff, but they get like a cold, hard quantifiable ROI on, Hey, I joined this mastermind.
Corey: I bought 100 grand worth of product and I've made 30 grand. You know, in profit. So it's very easy for me to justify a 10 K a year price tag. You see. I
Dustin: Yeah, no, that's I, I'm making notes and I'm running out of room because there's so much there. Like, I just wanted on the surface for Corey to be like, here's our business model. And there's like so many principles or
Corey: tend, I tend to, to just drag on. So I
Dustin: it's perfect actually, because there's so many. What I was going to say is there's so many underlying lessons, like, and a few I wrote down is like, do master teach.
Dustin: So you didn't start by saying, Hey, some other people have masterminds. I should just go have a [00:30:00] mastermind. You first. Did the wholesale business, mastered that, got it working on its own. And then you, had real world market value to add to other people. And you had something to point out and be like, I did it.
Dustin: I got a seven figure wholesale business. I can now help you with it. And I think a lot of people get that backwards because it's pretty attractive and they see all these influencers and people online are like, Hey, I'm doing, I'm doing a, I have a mastermind. It's. 25 K or whatever. And they're like, I just want to do that.
Dustin: And it's like, cool,
Corey: that, right?
Dustin: to have like real value to add. And most of the time that value comes from actually doing the work yourself and building something and then build, have, have that to point to. So because I do master teach was a principle. The other thing I really loved that you said is you use the word buying access.
Dustin: And so you bought access. You, you invested in yourself and said, I'm going to join this other person's mastermind or community that was mostly private label, but you saw enough value in that through the relationship building. And most importantly, I think in your case, you invested in a model. So basically you got in there, you got to see how it works, [00:31:00] how they structured it.
Dustin: And then you, you said the word copy. I wrote model, but you know, you emulated the success and you're like, I could totally do this for my market. And I think that's a really smart play. And then the other thing I think that was, well, two other things, how you started that I think is like super should be really motivational for people.
Dustin: You didn't say, Hey, ether, I'm like putting this like new offer out and hopefully some people show up and the front door, you personally reached out through voice notes to 25 individual people that was on a piece of paper and
invited them. And I think so many people miss that when they're launching, especially a group coaching program or a mastermind.
Dustin: They think, Hey, I got some followers on LinkedIn. I'm going to post about it on LinkedIn. And all these people are going to like show up with, asking me for my payment link, unfortunately, it doesn't work that way most of the time when you're starting something, you got to be very intentional and do that direct outreach, you know, and we still do a lot of that.
Dustin: And, I think that that's, that's an amazing lesson and I'm happy to jam on any of these. And then the last one I wrote down was, sort of the two [00:32:00] tiered approach that you've developed with the mastermind. And so you started with a single. ideal client profile. Hey, you're seven figures. I'm seven figures.
Dustin: You're one of the 25 come in here and that's where you started. And I think that's really smart to start with sort of the flagship version. And then you saw, you know what? There's a lot of people we could help qualify themselves
into our flagship. Offer. And so how can we help them? And so you created the network tier, where they can come in and get coached and then, you know, sort of a graduation present.
Dustin: Hey, you hit seven figures. Congratulations. Now you can pay me 9, 700 a year and be in our top tier mastermind. And even, and even in that, I think it's so smart. It's the network and the camaraderie and all this stuff. You come that comes from being in a mastermind. And, something I love that you're doing so well is you added a, a unique value.
Dustin: This is kind of, it's like your moat. This is like the unique value that only you can provide. You've got a buyer's network or a deal flow built into this that they get access to, which is not [00:33:00] only attractive to get them to sign up, but it makes them stick around because you, like you said. It doesn't have to be Corey giving them a 30, 000 deal, but they're in a network that facilitates deal flow.
Dustin: And so it's really easy for someone to stick around because they can justify the ROI over and over again. And they know, as soon as they say, I'm out of this, they, they lose that flow. So yeah, there's so much there, but, those are the kind of the highlights is anything I missed or anything in there that you want to jam on a little bit more that you think is particularly insightful.
Corey: So your summary spot on a couple things to touch on, I think a little deeper for the audience. So first talking about doing those initial, the 25 voice messages to get the first 22 people in the mastermind. So keep in mind, these weren't just, I didn't just go down the followers list and just, you know, kind of spam out voice messages.
Corey: I looked through my DMS and I'm like, Hey, who, Who has been asking really thoughtful questions over, you know, not just recently, but like weeks and months, because at this point, I think I'd been putting out content for about 10 months at [00:34:00] that point. So, you know, by then it's like, all right, there's people that I know I've helped in the DMS or that I know have asked good questions and that, you know, I think they're qualified because of the quality of their questions.
Corey: So I'm going to just, you know, qualify, just reach out to them anyways and see. So, you know, it's the people that. I mean, it makes sense, but it's that reciprocity. It's like, well, Hey, I've answered a lot of your high quality questions for free in the DMS over the year. How about you join this group with me where not only you get access to me, but all these other people who quite frankly, a lot of them are better at this business than I am and smarter.
Corey: So you get access to them too. And when you kind of frame it that way, it was, it was a relatively easy pitch, right? They're like, okay, well, sure. Right. You know, 250, but I'm like, listen, if you don't like it after a month, you can cancel, right? Let's. You know, so it was, it was a pretty low risk proposition.
Corey: And then, so on the network group, right? So we started with the mastermind and ran that, from I think October until about, and it's still active, but in terms of timelines, so October 23. And then if you fast forward to about March [00:35:00] of 24, there's this big Amazon seller events that I've spoken at the last two years.
Corey: I'm speaking at it again here in may. It's called Miami seller conference, and it's down to Miami. The main demographic of people that show up is our ICP. It's these arbitrage sellers who, you know, a lot of them are young guys, right. And they're late teenagers or twenties live in Miami or kind of live on the East coast.
Corey: And you know, they're interested in this wholesale business model. They're interested in this more scalable business model. And I remember we, so we get down to Miami, we've got a couple of days before the conference and
we're like, I'm sitting down with the two other guys, Kaj and Jonah, who are now kind of my right hand hand men in the community.
Corey: There are the two other coaches in the community. I'm like, guys, you're each running coaching programs. I'm running this mastermind. Like let's just work together. Otherwise. You know, none of us are going to make very much money this weekend, but if, if we can maybe kind of collaborate on an offer, like let's put something together right now and at the [00:36:00] show, as we talk to people, you know, we can kind of float it by him and see if we can sign some people here at the event.
Corey: And we kind of came to an agreement right then and there a couple of days before the event. They agreed to come on as essentially coaches within our community. And we put the offer together on the back of a napkin pretty much right before the event. And we didn't really pitch it that hard. But, you know, at the end of my presentation, I was like, Hey, if you're looking to get into wholesale, if you're doing arbitrage, you want to get into wholesale, just come find me in the hall and we can chat.
Corey: And I don't, I think we might have closed maybe like 1 person at the actual event itself. We had a ton of guys that, you know, we got phone numbers. We're exchanging dms and kind of over the next half And really those first two or three months, we had just a ton of interest. And we started to get a ton of people interested in, in to that community and paid and, you know, I've raised the price over time and added quite a bit to it over time, but that's kind of how that started very organically as well.
Dustin: I love that. That's cool. [00:37:00] Yeah, I mean, I could we could we could talk a long time about about this and all the parallels I've seen in other people's businesses. But I hope people really that there's some really, really, really vital juicy lessons there for. Kind of the evolution of the business model, how to test and start new offers, I think kind of a master class and retention, giving people a founders rate and then locking that in and honoring that.
Dustin: That's something I've always done. And every business I've had, that's got any sort of monthly or annual, fee or subscription really honor and. Love on the people that trust you first and lock them in and let them always be grandfathered in. They're going to stick around a long time. They're going to be really loyal and they're probably going to typically be your top sort of recruiters and affiliates for the next group that they, that, that they bring in.
Dustin: I love, I love all that. So, all right, I think we had a really good feel for. The current business structure, I always like to talk a little bit, a little future casting. So, you know, Hey, maybe the next year, maybe the next three years, where do you see the business going? What kind of moves are you making right now to [00:38:00] sort of invest in that future?
Dustin: And then we'll, we'll get into more of a, what's working now for Corey and let you teach us some things before we close out today.
Corey: Yeah. So I'd say looking at the future, right? So we're, it's today, it's February 18th, 2025. And we, so side note, and we can go on a whole tangent about this, but we'll, we'll try not to, for the community business, we've implemented EOS, right? Entrepreneurial operating system. So that has been a huge, huge learning experience for me and also very helpful in just structuring.
Corey: Management and structuring the team and just moving forward and making progress. But you know, one of the things we sat down to discuss at the beginning of the year, when we're going through the EOS process is our, our one year goal. And I was like, guys, we want to be at seven figures and ARR, annual recurring revenue by the end of this year.
Corey: There's really no reason we can't get there right now for context. We're I think exactly a third of the way there. And so we've got another, you know, 10 months to get there. And I think we [00:39:00] have the team in place. I think we have the infrastructure in place. Really, it's just a matter of marketing and doing smart partnerships.
Corey: You know, a lot of what we learned, like, honestly, why I went through your accelerator is because me wanting to get this community to seven figures in ARR. And I realized that the bigger my audience becomes and really. The more I can grow my personal brand, it spills over directly into the community. So that's kind of the strategy is okay.
Corey: If the goal is seven figures in ARR. Really? The input is how many podcasts do we get Corey on? Like, that's kind of what it comes to. That's kind of like our main KPI there. And as far as just investments we've made and, and team structure, we've got, I think, 14 total employees in the community now, which sounds like, you know, quite a bit of overhead for, you know, only doing about 330 K and ARR, but a lot of those people are overseas.
Corey: Some of them are part time, but we've got a really, really fantastic operator. Kate, she's pretty much running the show. I am able to effectively be
in that visionary [00:40:00] seat for people who are familiar with the EOS process and we've got our coaches, we've got, I mentioned the buying opportunities we have within the mastermind.
Corey: So we have a whole, I think at this point, 5 people solely dedicated to that value out of the mastermind. So Joe is our director of group procurement all day long. He's wheeling and dealing with distributors and putting deals together and finding products for us to buy. And then we've got a couple of folks under him who are then analyzing those deals and then putting them in front of the of the mastermind and see, you know, taking bids and kind of coordinating those deals.
Corey: So we've invested a ton into just team. We've got a lot of people right now and, you know, decent revenue, but I had this conversation today with our leadership team. I'm like, guys, but the team we have in place right now. We can get to, I think we can get to seven figures in ARR with no more hires. Like we basically front loaded all the hiring, had to get all the infrastructure, all the people in the right seats.
Corey: And we've done that. Like [00:41:00] our people are. Fantastic. And now it's just, it's marketing. That's it. So, so that's kind of our plan for this year.
Dustin: That's awesome. Yeah. I like the, of course I like selfishly the KPI, the more a podcast
Corey: Yeah,
Dustin: opportunities, Corey gets the more, you know, cause you're growing, you are, you're growing your personal brand, you're growing, obviously deal flow and relationship building. And, but you also mentioned extensions of that.
Dustin: So we talk a lot about podcast guesting and that's like a great vehicle. It's very, repeatable and consistent and, And in its own right, if you only do that, it does a lot of awesome things for your business. But there's more advanced forms of what I would call the same thing, like speaking on stages, like going to other people's masterminds and being a featured expert.
Dustin: A lot of the things that you've talked about doing, you know, I know you guys do like trainings and workshops. A lot of people would look at that and say, those are all very different. Well, they're really not there. And that's part of what we talked about in the accelerator. We start with podcast guesting
cause it's very approachable and people can get dialed in on their message.
Dustin: They can get some quick wins and we want you to keep [00:42:00] doing that. But then we want you to expand off of just that platform onto these other more advanced partnerships, which certainly includes speaking in front of, your, your target market in Miami and, and, all the other cool things that you talked about.
Dustin: So. That's awesome. So I'm really excited, for you all. And, I love how intentionally you've been with building the team and setting the infrastructure in place to my word of the year this year is inevitable. And I kind of feel like that's
really the approach you've taken with this EOS setup is, you know, front loading the investment and getting infrastructure there so that if you do your part, which is.
Dustin: Pouring the marketing efforts in and the way that you know now how to do like the success, the seven figure run rate sort of becomes an inevitable outcome because you've done the work up front. Do you think that's a fair summary? Yes.
Corey: right? A lot of the last six months has just been that boring foundation work, right? Getting. Even things like, you know, for the first longest time, we're just paying everybody via PayPal [00:43:00] each month, right? Like, so it's like, all right, now we actually have employment contracts in place and we have, we set up payroll.
Corey: Everybody's 1099 and it's just running it like a business, right? Cause I feel like a lot, especially a lot of. People in the info space and like the group coaching space. It's like, all right, you know, how much can I do personally to take home as much profit as possible at the highest margin? But I'm me personally, I'm like, well, I'd rather I'm okay with like a 40 percent margin if we can actually scale this thing.
Corey: And I'm not the one leading every coaching call. That's kind of what it comes down to.
Dustin: Yes, I love that. I love that. Cool. Well, I do want to sort of have our moment here of what's working now. Corey and I talked a little bit before. Obviously, we could he could riff on any of these individual things that I keep bringing up. But he had. A really interesting idea. And he's like, you know, as systematized as the businesses are, and how he's built one team and sort of let that run.
Dustin: And I was building this mastermind oriented team and letting that, grow, on the personal side, you know, at some point this money actually [00:44:00] comes home and then it's a whole different ball game on what you actually do with your income. To set yourself up for longer term financial success. And so we didn't talk about any of the specifics.
Dustin: But I trust Corey to basically like take the mic and teach us your kind of philosophy and how you set up your financial system, your personal financial system, to maximize your success in that way.
Corey: Yeah. So, and it starts on the business side first. So that kind of sets the foundation. So, and again, using my situation for context, I've got three different businesses. I've got the Amazon wholesale business, We've got the community business and then I've got really just like my personal brand, right, which is courses, sponsorships, that type of thing.
Corey: So that's three separate businesses, three separate P and L. So the way that I run my finances within my businesses, which then obviously drips down to me personally, is based on the book Profit First. Have you read that book by Mike Michalowicz?
Dustin: I, we didn't, you didn't use that term. And I'm like, this sounds like a profit first guy. And I love Mike Michalowicz. I got to get him on this podcast, but I love profit first.
Corey: yeah. So [00:45:00] profit first for those in the audience, if you're not familiar with the system, go check out the book. It's a super simple read. It's very basic, but it's very powerful. So essentially what it comes down to is each dollar you make goes into a different quote unquote bucket. And those buckets might be something, you know, things like taxes or profit or operating expenses or inventory.
Corey: So to kind of summarize it each, each month I get my P and L's for my three different businesses. And then within each business. I then go and leave. I want to make sure there's at least three months of operating expenses in the checking account. So that's kind of the bit, the baseline, right? So let's say there's three months of OPEX in the checking account.
Corey: Anything over that amount, I'll take. Basically 30 percent of last month's profit, according to the P and L and put that into a separate account. It's the tax account. So that separate account, it's just a money market account. That
cash sits there all year. It never gets touched. It's completely off limit, and that is what's used to pay taxes.
Corey: So that way [00:46:00] I'm not scrambling come tax time to, you know, pull a bunch of cash out of nowhere to pay my tax bill. So Like I said, you get the P and L, whatever the profit is, take 30%, put that into the tax account. And then whatever is left over past three months of OPEX goes into profit, right? Just a separate profit account.
Corey: So, you know, if I've got six grand over six grand in excess of three months operating expenses, well then that month I get to take that six grand and put it into the profit account. And then I do that. That's a setup for each business. So you've got that for three businesses. And then each quarter, what I like to do is I like to go in and see, okay, well, how much do I have in my profit account for each business, right?
Corey: On the Amazon business, it might be X, the personal brand it's Y and in the community at Z. And I can choose to either let that keep building, which don't really know why I would. Usually what I do is I just, you know, literally transfer all that money in the profit account into my personal account. So now each quarter I've got this big chunk of [00:47:00] cash.
Corey: And then with that big chunk of cash, my personal take of the profit, I take. 10 percent and I put it aside to donate, I take 10 percent and I put it into what I call my personal fund, which is literally just a checking account and my personal name that I can spend on whatever I want. Because I don't know about you, Dustin.
Corey: I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs are like this, like obviously we're doing this to make money and I love making money. Then it's like I can't bring myself to spend like 100 on something I want. So
Dustin: I love that. We call it like our fun account. You know, my wife, my wife and I each have like our fun money or whatever, where it's just there and you can let it build up and to go on a guy's trip or a girl's trip, or you can go buy a nice watch or whatever you want to do with it. But it is a no strings attached fun account.
Dustin: I love that you set aside giving and fun. I think that's really healthy. And I know you're gonna give it the rest of the breakdown.
Corey: Yeah. And it's I mean, it's it's 10 percent giving. It's 10 percent fun. And then it's 80 percent investment, right? So keep keep in mind that my in terms of my personal [00:48:00] expenses. All of that's covered by my W two salary that
I pay myself out of my Amazon business. So this, you know, this profit chunk each quarter, that's like net net to me in my pocket because my salary has been paid.
Corey: My expenses have been paid. All that's taken care of. So you know, 10 percent giving 10 percent fun, 80 percent donation or sorry, 80 percent investment. And right now, so I actually just bought a house or a townhouse a minute right now, October of this past year. I didn't get a great interest rate because I'm self employed as I'm sure a lot of people in the audience can
Dustin: Yeah. That's another topic for another podcast. The, the unfairness of that, but yeah,
Corey: and so that that 80 percent you know that I would use for investment each quarter. I literally take all 80 percent and just put it in my mortgage because my goal is to like, I'm I said, I want to have this house paid off by the summer. It'll be kind of a stretch. I think I'll get it done this year. So right now that 80 percent goes into the mortgage, just straight, you know, principal reduction.
Corey: And then once that's paid off, then that 80 percent will get, [00:49:00] I haven't decided on the percentages yet, but you know, a percent of that 80 percent will go into stocks. A percent will go into crypto and a percent will go into. A separate account where it'll sit and wait for any real estate investments, right?
Corey: Kind of let that build up for any, you know, opportune real estate investments there. But those are kind of like the three investment buckets that I like to plan like stocks, crypto real estate.
Dustin: love that. That's really cool. Yeah. And I think just to recap that in very basic terms, the business is paying you a salary. I don't want people to miss that, right? Like you have a W2 salary from your business that covers your business, your personal expenses, you know, And then there's a tax account.
Dustin: And then all that money outside the tax account gets dispersed to Corey on a quarterly basis. And then he's doing giving fun and investing right now in the season. His investing is paying off his mortgage, but I think it's fantastic. It's
really cool. And I knew crypto was going to come up in this because you said Miami and a 20 year old guys.
Dustin: I'm like, he's got to have some kind of crypto presence. So, I'm joking, but, but yeah, whatever that [00:50:00] investment looks like for someone in this season of life. The point is, and that's the profit first mentality is like, you're the entrepreneur, you're taking the risk, you should be capturing that profit and not just sort of letting it float into the ether and end up in different business, things that you would call like reinvesting into business, like do that part intentionally, but then what is actual profits should come home and then you should have a very intentional system for how you're leveraging that to meet your personal goals.
Dustin: You know, Corey's a young single guy. He's got his townhouse for me. That might be, College savings, or that might be retirement. Cause I'm an old dude, right? For him, he can, you can play with crypto cause he's, he's, he's young and, and, is able to do some, some more fun, risky things maybe than, than I can, but the principle
Corey: point I want to make too, right? So people might be hearing this and like, well, you know, that's easy for him to say because he's got these three businesses and you know, you can have a system like that. But like, keep in mind that back in even 2020. So really exactly five years ago, right? I still taking profit out of the business, but [00:51:00] instead of, you know, quarterly chunks of cash from each of these three companies, it was.
Corey: 550 a month to pay my rent and a duplex that got torn down that year. Like it was literally just like, you know, all right, first goal is I just want to make my rent. Right. Second goal is, you know, then maybe I want to put away 200 a month. Third goal is, you know, maybe I want to start that second company and build out that second income stream.
Corey: So it's definitely a process happens over time. So I, but I think what you said is key. It's like, even if you're brand new to entrepreneurship, if you're making money or any, or pro or even income, it doesn't even necessarily have to be profitable. It takes something off the top. Like I tell people, I tell Amazon sellers, cause we get paid every two weeks by Amazon.
Corey: And a lot of times it can be a pretty large chunk because it's cogs and everything baked in. And I tell guys, I'm like, take 1 percent of that disbursement every two weeks from Amazon and just put it aside. And, you know, when you're dealing with sometimes pretty big numbers, 1%. Over a
couple of weeks can be a lot of money and you know, you're really not going to miss [00:52:00] it, at least in my business, right?
Corey: Like we're going to buy our inventory. We're going to buy, we're going to pay our expenses. That money probably would have just like set there anyway. So you might as well take it off the top.
Dustin: Yeah. And you know, the principles obviously pay yourself first, but I think many of us have had a, a. Corporate background or W2 background, and this sort of incentivized by the 401k or, you know, a thrift savings plan. If you're in the federal, my son's in the military and it's sort of baked into that system.
Dustin: But as an entrepreneur, it's not. And I think that's why this is so important is you get on the plus side so much independence. And on the other side, the tax man comes once a year and you don't want to be surprised by that. And. Again, like I said, you're, you're the entrepreneur, you should really be paying yourself first.
Dustin: And I think having the system in place is like so smart. Even if it's a dollar that goes in a bucket, the fact is it's still a percentage. And then as that dollar becomes two, it becomes four and becomes, becomes eight. Like it just, it's becomes a system and another, a second nature. [00:53:00] So this is a very.
Dustin: Maybe granular question and it's the last thing I'll ask before we talk about how people can, can, can get, get, go deeper with you, Corey. But when you're thinking about an investment of say, business investment, like my accelerator or strategic coach, I know something that you just joined with Dan Sullivan.
Dustin: Is that new for you? Do you view that typically as like a personal investment or is that a business expense that comes out before this profit equation hits? Because I bet that that's a question that our audience would have to is like, what about. When I want to like further my own education or my networking and I want, I want to be in someone else's mastermind.
Dustin: Like, how does that fit into this equation?
Corey: Yeah. Really good question. So like, for example, when I joined your accelerator, that was a business expense out of my personal branding entity, right? Because. And again, I guess I have the luxury of getting granular with it because I have that business like dedicated to growing my audience, dedicated to growing my brand.
Corey: So it just made sense that that investment would come out of that company. Right now for [00:54:00] people listening, I'd say any sort of personal development, whether it's coaching or course, even books, right? If you're buying a business book or a nonfiction book, that should be a business expense because chances are you're gonna learn something that can help your business.
Corey: And I know I remember for a while when I was starting out because I love books. I read a ton. I buy a ton of books. But I remember when I was first buying books, I was buying them on my personal credit card because I'm like, I don't, it doesn't feel right, you know, making this a business expense. And then I thought about it, you know, over the years, the immature and I'm like, this is absolutely a business expense.
Corey: And yeah. Guess what? It's gonna basically be 30 percent off if I run it through the business because of, you know, it's a write off. It's an education expense. Same goes for your accelerator. Same goes for the wholesale network, right? So really, and this is not tax advice, but anytime,
Dustin: I was going to say, we have to qualify. Neither of us are tax
Corey: anytime you can make something a business expense, try to do so within reason, of course.
Dustin: yeah. And I, and I do think that's a common misconception. People think, I want to invest in this [00:55:00] person's mastermind or this course or this, this coaching program. And they're thinking how much money is in my personal checking account. And you obviously want to honor that, but this is actually a legitimate business expenses.
Dustin: These are educational expenses, marketing expenses, you can categorize it in different ways, but that should totally be a business expense. So, if not, if no one learned anything from this, except that they maybe made 30 percent on their, their next, education, investment. So. But that's not tax advice.
Dustin: So Corey, this has been amazing. I've, I learned a ton and, and, and, and you reaffirmed some things that I kind of knew and needed reminded of, especially with this last segment on some of the personal finance system that you adhere to. So, you know, the drill, you've been an accelerator. What's, what's the call to action?
Dustin: How, if people need more Corey in their life, like how should they go about getting to know you better or, or getting some more value from you?
Corey: Yeah. So I would recommend people check out my podcast. It's called the Corey Ganim show. Now it will be the Corey Ganim show by the time this episode airs. Up to this point, it's actually been the [00:56:00] Amazon wholesale podcast, but you know, I'm 91 episodes in, I think haven't missed a week in like 91 weeks.
Corey: And up to this point, it's all been. great interviews with successful Amazon sellers. And I've learned a ton and, and, you know, educated a ton of people about e commerce through that process. And I am just rebranding a little bit to be more, I just want it to be a little more broad, right? I love e commerce.
Corey: I love selling on Amazon. I'm always going to be talking about that, but I want the ability to be able to interview people like you Dustin or people in real estate or people in crypto, just more general entrepreneurship so that I can get. Bigger guests and kind of get outside the Amazon bubble. Cause I feel like I've been in there for so long.
Corey: So the Corey Ganim show on any podcast platform, as well as YouTube, by the time this episode airs, I'm sure we will have, you know, rebranded at that point.
Dustin: I love it. So the Corey, Corey Ganim show, he's moved it from the Amazon or the wholesale business into his personal brand. And I, and I love that. And I think that's a very expansive move for you. You obviously have a [00:57:00] ton of knowledge to share and wisdom and relationships to leverage, with that to serve people in a bigger way outside of just the Amazon wholesaling business that you've been so successful building.
Dustin: So the Corey Ganim show, go check that out for sure. Corey, man, you're awesome. It's really an honor to have you here. I'm very grateful that our paths have crossed and we have a lot more work to do together as we move forward. And yeah, man, just thanks again for being here and sharing so openly.
Corey: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it.