TT118 From Small Town to Internet Millionaire: Tom Antion's Story of Entrepreneurial Success

What happens when you combine a humble upbringing, a knack for entrepreneurship, and a passion for internet marketing? You get Tom Antion, an internet multi-millionaire, and the man who founded the country's only licensed dedicated internet marketing school. Join us as Tom takes us on his journey from a small town in Pennsylvania to becoming a beacon of online entrepreneurial success.

Tom shares captivating insights from his unconventional career path. He takes us back to the 70s, where he invested in a hotel in West Virginia and earned over half a million dollars before the age of 22! And guess what, it's not about get-rich-quick schemes that are rampant today. Instead, Tom speaks about the power of persistence, "giving before you get", and developing methods for passive income generation.

Ever wondered how to make the most of your time and resources while running an online business? Tom has got some tips for you. Let's talk about email automation, the benefits of having multiple signature files on Outlook, and how tools like Keyboard Maestro and Shortkeys can help streamline your business. We also touch upon the success story of one of his students who sold his business for a whopping $340 million. So, buckle up for an episode filled with anecdotes, wisdom, and some serious entrepreneurial motivation.

Enjoy!

Head to https://www.screwthecommute.com/automatefree where Tom is giving away his $27.00 e-book that has saved him millions of keystrokes and allows him to take care of prospects and customers lightning fast. You will love it!

Links:
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Credits
Tailoring Talk Intro and Outro Music by Wataboy on Pixabay
Edited & Produced by Roberto Revilla
Connect with Roberto, head to https://allmylinks.com/robertorevilla
Email the show at tailoringtalkpodcast@gmail.com

Chapters

• 0:10 Entrepreneur's Journey and Money-Making Tips
• 15:45 Criminal Empire
• 21:26 Passive Income and Avoiding Scams
• 34:46 Tax Deductions and Digital Entrepreneurship
• 42:51 Time-Saving Tips for Email Automation

Transcript

Roberto Revilla: 0:10

Welcome to the tailoring talk show with your host, roberto Ravilla. I'm a bespoke tailor, menswear designer and owner of Roberto Ravilla London custom clothing and footwear. I activate your superpowers through the clothing I create and the conversations on this podcast. We'll meet self-starters and creators to learn about their journeys, while they share valuable lessons to help you be the very best you can be. Please support the show by subscribing, and it helps so much if you take a few seconds to leave a rating and a review. Today's guest is an internet multi-millionaire guy next door and founder of the only licensed dedicated internet marketing school in the country. He was also the subject of a Hollywood documentary entitled the American Entrepreneur in Spring 2021, yet to be released, but we will be talking about that. Known as the king of Ker-ching, he has never had a job and is here to show us how to make money. Tailoring talkers, please welcome Tom Antion to the tailoring talk show. Tom, how are you? I'm great.

Tom Antion: 1:20

I'm thrilled to be talking across the pond there and I don't know if you have a 401k in the UK or something similar. But people always say, well, yeah, you never had a job. But I applied for a job once and it said it had a 401k and I thought, man, that's a great starting salary 401k.

Roberto Revilla: 1:47

I know exactly what a 401k is, because I worked for an American company for seven years and we had a 401k thing but it was exactly the same. When I saw the list of you know, like this is what your duties will be, and then this is the benefits and so on, I was kind of like I saw one base salary figure of like 13,000 a year, and then, because it was a commissioned job, right, and then I saw another figure of 401k and I was like holy smokes, I'll take that one.

Roberto Revilla: 2:19

Yeah, I'll take that one, and sadly, no, it wasn't what I thought it was because you found as well. We call them pensions over here. Pensions okay. Yeah sounds a bit less exciting.

Tom Antion: 2:35

Yeah, well, we have pensions too. They're a little different deal. You have to work 50 years until you're dead, and then you get one.

Roberto Revilla: 2:42

Yeah, exactly, you get to enjoy it like when you're literally standing on the tiptoes of your grave. But you know, there we go. We're going to work out how to start enjoying life a bit sooner, aren't we? Tom?

Tom Antion: 2:56

Well, I've enjoyed it the whole time because you know, I tell people you know, when they look at my resume it's hard to believe that somebody, one person, could have done all the stuff I've done. And I say, no, it's not really that hard to believe if you're not in traffic all day long, going to work and coming home making somebody else rich. I never had that commute ever. So that is thousands and thousands of hours. I've been able to do what I want to do take care of my customers and run my business, but do the stuff that I enjoy. So it's not that hard to believe if you can get out of that commute. That's why my podcast is called Screw the Commute. So I've never had the pleasure of sitting in traffic making somebody else rich.

Roberto Revilla: 3:47

Yeah, and it's really funny. I mean, when you filmed the documentary the American Non-Troppin'er, which you know studios are still dilly-dallying about and you know, unfortunately it hasn't been released yet but it will be at some point, you know that was kind of out of the pandemic, I guess, when the commute people were screwing the commute not out of choice and then starting to discover that all that time that they had back they could actually do something useful with it. I mean, unless you were over this side of the pond, in which case people weren't doing any use, anything useful with that extra time. They were goofing off and ordering pizzas in the park and drinking beer and not doing any work. And the commute is now coming back.

Tom Antion: 4:36

So we are getting back to some sort of form of the old normal there's a big resistance on it now, though, because people realize they, and also it was a big eye-opener for major companies because they're paying in New York City I don't know 50 or $100 per square foot per month to have someone sit there and write blog posts, that they could be sitting at home and writing blog posts. So I think something like 70% of the commercial office space in New York I don't know that for sure, but is empty. So the companies are downsizing the space needed for the folks too, because they can work from home.

Roberto Revilla: 5:16

Yeah, exactly, and.

Tom Antion: 5:17

I've been preaching it for 25 years and then, after the pandemic, oh, you can work from home. I didn't know, yeah we're starting.

Roberto Revilla: 5:24

I don't know if we're Well, I guess New York's going to do its own thing, but certainly over here in London we're starting to move back to a balance between the two, say three to four days a weekend and then a day or two at home. But it's the goofing off thing that is now becoming apparent. For a lot of it depends what business you're in, but there's a lot of interesting conversations. Anyway, more interesting is your story. You're in Virginia, born and bred, or did you end up there from?

Tom Antion: 6:00

From a Western Pennsylvania a small town. To this day, the population is still 500 people. No way.

Roberto Revilla: 6:10

Oh my God, does it have one of those signs outside that says like welcome, what's it called?

Tom Antion: 6:15

Well, yeah, welcome to Clay's O'Piae, but on the other side, is you're leaving Clay's O'Piae, the other side of the sign? We were going to get a four-way stop, but we didn't have enough streets to.

Roberto Revilla: 6:29

And do they change the number Every time someone dies on Monday? Does it go?

Tom Antion: 6:33

down to 499?.

Roberto Revilla: 6:36

Someone has twins. On Tuesday it goes up to 501. I love that.

Tom Antion: 6:40

Right and I lived in the suburbs of that town, left me total in what we call the sticks in the rural area. So I lived a mile outside of town so there was nothing there basically. And the thing is, and I know you got a great work ethic from your dad and I got one from my dad, but the whole town in those kinds of places your handshake meant something. If you messed up, the whole town would come down on your head like they take a village kind of thing. And I swear that any farmer from my part of the world, if put into Congress here in the United States, could make better decisions than the politicians. We all had common sense. We all had bottom line If we can't afford something, we can't buy it. We can't just print more money. So a small town attitude is what I keep today.

Roberto Revilla: 7:50

You have had your first share of ups and downs. So give the audience because obviously they don't know you, I know a little bit about you Just give them a kind of sort of flavor of how you got to where you are today.

Tom Antion: 8:06

Oh no, roberto, I didn't have any downs. I'm a trust fund kid with so much.

Roberto Revilla: 8:11

Nothing ever goes wrong with for me we don't invite people here that haven't had ups and downs, so interview terminated. No, I'm kidding.

Tom Antion: 8:24

Right, so back up a little bit. My dad came from Syria on a cattle boat in the early 1900s.

Roberto Revilla: 8:31

Three years ago.

Tom Antion: 8:35

And he put the first electric light bulb in Carnegie, pennsylvania, when he was 10 years old. He had his electrical contracting company when he was 13 years old, and so all I knew from the time I grew up I'm the baby of six boys was entrepreneurship. You work hard, you do stuff, you take care of people and you can make a living at it. Okay, and we grew up very frugal. I know you had the Bell Bottom syndrome and these are the drain pipes To me. I was laughing at that because for me to ever think of any kind of skinny jeans would just be it'd be like an elephant walking down the beach. So I grew up very frugal, where my dad would buy used lumber and we'd have to take the nails out, pull them out, straighten them out so he could reuse them. That's the kind of frugality I grew up with which I maintain today.

Tom Antion: 9:38

Roberto, we had well water. We had 13 wells on our property just to get enough water and to this day I can't let the water run while I'm brushing my teeth because I hear my dad saying don't waste water, don't waste things. So it's carried through the whole way. I buy all kinds of used stuff. People say you're rich. Why aren't you? Why are you doing that? It's me, it's part of me to go buy something used and save a lot of money you can for your listeners. That's a way to get to be a multimillionaires. Don't pay retail for everything Except for Sorry.

Roberto Revilla: 10:21

So I'm just to any of my clients who are listening just close your ears now or just skip forward about 60 seconds.

Tom Antion: 10:28

I said, except for bespoke clothing. And I had to look up what the heck bespoke meant because I'm a country bumpkin. I guess it's a cool way to say custom. Is that fair?

Roberto Revilla: 10:43

Bespoke the old term was bespoken or spoken for. So what would happen is you would go into a tailor's and you would speak for the fabric that you wanted your outfit to be created from and it would be put aside for you, and then it would be obviously you would get measured, and then you would go through the process and you would end up with something that was made especially for you. So that's kind of the origin of the term.

Tom Antion: 11:06

Well, you know, and part of the thing folks is I'm as we tell my story a little bit is that I'm a continuous learner. So I'm 68 and a half years old, going on 12. But it took me this long to know that my socks should match my pants because I watched one of his videos. Oh, it took me 68 years. But now I know. I know what boat shoes are too, so you've got to be a continuous learner. So, anyway, I was surrounded by entrepreneur stuff since I'm a little kid. I actually sold a used car when I was 15 years old. I did not even have a learner's permit, I didn't have a driver's license or a learner's permit. I sold a used car. So my whole thing has been surrounded by entrepreneur efforts.

Tom Antion: 12:05

And then I went to college on a football scholarship and I played first team on the West Virginia Mountaineers, the top 20 school here in the United States. And then I bought a nightclub and it used to be a biker bar and I don't know, roberto, those bikers just didn't appreciate my efforts to turn this into a really nice place where you had to have long sleeves, like some of the places you teach you have to wear. And so I was in gun fights, knife fights. I wear a gun all the time. Now I'm very cognizant. I'm considered a self-defense expert, which I just revealed recently, and I have a psycho, brutal self-defense. But then the drinking age went from 18 to 21 and it was a big college town. So I had worked seven days a week for six years. I got four days off a year and one of them didn't count because it was New Year's Day. But after New Year's Eve I was still shot so bad I had to sleep all day. So on my way to being a millionaire before I was 30, and then the drinking age went from 18 to 21 and then wiped out half the crowd. Well, when somebody comes into an enormous nightclub and it looks empty, it's dead tonight. We'll go somewhere else. So I had to close up and I lost probably about $400,000 in 1980s money.

Tom Antion: 13:40

And another lesson that came from this is that I could have gone bankrupt. But I go back to my small town attitude and the training and the ethics I got from my dad and he says you can't screw all these people over the trust of you. So I went to every creditor and including the mortgage company, and I winterized the place and I gave the keys back and the pizza delivery cars and I went to everybody and I said look, you know me, you know this wasn't my fault, that I'm not some drunk and was drinking up all the profits and this just happened to me. I said if you give me time, I will pay you all back. Of course I didn't have much choice. I could have gone bankrupt, but they all said yes and I paid them all off and so there's no bankruptcy, even though in the face of the nastiest time of my life, after seven years or six years of day and night work and danger and being in.

Tom Antion: 14:45

You know, and here's the funny part, this was in West Virginia, all right, and there's a lot of West Virginia jokes of being all hicks and stuff. So the two gunfights we had Roberto. The next day the sheriff came out and he said hey, tom, I heard you had some excitement out here. I said yeah. He says anybody get hurt? I said well, you know they didn't shoot and get me, but I haven't seen them. He sat there about it for a second. He said okay, be careful. That was the whole investigation of a gunfight.

Roberto Revilla: 15:17

It reminds me of. There was a show recently with Sylvester Stallone called Tulsa King on Parallon Plus, where he's a ex kind of mob enforcer and he set up as the full guy for like the gang leader or something I can't quite remember. It was a really good show. We, like binge, watched the whole thing. It was like 10 episodes. I'm hoping they're going to do a season two.

Roberto Revilla: 15:45

But when he gets out of prison they send him to Tulsa in Oklahoma, as you know, and you know it's basically to put him out to pasture.

Roberto Revilla: 15:56

But the moment he walks into the town he recruits the taxi driver and then he starts to. Then he works out like who the local weed dealers are and how they're making their money, and starts to work out you know who, who are running the protection racket and stuff, and literally within weeks he's built his own little you know kind of mafia thing and one of the investments is in the local bar. And then there's a basically this war that starts with the local biker gang who were, you know, were previously the big kind of drug dealers in the area and so on. And yeah, as you was just describing, the you know kind of shoot out in the bar, that sort of thing. That's what the season culminates in is this big showdown where you know Stallone and his kind of gang of people that are made up of just regular local people as suddenly having to arm themselves and defend themselves against this, this violent biker gang.

Tom Antion: 16:55

So you know, being in the middle of something like that I mean on TV it all looks, you know, really gun, hoe and so on, but can you imagine that it, you know, must be pretty frightening well, yeah, again, like said, when you're used to seven days, six, seven days a week for six years, in fear, because there was only one sheriff and one state police for 300 square miles I don't know what that is in meters that's a long way.

Roberto Revilla: 17:23

So yeah, so I imagine, because, again, it's the same in some of these shows. Like you know, the sheriff then turns up once everything's sort of done and dust and it's like okay, everyone, alright. Yeah, fine, anything for me to do here? No, okay, well, I'll be on my way. Then, as long as you guys are self policing, and that's cool, what do you?

Tom Antion: 17:42

get crazier than that. In West Virginia in the 70s and this is a actually a good training story here I owned a hotel and in the top part was all rooms but the bottom was three commercial businesses a barber and then a gambling, an illegal gambling joint that the police would come and put their bets in, and a small neighborhood bar. Well, I got a call one night that somebody got stabbed in the bar and I wasn't my bar, I leased it alright, and it turned out he got stabbed 27 times and died. But the guy that stabbed him got off on self defense kind of crazy ripoffs, payoffs, everything that were happening in those days yeah, but the story the story that I think will help your listeners is is what I call give before you get.

Tom Antion: 18:47

And when I was in college I was renting a house off a guy, and every time he would come over to fix something I would say hey, frank, I'll help you put those gutters on, but you teach me what you're doing, right? Continuous learning that my dad taught me remember. And so at the end of the semester he came to me and he said Tom, I want to talk to you. And I thought oh, what, what do we do now? He said in the 25 years I've been renting to students here in this town, not once ever has one of the kids offered to help me with anything, let alone want to learn from it. So he said I want to retire and go to Florida, but I own a hotel about 20 miles from here and Fairmont, west Virginia. I want you to have it. And I'm like what he said yeah, if you can come up with the first mortgage, I'll take back the second mortgage, which means no money down. Basically, I'll teach you how to run it, you only there's a manager, you only need to go down once a week. And so I went to.

Tom Antion: 20:00

So the one lesson here is give before you get. The other is persistence. I had to go to 50 lending institutions who were just shooing me away like a little punk kid that how you gonna buy a hotel, and, and so I kept going, I kept going, I kept going. I got the first mortgage. He held back the second mortgage. I learned how to run the place. I made $65,000 a year in the 70s while I was still in school. Run in the place. The city ended up buying it for a couple hundred thousand to put a parking lot in. So I made about a half a million dollars and I ended up owning five apartment buildings and a hotel before I graduated college. I gave before I get and I was persistent. Now the lesson here is for you know today's atmosphere. It doesn't take much folks for you young people to stand out among the crowd, because the crowds a bunch of idiots that can't even read and write half of them out. You know so. So persistence and give before you get.

Roberto Revilla: 21:07

Prove yourself, and guys like me that have money can open up doors for you that you'll never believe yeah, because of speaking of opening doors, you have several method systems, programs that you've developed to help people to kind of get started on that route to passive income.

Roberto Revilla: 21:26

And one thing that you're really, really passionate about is what I touched on in our pre-talk is that in this day and age, there are a lot of people out there that are taking advantage of the fears that people have and also this desire for any type of how can I get my hands on money as fast as possible. I was always taught not just by my dad, but you know the best managers that I had in all of my sales jobs that you know it's the best way to be successful is to kind of have that attitude, that it's a marathon, not a sprint. You know it's a get rich slow scheme, not a get rich quick scheme, but that these days you seldom hear because it's now just you go on social media you know Facebook, instagram, youtube even and people are either throwing it in people's faces and it's very blatant right sign up for this and you'll be earning a hundred thousand dollars a month in and you know this is how Sally did it and this is how Ralph did it, and so on or they do a little bit more underhand and it's you know where we're going to show you all the secrets of how we built our YouTube channel or whatever it is. And then, when you kind of get in it, you're then in a rabbit hole of paying someone else money, money, money. So they're on the get rich quick scheme where, but then they're just taking money of people, not actually giving anything to them.

Roberto Revilla: 22:49

And I know that those sorts of scams and things you're very, very passionate about, campaigning against them, railing against them. So what's your approach to this whole kind of area of passive income generation and making money quick?

Tom Antion: 23:12

Well, the first thing is is you know there are so many scammers that I wanted to take steps to set myself apart. Because, again, I came from a small town. Your handshake meant something and reputation is on the line. So I started a TV show it's in development called Scambergade in Hollywood. Of course, they said don't quit your day job. They're trying to still try to sell it, but it goes after people to scam all kinds of things. You know internet, you know old people good, you know stuff like that.

Tom Antion: 23:44

And then I started this school that you mentioned in the intro, which it took me three years to get the license. They did background checks on me and everybody involved in the school, financial checks and everything. So I did that to set myself apart. And you know I say to make a legitimate school. A lot of the four year colleges aren't really legitimate. They're raising the tuitions, they're only teaching you how to protest and they don't care if you show up as long as you have a mask on, so, so, so I took those steps to set myself apart. Now for the income. Yeah, I don't preach get rich quick, but that doesn't mean it has to take forever, especially with the digital stuff that's available to us now. So one of the things that people can start I mean literally right away is has to do with what we call affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is basically I recommend one of your suits and then somebody buys them. I get a commission. That's a one shot deal. Do you have a comment there?

Roberto Revilla: 24:52

No.

Tom Antion: 24:54

Oh.

Roberto Revilla: 24:54

I thought I'm now in. I'm now in student mode. Okay.

Tom Antion: 24:59

Now the next step up from that which has made me the most money is called residual affiliate programs. That means that not only do I reckon I recommend something to somebody, but when they buy it, they keep buying it over and over and over and over. I've had some people buy stuff for 19 years straight. All right, and the way that you can promote this, you say, well, I don't know anybody to promote it to. Well, you have YouTube, you can make videos about the product or service. And the other thing that I've made the most money on is eBooks. I mean literally today you could create an eBook with a Microsoft Word or pages on your computer, convert it to Adobe PDF and now you have a digital product and you're an author. You own intellectual property now. But what I teach my authors is that books are the most hassle, least profitable thing you'll ever do. It's what the book leads to is where you make the money. So you could crank out some YouTube videos on an affiliate program. You could crank out an eBook on an affiliate program and you teach somebody how to do something, but they can't do it unless they purchase the tool necessary to do it or to get the benefits, or I mean it could be supplements if you're health conscious, could be hosting services. I believe there's still a site called residualaffiliateprogramscom that has hundreds of these programs where you can. It's also called recurring affiliate programs residual or recurring and you can sign up for free for these things and promote them and if somebody buys it you start getting paid. And the beauty of the residual is you promote it once but you get paid in perpetuity as long as the person stays in the program.

Tom Antion: 27:04

Also, membership sites are good for that too. I was a member of three different tennis membership sites at $20 a month each, and that's another thing, roberto is. Membership sites are still popular and I wrote an article once for Roberto called when does 20 equal 24,000? So if you had a membership site on any topic on earth which they are, they exist and you just had a hundred members, which is about as pitiful as you could possibly do with billions of people on the planet, right At $20 a month each that's $2,000 a month times 12 months you just created a cash flow of $24,000 a year with the most pitiful performance on earth. If you double that 48,000, that's more than the average income of a US citizen. So these are ways that you can legitimately do this with extremely low, minimal investment. So residual affiliate programs can get some income coming for you.

Tom Antion: 28:19

And then I want you to improve. I want you to get your own website, I want you to get your own email list, and so that you know, I have a hundred thousand people on my email list. I can hit a button and money starts pouring in the front door. All right, I don't spam anybody, but over time they trust me and if I recommend something, boom, they start buying it and they buy my stuff too. So that's how you can progress in this. But it doesn't have to take forever. But you've got to get knowledge. You know that's the whole thing from a credible source.

Roberto Revilla: 28:49

Yeah, exactly. So I guess that's kind of what you've been with Screw the Commute and with your website as well is kind of Well, I mean, I guess that's the whole point of the school as well. Right, Tell us about that, because it's the only thing of its kind in the States the Internet Marketing Training Center.

Tom Antion: 29:09

Yeah, and it's a distance learning school, but it's quality distance learning, not like they were shoving on our kindergartners and stuff. And I developed it because there's three types of clientele for the school. One is the high school kid that doesn't want to get a giant debt and go to a four-year college and learn nothing and they're all on their cell phones and tablets anyway all day, so why not learn to make money with it? So it's a young person that wants to get money coming in quickly, rather than four years later when just paying for partying and then having big debt. So that's one that is a displaced person from the workforce. So they have a lifestyle buildup, but they just got fired or some company bought out their company and they got laid off. So this type of person says I don't want to be in that dangerous position and lose my lifestyle because of some executive right flips a coin and sends me down the road.

Tom Antion: 30:22

So that's the second type. And the third type are people that are older. The older people are getting very tech savvy. There's a 91-year-old guy who's got an Apple Watch that I don't even know how to use and he's all doing it all day long, so that they want some extra retirement income. So those are the three main things, and everything that I teach is highly practical and we do something that no other school on earth does we update our curriculum, sometimes daily, because of the changes in the internet. You go to a big school that has an e-commerce course. It might be two years and somebody that never made a nickel online is trying to teach you stuff out of a book. So ours is a very unique boutique school and you don't have to hawk your lungs forever to pay for it. So that's why I developed it.

Roberto Revilla: 31:13

Yeah, the thing I love about the things that you show to people is that, even if they are in a situation where they feel like they might not enjoy their day jobs or it might not even be the thing that they actually really, if you ask them the questions, do you really really want to be doing what you're doing? I think a lot of people would say no, right? A?

Roberto Revilla: 31:37

lot of people would say no, and they would probably tell you 100 other things that they would rather be doing, but they don't have the confidence to leave the day job. At the very very least, with the things that you teach and show, they're able to just put a little bit of time aside, maybe a little bit every day or a little bit of time once a week, and start to If they try some of the things that you teach and show to start to generate a little bit of a passive income and then build from there. And then I guess your goal always with let's call them your students is to get them to the stage where they feel like they can make that leap and be independent and free.

Tom Antion: 32:21

Yeah, my goal, especially with that type of person you just described, is to make it eventually too expensive for them to go to work, because the time they're putting into the other stuff is paying off, and it doesn't even have to pay off as much as your salary, because your salary in the United States is called a W-2 income. All these payroll taxes are taken out.

Tom Antion: 32:49

where you get a little bit of what you're earning, so you can make as much money, because if you are doing your own business, you have tax deductions for small business, and so that's reducing all the potential W-2 income. That's being taxed like crazy. So in the US you just file a Schedule C. You don't have to start a corporation or LLC. I'm not your advisor here, but the thing is is you don't have to jump through a hoops with tons of legal assistance and stuff to get started, and then when you see the money coming in especially with the digital stuff, roberto, it's 97% profit. You've got to try to mess up at 97% profit. I'll bet you're tailoring, not 97% profit.

Tom Antion: 33:38

No, sir, it is not. Yeah, see, so this is. And also I teach people how to make their hobbies tax deductible, because I enjoy my life, I do what I want, I don't deal with anybody I don't like, and my hobbies I make them tax deductible. For instance, I have the dubious distinction of being the largest person ever to have created and starred in a tennis training video. It's called fatsotenniscom.

Roberto Revilla: 34:08

You can see it. Oh, sorry, sorry. When you said largest, my immediately polite brain was thinking huge business, celebrity or whatever. I wasn't thinking like the fattest person Physically when I started it.

Tom Antion: 34:25

I weighed 350 pounds.

Roberto Revilla: 34:27

Oh honey, how old are you? I sound way, way down.

Tom Antion: 34:32

And so you can actually see the trailer to that at fatsotenniscom, where I'm playing tennis and eating pizza at the same time. So that made all my tennis rackets my ball machine. I have a tennis court here, I got to take trips to interview professional tennis coaches and all that tax deductible. While I'm loving, I'm a tennis nut, I love it. So that's an example. Then I have $50,000 protection dogs here and I got into that because I was trained in a big protection dog company on internet stuff and they gave me a dog as part of my pay and so I fell in love with them. So I started a site called Protection Dogs Elite and so it pays for all the training and everything on my dogs as I sell other dogs to other people. So, just like all that kind of stuff In today's atmosphere, you can do this by having a WordPress website which is free, responsive theme and responsive means that it looks good on a cell phone and tablet automatically for maybe $100.

Tom Antion: 35:45

So you could get started in making your hobby and save way more than that from your salary by the tax deductions you get. I don't know what your laws are, but any developed country has business deductions, so you'll more than make up for that just by being in business. And the beauty of it is no law says you have to be great at business, because most businesses in the United States lose money for the first couple years. In fact, amazon's never made any money and the guy's a billion. It runs it. So these deductions and all the things that you can do and enjoy it's just a beautiful lifestyle. So hopefully that's enough to get you to take the first little baby step. But I don't tell people quit your job and just go full blast. No, that's not a credible thing to tell people or reasonable. But it is credible to get started with digital stuff at 97% profit and give it a good, honest try.

Roberto Revilla: 36:49

Yeah, absolutely. Now, I think King of Ka-ching. Just to round us off, it's obvious why you have that name but who came up with it?

Tom Antion: 37:01

It's not maybe as obvious as you think.

Roberto Revilla: 37:04

So I don't know, because everything that comes out of your mouth is a tip on. I'm just Ka-ching, ka-ching.

Tom Antion: 37:11

Yeah, but the actual way it happened is that I came from an entertainment background. After I had the nightclub business, I had an entertainment company and it was a lot of humor in it and everything. So I'm never going to do anything like everybody else. So when my emails would come in with some order, I would set my email to recognize the subject line as an order and play the cash register sound Ka-ching, ka-ching.

Roberto Revilla: 37:43

Ka-ching Cool.

Tom Antion: 37:45

That's where it came from. And then one of my students we have an immersion weekend where they live in the house. Here we have a big estate in Virginia and they said they kept going off all day, to the point we had to turn it off so it wouldn't interrupt the train. So she said you're the king at Ka-ching, aren't you? I said yeah, I guess I am. So that's how it came about. Awesome, even though I'm going Ka-ching.

Roberto Revilla: 38:11

And also.

Tom Antion: 38:11

this is another good tip. I know I'm doing some recording on this thing, but on my cell phone. I wanted my cell phone to have the Ka-ching ringtone, but I thought to myself it'll take me all day because I'm not really a techie. I know a lot, but I'm mostly marketing, not the tech stuff. So I said it'll take me all day to figure that out and I always keep young people around that are tech savvy.

Roberto Revilla: 38:36

Yeah, young people can come in handy sometimes.

Tom Antion: 38:38

Oh my God, they took the phone away, brought it back in 10 minutes and it goes Ka-ching. Do I know how they did it? No, Do I care? Oh, Does it go Ka-ching? Yes, that's the value. One of the kids I started out in 10th grade. He just sold a Plutotv for $340. $340 million to Viacom.

Roberto Revilla: 39:02

Oh.

Tom Antion: 39:02

You can look it all up and on. His name is Ilya Posein. If you can get him on here, it'd be a great interview for him. Started him out in 10th grade and he would be running around here like crazy doing the tech stuff for me and teaching me stuff that I still use today, all these years later. So keeping the young people around for the tech stuff is very handy and you're doing them a favor too. You're teaching them entrepreneur stuff and I don't expect them to be here forever, but when they leave here they'll say, boy. Thankfully I met Tom Antion, because he gave me a mindset that I can be whatever I want to be.

Roberto Revilla: 39:41

Yeah, wow, that's crazy. I just jumped on PlutoTV, so basically it's like a live TV streaming channel.

Tom Antion: 39:49

That's what it is. He started it Something. His little girls were having trouble finding what they wanted to watch, so he decided, okay, I'm going to curate stuff for my girls. And then it turned out into this. They got $50 million of funding and then he ended up selling it for $340 million. It's all fired online there.

Roberto Revilla: 40:09

Wow, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's such a great platform and I don't know whether it's because of my VPN or something, but I'm literally halfway through season six, episode 12, part one of Family Ties. I haven't seen that since I was like six years old, are you on VPN?

Tom Antion: 40:28

Huh, are you on VPN right now?

Roberto Revilla: 40:30

Yeah, I do. I use a VPN because there's just so much stuff attacking us these days I don't take any chances. So yeah, I'm kind of locked up tight with all of that stuff. But yeah, and obviously the unexpected benefit is that I can access PlutoTV.

Tom Antion: 40:48

Exactly, but the thing is like I said, I still use it today.

Roberto Revilla: 40:51

What an amazing story.

Tom Antion: 40:53

I mean I would sit behind me while I'm working on my computer and he was a little Russian smart alec kid and he'd be like ready to explode. He'd say I can't believe somebody making so much money is so stupid. We just click here and I let him abuse me because he was always right. I still use the shortcuts and things today, after all these years that he taught me and when the we're going to give them an automation book here in a minute, but just one of the tips in the book that he taught me. Has we estimated actual estimation of saving me eight million keystrokes over the years?

Roberto Revilla: 41:32

Wow.

Tom Antion: 41:33

That's a carpal tunnel. It means I could be making money, not fighting with my computer all day.

Roberto Revilla: 41:38

Yeah.

Tom Antion: 41:40

Yeah, so we'll give that book whenever you're ready.

Roberto Revilla: 41:43

Yeah, I was really interested in that. I mean, I'm I'm going to be signing up for it myself. So right, everybody listening. So if you go to screw the commute dot com forward, slash automate free. Tom is giving away his $27 ebook and, as he just said, it has saved him millions of keystrokes and the pain of carpal tunnel syndrome and it allows him to take care of his prospects and customers like lightning quit, and he promises that you will absolutely love it. Tom, do you want to just give a little bit of flavor of what that's about just now, without giving too much away, because obviously no, a lot of these things are right in front of you.

Tom Antion: 42:26

You just nobody taught you how to use them. For instance, there is a $20 program called short keys. Now it's for PC, if you, if you have a Mac. It's called Keyboard Maestro and it allows you to make a two character input that would type war and peace for you, if you want.

Roberto Revilla: 42:51

So the, the three set, whatever that two character thing is to say if it's a repetitive email, like it's a welcome email or it's a. You know customers that are the same question question all the time. Sorry, any clients, the clients that are listening to this. You're not the problem, trust me, but but you know, sometimes you just think to yourself I forgot to, and then you try and find one that you sent somebody else so that you can copy and paste from it.

Tom Antion: 43:20

It kills your, your, your train of thought, yeah, even if you know it's on the computer in a file somewhere, you got to go find it. Copy it, paste it where this is like bam, bam, all right who's next? So that's. That's just one of them. Keyboard Maestro is for Mac and short keys is for the PC. There's like $20 for a program.

Tom Antion: 43:44

And your signature files of your email. You know it usually says Roberto Ravilla. Is it Ravilla? Yes, yeah, Ravilla, Roberto Ravilla bespoke guy, I don't know what it says. That's your signature of your. You know your regular emails, back and forth, right. Well, it doesn't have to be Roberto Ravilla bespoke guy. It could be an answer to a question. So you can put get a program like outlook or something has unlimited signature files. And then you can somebody ask you something, you go insert signature and pick the one that answers their question and it puts it in just as if it was short keys. So it's stuff like that and loads more. That just saves you enormous time. I mean, we're talking if hundreds or thousands of hours into the future saved where you could be developing products and services, handling prospects and customers. That's where the money is not fighting with your computer.

Roberto Revilla: 44:48

Yeah, exactly, because if you imagine your business is zones or however it is that you make your income, you have one zone which doesn't make you money and is a time set, and you have the other zone which is yeah, and that's where you want to be.

Roberto Revilla: 45:00

You want to be in the golden zone, not in the red zone, right, Right, yeah. So so to get the rest of the tips there and go to screw the commutecom falls slash automate free. Tom, thank you so so much. I feel like there's so much more that we could have gone into with you. I know I'm sorry.

Tom Antion: 45:20

What's up with you? You can't be sorry. Can't you be kind enough to have a time zone the same as us in the US, because we're the universe, you know us, erigan, yeah.

Roberto Revilla: 45:32

London is the center of the universe. Thank you. No, apparently it's Rome, tom, have you had fun today?

Tom Antion: 45:41

Oh, I have blast, absolutely. Yeah, I learned about bespoke. I learned about boat shoes and socks. I mean what I learned? More today than I learned all day yesterday.

Roberto Revilla: 45:52

Okay, before I let you go and I do my outro, I gotta ask you, dude, what gun are you carrying? I imagine you're carrying something like a 40, maybe not a 44, something in between, definitely not a 22.

Tom Antion: 46:08

Right, Well, it actually it's called a 22 because it's block 22, which is a 40 caliber 40 caliber.

Roberto Revilla: 46:16

So it's a 40 caliber. Yeah, caliber. Yeah, I didn't figure you for a 22 caliber or even 30 something.

Tom Antion: 46:23

No, you gotta have stopping power, yeah.

Roberto Revilla: 46:26

I had a boss in, so I've shot guns once in Baltimore and it was the CEO of my company, so it was obviously one of his favorites, up until the point that I decided to leave. So he took me to his local shooting range never shot a gun in my life and so they set me up. And they set you up on the range with obviously the smallest one first, so the P-shooter, the 22. And then you progressively move up to the hand cannon right, the dirty Harry, 44. My God, the I don't know what you call it, the recoil on that or what it's like oof, like the 22 is like you know, ping ping right, but the 44 is like whoosh.

Tom Antion: 47:09

I mean you literally feel the rushes again and then the recoil. Did you feel any ping in your chest? Did you feel a concussion?

Roberto Revilla: 47:14

I did a little bit. I mean, see, the problem was is that they then left me to main devices, which was probably not the right thing to do, and then everybody in the gun range stopped shooting because I was kind of like, you know, sort of getting myself ready.

Roberto Revilla: 47:28

And then like you lot can't see this, but you've all seen enough American movies to probably know what I'm doing. So I'm stuck. Yeah, that's it Exactly. I'm standing there, like you know, and then everybody suddenly stopped shooting and they're all just, they put their guns down and they're just looking at me.

Roberto Revilla: 47:45

And my CEO he must have been so embarrassed, he was like and he turns around to the range master, or whatever you call them, and he says what the is that kid doing? And so they saw me kind of fire off like a full you know round of bullets until my thing was empty. And then the target slowly comes back. I didn't hit anything, it was completely clean, Like no bullet holes in the thing whatsoever. And so I then turn around. They're all there, you scare the bad guy, yeah, but they're like what the are you doing? And I said well, that's how they, that's how Mel Gibson does it, that's how you know, that's how they do it in your movies, right, that's based on facts, and I know you do not stand like that. So, anyway, they set me up properly, taught me how to shoot. I still didn't hit anything, but anyway, and he never, ever took me back.

Tom Antion: 48:46

I've had training the most police officers, including a SWAT training and sniper everything. Like I said, we're a gun country, you know, so yeah.

Roberto Revilla: 48:57

Yeah, we're not over here, we just throw things at people.

Tom Antion: 49:01

A good stabbing company a country You're good for stabbing.

Roberto Revilla: 49:04

Yeah well, the neighborhood I grew up was a great stabbing neighborhood, so, yeah, you had to learn how to defend yourself against meat cleavers and all sorts of things.

Tom Antion: 49:12

I'd rather go against a gun sometimes than a knife. Jesus.

Roberto Revilla: 49:16

Yeah, I don't know, I don't. This is really taking quite a dark turn. So, people, I don't know if anyone's still listening, but Well, look, you know a little bit about my background.

Tom Antion: 49:25

I've got my most seven bond all day long. What's that?

Roberto Revilla: 49:28

Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I just like, given the choice, I would always. I remember once someone did pull a gun on me at school and I was like okay, I don't want any of that because I can't do anything about it. Do you know what I mean? I think it lands somewhere. That's fatal, that's it. I'm taken out of the game, whereas with a knife I feel I used to sorry, not nowadays. Nowadays I'm irrespectable. I don't get into that sort of stuff. But when I was younger, if I was faced with a knife, I wasn't so bothered about that because I might get cut a few times, but I was going to make it damn difficult for them to make a killing blow, if that makes sense, I've gotten it close distance because I can control where the bullets going to go once I get a hold of it.

Roberto Revilla: 50:09

No, I pretend I'm unarmed and I'm coming up against someone who's going to attack me with either a gun or a knife. If I've got the choice, I'd rather they have a knife, not a gun.

Tom Antion: 50:18

I'm saying I'd rather they have a gun. Oh, okay, If they're close. If they're 10 feet away, no, a knife is better. Yeah, but if they're close, I can get a hold of the gun and make sure that the bullet hits you, not me.

Roberto Revilla: 50:33

Oh, okay, yeah, I get you, yeah, okay. Yeah well, maybe this is something to talk about on the next episode of tailoring self-defense.

Tom Antion: 50:43

Yeah, you know they make a whole line of clothing that's bullet resistant and knife resistant. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Roberto Revilla: 50:53

That's right, john Wick's suit is Kevlar and all that kind of stuff apparently. There you go. Yeah, I'd love to get the costume designer for those movies on here. Oh Anyway, sorry. Yeah, well, you know I've got one of my early guests, episode six. I think it was a guy called Artif Ghaffar. He does like home cinemas and sound setups and stuff and so he started his podcast. I'd like to thank Artif. If you're listening, I inspired you and you're doing a great job. By the way, a Zebra Home Cinema podcast, look it up and he gets amazing guests on there. He gets like proper Oscar winning Hollywood sound people on his podcast to interview them and the way he does it. He just watches the film credits and then he just makes a note of the people that were involved in there, because everybody focuses on the actors, right, and the screenwriters, directors and producers, but no one really pays attention to people like the carpenters, and you know the account owners.

Tom Antion: 51:56

I'm trying to get Bobby Ozinski on. I had him on. He's one of the top sound guys in Hollywood. He was happy to come on and he sells a lot of books and stuff to sound engineers. But I'll give you his contact details. Yeah, yeah awesome.

Roberto Revilla: 52:10

Thank you, tom. Thank you so so much. Thank you all so much for joining Tom and I on this episode. I'll make sure that I have all of Tom's links in the show notes for you, and you know we're on Instagram, so look us up, and you know I love feedbacks with the DM me or email me at the address in the show notes. Remember to subscribe, rate and review. You can also click the share button in your player to send this episode on to someone you know who might get some help or be inspired by Tom today. If you're enjoying Taylor and talk and want to support the show, you can buy me a coffee at. Buy me a coffeecom full slash. Roberto Rivera. Have a great week, be good to each other and I'll see you on the next one.