020: “You do have to work when you work from home.” Establishing an Internet Marketing career with Tom Antion

Jen Amos 0:00

Welcome, and thanks for joining us for another episode of holding down the fort, a podcast show where we put military spouses and children's needs front and center so that they can make informed decisions together as a family, because let's face it, we know who's really holding down the fort. I'm Jenny most a veteran spouse and Goldstar daughter, and your host for today's show. Let's get started

all right. Hi everyone. Jen amo is here with holding down the fort podcast show. I am excited. Every time I get to do another show like this. It means that I get to introduce to you someone in the community or for the community to help military families just continue to hold down the fort. So today, I want to introduce you to Tom Antion. So Tom has never had a job. Very interesting. He's an internet multimillionaire guy next door, and founder of the only licensed dedicated Internet Marketing school in the country. He's the subject of a Hollywood documentary, The American entrepreneur premiering later this year, Tom has helped many military people realize their dream of having an online business. He's also the host of the podcast, screw the commute. Tom, welcome to the show.

Speaker 1 1:19

Thanks, Jen. I'm thrilled to be here. I'm absolutely thrilled.

Jen Amos 1:23

Yeah, we just discovered before we got on that we might be neighbors, Virginia, Virginia do the company or that what do you call it? The school that we'll be talking about today is at least the physical location is here in Virginia as well. Correct?

Speaker 1 1:38

Yeah, it's right next to Mount Trashmore. And for your listeners, I'm not kidding. We have a place called Mount Trashmore. That used to be the garbage dump. And it's a gorgeous park. So I'm next door to Matt Trashmore.

Jen Amos 1:53

Oh, I love it. I went to that park with my husband a couple months ago when we first moved here. And I was asking him I was like, it was this place literally built on trash. And we'd like joked about it. We were like, oh, yeah, sure it was and come to find out it actually was so that's crazy.

Speaker 1 2:08

Yeah, I'm wondering where all the methane has gone usually on garbage dumps. Maybe it'll all explode when these days.

Jen Amos 2:14

Oh, my God. Well, Tom, you have been in the internet marketing industry for over 20 years, quite a long time. And you know, just from your bio alone, we have shared that you've never worked a job. And you are doing a lot of incredible things for other people who want to screw the commute, and build an online marketing business. So for people that are just getting to know you for the first time, Tom, what would you say is like a day in the life of someone in your position? Who probably just works remotely, you know, probably works at home? What is the day in life for you?

Speaker 1 2:48

Internet since it started in: 1994

Jen Amos 6:49

a day go. Yeah,

Speaker 1 6:50

so that's pretty much my day is just and you notice none of it was getting in the car and sitting in traffic. Yeah, yeah. So if I'm sitting in traffic, it's gonna be to go take the dogs to the park. That's as far as I go.

Jen Amos 7:05

There you go. Yeah, I, I've been self employed for basically my entire young adult life. I'm 31. Now turning 32. But part of my story is that I was fired from for jobs and my younger. Second. Yeah. So my, my best friend was like, Jen, I don't think you're meant for a job. And so I've just been in sales and entrepreneurship ever since now. It's not like the sexiest journey. I try to kind of like, not romanticize it when people ask about it, because at least for me, it had been very difficult. But I feel very fortunate today to be working with my husband, because he's just as crazy, if not crazier than me. And taking big risk. And, you know, he understands the difference between good debt and bad debt, for example, and, you know, because he has a background in finance, like, the numbers don't really mean much to him. And, you know, he's all about helping, you know, like, what do you call it? He's all about like, the bigger mission, like the bigger cars and, and helping, you know, helping for the greater good of things. And so, yeah, that's why I fell in love with him and why I'm still part of this crazy journey of online marketing and what have you. It's pretty crazy. But anyway, with that said, I was looking more into your story, Tom, and I was curious as to how you ended up or how you grew up in this life. And your father was an entrepreneur? Is that correct?

Speaker 1 8:24

That's correct. He was. He came actually on a cattle boat from Syria when he was three years old to Ellis Island, and my name is a mistake. My last name is Antion. But when he came from Syria, where you were born is how you were named. So he was someone from Antioch, Syria. And when they got to Ellis Island, they're looking at it trying to read it, or you're Sam Antion Oh. Yeah. So he was very entrepreneurial. And that's all I saw as I was growing up, and I was a baby of six boys. And, you know, I was doing side hustles. Like I said, 10 years old, I bought my first used car when I was, I don't want to be a used car sales, right. But I bought my first used car at 15 years old before I had a driver's. Wow, we sold it for a big profit. So yeah, so that's all I've seen all my life. And I know a lot of your listeners are not used to that they might be they or their parents. Both worked. And they they taught them to grow up and get a good job and you know, try to get a gold watch and 20 years. Well, I haven't seen any gold watches being given out for Yeah, let's for now.

Jen Amos 9:33

you get started in it back in: 1994

: 10:17

Well, I had been an entertainer and professional speakers since 1988. had businesses all before that too long before you were born. But at the time, you know, we were selling cassette tapes, if you even know what that was. And it was hard enough to sell them across the street, let alone around the world. So so when I saw this internet coming along, I'm thinking to myself, You mean, I can sell my stuff around the world from my basement on a computer, I'm going to figure this out. And I scratched and crawled for two years didn't make a nickel 1994 to 1996 until I got good training from a guy named Corey Rudl. He was like the 31 year old saying the same age as you, Grandfather of internet marketing, and he was making like 5 million a year from his apartment. So that was my first training. And as soon as I got good training, I started making money wasn't like it is now but it was 50 bucks a week 100 500 1000. And then you have $30,000 weeks now. So this is a very, very powerful force. And my dad was in the military, he was actually in the cavalry, he had a horse. And I've always been extremely patriotic. And several my brothers were in the service. And I live in, you know, you know where we live. So one of the biggest collections of military in the world. And I saw over and over again, in I'm like, extremely pro military. And I saw over and over again, and I'm not I'm preaching to the choir here, but military spouses taken crappy jobs, because the employers know they're going to be leaving, and then they have to go somewhere else and take another crappy job. So I said, I'm gonna figure out a way was what I know, to help these military families. And so that's how I got approved by the Department of Defense for the my ca program. And I don't know, I hopefully you know what that is, because a lot of people don't it's, yeah, yeah. But every spouse that I talked to around here, nobody even heard of it. And so I'm helping spread the word about that, so that they can get trained in a portable skill, so that if they have clients or something here, where they're working from home, and they get it, I have a young lady that was an intern for me, married to a guy in a navy moved to South Korea, she still does work for me. Yeah. Love it. Love it. I mean, so I've got a whole list of benefits to help solve this problem for military spouses. And that's part of my thing. And I just got invited to the White House, talk to the second lady who is part of her platform, Mrs. Pence is to his military spouse employment problems. And so just came back with Rochelle Futch, which hopefully we'll have her on here. One of these days, she was military spouse of the year for Fort Bragg. And we were up there meeting with the office of the second lady and she agreed to show up at some of our events and really inspire the military spouses and so forth. So it's been a great ride. And I know that the school was going to do some good for a lot of families. And that's, that's my mission.

Jen Amos: 13:36

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: 15:06

for sure. Well, over, you know, I have a TV show and development called scam brigade. Because as I was coming up, and I speak at a lot of events around the world, and there's so many people scam and everybody and in the internet marketing field, they can be totally anonymous and scam the heck out of you. And so I thought, You know what, there's so much of this going on, I'm going to set myself apart. So it took three years to get the license for the school. It was background checks, financial checks, security checks, everything, because so many of these for profit schools have been ripping people off like crazy and, and then they have a big debt on their hands and no marketable skills. So I said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna wipe that off in my school, if my name is on it, it's going to be good. So I went through all that we've been operating, I think, eight, nine years now hundreds of graduates. And then when I got approved for the Department of Defense scholarship program, I thought this is perfect, I have a list of 10 benefits, if you'll indulge me, yes. How this can help military spouses so. So number one is you can start any time you're not forced to comply with anybody else's schedule. Now, I do have what they call a cohort starting in the mid January, where Rochelle Futch is going to join and she's having a lot of people join at one time to help each other through the school. So I thought that's beautiful, but you don't have to do that. And then number two, you can legitimately do your training from home, anytime, day or night. So you can totally work around your family schedule. So if you have little kids, you can do it at night or early in the morning. So that's a beautiful benefit for families. And you have no cost for books or travel. This is benefit number three, because any book on internet marketing is obsolete before the ink dries. So and they charge you a fortune in school for these books. So that's wiped off the map, you don't have any extra fees for any books or travel or anything, everything is online. Now, we can't guarantee this. And I know you want me to tell you about some of the success stories. So we can't guarantee it. But you can actually start making money even before graduating in a young woman named Ashley join. And in her first month in the school, she was making $1,100 on the side, because businesses know that they need this, but they're pulling their hair out with taking care of social media and keeping up with everything. So she immediately went to $1,100 a month, two months later, she was making $3,000 a month. And her dad had paid 80,000 bucks for her college education. And she was working some menial job. And so now she's quitting and starting her own agency. There you go. Oh, and this is all not pie in the sky. We can't ethically guarantee anything like that right thing is you young folks, it's just perfect because us old farts are basically, you know, desperate for in most small business people are desperate for somebody to take this off their plate because they can't keep up with it, they don't understand it. And you walk in, as a young person that's very tech savvy, you can write your own ticket. So that's number four. And number five, the Department of Defense demanded that for us to be in this program, that the skill had to be portable, which means it couldn't be some kind of thing like art history. You know, it's it's not in demand anywhere. And it's not a skill that you go somewhere and instantly get a job. So this is clearly is about as portable as you can get. Because not only can you have clients that you never have to divorce, just because you move, you can actually sell your own stuff. And I encourage that heavily is I want you to both be working for somebody else and have your own products and services and eventually to the point where you don't have to work for anybody else. You're just selling your own stuff. So that's number five. Number six, the skills are in high demand, every business on earth has to have all this stuff and that and like I said they're pulling their hair out because even a restaurant let's say they're desperately just trying to get the food on the table and keep the customers happy. And then they got all these things on their plate of social media on their plate, no pun intended.

Jen Amos: 19:35

They just got all their

: 19:36

things I just What did I just say? So anyway, it's a high demand skill. Everybody needs this if they're going to be in business and the most of the small businesses are just desperate. That's why as soon as Ashley told people she was doing this, they're like begging her to take it off to do it for them. So the high demand number seven, not only can you learn earn from home, which means no childcare expenses, you can legitimately work from home, which is no childcare expenses and see businesses don't want to pay a high rent to have you sit in there and write in a blog post, you could have written at home, say so they're happy. Now there's plenty of work from home scams. But this isn't one of them. This is around the world businesses are outsourcing to this but mostly to English speaking people, because this is marketing related. See, programming gets outsourced to Pakistan and Indian stuff. But marketing is usually they want to an English mentality. Because we're USA is the number one in in marketing around the world. So you can work at home and learn from home. So that was number seven, number eight, you're never far from your cell phone anyway, right? When you have a spouse it's deployed. So you can turn that into an income generator for your family, you can work kind of where you know, if your kids are at swimming class, you can be sitting there working on your cell phone. And it's like said totally portable, even locally, when you're doing your other family things. And nine, I got a little bit tongue in cheek, you won't have to bug your family and friends to buy your network marketing crap.

Jen Amos: 21:22

That had to be put in there.

: 21:27

And then 10, the sky's the limit on your income. I mean, you can create your own digital products and sell them all around the world at 97% profit. And then here's something again, I can't guarantee but I ran into a military spouse and Italy, that they don't allow you to get jobs there, because I guess it's a local economy. But you know what, and again, I'm not pushing this, I don't want to violate any kind of, you know, make a international incident over this. But Is anybody going to notice if you're sitting on your computer, doing a blog post for somebody in Toledo, Ohio, I don't think they're going to notice, keep money coming in. So those are 10 of the really big benefits of getting internet marketing skills, no matter where you get them, just make sure you get them from someplace credible.

Jen Amos: 22:16

Yeah, and I mean, to me, this sounds like a dream. And this is something that I wish that I had learned or I was able to go through early on in my online marketing career, just to have something that really affirms that yes, you can learn from home, you can work from home, you can set your own hours, you can build your business around your life, your work around your life, rather than your life around your work. And so I think for the average civilian, that's like the dream, but for military spouses, that's like the necessity. And so I think it's really awesome that you were able to go through the painstaking process of getting approved by the DOD to get that DOD stamp. And really, really separate yourself from other people who are kind of just haphazardly putting their programs out there. I'm just curious, out of all the good things with the program, what what's the number one catch is there a catch 20 of this.

: 23:15

The catch is, is that you do have to be self motivated you you know, some people are just not cut out to work from home, they need to get dressed up and put some heels on or, or you know, tie on and go to a workplace. So if you're not a self starter, and you're more likely to just turn TV on and watch so not not really mean for you. But when you see the potential and what it can do for your family. You know, it's just so powerful. And like the hobby stuff I was telling you about most families, military or not spend a fortune on things that they get no tax credit for, or no payback from other than the enjoyment of doing it. For instance, if you're a soccer mom, or soccer Dad, you buy in the cleats and the socks and the outfits and the balls and the equipment and you're going to you're driving to events and all that. And you're just paying up for that. I mean, you could start yourself a soccer blog. And you could bring some money in by what they call affiliate marketing. So that means you don't even have to make your own product. Somebody else has a product that you could put on your blog. And if somebody buys it, you get a commission. Well, as soon as you start getting money from that, you have just now created an online business. And you have tax deductions that are available for the things that surround that. I have a crazy site called fatso tennis. It's bad so tennis.com Um, I have the dubious distinction of being the largest person ever to star and create a tennis training video. Winning tennis for the overweight and hopelessly out of shape. Oh man And as I'm a tennis nut, you know, and it's expensive. The rackets are a couple 100 bucks and strings and ball machines. And so I created this. And it's a serious thing on one hand, where it shows how the geometry of the cord, I can run young people to death before I drop dead. Some of it like crazy funny, like, there's a thing, you can stick on the end of your racket, and you can go down and push it on top of the ball. So you don't have to bend or break the ball.

Jen Amos: 25:29

There you go.

: 25:33

It's all kinds of gadgets like that. But see, that makes my all my stuff legitimately tax deductible, and I'm not an accountant or CPA or an attorney. But I have cleared this with hundreds of people in my audiences that were accountants and attorneys, they say, yep, that's a business. So your family or camping or any kind of family interests that you have, they can be made tax deductible, and you don't feel so guilty spending money and time on. So that's just one of the big benefits.

Jen Amos: 26:02

I think that's so incredible. I appreciate your passion for military families and being able to provide this knowledge and this program. So thank you so much for that, for people that want to learn more about the school, you know, and get certified and, and everything. And I also just want to add early on, we had mentioned this on the show, military spouses are eligible for a scholarship offered by MI CA, which stands for my career advancement account program for military spouses. I'll provide that in the show notes for our listeners, if you want to look more into that,

: 26:37

I can add to that a little bit as a thank you, as a thank you to military families that that sacrifice sometimes to the max to keep us safe. And let me and other people like me do what we do. Our school and me basically gives a 50% scholarship off the top of our tuition, just as a thank you. So you cut off 50% of the right there's for any military, we actually include law enforcement and first responders in that. And then in addition, military spouses that are eligible, there's certain requirements that they have to fill, but then that's another potential $4,000 You can get as a military spouse. And then again, as a thank you, we made sure that any balance, no military family will pay more than $97 a month on any balance that's left over after their scholarships so that anybody can afford this and, and I'm just thrilled to be able to be in a position to do this for military families.

Jen Amos: 27:42

Yeah, and I want to thank you so much. I was gonna ask like, what, you know, what is it about military families that resonates with you so much? And I think you just answered that question for me. I

: 27:52

mean, like I said, when I see the stuff on TV, and I see the people that I meet around here, because we got one of the biggest collections in the world right here. And I remember when I first moved here, I was down by Oceana Naval Station and then, you know, the jet took off and I didn't even know there was a runway there. And it's like, oh my god, that my brains are like getting rattled. Then they got signs around here for everybody who doesn't live here. If you don't like jet noise, go the heck home where you came from.

Jen Amos: 28:19

Oh, man. So Tom, like no joke. Every morning. We live close to a base as well. Right? Every morning, I think right at eight o'clock, like right around sunrise, the national anthem always goes off like it's always on. And we can hear it all the way from our house. Like, we're in house for like, what is that? So if I'm not sleeping in, like, if I'm up early, it's one of the first things that I hear.

: 28:42

It's, I'm glad they're playing it, because I'm really not too thrilled. You know, I'm not a spring chicken. And I've, you know, I grew up with there's super high patriotism in the country, and some of the stuff that's going on is doesn't sit well with people in my generation. So I'm glad they're playing that and said, I can do a part for military family.

Jen Amos: 29:01

Yeah, definitely. Well, Tom, I feel like we had such an incredible conversation today. Do you have any other closing thoughts or advice for our listeners, before we wrap up?

: 29:10

Well, I just want them to know that the internet can be used, everybody's on it anyway. So you may want to really consider how you could change the course of your financial future for your family. By embracing this in some fashion whatsoever, if it's not me, somebody credible to teach you how to do this. And I'll tell you what, it's just the sky is the limit. There's no limit on what you could do for your family. If you took the time, especially if you're taking the time to go to some pitiful job that you hate and is not really commensurate with your knowledge and your education and you're just doing it because you have to have the time spent in this could pay off beautifully for your family and your financial future and your security.

Jen Amos: 29:57

I feel compelled to ask me one more question. Sure. Rob, I live here. Come to your house. No. But you know, you've been in the entrepreneurial world for basically your entire forever. And what do you think is that hang up for people that are working a job? What keeps them from taking that leap, you know, to learning something such as internet marketing, you know, to break away from the nine to five job and you know, screw the commute. What do you think is that hang up? Well,

: 30:27

I don't like to use the term brainwashed. But I feel compelled in that the higher education system in our country has been designed to make you think you must go to college to be anything in this world. And they just keep raising the tuitions. And I have a webinar on this. And you'll be mad after you watch it, because some of the things that are happening out there is that they're artificially raising grade point averages. But testing is showing that the students are dumber just to justify these high tuitions. But anyway, this, you know, Onslaught to parents that, Oh, you gotta get your kids to college so that they can make money. And they can have a good career is not really working out. Look around. I mean, the average student, they did a study with 2000 students in a bunch of different colleges, they're spending eight hours a week total, preparing and go on to class eight hours in a whole week. The rest of it is partying, eating and shopping. I don't know if I want to mortgaged my house for that. Right. Yeah. You know, the ones that are making it are getting usable skills that are in demand, which is why I'm so fired up to try to help people do this. Because the other direction, yeah, if you got to be a dentist or a doctor or something or an account, and that requires, you know, you go through that. Yeah, that makes sense. But for most people it doesn't. And I think that's what's holding them up is they've been hammered since they're a little kid. I mean, preschool, they're saying, what are you going to? You know, what are you going to be in college? What are you going to go? Where are you going to go? Yeah, I'd like to teach them little kids say I'm not and then throw up on the person asking.

Jen Amos: 32:13

Yeah, no, definitely.

: 32:14

I think that's it that they've been brainwashed to. There's only one path. And that is just so wrong. Nowadays. The world has changed.

Jen Amos: 32:22

Yeah, you know, my siblings, and I were very fortunate to go through college, our tuition was paid for thanks to my father serving. But you know, it didn't mean I was going to be successful. I did get fired from four jobs. You all know, it didn't really work for me.

: 32:38

Oh, they're giving credit the protests. They you know, just just upsets. Yeah.

Jen Amos: 32:44

Yeah. Well, Tom, I want to thank you so much for your time. For anyone that wants to reach out to you and learn more about you and the school. How can they do that? Yeah, so

: 32:53

they can go to imtcva.org. That's Internet Marketing Training Center, Virginia, but it is distance learning. So it doesn't matter where you are, and then put forward slash military. And that'll show you a lot of the people that I've helped in the military over the years and, and go over all these benefits and talks about the my ca program and so forth. And then they probably should subscribe to my podcast, screw the commute.com. They can. It's all over iTunes and every possible place, you can get a podcast so and they can reach me through there. And I'm happy to speak to people, like I said, people at my level won't talk to anybody. I'll talk to anybody that wants to improve themselves so so they can find the contact information there.

Jen Amos: 33:36

Awesome. Well, there you have it, listeners. We have Tom Antion on our show. Thank you so much for your time. And hopefully this was another valuable episode in which you can apply to holding down the fort for your family. Thank you all for listening. And, Tom, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. My pleasure.