I said so what is going to get me close to the front line he's like he said combat medic I said boom done so my unit cased its colors everybody jump ship it might seem so insignificant while you're doing the day to day but it's part of such a bigger picture such a bigger mission the World Series of trade shows of toy trade shows in the US some of the times I was happiest in my life you know hanging out as a kid playing D&D with my friends there's no political agenda hey up she rises way hey so we're putting in the long bus to jumpy so we're putting in the long bus to jumpy uh I am Anthony Siati I am the owner of a small uh e commerce business called Tactics Toys uh I live in and operate the business out of my home in southern New Jersey uh born and raised in Philadelphia uh spent 32 years in the Army Reserve and have had the benefit of two parallel careers one military one civilian so I got the best of all worlds and I eventually settled in South Jersey so nice I joined in do you want me to go through like a Reader's Digest version of my military yeah well let's let's first talk about what like growing up in Pennsylvania okay did you live in PA I lived in Philadelphia in particular uh from until I went away to college when I was eighteen oh wow okay and then so uh where'd you go to college uh Seton Hall University in uh South Orange New Jersey yeah okay so that's what LED you to go into Jersey yes yeah I I followed a uh I I think I I went to I started mid semester my parents wanted me to go away to college yeah and so I ended up in a had a summer fling followed a girl to seat and hall and we went our separate ways as soon as school started nice yeah um that's funny yeah so did you finish college while you were out I did yeah I did I I stayed in I was uh you know I think I had two sophomore years but um you know it took me five years to graduate uh huh but I I did yeah what did you get your degree in uh psychology oh nice okay had I known better I would have done something different you know it's really uh well one of the things that I maybe I didn't use my career counselor enough but you know I didn't know that a bachelor's degree in psychology is really with the degree and 4/4 I can make a call to payphone that's really about it yeah so unless you had aspirations for grad school and I tried I took my GREs and came in middle of the road yeah that's what I always tell folks and they like hey can you talk to my kids they're thinking about college and a lot of them want to get psych degrees I'm like that's an it's a gateway it's a gateway degree for another 10 more years of school yes I know and I did have a secondary major in Russian language and history oh interesting yeah we had to take a language at Seton Hall um so I took something I I thought I was being clever just take something we gotta learn a whole new alphabet yeah so we started with ah be be get you know it's going through the Russian alphabet start putting words together and I got a's and basic Russian so I took intermediate Russian and then I qualified for advanced Russian which was advanced Russian you had to get approval cause it's one on one with a teacher which the challenge was she knew always knew when I skip class haha well yeah cause she would she would call my dorm room yelling at me in Russian and I like you're going too quick you're going too fast slow down alright alright alright I'm sorry and of course I gotta do all this in Russian when I'm you know hungover yeah it's funny cause um it's so interesting that you said it's so weird so I recently like in the last couple of weeks have been down going down this rabbit hole of just how beautiful certain parts of Russia can be like it's not always snow it started off with some research of Siberia and kind of like traversed into I follow this hiking channel and this guy went on a really long not cross country but a very long hike on eastern eastern side of Russia so okay not as cold or it has seasons I should say and I didn't realize how beautiful the landscape is cause you just you just think Stalin and snow like you don't really you don't really realize that like this is a huge piece of Asia yeah you're I think it spans like 10 time zones or eight time zones yeah and it's I mean another thing that got me really interested especially with this whole um the current administration trying to buy Iceland um is that Russia is across the river from Iceland yeah you don't oh yeah absolutely it's right there and same thing with Alaska like you see it on a globe but if you actually like go down a street view and if you actually look at how close Russia is to Alaska it's like wow and it makes sense we bought it from them so you know but um anyway sorry that's okay a history lesson in Russia for everybody listening um so okay so you went to college when did you join the reserves uh I ninety one um it was may and I didn't have a job lined up for the summer and I'm like maybe I'll join the military yeah as like I don't I I'm sure I don't need to worry about an interview process and cause I waited so long procrastination in college was a I think I was a strong point of mine yeah so I went to the recruiting office but at the time it was in Montclair New Jersey and all four recruiters had a little section in there it's when they were all consolidated and the guy from the army recruiting office was the only one at the as desk so I went right to him we spoke I took my finals and four days later five days later I went home got picked up got dropped off at Meps and was on her way to on my way to boot camp at Fort McCoy Alabama oh wow what was your um MOS when you joined the reserves I wanted nothing more than to be an infantryman and I didn't get it oh interesting I didn't know anything about how what you can and cannot do with a with a recruiter okay and he's you know they they took my azvabs and I qualify for everything cause I got over 120 in every category and the only thing they like it was put to me almost like this we're not hiring infantrymen right now interesting well you have three positions you are qualified for accountant medic and cook I said so what is going to get me close to the front line he's like he said combat medic I said boom done sign me up so it was 91 Bravo back in 91 eventually became 91 whiskey then 68 whiskey okay so you're you're a medic did you yes um so obviously that was reserves how long how long was the pipeline through basic and then your MOS school all right uh split split options so I did basic training for uh nine weeks came home went back to college two and a half are two semesters and I had to skip a semester because the train my training pipeline for AIT started in August and went 12 weeks so it carried me up into Novemberish gotcha did you were you a combat medic or working in the medical field the entire time your entire reserves reservist career uh yes I was a I was a combat medic the entire time uh I started off as a medic with an infantry mechanized infantry unit when the Armor Reserve still had combat arms and then the rift came in 94 and the combat arms all went to the National Guard and combat support went to the reserves and I was still a a dumb private at the time uh I didn't know anything uh you know I had been demoted more than once already and my unit cased its colors everybody jumped ship it was like when you know it was like the rats drink running off the sinking ship and all of a sudden the phone call say hey next week is battle assembly weekend or it's drill weekend um are you gonna need a ride from your home to the the reserve center you do you have all the gear you need here's what we're doing you know cause there was no email so I would get a phone call the phone call stopped and I didn't think anything of it and I just you know without absence with absence of leadership I didn't know that I can take charge and try and figure it out for myself so I got dumped in the IRR for three years and I thought okay I'll just write out my contract here and call it a day and and my buddy Chris joined the army asked me what I thought I said it was a great time when I was in it you know I had fun and all that and I went to go see him graduate basic training at Fort Knox by that time I had a Mohawk I have my nose pierced and and all that and I met his uh met his drill sergeant and I signed him out saying I was his brother and the next day the drill sergeant calls him into his office says that knucklehead who came in to pick you up he goes uh is he military he goes he did his time how did you know he goes I don't think he realized it he was talking to me at parade rest the entire time it was just an instinctual thing you see the brown round you go to parade rest yeah in your Mohawk yeah but watching watching the formations go and hearing the cadence called and I was like wow a day after I got back from Fort Knox watch him graduate I was on the phone with a recruiting office and went into the reserves to be with an artillery unit or excuse me I went into the National Guard Jersey Guard with the to be a in an artillery unit as a gun as a battery medic and then my buddy years later calls me down to his house and says tells me how I've messed up my military career cause here he is E5 bucking on early promotion to E6 already and he said but it's not too late to fix it here's what I want you to do and it gives me a phone number says call them get an interview and if they offer you a position take it don't ask questions just trust me he's like alright three bags full I got it so I called a place called

04 Civil Affairs Battalion at Fort Dix interviewed uh in early 2000 August 2000 I was discharged for the guard and listed in the reserves and January 2001 I was on a plane going to Kosovo on deployment number one oh wow yeah um Kosovo too interesting uh huh it was great it's a peacekeeping mission I had a blast yeah yeah I'm talking to a buddy of mine who's actually out in Albania and they do a lot of stuff with the units that are out in Kosovo but do I fell in love with the civil affairs mission uh and that's when I I started to figure out what it takes to be a soldier or how to be a soldier cause civil affairs has its its its share of people who do dumb things much like every other army unit yeah but the the mission is you know when you do something that years later redraws a map of Eastern Europe and it's not directly related to anything I did but I was a part of the mission all of a sudden now there's this went from a semi autonomous province of Serbia to its own little country now I was like wow I was I had a role in that yeah I always I used to try to tell this to my my folks when I was still in is that it might seem so insignificant while you're doing the day to day but it's part of such a bigger picture such a bigger mission and I think it usually it takes a really long time sometimes people wait their entire careers before they get like that piece of like oh wow I was a part of this or like I thought I was just sitting in the golf on a boat next thing I know we're launching we're launching Tomahawks or whatever um and you realize kind of like the piece that you're playing and the impact that you have but that's pretty awesome so yeah and it helped me structure everything I did in the civilian world like after college I was just going from I went from like right out of college working three part time jobs at the mall to sales selling uh accounting and financial services and selling copy machines and all that and this is awful yeah and once once I finished my first appointment I realized what I wanted to do and which probably should have been go active duty and call it a day but every civilian job I started getting it was structuring around making me a better soldier and medic and civil affairs guy so I you know spent 15 years on a volunteer rescue squad um I worked in the biotech sector uh worked in a laboratory so I got a lot of I I acquired a lot of knowledge on um pathogens and infectious disease and all that and I've taken course in environmental sciences and and um and then I eventually ended up working for the army as a civilian years down the line um as a medical administrator oh nice yeah I was at that's one of my was goes listen to my next question was you know what did you do with all of that medical training from the army um I I I stare at a computer now all day but yeah uh I I monitor the medical readiness of 32,000 soldiers spared over 13 states I write profiles and that kind of thing and have the DOC sign them I review medical records um lines of duty that kind of thing and yeah lately it's been helping soldiers through their VA process I mean that's that's pretty incredible have you when you got out initially I know I have a friend who is in the Army Reserve as well she's attached to um she's an um gosh what does she do she's aviation side but she is also a medic and um the first thing she did when she got out I mean obviously this is a little bit laughter you after you had joined but she went and got her NREMT and became licensed did you do anything similar when you got out as a as a medic you're required to have your NREMT oh okay it's it's it got written into the it was written into the curriculum so you got it as as you were at AIT and then you have to sustain it your entire time so I had uh both NR and state because New Jersey doesn't accept a national registry yeah um but you can challenge a test and just get your state because to run volunteer rescue and to do hospital work as I've worked per DM at a hospital and as an er tech you have to have the state certification so you're trained up to the EMT level and not the paramedic level correct oh interesting I just I just went through that process oh did you yeah I took the EMT course in November I'm actually I waited to take the EMT course because I knew they were coming out with the new version um okay they have a new version now that it's all about uh you know uh scene size of primary secondary assessment uh huh so I waited for that because I didn't like the old test and um there was a couple people in my class that were prior service that did not maintain their NREMT and I knew my friend had hers I didn't realize it was part of the curriculum but that that makes sense um so that's that's pretty cool so let's talk a little bit about your business cause I know that okay you have this really awesome business I'll let you uh introduce it so what's so how did you get into um this toy industry collectible industry board games things like that all right uh so we're we're talking after 1 2 after my third deployment I came back and you know you just I got married and we combined households and we moved into my small and we sold one house bought another and realize we have too much stuff yeah and so I started selling like a lot of a lot of resellers I met started selling things on eBay and I just put stuff up and you hear that cash registers down when someone puts a bid if you're running an auction or somebody buys it and I was like oh this is fun so I just started putting more stuff on hey do we need this no get rid of it all right put it up go go next thing you know I look into the Paypal account there's like four or five thousand dollars in there like oh wow that's weird so I told my wife and she's like transfer to the bank boom gone done and disappeared like where to go so I started um now mind you um mind you I didn't have a business account no LLC or anything so and I started going to the store and buying stuff on a clearance rack and bringing it back taking the labels off and selling it as new cause it was new I didn't know there was a word for it it's called retail arbitrage but it's apparently it's a thing yeah and then I started getting going I started going good where I had a few hundred listings up and um you know I get up I pack ship go to work come back pack at night get ready you know the same thing over and over and then um then I deployed again so that was it see now let's see Kosoovo Iraq Africa Afghanistan okay I was going back to Africa again on deployment No. 5 I had to shut everything down and uh so I took my personal computer and just occasionally logged into my accounts just so they don't go stale and lock me out or just go defunct for inactivity and I was deployed as a first sergeant and the biggest job you do as a first sergeant when you're on on the in Djibouti is make sure your junior soldiers don't get dumb or do anything stupid cause you're allowed to drink there cause it's considered a combat zone but there's nobody throwing grenades over the wall at you yeah and you're allowed to drink beer and wear civilian clothes and unfortunately those things don't mix well a lot when you're dealing with soldiers and multiple branches and and male and female soldiers together things get a little you know some formalities are forgotten yeah so I started thinking you know I'm getting older I'm already past 20 years at this time almost at the top of the food chain sooner or later I got to stop and the arms gonna say you can't play anymore what the hell am I gonna do so I started I thought maybe maybe there's something to this reselling business so I started researching and I started I there's Sawyers Learned about this whole community of resellers on YouTube on Reddit on everywhere else in the world just putting out information or you know selling their quote unquote mastermind courses and that kind of thing but there's a lot of people doing the same thing and some are doing it well some are talking about their trials and tribulations doing it how they do it what they do so I just started listening and get towards the end of the tour so this is about 2,014 I think I present the idea to my wife and we're on a Skype call and she goes um well two things 1 don't quit your job unless you can replace your income completely and 2 the house doesn't look like an episode of hoarders which I'm really trying not to do so she said um and what do I have to do I said nothing just say yes so she said yeah and a month later I had tax ID number I had um two vendors who said yes sure we'll take you on even though I didn't have a website and just an idea a business name and a tax ID number and then lies the birth of tactics to toys yes yes and I came home and went to go daddy got the first website got it built started listing on eBay cause I needed cash coming in I took $400 of my earnings open a business account or $400 from my deployment money open a business account and started buying a few things and just started snowboarding from there that January or February I went to my first toy fair wondered which is the World Series of Trade Shows of toy trade shows in the US on the East Coast you can easily walk 14 miles going up and down the aisles looking at the all the manufacturers so I handed out my cars to some places and you know had some people say yeah no you're not what we're looking for and some people like yeah sure we'll sell to you and then they're they I get back and they never fill the order and I I pig them saying hey what's going on and they said well we looked up your address and it's a residential address you're not the kind of business we want carrying our product I'm like okay now bear in mind ten years later some of these businesses I have circled around to try and pitch to me and uh one of the things that motivates me is spite yeah it's a little it's it's very immature I know but East Coast thing yep but it's one of those uh yeah I tried that with you and you told me no so I don't think so yeah thanks thanks but no thanks cause I I I picked up a numerous a whole series of other vendors by this time um the original ask the reason why I chose toys and games cause that was what I was selling the most of it's kind of what I know more than anything and if I think back um some of the times I was happiest in my life you know hanging out as a kid playing D&D with my friends um listening to music going to shows um and working in the laboratory in a clean room because nobody bothered me yeah so this whole e commerce thing works you know I'm around you know collectibles toys and games and I don't have to be face to face with customers all day day in and day out yeah you know that may change one day you know but and right now so that and there's no there's no agenda around toys you typically there's no political agenda there's you know I mean there's some things that go to where people put their their policies and thoughts behind it but in general you know a board game is a board game yeah I think that's they're pretty timeless in that regard yes and I love the nostalgia aspect of it you know and um you know when certain things come in with some of the action figures that are made after the 80s movies the original Dune action figures and all that it just brings me back and this makes me think wow this movie was great or when the the alien characters they released those from they live or the John Notta who was Roddy Roddy Piper's character and they live you know yeah I'm starting to feel that a little bit more now that I'm I'm getting up there in in age that things are coming back around with like sequels and remakes yes younger generation is really getting into things from my generation and I see that stuff resurfacing it definitely definitely brings me back I had an uncle who he still does he collects action figures particularly Star Wars okay um cause that those movies were coming out when he was a kid but I remember whenever I would visit him his old room was just covered in these action figures he ended up getting injured during 9 11 he's a he was he's retired medically retired now NYPD officer okay and um he's dedicated his entire retirement to collecting things from 70s 80s okay and his basement is like you guys would be great friends his oh I'm sure his basement is like insane the amount of collectibles he has in there life size action figures things from the movie sets um it's just insane and and he just does it cause it it brings back those those memories being a kid um so let's talk about a little bit about uh you know the things that you sell on your website okay I know I've gone through it I saw a bunch of DnD stuff but what are some of the things that you sell uh I saw a lot of pop culture and horror related when it comes to action figures I love horror movies been watching them since I was a little kid and I don't stop I still watch them you know it doesn't have to be Halloween for me to watch anything horror related yeah so when you know when trick or treat studios uh came out with a 12 inch Halloween 1978 Halloween versus the Doctor Loomis and Michael Myers I'm like I I need them yeah oh yeah I I need them send them over or the return of the living dead action figures or the Dune action figures the movie Willow they released action figures set 4 and then there's also and music figures that come out um you know Bismark or salt and pepper um uh DMX you know so a lot of hip hop stars there's some uh some metal Ronnie James Dio and that's a that's what I'm that's what I'm attracted to that's what I get and sometimes you know I'll get things that my vendor will make a recommendation on like hey this is selling really well do you want a couple cases for your shop like sure yeah I mean especially as like sequels come out like I just I bought um The Complete Works of Alfred Hitchcock and I feel like the universe was talking to me because like right after I bought that a couple of friends of mine were saying that you know they're redoing movies or like there's movies inspired by those works and that causes the the surgeon and his action figure was a big seller oh yeah I had it yes yeah I just um gosh what I think it was last year when I bought that movie set and I felt like two weeks later it was like all I could hear all I was hearing about so okay so that's pretty cool so how when it comes to what people are buying the most you find that they're buying um like board game peripherals like dice and things like that or are they buying more action figures where where are people uh for right now it is right now my my biggest sellers are the action figures right okay like right include especially right now there's one I feel like I have to up my order cause not due until may but it's um if you ever saw the movie True Romance yeah uh alright they released an action figure set oh interesting okay and it is uh I only ordered 3 cases cause there it's a mix assortment so I got an even number of sets and I'm 3/4 sold through them interesting what about um what about sports is that something that you see no um the the luchadores from the Mexican wrestling circuit I had those they sold they sold well actually and I got Andre the giant he didn't sell oh that's really I I had a thing out on eBay let me know when my this Rick Flare action figure that I really wanted came out and it finally did and I I just I could I think the bid was at like 10 bucks and I just put 100 bucks I was like I'm just gonna can't kill out the bid cause I knew but nobody was gonna outbid me um yeah now the at the the sports action figures I sell are the ones I have they're the 3 3 quarter inch are you talking about the larger no no this was this was a smaller one okay the larger one all the ones that I've seen they are animated in some way they take batteries they make okay and I don't really go for those um now they're there there's a line and I can't think of the toy company right now that makes it that it's probably Hasbro cause they seem to make a lot of metall yeah they're like 6 or 8 inch tall uh and it's the entire wrestling line you know anyone who's anybody in wrestling has been made into a figure yeah but I I don't typically carry them cause I'm I'm a one person show so sure I have to be able to the one thing I don't want to do is get so in it have so many irons in the fire so many diverse lines that I can't keep up with it no I think your niche is pretty awesome I think you hit the nail on the head I think the the types of people that are gonna be attracted to your website are gonna be in a couple of those realms because they are similar interest um I right before this call you and I were talking about D&D so what are the sorts of things or tabletop games that you what are the sorts of things you have for those those areas okay uh let's see the um uh a lot of like HP Lovecraft theme games so the um the Arkham Horror game series the elder torch game series some of these expansion packs sometimes it's hard to keep up because expansion packs yeah all these games are in existence already so there's you know 10 15 20 different expansion packs or expansion card sets some of them are living card games other are tabletop games something new that came out well not new now but it's was uh the Star Wars Shatterpoint corset and there was a lot of hype behind it and I got the thing and the box is box weighs like 8 pounds huge tall big like this is gonna be a bear to ship yeah you know and then the expansion packs come out after it and it's just had sometimes it's hard to keep up um yeah it reminds me of I don't know if you ever watch Big Bang Theory but there um the cast is in this comic book shop right and there's a an expansion set and it's like every time the whole episode every time they go into the comic book store a new expansion set comes out okay we just bought the expansion set um it was like the Billy the kid expansion set for I forgot what game it was um but yeah it was pretty fun I don't think it's a real card game that they were playing in the game in the TV show but okay it seems that that's like a familiar theme amongst anybody yes yeah they they come out with a lot and then then I got the the monthly newsletter stating that you know hey we have all these on this when you look at the price of something typically with board games and expansion packs you are paying 60% of the retail price that is your wholesale price it's not even a 50 50 oh wow split anymore so uh you know a hundred dollar game cost me $60 or more yeah and then you got to factor the cost of shipping it to me cause shipping is not cheap and a lot of my stuff comes from California going from coast to coast oh boy yeah it's really small overhead that's I'm actually really surprised cause a lot of my clients I tell them to look for margins that are the complete opposite of that um but I mean I will say though it's volume at that at that point so yes yeah it's pretty interesting okay so how are things now how do you find I kind of want to get into the business aspect because a lot of our listeners are veterans that that are interested in businesses and a lot of them don't want to do the don't want to do all the fancy or like popular things like dropshipping so what is it like having an e commerce that sells physical products what were the challenges you've you've you know discovered when you first started things like that uh organization storage uh bookkeeping and developing a system right yeah and that's what yeah so one of the one of the big things is you know a lot of my items are generally the same size so I like why am I buying different size boxes just get one side so there's for example a 10 by 7 by 4 box um I go through about 500 of them a quarter because most things fit in that sometimes you put a little packing paper on and I go through about 1,000 feet of bubble wrap bubble wrap a quarter and yeah and knowing that um automate where you can right and it's whatever makes your life quicker and easier um getting a Thermal printer for example when I no longer buy ink it's great yeah you know cause ink runs out at the worst times and if you have to go to Staples to get ink it's like $40 if I go to the PX on the on the base it's $20 but they don't always have it yeah logistics is definitely big for any physical products but I'm curious what was it like um because you know getting started how are you able to find vendors was it just simply by going to those trade shows yes um my I was at the Super 7 booth and in 2,017 my wife didn't want to go this time so I'm flying solo and they had the King Diamond action figure coming out and they had the they had the prototype and I was a big merciful fate fan growing up King Diamond was the man you know so I'm talking to him about it and he's like you're he asked me something about how am I how do I know his products I said well I buy them through one of your distributors Entertainment Earth I said I carry these I carry the universal monsters and he goes so what do you think I said I think I love them you know they remind me of my childhood I said you know in fact I only had one issue with anything the Bell Lagosi style Draculas the bubble wasn't glued to the card so I pull a card out and there's nothing on the card and you look down in the box and there's the bubble and the figure I'm like oh yeah he said so what did you do because did you call anybody I said no no I got the blue Elmer's glue that dries like perfectly clear put a just bead around it dropped it on and just Mark them all as reglued with an explanation of what happened yeah he's like and you get these from who now I said Entertainment Earth he goes you have a card I gave my card he goes pops open his little computer does a few things he goes all right you can buy from us directly he goes don't go through the distributor he goes it'll save you a little bit of money nice what's it and it's and they are they I buy their three and three quarter inch figures and I I think since in the last 10 years I've sold about 12,000 of them wow taking rough estimates and that's individual orders now some of the orders have multiples on it I didn't go dive in that deep yeah but they're my they're my money maker and sometimes they also have the bigger margins too cause it's it's 50 to 100% margin if you got the if you got a figure that's in high demand yeah and it's better for them too because there's no there's no distributor in the middle so yes for them it's they're actually maximizing their profits even if you're making more they're making more too it's a win win uh huh to go direct um what and it's every time I go back to the booth it's a Luke and I have a no matter how what my new vendor is or my new rep is over there I always got to stop and say hi to Luke and yeah you know that's I don't know how many times he's gonna get sick of hearing me thank him for the yeah thanks for bringing me on as a client how many vendors do you think you have now um 10 oh that's not bad that's not bad at all what um the question I was gonna ask is what is it like I don't know much about I I have a business in New York okay and I know it's a pain in the ass um New York did not make it easy so since I live out of state uh what's it like in in Jersey are there any like hoops to jump through with physical products and being e commerce no or oh okay no um it's I register with the state as an LLC as long as I file my taxes quarterly yeah funny story to go with that got some bad tax advice uh from the internet of all places cause you know you know god forbid the internet you know you know cause not everything on the internet is true I don't know how many people don't realize but he doesn't know yeah but because my threshold was so low I was under the impression that I didn't have to file sales tax but once a year not and I have to worry about it quarterly cause I didn't hit a minimum point well that's not the case so as soon as you pass the 12th of that the 12th month the 12th day of the month following the quarter and you don't file you start accruing a hundred dollar fine oh and then the second quarter you miss is another hundred dollar final top of that and it it cruises daily yeah so by the time I filed my eight dollars and seventy two cents in sales tax for the year cause I don't have a lot of Jersey customers um I got a over 4,000 dollar tax Bill yeah and I went through the law and it said ignorant and it's very clear that ignorance is not an excuse so I called and had to play and like look I know it says on your website but I am completely I was completely ignorant of this I got bad tax advice they told me to write a letter send it into the tax department explain everything and they'll make an adjudication well they accepted it they wiped out the money I owed and they took the $8 and something cents yeah taxes as like lesson Learned so now I file a matter of fact I have to do it tomorrow yeah I was gonna say in the next couple days I I was trying to explain this to somebody because they were under the impression like it's one thing if your LLC doesn't make any money and how you file your federal taxes but in California it's the same way even if you report zero you still have to report it that's correct and I had some clients that got tripped up over that because I'm like the second you apply for a seller's permit that's when the clock starts ticking and they there's no there's no grandfathering in there's no if you bought it on the last day of the quarter guess what tomorrow you have to go in and submit your your paperwork and we yeah for federal uh I do it once a year um yeah yeah federal is different yeah and cause if you pay quarterly as soon as you pay that first payment quarterly I feel like you're locked into it and then you have to file every quarter and I don't I enjoy seeing my account only once a year yeah cause I only I do my own sales tax filing that's it I'm an accounting software I pull up the ST I pull up the the PNL sort by state and figure out what what I owe Jersey now what I but a goal when you're selling physical products um I don't know how many years ago but it was a Wayfair versus North Dakota um set up set precedent now that if you sell to another state you technically should be paying sales tax in that state regardless of nexus and I think I may have said that wrong but every state has their own mandatory minimums now so it's you know$200,000 in sales and or 200 individual sales in a particular state is your threshold for example is what your threshold would be to have to file taxes in that state and tax jar one of these other software things has has all those in it uh which I I hope I never hit the threshold on Florida because Florida has all these county county sales tax as well as a state and it's it's messy and I think New York State is is kind of messy like that too where the counties have different sales tax rates that's how it is in California too but in California it's $1 like if you do any business in California you not only have to register as an out of state business conducting business in California uh huh you also have to go through their whole tax procedure so um like when I started my business in New York I was doing business in California and California charges you $800 a year even if you're an out of state business if you're conducting business within the state you have to pay they do have nexus though so right their own nexus rules where if you're in California but selling out of state you don't have to pay sales tax but if you're in California and sell in California yes but I think their threshold I think you're right I think it is 200,000 for California also okay yeah cause I start paying yeah and I I believe I sell a lot to Calif I ship a lot to California yeah we have which is funny because my my vendors list a lot of my vendors on the West Coast they also have a storefront as well they have a retail site but they're still coming to buy from me yeah I mean hey that whatever works I look I'll take it yeah I have um uh which one we'll call it so um yeah we should probably talk cause I have a distribution center here but um I always tell like my friends I have a friend who's a bookkeeper I'm like listen do yourself a favor go talk to ammo she'll tell you exactly what you need to do cause she operates primarily on the East Coast okay from she's in New York but um she manages businesses like New York Jersey all the way down to Virginia North Carolina and I was just send people to her cause I'm like listen the internet is sometimes not your friend haha sometimes you have to actually like talk to somebody um and she actually saved me for making a few of those mistakes when I um when I was doing my business in New York but sitting in California cause there's a lot that I mix I mean New York is so old like I still have to FAX stuff to Albany and like I didn't even know that people start are still faxing things the medical field still facts is like hospitals and such I mean yeah what's your facts number yeah I'm like when they told me that I had to FAX stuff to Albany and I was like the capital of New York doesn't have an email I have to FAX this stuff and there's no sensitive information on it if there was something sensitive I can understand a more secure means right like it's your form anyway um so so where do you see your business going so it sounds like your business is doing really well you've been in business for a really long time what's the next step for you yeah well hopefully cause I'm on my second and second full service marketing firm or excuse me third okay um and my first two were uh uh other disappointments yeah we should talk about that cause I think that's good for people to know that uh some not everybody's promising the right dream yeah and and so um so down the line um now my 5 year plan always seems to move up cause every year that 5 year plan still seems to be 5 years yeah I'd like to be out of here uh in a whether it's a I build something on my piece of property and put everything in there or sublet a section of warehouse cause New Jersey's cutting down all the feel like they're cutting down all the agriculture and state Woodland and putting up warehouses yeah so I know but at least a section of that put everything in there to get out of the house and have something else and then shortly after that build up to a distributorship because and still maintain the B to B b to C but I'd like to do b to B as well yeah cause I want to find that guy who was me in 2,014 making that phone call and somebody had was nice enough to say yeah we'll take you on as a client I want to do that for somebody yeah and then my own figure and then my own action figures oh that'd be kind of cool and and and slush cast soft vinyl designer toys yeah you know um well two things I was in a similar situation when I started my own supplement brand okay obviously for consumables it's a it's I don't know it's a little bit different but not too different than actually like collectibles because you have to keep them in a certain temperature and humidity levels and things like that oh yeah especially things like comic books yeah exactly so um I can't store that stuff in my house and if I did there's all these like FDA regulations and like making sure you keep certain temperatures anyway yep I did a ton of research and it turns out that one of my really good friends um her partner does a pick and pack so it's a distribution warehouse where they are the filler you you send them you send them all your product and then they fulfill the orders but it is expensive cause it's like by skew the number you have per skew and that cost adds up plus like shelf space and storage and you have right like a certain amount each month so that's definitely something that I think people need to consider when they're getting into physical products is where are you gonna store it and are there regulations around storing stuff um so I ended up going with them and they're in Idaho obviously the more tax friendly states but I think right now Texas is is really under the spotlight for distribution cause they have some of the largest distribution centers in the world because a lot of the products coming up from like Mexico for example okay will stop at those distribution centers but they have smaller warehouses for um for smaller businesses like that's where Amazon and Walmart are gonna get their stuff uh huh but they have smaller ones uh that are not as expensive cause they're bread and butter as the big businesses so yeah I'd be interested to see what Jersey does but um yeah I wanna talk about the marketing thing because yeah go ahead you've gone through a couple of different marketing companies so can you explain what happened cause I've been in your shoes so I just alright so I first you know sought within a veteran community and I had somebody I'm not gonna put anyone on blast actually wait a minute this is my fourth company oh wow I went through I went through two veteran businesses okay and you know and I I don't know how to how many times I could say this to a a marketing rep or at least a sales site salesperson who's trying to get me in the door to be their customer if you don't understand the adult collector market you know I had to be very careful cause I always say adult toy market and that just sounds like weird the adult collector market the adult tabletop game market you're not gonna know this is not none of this stuff except for with with the exception of one or two items none of this is geared toward children it's geared towards adult collectors adult gamers and so one started off um so the first two veteran community we we hired them on they you know they gave me we got it we can do this you know kind of the same story um sunk money in advertising and it just one of them was like yeah I this I don't think I could do this this isn't he goes I'm not producing results for you so that was short lived the other one I fired cause once again it was like pulling teeth to get them on the phone pulling teeth to get metrics and I let him go my son's poking his head in I'm laughing I did hi bud what I did the dishes thank you go upstairs please small business it's alright I was laughing cause this happened in another episode and I turned into a drinking game like whenever the kid pops his head in you have to take a shot okay oh if I didn't know that I would have put down a good bottle of Bourbon um so you fired the second one so this so I fired two and then I try to do it on my own and then I just stopped any marketing whatsoever yeah and and I got and I did a zoom call with a small company um with you know remote workers all over the country uh not gonna say their name too cause they they may actually work for they may do well for some people you know they had case studies they presented and all this and sure and I I'm a bit cynical so I I look at all case studies cynically you know it's like okay that's one yeah yeah and you know and or you know when they say we work with businesses similar to yours oh give me some names and business names and points of contact so I can get a reference well that's proprietary we have NDAs and like well why we can't work together yeah this one did provide me things and one of the thing one of the questions I asked and this was a is usually a make or break question it's what are you promising and it's and the answer they gave was very very well thought out it was marketing is a very um volatile area so we cannot promise dollars that would be foolish but we can promise you and they outlined what they were going to do for me it's like you can rely you can count on this many posts this many of this this many that um ever uh you know this many requests for what you want to what you want to advertise out they added um so I was like alright let's try it out they had it what they called an incubator program so it was sinking now 12 a month into it uh 20% goes to the agency the rest goes to advertising dollars and uh you know like and it typically takes about 90 days to get really spun up to get the advertising out there's where you start seeing it so uh you know naturally I find a product I click on it on my website just so I can be retargeted so I can see it happening live yeah but after about month 5 or 6 all the images all the all the assets I was sending I kept seeing the same ones I did back when we first started like where's all the new stuff all the new post all the new products I need to you to push out and I'm I missed the red flags just cause I I didn't know any better um every month or two I seem to have a new new rep on my account and then I could start going on LinkedIn and look up my rep my rep say a solar salesperson on top of this and or does this on top of this like this doesn't make sense so um by that time we're too close to Q4 so I was like I can't cut right now you haven't you haven't got me any conversions and that's my metric oh we had a meeting every month and they'd show me you know the the metrics and how many people were viewing and all that like my metric of of choice I need to know is conversions and you haven't converted anything yet up my sales budget to 2 k or my marketing budget to 2 k a month uh so 15 or X amount to them 15 500 to them 15 to sales and marketing in Christmas Christmas should get me something so when I went to the ad roll which was their service they use still no conversions by the end of November I was like look I'm done working with you of course I had to pay an extra month the exit fee yeah I was like this mother yeah and by that time I picked up with um a company and marketing company in Canada okay and same money but a separate advertising budget so I gotta think more money in advertising but they full social media management full website management and they built a new website oh wow I mean the website is phenomenal I saw the old website too so the changes is night and day for sure I really like the new website um how's the how's the social media marketing with them uh we haven't sunk any dollars into it yet cause I I was with a a company actually they're I really liked working with them called Arrow Dot AI they manage my social media they were good I had no complaints on them they were getting me followers getting likes getting some business out of it but I can't have two people doing the same thing yeah and they're they're growing and evolving too so uh you know naturally their prices had to go up cause their features were getting bigger and more robust uh so you know we parted amicably I got it I still have to go back and leave him a great review and um and shifted everything to one company no sense in paying for the same service the two different eight entities uh so now they they post um 5 4 or 5 days a week uh they pull from my site um I loaded up all my assets to their images anytime I do video I had the video onto there they pick it apart and the post through meta um they just connect we just reconnected Pinterest so we'll start getting them involved in that and uh when they take video they'll edit it back and send it back and like hey this one you use for TikTok this if you're gonna post on there this one you can use on your site if you want to upload it on and a few other places or they just pass it over to my website my webmasters and they do it for me yeah that's pretty cool I think it's always a struggle for small business owners and not in your case but a lot of the people that I talk to is sometimes they they think that they have to do everything themselves and like there's somebody out there that can do it better than you and you can save your time but I yeah I still struggle with it cause every my I joke around it and and my my point of contact who manages the site I feel like I drive her nuts sometimes and I'm like I'm always apologetic cause there's always something else I need like hey I needed to do this oh by the way this is in the wrong spot it's got to get moved up to here do this that the other thing and connect my connect Pinterest Connect Meta Google Analytics isn't working please have them figure that out yeah I mean it but you know it's kind of like risk reward like you had to go through four or five different companies to find one and it time is money and you know having to sink money into these things and it it sucks and that's why I think word of mouth is really good cause if you can if you have a friend who owns a business or if you hear a podcast like this and someone recommends a company it might be worth looking into rather than you know going through five or six different types it is a little disappointing the first two were veteran owned businesses because I think that sometimes veterans are very good sales people and sometimes they just need a little bit more time under their belt but sales sales and marketing are two very very different categories so and there you have a lot of people that buy these will sink money into like a mastermind course and a license for some particular software and cause for a while I used to see on YouTube these advertisements how you know dropshipping is dead and digital marketing is the way to go and yeah you know and you know the guys got the Lambo in the background and yeah and he's good yeah oh no not me I'm cynical I know it's all bullshit oh that's why I tell people I'm like listen if you're if you're leasing a Lambo or if you're you're renting Lambo for the day for an advertising shoot it's not real but the but it's the same person too it's the same person same background you know one day he's talking about how drop shipping is the way to go and I only drop ship from one company yeah cause drop ship is so risky and that's a replogo Globes cause yeah I like globes I don't know why I've always had had one as a kid and just fascinated with them I have three on my bookshelf okay and we we entered into a partnership and so you know I get an order for a globe I flip it through their portal the shipping address yeah boom it goes that's a little different though I think I did an experiment on my old YouTube channel where I tested dropshipping on an Etsy store okay and it was for initially it was for mugs so I'd use AI to make the designs and upload them onto the mug and then I tried to sell and it and I did really well but it's it felt I guess for me because of the type of business person that I am I didn't like it and there was also the onesies twosies like when we had all of the ships in the ports during Covid this is around the same time oh yeah um that held up shipping someone orders a mug and they're waiting 45 days there's all these logistical aspects that people fail to think about or pay attention to the market or the global atmosphere when they're in a drop shipping model but yes no I think I mean it's a true testament yeah and drop shipping is gonna take a kick in the teeth because the particularly if you're dropshipping from the Pacific Rim right because the Dominus has been by executive order has been wiped out so anything under $800 single shipping coming into the United States it does not have to it gets around the tariffs no more tariffs on everything yeah I mean it's I'm waiting cause I think right now it's everybody's up in arms they're like oh no it's good no it's bad I'm like just sit tight and wait it's gonna take some time for people to start to feel the effects because a lot of businesses order things in advance based on yes their consumer trends I'm like but they're all raising their prices anyway yes and people are just starting to feel it I'm like just wait exactly like you're saying when you buy something from some random person on Amazon and you know it's coming from overseas and you're buying a single planter you know it's gonna cost a ton of money or your order is gonna get canceled from Amazon because they're gonna need to sell it at the higher price yes but yeah and there's also the shipping discounts that are coming from Asia to the US so for me to send a package to China use 10 by 7 by 4 9 ounce package between 28 and 35 dollars depending on where it's going same package coming from China to New Jersey is about 37 cents oh wow because of the uh the e packet and the postal subsidies that go on around the globe is we're still going on a early 1900s uh postal policy where you know people still look at China as a developing nation uh huh which they are far from it yeah no and another thing that you said that I think is really important is um when you're looking for things like like marketing managers or stuff like that it's important to find a business that is familiar with your industry and your yes I have as a business consultant people will hit me up all the time looking for help and I'm like listen I can give you basic advice I don't know anything about your industry we would be learning together and if that's the case I'm no used to you and you're right something goes for marketing um the current company that you're working with are they familiar with your industry no oh interesting not really really good job damn it's so this is a caveat this is an exception but that generally what I said is true yes it's I look we haven't really gotten the ball rolling yet um cause I we haven't started advertising I I needed to get everything in place uh we still have a little bit more AB testing on the website to do especially for the I mean obviously the checkout procedures are working we're trying to figure out how to make it quicker and more painless and add and add more options to it including I think I just enabled where you can make 4 payments oh right yeah like Klarno or like yeah that yeah those yeah I did I did those I sell high ticket items so sometimes that's a little bit easier for people to buy it off as if it's broken up into payments I think it's I think it's a great I don't know why I wish I would have thought of it yeah no I mean it's depending on what you're selling I mean for me sometimes what I charge $60,000 a year sometimes and business owners will will prefer to sometimes they prefer to pay that in installment okay and they have the ability to do that through a firm or Paypal or whatever they're approved for um so no absolutely but yeah I think um that's pretty awesome I before we wrap things up I guess uh huh what is there anything that you want to like share with the audience whether it's about what you do or or um or anything related to business ownership well I mean I I I'm doing what I love I'm having a blast with this my kid gets involved I just can't take him to a trade show cause he's not 18 yet um but um you know one of the things I Learned is uh important is be ready to expand your repertoire um be ready to scale to very different concepts and I always always be willing to pivot yep absolutely and I'll make sure that I leave a link to tactics of toys I'm I'm gonna be purchasing some stuff and I'll post that on my social media so for anybody out there who collects anything for the most part I definitely check it check out your website so well with that thank you so much Anthony thank you for being here thank you for uh taking the time and shout out to your son who made this hysterical haha