In-depth With Anthony Lee

Richard Morgan
May 6, 2019

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Anthony Lee is in-depth on his background and what has got him to the success he enjoys today. We talk through humble beginnings and eating hurricane relief box food rations for lunch, no money for hot water to bathe his daughter and the seedlings of Zonblast and the achievement in formulating Slingshot.

Innovator on Ranking on Amazon
Published author
President of Six Leaf (formerly Zonblast)
Posts on Amazon trends are legendary
Body popper extrodinairé

What did your parents instil in you as a child?

Mother and Father were very different
Father has always been an entrepreneur – education and hard work are the most important thing
Working your butt off t oget somewhere
Mom was more structured and always being on time is important

Earliest Entrepreneurial memory

Late bloomer – not the lemonade stand kid
Was in early 20s when got bitten by entrepreneurial bug
Many years after 1st job at fast food chicken joint at 14 years
Kenny Rogers Chicken Roasters
Anthony impaled the chicken onto the spit
Had to quit as Anthony marinated the chicken in a toxic brew and it got on his clothes and Anthony’s Mom could not handle the smell any more and Anthony had to get another job

Is Education and School important?

Anthony did not go to College – was a dropout
Not big on the school structure
Acquiring skills is important but don’t think the traditional school system is going to give you the results
Know plenty of people who never got a degree but know how to do a million different things
Focused education on skills acquisition and creative problem solving skills

First meaningful job?

Had so many as moved around a lot
Not really meaningful work in the workforce
Was a waiter and bartender for many years
Learned a lot in that work
As an introvert in mid-20s loathed the idea of networking and saw it as a sham
When he tried he was the first to put out the sales pitch
Difficult to separate relationships nad networking
Restaurants helped to develop social skills
Had a child at a pretty young age so had to make it work
Danny loved Anthony’s blog posts in Will Tjernlund’s private Mastermind group in 2015
Got into Amazon end of 2014

How did you land working on Amazon?

Everything changed when Anthony was 19 and his oldest daughter was born
Joined the military National Guard
While in training you’d get $4-5k
Met and older hippy dude with future plans to get into real estate investing
That was the moment Anthony got bitten by the entrepreneurial bug
Hated the idea of selling stuff (Dad was a sales man)
As soon as Anthony left the military they moved to Atlanta Georgia

Multi Level Marketing

Looking for work and see an ad for a business opportunity
Anthony gets sold on multi-level marketing by a guy
A solid decade of trying MLM and was in like 11 of them and could not make it work
MLM was the only way Anthony knew of being an entrepreneur
That was Anthony’s break and wanted something different for his family
Working the restaurant was wearing Anthony down working nights
Knew he was decent at writing – spent a year and a half applying for freelance jobs
One guy hired him as he had experience and got a day job as a copywriter
Working weekends still as a waiter and know he wants to be an entrepreneur
Saw a video from Ryan Moran on Amazon FBA and Alibaba
Talked of making your own product not competing with Brands and if you’re a good copywriter then it’s all good
This was the tipping point
Anthony went and got 3 credit cards and maxed them out to bootstrap his business

Ryan Moran and Zonblast

The video was from an affiliate for ASM video for the Ryan MOran ‘Tribe’ course
Anthony had to sign up for ASM to keep in with Ryan’s Tribe weekly calls and Anthony was one of Ryan’s more active students
Jumped far ahead of the other students in the first few of weeks
Did the first shipment asa sea shipment and figured it all out and got inventory before anyone else did
Copywriting was all you needed back then – with a good listing it was all good
Selling 30k per month within the 1st month
Anthony was the ‘example’ that Ryan liked to use
In the 1st six months Anthony was doing really good
Ryan’s approached Anthony and suggested he should start ‘consulting’ and Ryan helped negotiate Anthony’s deals
Brought Anthony 4 clients from his Girlfriends ex-clients
Gave enough money to Anthony that he could quite his day job for het week (kept serving on weekends as wasn’t sure it would be a success)
Anthony started working with Joe Junfola who founded Zonblast at the suggestion of two other members of Anthony’s little Tribe group
Was in business on his own in 2 months and the first help Joe needed was copywriting and Anthony worked with Joe
Anthony was pulled into Zonblast 2 months after it was created and he helped scale and systematise Zonblast tail end of 2014

First Launches

Reason why things grew so quickly was because it was so easy
A blast lasted one day and that was all that was needed
Able to get reviews as no such things as verified and non-verified reviews
Sending people emails was giving upto 70% Review conversion
Were doing this Zonblast product for own products and then others
No advertising as ranking was happening – it was so easy
This was before SaaS and they were writing emails by-hand
Then templated the emails and started coding to help automate it
Brought in developers and automated some of the processes
This was when ‘heatseeker’ came out – mimics search and buy activity on Amazon
Company grew really fast and probably wasn’t a good thing as could not figure out longer term products and services for Sellers

Engineers came in

Joe kept the teams separate in the beginning
Started with one full time engineer in the beginning
The team became Joe’s team and that was end of 2015

Around 2016 – Growth

Things started changing
A lot more competition as others started catching up with the software
Anthony’s own products were feeling the competition
Had to figure out how to deal with competition personally and in the business
Anthony moved into Software as well
Had always had a vision for providing solutions for ecommerce sellers (not just Amazon)
Can’t move away from Amazon as that’s where the money is at….
The ToS changed and algorithms changed so contact activity and maintenance of the software
Was taking all of Anthony and Joe’s attention

Issue with the Development Team

Anthony and Joe had an issue with the Development Team
Had some disagreements
A split was inevitable
A software company and the dev team said they were leaving next week
Scrambled and brought on a new team of developers and the right time to re-brand
Had a couple of ToS changes too which created a lot of flux
People just don’t know how to interpret the words
Amazon cultivated a culture of fear
Zonblast was too intimately associated with Amazon

Rebuilt Everything

From the architecture upwards took 9-10 months
Finally had something that would offer other services to Sellers (Facebook integration, code distribution)
From Service Only to SaaS

Diversification and SaaS

More attractive to buyers is a SaaS business – better multiples to a service based business
New services are:
- Bridge – communication between Facebook and Amazon – Anthony pushed for this (before Facebook took away analytics for custom audiences), really useful for people that want to create look-alike audiences
- Code Courier distribution – promotions are part of running a brand on Amazon,not everyone wants to give over control. Started as coupon distribution , then URL and code distribution but now ultimate goal for this is to put Zonblast out of business.

Something no-one else knows?

Anthony is an ex-hip-hop dancer and loves Techno music
Listens to dance music at the gym

Name a Business Book that has influenced your life

Influence the psychology of Persuasion – a mindshift for Anthony

Biggest influence in your life?

Many different people have influenced in small ways
A single person is Anthony’s eldest daughter who was the impetus for starting Anthony on his journey
Seeing his daughter grow keeps Anthony humble and knowing he doesn’t know a lot really

Three important habits?

Listen to at least a chapter or more of an audiobook a day – make the time to do this every day
Stop work for an hour and hangout with his youngest daughter – make time for family
Obsessed with To-Do lists as keep Anthony organised to keep on task

Invest in Health

Was super physique for a while – not so much now
Constantly aware if achieving health goals or not
Have some glutenous nights in Taiwan now so constantly re-vamping diet with fruit, veg and raw fruits
Used to do bio-hacking back in the day
- Approached by a guy to write a book
- Wrote a Book called ‘Get Limitless’ inspired by the movie ‘Limitless’ with Bradley Cooper
- Taught Anthony the Research Techniques that he’s using now
- Studying how to enhance your mental state
- Researching Monks, meditation, Diet and Nootropics and Transcranial Stimulation with electricity
- Created a YouTube channel and put circuits to his head and run electricity through his head while playing games to test performance
There’s a culture in Amazon people to push themselves hard to deliver for their Amazon business

Biggest weakness?

Probably ‘self-talk’ in my head
Suffer from severe lack of confidence in ‘Business’
Second-guess myself way too much and can have negative impact
Got to check yourself sometimes to realise it’s going on
Remember these are just thoughts

Darkest Hour just before dawn?

Two of them that Anthony goes back to and keeps him grounded
In Atlanta
- Could not afford the gas bill and stove did not work and no hot water
- Had to buy a small Walmart heating eye to warm hot water for the bath to bathe his daughter and then once she was done he jumped into the tub
- After this Anthony moved back to Alabama and in with his parents was things were going South
Living in a trailer
- Could not afford the natural gas and had no heat
- Slept in daughters bed to keep her warm in the Winter
- Remember lying i nbed and staring at the ceiling and say ‘I must make a change’
- This was probably a year before Anthony watched that Ryan Moran video and started making the change

Biggest comeback from Adversity?

Within that year period at it’s worst, had a job that did not make money
Was on food stamps for food, had hurricane relief boxes donated for food in the trailer
The bounceback from that was epic – was eating tuna and little pots of fruit from hurricane relief boxes for lunch everyday
Figured out how to make it better – Managed to earn enough and get out of debt, put money away to invest in the entrepreneurial endeavour – turned everything around
This was all done on willpower and hard work – this got him through to getting Amazon started a year later

Most common advice you give to people?

Always test everything – in anything
Applies especially to running ads and doing business in general
Why? – because it doesn’t matter if you were born mediocre you can still be consistent
“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard”

What Advice should people ignore?

Anyone trying to sell you the idea that they have figured out the magic way to make everything easy should avoided
Too good to be true then it probably is

What has been your biggest Win/Accomplishment?

The Books were good
Anthony’s most proud of the stuff put together with Bridge and Six Leaf
Biggest recent win was when Anthony formulated the Slingshot method – added $20k monthly revenue for the business

Where do you see yourself in the next 2-5 years

Reduced dependence on Amazon dramatically
While it’s an effective channel it is a headache but want to build own asset on Shopify
In 2-5 years want to be fleshed out and profitable
Would trade $20-30k / month Amazon account to a $7-8k Shopify account to get off Amazon to avoid the hassle
See a lot more focus on Messenger marketing as see this as the future as single best platform for real person to person psychological marketing

Who do you rate in the community for putting the work in and why?

Want to give props to Liran – he has earned Anthony’s respect in how he composes himself and handles his audience and gives information
Props to Casey Gauss with a hell of a brain on him – admire him and the stuff that he does

Seller Sessions Live in London

Covering the Messenger Marketing
More Psychological stuff – similar to copywriting
Funnels and bot flows
Psychology and Influence to help with conversions
Talking through testing too

How has Networking helped you in the last 2-3 years

This interview is a prime example
Knowing Danny has put Anthony on the microphone and giving exposure all the time
In MLM Anthony was taught that networking was to meet people to be able to leverage in some way to your advantage
Networking is just relationships and can be strategic at times but genuine friendships
If you can lend a helping hand then great and if your need help you ask your friends
Anthony calls himself reclusive but has daily digital friends who hit him up to ask how he’s doing
Having people that want to talk to him every day is amazing

Paying it Forward

It’s a good way to put it
Don’t know it’s paying anything, Anthony just likes the conversation and sharing knowledge
Not a personal mission to go out and change everyone’s lives
Just a normal Dude and if he can help than that’s fantastic
Try and answer every query as don’t want ot be a jerk