He Went From Military to Making Millions With Automation | Joseph Carter Digital Social Hour #104

So if a Marine goes down, if he gets shot, if he gets injured, if he gets dehydrated, if he needs his temperature checked, which is pretty interesting, usually we'll do a temperature check by sticking a thermometer up there.

But we were out in Japan once, we were doing jungle warfare training, and Marines would bet each other $5 on who could eat a lizard

without throwing it up.

And the problem with the lizards out in Japan,

they have a neurotoxin.

And some lizards can kill you.

You eat the wrong lizards.

So I would literally have to give briefs to my Marines on things not to do.

Stuff you would think you'd tell a five-year-old, but now you're telling an adult man.

All right, welcome back to the Digital Social Hour.

I'm your host, Sean Kelly.

I'm here with my co-host, Wayne Lewis.

What up, what up?

And our guest today, Joseph Carter.

What's going on?

How's it going, man?

Great.

Great to be here.

Thanks for having me on.

Absolutely.

Mr.

Amazon.

Hey.

Yes, sir.

Yes, sir.

One of the many ways I've been able to make money in my life is using Amazon, using someone else's platform.

Automation is extremely great for it.

Yeah.

Automating everything, automating my knowledge, you know, trying to find places where I could gain as much knowledge as possible without having to spend hours in a book.

You know, that's the goal.

So before Amazon and before making millions, you were in the military.

Yeah, that's right.

I was in the military for six years.

I was a Navy corpsman.

So I went into the Navy.

I was attached to the Marine Corps for six years.

So just for those people who don't know, a corpsman is basically like a medic, like an EMT.

And the Marines don't have medics.

So what they'll do is they'll borrow from the Navy.

So as a Navy corpsman, I'm attached to the Marine Corps unit.

And basically, we provide all the medical coverage.

We do everything a Marine does.

You know, carry a weapon as well, provide tactical,

get tactical training, and then also provide medical coverage.

So if a Marine goes down, if he gets shot, if he gets injured, if he gets dehydrated, if he needs his temperature checked, which is pretty interesting, usually we'll do a temperature check by sticking a thermometer up their butt.

Really?

And that will be enough motivation to keep a Marine hydrated.

We have a running joke in the Marine Corps.

Basically, it says, you know, if you're not feeling well, change your socks, drink your water.

Basically, at the end of the day, if your Marine has good socks, his feet are taken care of.

He can move, doesn't have any issues.

If he drinks his water, he stays hydrated long enough to get from point A to point B.

So that's basically the basic goal of a dock is is to keep the Marines hydrated and keep their feet good.

Keep their feet good.

Gotcha.

Do you ever have to provide coverage for someone getting shot or injured?

So

I got all the training, and luckily I did not have to go to the sandbox.

But there were a couple times when we were out in Mojave Viper, Mojave Desert, doing desert warfare training.

Unfortunately,

it's a big issue in the military.

18-year-old took a round.

right to the brain from his own weapon

on purpose

and we had to go and clean that up

And then also provide basic therapy for all the other Marines around.

So sometimes, yeah, we'll see things like that.

We'll get Marines that do stupid things.

They'll play with their K-bar knives.

They'll sit 10 feet across from each other, legs spread open, and they'll toss their knives up in the air and try to flex their leg as the blade goes to hit

their muscle

and not let the blade go into their...

How successful is that?

I mean, you know, you'd be surprised.

You have to hit your leg at the right angle

for the knife to go in.

But there were a couple times where the knife went in, and I didn't know about this until

actually happened.

And I had to spend my Friday afternoon stitching up a Marine's leg.

Oh, my God.

And, you know, there's a little things.

We were out in Japan once.

We were doing jungle warfare training, and Marines would bet each other $5 on who could eat a lizard

without throwing it up.

And the problem with the lizards out in Japan,

they have a neurotoxin.

And some lizards can kill you if you eat the wrong lizards.

So, I would literally have to give briefs to my Marines on things not to do.

Stuff you would think you'd tell a five-year-old, but now you're telling an adult man.

You know, so but I love my Marines.

Um,

just had a blast, hang out with them, the breast, the best brotherhood you could ever be a part of.

You know, I always say a lot of people choose a fraternity, but for me, the greatest returning was being part of the military,

you know, because you meet so many veterans all over the place, right?

So, let me ask you this:

would the military still have been an option had you known what you know today

before you signed up?

So that's a really good question.

Would you have went in with that same knowledge and still built those relationships or would you just went head on with

the automation and Amazon and everything?

So I asked myself that question I got out of the military because I spent most of my adult life in the service.

And for me, I needed it because I was this naive little Christian boy who thought I could trust anybody who said they believed in God.

You know,

it was, you know, from age of, I grew up without a father.

So

I got introduced to the church when I was 15.

And I got kind of, I went really down the rabbit hole of being a Bible thumper type of Christian individual.

And you don't really learn too much about the world in church.

You learn more so like how to be a better individual, how to forgive people when they commit sins, how to not sin, all this other stuff.

And so long story short, the military balanced me out.

When I went into the military, my eyes were open to the world.

I was open to how man actually can act.

And

it took me from being this naive individual to somebody who had a greater sense of what humans were capable of, on the good and the bad.

And that was extremely important for me.

I don't think that I would be as successful as I am today if it was not for the military.

But I will tell you this.

So you still would have gone then?

I still would have went.

But I would have went on the different, on the mindset of I would have went to travel, and I would have went because, you know, um, can you still have an Amazon set up in the military?

Yeah, you can make money in the military.

Oh, so you would have just had an Amazon setup.

I would just have, yeah, there's a lot of guys in the military that have their own businesses.

Oh, really?

That are making, you know, a million dollars a year or more.

In the military?

In the military.

What?

See, I never knew that.

Yeah, I thought they took away your phones and everything.

No, no, no, no, no.

No, they don't.

I mean, in boot camp, they do.

But when you get out of boot camp, you're pretty much like, you know, you're a civilian with a job, essentially.

You show up, you report in for certain training, basic training.

You go and do admin work.

Some military members have an office that they have to go to.

Some military members are on a ship or out in the field.

For me, I was never on a ship because I was with the Marines.

I was always out in the field

doing some type of training, warfare training, jungle warfare training, desert training.

We spent some time

in Japan during the wintertime, and that was pretty awesome because it was negative five degrees and you're making igloos and trying to survive and stay warm and you're like huddling up to your brothers.

And, you know, there's a saying called misery loves company.

And I never learned that until I actually experienced misery with other people.

Right.

There's something about a group of people being together that are miserable, you know, holding each other accountable and

staying strong and going through the challenges that this moment in time bring you.

But yeah, those are little things that you'll learn, little things that you'll learn in the military.

It's not, you know, Rambo ruined it for me.

I'll tell you that.

I thought it was not coming out the water.

I thought it was going to be awesome like Rambo, right?

Like you're covering yourself in mud, you know, you're hiding in the woods,

you're doing all these fun missions.

And I'll tell you, there is nothing great about playing Rambo in the woods.

You know, you got to think, there's no places for you to go to the bathroom when you're out in the woods.

You know, you have to go and dig a hole

if you're going to go, you know, take, right?

And while you're digging this hole and while you're taking this shit,

you have to worry about mosquitoes.

in the front of you and mosquitoes behind you.

And so while the mosquitoes are trying to bite you, you imagine squatting over a hole, you're trying to protect Mr.

Johnson in the front.

Meanwhile, the mosquitoes are flanking you from the back and stabbing you in the f ⁇ .

You know, these are the little things that people don't really talk about before you go into the military.

These little experiences that kind of suck over time.

But yeah, you know, it has its pros and cons.

It definitely made me a better man in general.

Like I said, awareness was the greatest thing I think I learned from the military for sure.

How did growing up without a father figure impact your view on the world?

So I basically grew up with TV as a father, you know, full house, family matters, matters, you know,

learning, you know, you learn from these family episodes of

what family means, why family matters, you know, and luckily for me, I had a grandfather that was like a father figure for me.

But, you know, I'm not going to lie, you know, up to the age of 15, I was this uncontrollable little teenager that was,

that lacked self-discipline, wasn't in control of his emotions, was quick to get angry,

always want ready to fight,

had no problem lying.

You know, there was those discipline factors that I lacked without having a father, without having somebody to teach me these things.

And then, like I said, when I was introduced to church at 15, I kind of flipped the switch.

I learned how to be a better individual because I did have a stepfather that was a part of my life for a little bit, but he wasn't a father figure.

He was a bum.

Basically, he stayed at home, lived off my mother, physically abusive, verbally abusive.

You know, and I was, I eventually became grateful that he was part of my life because I learned how to be the exact opposite of him.

You know, it's turning a negative interaction, a negative situation into a positive by just learning, like, how can I not be you?

Like, I'm grateful that I got to see what your life looks like as a man because I know I don't want to make those same mistakes.

Gotcha.

You see what I'm saying?

So I had to learn a lot of these things.

And then, you you know, after getting introduced to church, then, you know, YouTube came around and I was introduced to a couple of people like Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar, Tony Robbins.

And that ultimately was what changed my mentality state on how to look at life, how to find self-improvement,

how to think outside the box, just how to be a better individual as a whole by looking at people who had the lifestyles that I wanted.

I learned really quickly, you know, you don't take advice from broke people because what's that going to get you?

It's going to get you broke, right?

And for me,

every day I would look in the mirror and I kept telling myself advice.

And I'm like, I got to stop talking to myself because I'm giving myself broke advice.

I got to start listening to other people who have the lifestyle that I wanted.

So I stopped listening to myself and I started listening to people that had

everything, that had the money, that had the house, had the cars, had the freedom.

And that ultimately is what, you know, helped me realize that this life, this successful life is possible.

Right.

Because,

it really starts with your mind first.

There was a saying I heard: you can either close your mind, or I'm sorry, close your eyes and replay your past and relive it, or close your eyes and preplay your future and live in that.

And I found that as long as I would envision where I was going, My emotions overall were better.

I felt empowered.

I had confidence.

And where I currently was at in life no longer mattered.

It didn't matter that I had no money in the bank.

It didn't matter that, you know, I didn't have that many friends.

It didn't matter that I wasn't driving the car that I wanted because I was able to visualize myself having those things.

And now I'm walking around with this level of confidence.

I'm walking around with this level of energy.

I'm walking around with a plan in mind.

And I am now technically living that emotional state, which eventually got me to that present state.

Nice.

So that was something that was life-changing for me.

It was just, you know, close your eyes and pre-play your future instead of reliving your past.

So when did that learning curve actually start?

Like, when are we like, okay, cool?

I want to make a lot of money.

Yeah.

But

of course, you didn't know how to do it.

So where did you go first?

So,

long story short, I got in the military

in 2014.

I had $800 to my name.

And there was a friend of mine who was in a network marketing company and he was making about $250,000 a month.

Wow.

So, and I found out about this because he came across Google because I was Googling how to make money from home without getting a job.

And I knew this guy back in 2006.

You know, it was 2014.

I'm out of the military now.

I haven't talked to him since 2006, 2007.

I called him up.

Somehow I still had his number saved.

And his name was David.

And I said, David, I just saw this article and you're making $250,000 a month, man.

Is this true?

And he's like, yes.

Yes, it's true.

I was like, there's no way.

How's that possible?

Because this guy was just as broke as i was when i went to the military and so he said what he did was he changed he changed what he saw on a daily basis he changed what he listened to on a daily basis and he changed what he told himself on a daily basis um and i was like david why are you giving me this hippie talk bro that give me the give me the truth right because in my mind the only people that were rich were people that are part of the

were people that were nfl ball or ball players or people that won the lottery you know that's what broke people think right you don't know you and money is this esoteric thing that you can never reach when you're broke.

So he simply told me, he goes, he changed his mindset, he changed his life overall.

So he said, get this book called The Magic of Believing by Claude M.

Bristol.

And I was like, well, I'm a horrible reader.

I read a page, I read it 10 times over again before I go to the next one.

This is an audio book.

Yeah, get an audio book.

So he said, get Bluetooth headphones, get an audio book, and listen to it for at least an hour a day.

Also, write down your goals from where you want to be six months from now.

And

look at those goals daily.

Have it up on a wall.

Look at those goals when you wake up in the morning and look at those goals before you go to bed at night.

One of the goals was to make over $20,000 a month, something obnoxious to me, something that was like, if this works, you know, this is going to be wild, but I'm going to put this obnoxious goal here.

And $20,000 a month was my goal.

Six months from listening to that book, six months from the day that I started those goals, from listening to that book an hour a day over and over again, I think I made a little over $32,000 that month.

Wow.

And for a long time, never made less than that.

And it was really because

I had to change my power, you know, my mindset of

where I thought that this reality can go.

And that power alone gave me

the confidence to become a better human being, you know, a better man, and the confidence to move forward in life.

Because otherwise, you know, when I got in the military, like most military men, we're depressed for our first six months.

We no longer have a goal or a mission.

We no longer have somebody telling us what to do.

And when you have a life with no goal, no job, no structure, idle hands, they say, are the work of the devil.

And I mean, at the end of the day, I think the idle hands will just eventually sabotage yourself.

So, you know,

it all changed when I got personal development.

It changed when I went to YouTube and I found Zig Ziggler, Jim Rome, Tony Robbins.

And it changed when I wrote down my goals.

And those goals stared at me in the face every day.

Love that.

And that's when you started automation pays, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

So I basically, so I started first thing, first things first is I made money selling items on Amazon.

I was doing this method called drop shipping.

Drop shipping no longer works on Amazon.

They stopped allowing that to happen about, I want to say about a year and a half ago.

Now the best way to make money on Amazon is FBA or a private label.

But I started making money drop shipping on Amazon and I started sharing my success on Facebook.

And eventually people started inquiring about how you're able to make money on Amazon.

And so for the longest time, I was teaching people how I did this.

I paid somebody a couple thousand dollars to teach me how to make money on Amazon.

And so naturally, I just charged everybody else the same price that I paid another individual.

Over the course of a couple years, blew up, did well.

But what I learned was 85% of the people that buy your courses never do anything with it.

They just, life gets distracting, right?

They have a family, they have a job, or they have their own business.

Lack of execution.

Lack of execution, lack of discipline, lack of confidence, right?

So they buy it, they do nothing, and then 15% of the people will actually do something with it.

And after time goes on, people started asking me, like, hey, can you help me with this?

Can you assist me with this?

Can you do this for me if I pay you more money?

And for the longest time, I said no.

And eventually I realized that there was a good model here of just basically setting up some structure, hiring some more employees, and having these things done for your clients.

And so automation has really been,

I think it's a new industry for the masses.

Like, think about this: you know, would you rather clean your house or have somebody come and clean it for you if you had the money?

Yes, automation.

Right?

Would you rather take your car to the car wash or have somebody come and clean your car for you?

You know, before you start your day, they come, you know, say you start your day at eight in the morning.

You can have somebody come to your house at six in the morning, clean your car, and by eight o'clock it's ready to go, right?

You know, people

are already automating things without, you know, even twice about it.

Not even realizing it.

Basically.

So because most people are distracted or they have jobs or families,

the automation service is really where it's at.

So we have an automated service with Amazon.

We have an automated service in Airbnb.

We have 44 properties that we manage in Florida currently, homes.

We have a portfolio of over $30 million in homes that we currently manage in Florida.

We have automation credit repair because a lot of people want to learn how to fix their credit, but then it's time consuming, three to six months for them them to repair their own credit when you can have somebody do it for you.

And so after we get somebody credit repaired, we go ahead and we have an automation funding company where we get them funding.

So we can get clients up to $200,000 of credit cards, business credit cards at a 0% interest rate.

And so now they have $200,000 at no cost to them, where they can now use it for their own business, invest in their business, buy courses, buy coaching, whatever have you.

But it's done for them.

And I find that's been a much more successful model to go with versus having somebody spend three to six months of their time learning how to do something.

Right.

So you think the quickest, the quickest from point A to point B for most people is going to Google and learning.

Whereas now it's even quicker because you can just pay somebody who already has the knowledge.

And you think about it, they want that knowledge more than they want that money.

Right.

Right.

So let's say it's $1,000 for this knowledge.

They're willing to give up the $1,000 so that way they can have that knowledge because now they know that knowledge is going to propel them to more than a thousand dollars.

Yeah, exactly.

That's the goal at the end of the day.

Or they'll pay you a little bit more than $1,000 for you just to do it for them.

So now they can still live their life.

They can still be with their family.

They can still go down to the beach.

Right.

And in my case,

time, freedom is everything.

When I got the military, the first, the most important question I asked myself was not how much money I want to make, not what I want to do, but when am I the happiest?

This is the most life-changing question for me.

And you learn that the quality of your your answers isn't what matters.

It's the quality of the questions you ask yourself.

So you ask yourself, when are you happiest?

Well, I'm happiest when I'm at the beach.

I'm happiest when I'm doing jiu-jitsu.

I'm happiest when I'm, you know, talking business with people.

I'm happiest when I'm talking to people about God and the universe and what this life is that we're living, which is we're literally living on top of a blue ball that's spinning in space, being kept alive by a giant fireball in the sky.

And nobody freaks out about that.

Right?

Like, it's wild.

Like, that is our current reality.

And so, when you figure that out, you learn that, hey, I need to build a life around my happiness.

Right.

And so how do, so how do I make money and still pursue this life of happiness?

Well, it's definitely not an office job.

No.

It's definitely not construction.

For you.

For me.

Yeah.

For me, it was not, right?

There are people that find great fulfillment with that,

which is important for them to know, right?

Like a lot of people's happiness comes in security.

My happiness doesn't come from security, right?

A job, a career,

gives great security and great happiness for people knowing that that check is going to come in every month regardless, you know, as long as they show up and do what they enjoy.

For me, I'm a risk-taker.

And

your happiness comes from risk.

From risk, because security is boredom.

Right?

Security is depression.

I think risk is a form of security.

No, because it is.

So

it is.

It's your security.

See, everybody's security has a lot of different variables.

So, your form of security is taking a risk because you know what your ROI is.

Someone else's form of security is going into work because they know what they are.

Very, very true.

I know what I'm capable of.

Right.

So, there's your security.

And I know their security is you.

Correct.

My security is me.

As long as I can stay alive,

I can do everything I want.

And that is what I've told myself.

So, in situations where you know, I've made millions and I've lost millions.

Hard truth.

So, how does it lose a million feel?

You know,

when you lose it,

when you lose it,

it's done.

It's gone.

It's like...

Yeah, but you can't just say that.

I know you went through it.

No, I'm going to explain.

I'm going to explain.

No, I'm going to explain.

It's done.

It's gone.

And in that moment, you can choose to fold like a cheap tent.

Or you can choose to go back out there and make another million because you know how to make a million dollars.

Right.

How many times have you lost a million dollars?

Breaking his heart.

Yeah.

It's not in millions, multiple millions.

It's twice.

But I also

have the confidence that I can make it back.

Right.

And in that process of doing so,

I only have that confidence because I've made it once.

If you made it once, you can make it twice.

Yeah, you're deceased.

You're manetized after the first move.

Basically.

Basically.

And you have to be.

Otherwise, you fold up like a cheap tent.

You go into a corner, right?

You cry, and you realize no one's going to come to save you.

Yeah.

Right.

And then you remind yourself that, hey, you're still alive.

It's only over when you're dead.

I always say that's the difference between entrepreneurs and athletes is that entrepreneurs know how to make a million dollars.

Athletes are paid a million dollars.

So athletes always come to entrepreneurs after their career or during,

they come to them to make money.

They come to us to make money.

Because they don't really technically know how to make money.

Correct.

They know how to be paid.

Obviously, they've been paid a lot of money, but they don't know how to make money.

Those are are two different concepts.

Correct.

No, it's very true.

And two different belief systems.

So I invested money into a business once that went belly upped, belly up.

And it was all the money I had.

And I was extremely, extremely scared, right?

You have that gut feeling where it's like your gut turns and goes into knots.

And then in a split second, the fear went away and happiness came to me because I realized that I know how to go back and make that money.

Now, it may take me some time to make that money, but I will still be able to go back and make that money because I have a certain skill set.

I have a certain knowledge, all right?

I have time on my side.

I have belief in myself.

You know, it's different if somebody gave me a million dollars and I lost a million dollars.

You're done.

Right, right, right.

Yeah.

Go ahead and file for unemployment.

There's no, there's no escaping.

File for unemployment.

Yeah.

I mean,

like, if you have, if you go to zero after a million, what are you going to do?

You're going to go down to Publix and get a job?

Hopefully not you're going to try to figure out how to get that money back some way or another right so what was your next like what was your next step like okay cool i lost the meal

so here's how here's how i'm going to make it back so here's what i did when i lost a million dollars plus um i i realized that i need to get money quickly so what i did was this was the very next day next week the next week the next week oh so you so you took a week to kind of sorrow a little bit well i was in a great deal of depression for a good minute um and then i had to remind i had to talk to a couple friends and I had to remind myself that wait a second,

you know how to make this money.

You just need some time on your side.

So the greatest saving grace for me is I had good credit.

So because I had good credit, now I could borrow money.

Leverage.

Leverage.

Because you're either going to go to a friend and ask them for money and you risk losing that friendship.

Because either way, they're going to feel some type of way about you if they have to give you money.

And you're going to feel some type of way about them if they say no to giving you money.

So your best bet is getting that money on your own.

So what I did was I went out and I got a bunch of business credit cards and I stacked those credit cards up.

And I used those credit cards to now buy me a course, to get me in front of some new coaches, to pay for a business trip, to go and get in front of clients.

And within two weeks' time, I think I made a little over $250,000

off of that.

Quarter a million.

Because all I had to do was get out there and provide value to people that I know needed it.

You know, the quickest way to make a million dollars is to find somebody that is a multi-millionaire that has a problem that you can solve.

So if you know somebody that has millions of dollars, ask them, what problem can I solve for you?

You know, because just off that alone, you'll make a good amount of money.

Wow.

And that's really what it comes down to.

So if you have no money, instead of going to your multi-millionaire friend and saying, hey, can I borrow a half a million dollars?

You know, hey, I got taxes I need to pay.

Hey, my, you know, I'm going to to miss my mortgage.

Hey, you know, I'm in, I'm in debt.

You know, instead of doing that, go to them and say, what problems do you have that I could solve?

You know, I had this one guy, a multi-multi-millionaire.

He bought $22 million worth of property in Florida, and he was looking for a builder that could build those properties at a wholesale cost.

And so I called him up and I said,

you know, what can I do for you?

And he shared that with me.

I went and found him a builder the next day.

Wow.

The next day.

And that alone made me a good amount of money.

He gives you, he basically gave me like, you know, thank you money.

It's like, at the end of the day, because I'm now saving him millions of dollars.

And that's really, you know, it's really simple, a simple come up.

Just find somebody who has more than you that needs a problem solved and you charge them, you know, after you deliver.

Right.

Because they're, of course, they're going to thank you for that.

I had a tax account.

He saved me $500,000 on my taxes.

So I naturally gave him, well, naturally, he said his fee was going to be 10%.

Fine, pay that all day.

Cost me an extra 50 grand.

But do I pay the $500,000 to Uncle Sam or do I give my tax account an extra 50K for saving me money?

I give you him

all day, every day.

He got 50K every time we do that.

And so that was really what saved me from that level of debt was just figuring out how to provide value.

There's more people out there that you can provide value to, you know, than

what you can do selling a simple service, right?

So the goal is to get all the eyeballs on you.

The more people that know you, the more people that can buy from you, basically, is the name of the game.

Nice.

Love it, man.

Joseph, what are you working on next and where can people find you?

Yeah, so basically, our main goal here is to educate people and also provide an automated service for them.

So our automated services are Amazon FBA,

Airbnb, where we help people get houses or do rental arbitrage.

We help people repair their credit and we do funding.

We have an automated funding service.

So, as long as we have a credit score of 640 or higher, we can get you up to $200,000 in business lines of credit because

we know how everything works.

Wow.

And we know how to do that for you within about 30 to 60 days.

So, you can follow me on Instagram at Automation Pays or Amazon Pays.

Those are my two Instagram programs.

Fire handles.

Wayne.

This is a lot, guys.

Make sure you guys follow up.

And thanks for watching.

Thanks for tuning in, guys.

See ya.

Appreciate it.