EP 95 - Achilleas Daskalakis - How to Escape the 9 to 5 Lifestyle and Live the Life of Your Dreams Part 3 

Steve:  00:02    Welcome to the Awesomers.com podcast. If you love to learn and if you're motivated to expand your mind and heck, if you desire to break through those traditional paradigms and find your own version of success, you are in the right place. Awesomers around the world are on a journey to improve their lives and the lives of those around them. We believe in paying it forward and we fundamentally try to live up to the Great Zig Ziglar quote where he said, you can have everything in your life you want if you'll help enough other people get what they want. It doesn't matter where you came from. It only matters where you're going. My name is Steve Simonson, and I hope you will join me on this awesomer journey.

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Steve:  01:13    You're listening to the Awesomers podcast. I've got great news. You're listening to the Awesomers.com podcast, episode number 95. And uh, that number just goes up every single day. It's crazy. Every time I see it going up I just can't hardly believe it. So if you're an experienced listener, you know that all you have to do is run over to Awesomers.com/95. To find all of today's show notes and relevant details. How easy is that? Just put Awesomers.com slash the episode number couldn't be easier for you. Please do that to find any show notes, links, details, transcripts, et cetera. It can be actually quite instructive for you. So today is part three of our three part series with Achilles Daskalakis. And he's a great entrepreneur based out of Greece and really has put together a phenomenal series of businesses by the way, he has five businesses that the young or perhaps a ripe old age of 27.

Steve:  02:15    He, uh, he claimed that he had a gray haired coming in, but I would like to see a closer zoom in and enhanced view of that in one of our prior topics. But you know, even though he's youthful and young, he's accomplished so much. And you know, this is one of the things that I really respect about Awesomers. It doesn't matter what age you are. I talked to awesomers who are in their eighties. I talked to awesomers who were in their teens. I talked to awesomers at every possible, you know, part of the world, every demographic. There is no barrier to be an awesomer. And Achilles is a terrific example of that. Uh, I love the story and you know, parts one and two, you've got a lot of the background today. In part three, we're going to kind of dive into how it all ties together and what it's accomplished. And how he feels about it. So you are going to be in for another great. Listen, I'm glad you're here and I hope you're glad to be here too.

Speaker 3:          03:15    Okay, we're back again, everybody, Steve and Achilleas talking about all things entrepreneurial and even a little bit of life lessons in here. I think we're packing some life lessons. What do you think Achilleas?

Achilleas:            03:26    Oh yeah, for sure. I'm totally 100 percent with them.

Steve:  03:32    So before we went to the break, I teased this idea of any big lesson or lessons perhaps that you've learned on your, your entrepreneurial journey thus far. What can you share with us?

Achilleas:            03:44    Yeah. So what I consider, I don't really like to say that, but if an idea is not going exactly as you have in your mind in the beginning, fight for it a bit, but as I say, the five businesses right now, right? If something is not going that well, you can stop that. It a failure. It's not a big thing. Very, very difficult. Let's say to fired someone. My for the first time I fired somebody was like last week, but one product didn't go well, so for me it was. It didn't make sense to have someone on board. This was very, very difficult for me, but a lesson I can say for sure is that okay, go for it. Plan 100 percent correct everything. Don't leave something you know, in luck, do anything you can and if you see that I did everything and it's not working, stop it. Don't invest money in things that are not going anywhere. That's a personal thing that I need to do probably more often. Rather not. Do you know, keep reinvesting money. Some businesses are investing in again and again. Just give up in a way because you're not giving up. If I, if I give up in my life, I would go to 95. Again, spoiler alert, I'm not doing it.

Achilleas:            05:20    And then another good thing, don't be pessimistic. Be like, what's the opposite of optimistic? Be optimistic with everything. Everything in life. Even if you don't believe it, there's a book out there. It's called The Secret. Mm. I don't remember Byrne Rhonda or something like these books for the majority of people is like, oh, I just do it like on a. it's like, um, it says like when you ask for good things, good things are going to come back to you. I don't really believe that. I'm basically pessimistic as a person that's very bad, but even if this is working, I'm just saying to fool myself that it's going to work, it's going to work, it's going to work after I say them, I said 1000 times that's going to work. It may work. So if it works, the good thing is that you're going only to remember that it worked if it didn't work.

Achilleas:            06:20    What I do, because I'm, I'm, I'm who I am. I'm saying I told you your knew it from the beginning. So always try and be optimistic with everything. Everything. So these bids is gonna work. I'm gonna be well in my health. Uh, I'm going to have a great relationship. I'm going to have the time and another lesson learned. If you can actually spend some time for your own self. I mean, working out, eating good food, doing some stuff, you know, like I don't know, even for your mindset and anything, do them. Don't get in the cave of only working because this is going to get your time, dangerous places and stuff and you don't really want that. Always invest in yourself. Come on. Money, money's hearing is going to be here and if you're smart, you're going to make some money. Everybody's going to make some money. Come on. It's easy to make money in a way if you invest in yourself correctly and if you are in good mood and try to be in good mood with everybody to make some jokes and everything in the business because everyday here, 50 or 70 percent of the day, I'm just fooling around and seeing everything that I want. No, I'm just singing the whole day and stuff. Tried to be positive. If you're positive, everything is going to happen.

Steve:  07:43    I think that's a good life lesson and a very good takeaway lesson from your experience so far. Especially, you know, there's always kind of that nagging a imposter syndrome that floats around in the back of people's head, right? Where they're like, this sounds good, but I don't, I don't really know if it's gonna work. Right? And that people get nervous and they're there. Especially you say you're kind of anxious on a natural basis and that that's a lot of people are like that. My advice of course is that, uh, to have that positive attitude there, there is kind of this, this, a theory of law of attraction, right? If you, if you say, yeah, I can do it, then I can make it happen. Your brain actually does fire different pathways to figure out how to make those things happen. I'm a big believer in pattern recognition. You know, when people see a pattern that they've been exposed to before and they, they've prepared their mind for it, that's when they can capture that opportunity. And, uh, it sounds, I see you shaking your head, yes, you agree with that premise.

Achilleas:            08:44    One hundred percent, 100 percent. I actually do this. So anyway, when I'm signing new project, if I remember when I did the first day, I started another project back then, I'm going to do exactly the same because I think you're stupid mind that this is the way to make it work. Yes. I don't know why.

Steve:  09:03    Listen, again, humans fundamentally are creatures of habit, which is another way of saying they follow patterns, right? So very commonly, especially as you, as you get more experience and that means get older, you start to see patterns and this type of situation, this type of person or this type of business. And, and anytime you see a pattern break, that's when you're, that's when things get interesting because you're like, was that a negative break? Is that a positive break? This pattern is being changed. I also talked about breaking paradigms pretty frequently. If people don't break the paradigms of normal, then they will be normal. And we don't want people to be normal. We want them to be extraordinary. We want them to be Awesomer.

Achilleas:            09:48    Oh I wanted to say that! Damn.

Steve:  09:52    Oh nerds. I stole your line. Sorry. Uh, well, you know, that's why I get paid the big bucks.

Steve:  09:56    So let, let me ask you this, Achilleas. I know you already gave the spoiler alert that you said you're not going back to nine to five, but in your entrepreneurial journey thus far, has there ever been a time you want to just give up and I know you said, you know, sometimes you should give up, but like on a business or idea, but I'm saying was there ever a time where it's like, this is just too overwhelming. I, I just want to not do what I'm doing and it just kinda go a whole different direction.

Achilleas:            10:22    No, no, no. That's not for me. That's not for me. I'm, I want to stay alert or something. I'm not gonna give up. I'm pretty sure that even if I give up this one, I'm going to build another business in sometime. I'm pretty. I have a big idea that in some years from now it will be, it will be the very big business that's going to be investors. And stuff in it. Yeah. I'm not sure it's going to happen, but in way I have it in my mind that this is, it's going somewhere there and I will have a great story. You know, like my first office was so small and it didn't have air conditioning and stuff.

Achilleas:            10:59    Yeah. I'm building my way to it you know.

Steve:  11:02    I love it! Have you ever seen that picture of Jeff Bezos in the Amazon office with that hand painted like a spray paint, you know, Amazon background, you know, it's a, it's a quintessential picture of kind of what it was then and what it is now. Lots of stories just like that. You know, the, the Costco guys used doors to put over, you know, that they use doors as their desks. They would just put five gallon buckets, you know, the old paint buckets and put those down and put doors on top that was there the same as well, I think. No, probably. Yeah. It's a pretty, fairly common, a cheap way to buy desks, right? Because you can get a, a, one of those cheap big doors for 50 or $60 would get some, uh, buckets for five or $10.

Steve:  11:46    You're in business for less than 100 bucks and you're going to have three or four people working on that thing. So it's a, uh, you know, too often we get caught up in the glitz and the glamor and you know, how many hours do we need to have and you know, how many islands are we going to own? And I love the idea of living within our means and starting scrappy and maintaining that scrappiness. And, and again, I'm talking about Bezos a lot today because I know you're so focused on Amazon, but Bezos with the day one attitude, right? Everything's day one to them, their, their business more than 20 years and it's still day one. The business he works in or the office building he works in every time he moves, it's renamed to Day One. So I was in the day one building a month or two ago right next to the Amazon spheres buildings.

Steve:  12:33    They still believe in that day one. And if you ever hear him give speeches and somebody asked him a question, he'll say things like, oh, that's such a day two attitude. Right? You know, that's, that's so day two, right? If we, if day two happens at Amazon, and I think this is largely true for other businesses, that's when the danger sets in. That's when complacency sets in. That's when people start going, you know, I don't really need to hustle, I don't really need to innovate. I just am going to sit back and enjoy the spoils of what we've created. And that kind of complacency allows a competitor come in and beat him up. So let me ask you, was there ever a day that you would think back and go, this was a pretty good day, maybe the best day of your professional life? Any. Any day that you've particularly took a victory lap?

Achilleas:            13:23    Yeah, tomorrow.

Steve:  13:26    Oh really?

Achilleas:            13:27    What are you going to be the everyday it's going to be more like, this is Matthew Mcconaughey said something like that when he got the Oscars and I really like it. You need to have someone to chase. He says, and the guy that he chases all the time, it's himself. In five years from now, he's saying that he's self in next five years going to be the best, so for me, the best day of the job is going to be tomorrow and then tomorrow and then in one year, two years if we, if we're at one point, I say the best day was back then I did something wrong. So yeah.

Steve:  13:59    I like it. There's no problem looking forward, that's for sure. I do encourage you and other Awesomers to take a victory lap now and again. Right? And we always want to maintain that, you know, we're building something better. I don't, I, I'm not quoting anybody specific, but there's a concept where, you know, if you didn't learn something today, you're wasted today. Right? Yeah. That's that. Just that little bit of learning, that little bit of progress on a personal business, financial, spiritual level at any level. It doesn't matter. To me, it has got to make some incremental improvement. Otherwise it's a wasted day and I think it was Steve Jobs who talked about this idea that, you know, death is the best invention of life and, and you know, you've talked about this earlier, you know, you and Steve Jobs think a lot alike by the way, because he talked about this idea of death.

Steve:  14:50    You talked about life is short and this, the reality is that every morning he would say, how can I make today worth living so that you know, if this is my last day, that I'm not embarrassed by it or I'm not disappointed by it. And so I think that follows along your philosophy very well. Yeah. You have Steve Jobs. Yeah. You guys are a lot of common software companies in your twenties. Yeah. Nice.

Achilleas:            15:10    Okay. Not exactly the same, but anyway, I just remember me after your multi-billions are rolling in,

Steve:  15:17    I've got an idea. Let's take a commercial break and we'll be right back. After this.

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New Speaker:   15:46    You're listening to the Awesomers podcast.

Steve:  15:48    Let's switch gears for a second, Achilleas as we were starting to run against the clock. Yeah. Is there a favorite tool? It could be a software tool. It can be a technique or a practice that you follow on a day to day basis that you think really impacts your life in a positive way. So something, you know, either it's a productivity tool, like an APP or a or whatever, or maybe it's just a practice, like, you know, uh, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you know, just to jog, right? I have to do this or that. Anything that stands out in your mind?

Achilleas:            16:20    Actually, I used to love to jog because it was very refreshing. Know, have a bad back right now, so I can not do it. Oh, another good lesson. Yeah. Even if you don't have the money, invest in a good laptop in a good cell phone, in a great chair for your office and they're very, very good and expensive mattress. That's all right. Nice.

Steve:  16:51    Chair, for the office. And I think that's very smart. So that sounds to me like that's linked to your back problem. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I'm like a scooby Doo level detective. Now that we have those things. What else?

Achilleas:            17:10    So what I do everyday is that, you know, so let's say that I'm leaving office in about 7:00 PM, so now it's 8:00 PM, 7:00 PM. Uh, I'm trying not to do a lot of stuff at home so I'm trying to for the past six months to leave my phone, like in a, in a table, lets say, not to take it before I go to sleep. I just flag all my messages that I think are important and the first thing that I'm doing everyday in the office, check the flag messages open whom list? When they list these four tasks, it's like asauna or something and put their everything that I need to do in the day.

Achilleas:            17:50    So that's a productivity thing that I'm doing. Just all the flags. Go down the list and start doing one by one.

Steve:  17:58    I like that, so that, first of all, that's a great tool to consider for people to use, but it's also the practice and there's a couple of things buried in there. One is this idea that, hey, when I go home, I'm not going to be obsessed at looking at my phone constantly and I think that's a big deal. I noticed that apple has started sending me my screentime weekly updates. Right? And Hey, I screen time. You're down a 17 percent this week. You're only spending four hours a day on your phone. It's like four hours a day on my phone and you know, I'm down 17 percent. What was I spending before? So I'm becoming more acutely aware of that myself. Um, and I think that's a good practice.

Steve:  18:38    The second thing you talked about is, you know, then once before you go to bed, you kind of flag any priorities and then, uh, in the next day you create a, your, your list of things to do. I think that's probably a very prudent practice for people to consider because it keeps that focus on what people need to do. So I liked that a lot. Um, so get out your crystal ball, I'm sure in Greece they have a lot of really good crystal balls that tell the future and hopefully you can tell us a little bit about the future. So think about the world in five years from now, whether it's Amazon or ecommerce or European politics, whatever you care to think about and tell us how you see the world in five years on any of those topics or, or any other topic you choose.

Achilleas:            19:23    Well, the European politics are going to be the same as now. I'm pretty sure about that. I'm pretty sure that my country is going to be somehow better. Yeah. I believe that um, I'm going to be very good because I'm good right now when it comes to business. So the good thing with what I'm doing is I'm not playing with Greeks when it comes to business. So if war, the economy crashes. Yeah. I'm going to crash. If Amazon crashes, let's say I'm going to crash, but I doubt it a way. So what I'm seeing is that I'm probably going to be married, I think. Yeah. A probably, going to have kids, I want to be happy, I want to have more businesses that I have now. The most important part is that I think I will have everything automated. That's one thing that I'm aiming to do to automate all the parts of my businesses and to actually be there just to take people that are underneath in a way and that's why I need to hire smarter people to do what I'm doing because I'm not that smart, but they are way smarter. And I think that in general, the world is not going to be a better place.

Achilleas:            20:47    Unfortunately. I don't really believe in that. Even if you take on Amazon, whether they're doing these days with their own products and they're Amazon `basics that's. I don't like that. I think it's not that good, but I think that in the end of the day, a lot of people through climate change and everything in five years and stuff, people are going to be more emotional about what's happening. So in the UK, people are very emotional these days with recycling and stuff. Five years ago there were not that much. In Greece nobody's there. Nobody cares about that in a way, but I think that in five years from now, everything is going to be more into the ecological thing. Although I'm not a supporter right now because yeah, I'm not, let's say that's bad for me. I think that the whole world is going to tell it like that in a way. So one thing is going to be better, but when it comes to politics and greediness and stuff, every year is going to be worse.

Steve:  21:45    Yeah, it's interesting. First of all, I think you're probably right that, uh, you know, certainly a personal predictions are great. Uh, but they, you know, Amazon is going to continue to grow. That was implied in your comments and some of the things that are growing are dangerous for, for the marketplace seller. So this year Amazon will do 7 billion US dollars on their private label brands outside of Amazon basics, maybe including basics, but they have 100 private label brands today that this year, $7,000,000,000 worth of private label stuff sold through Amazon. They're positioning their own products at the top of the page, uh, everywhere without really the same burden that we have to advertise. Um, and, and again, this is part of that monetization of the platform. The Amazon has every right to do, but it's not necessarily good for us. This is why I try to, I try to remind people that the world is bigger than just one platform.

Steve:  22:43    And uh, I certainly, I'm not saying ignore it, but I'm saying, you know, don't put all your eggs in one basket, I suppose. Uh, and, and by the way, the, the, uh, somebody predicted in 2022, which is, you know, uh, around five years from now, a little less, they said the Amazon's going to do roughly 22 billion and maybe it's 25 billion in their private label brands. So when you think of it as a marketplace seller, this is one of the points of, don't be a private label guy who just buys some generic thing and stick to your own Barcode on it, sends it to Amazon, build a brand, make something differentiated, make something important. What's your thoughts?

Achilleas:            23:25    Of course, of course. Um, let's see. That I, the products that I'm selling, I'm selling a little political but one brand, these come from Greece so it's not something that I found in China and send it there. One other brand is pretty exclusive for the UK. Also have some things, but if you don't brand it, if you'd actually don't build the story behind it, don't bother doing it. You're going to lose your money. It's not 2009 anymore. 2010. It's not like that. It's not working anymore. And if you just, you said day one and day two is the only thing that I don't like. I always plan not in one product. Let's say I plan in our planning 10 products. If I don't see 10 products working, I may have the cost of sale just for one, but I need to take what's going to happen after my third, fourth, fifth.

Achilleas:            24:20    Okay. If Amazon is growing, okay. Is growing. I, I think I'm going to be smarter for sure. I'm gonna have a better customer support. I know that they have a very bad customer support. The agenda. What's the letter was well, yeah, that's nice, but I think that even if they do everything you know against in a way the sellers, they will always need the sellers. They love to have the sellers because they love to have the differentiation. The one thing that is for sure, there's a great book that a friend of mine told me, I don't remember it now. I'll probably tell you after that was a great book that they say that it will be way more difficult for us for the PPC after sometimes it's gonna be very expensive and stuff. I wasn't into going to not going to have the cost that cost, but I don't know if it's me, but now with all the publicity there's. This is taking, you know, the Amazon basics, just the basics and stuff. I think that people are going to turn against Amazon in a way because they're not playing fair. I'm not saying that everybody's playing fair, but I think that Amazon is gonna have a negative publicity in a way.

Steve:  25:33    Well definitely. I think that's a really salient prognostication there. You guys can look that up. Uh, the, the idea is very well stated that if Amazon continues down this road where they get to use all the marketplace data to figure out the top selling products and then just simply knock off the, you know, the top sellers and put their own brand sticker on it and then give all the best placement that really is unfair competition. And in different countries there are actually laws that forbid some of those practices including the United States, uh, and, and including Europe. So I do think that Amazon runs a very high PR risk. And the irony is there are people within Amazon that are responsible for the seller experience that, you know, they don't like that practice anymore than we do, but there's other guys who are, you know, incentivized to build these private labels and build sales.

Steve:  26:24    And it's like we have to stop at nothing to get our, our goal accomplished. So they have these competing things. But Amazon could face monopoly, you know, problems, they could face breakup, they could face, you know, government intervention, all kinds of things if they're not careful about navigating this. So I think that's a really good prediction. A listen, a, I've enjoyed our time. It's gone fast and uh, yet long. And so I will probably break this episode up into a couple of different episodes. So it's, as the Awesomers are listening to this, this is probably part three of three and a Achilleas is been very generous with his time. So thank you Achilleas for joining me today.

Achilleas:            27:00    My pleasure. My pleasure, Steve. Thank you very, very much for everything. Let's not say anymore, you know, for the people that no problem partner, I will, I'll make sure for sure that in the show notes we get a links to AchilleAs companies and you know, for those looking to, of get into the EU, they're still an extraordinary opportunity not withstanding any of the political pressure, Amazon or any of this other stuff. The opportunity's huge and it's getting bigger now. It's still a great time and uh, I'm a big fan. So thanks again at Achilleas. Awesomers if you're listening at home or in your car, wherever you are, we'll be right back after this.

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Steve:  29:24    All right, well, I want to start by saying, uh, you know, just a sincere personal. Thank you for taking the time to listen. My Good Buddy Achilles was very generous with his time and I hope that the takeaways that we've shared in this third part of a three part episode series a with Achilles was helpful and instructive to you and ideally that you have some action steps or you have at least some some pivot points maybe that you say, you know, based on this information I'm going to, I'm going to think a little bit to the left or a little bit to the right and just minor tweak your trajectory a little bit in a positive direction. That's the hope of every episode to be honest. And you know, part of my journey, and Kelly's and I talked about this a little bit during our three parts a, is that, you know, each day if we can learn more and each day we can be just a little bit incrementally better, we're going to be better off as human beings.

Steve:  30:18    And that, you know, that's part of being an Awesomer is that we, we just want to have improvement every single day. So Achilles is a brilliant, a young entrepreneur. I'm thrilled that I know I'm, I'm, I'm extra thrilled that you had the opportunity to hear his story and I can imagine, you know, 20 years when the Achilles is around the age that I am now, that he will look back at this and kind of laugh and say, wow, that was a fun little piece of history. And to be honest, even though he's brilliant and doing a lot of things right, I can almost guarantee when he's my age and his late forties, they'll look back at when he's in his late twenties and go, oh man. I had no idea what I was doing compared to now. And that's how it's been for me. You know, when I was 17 I started kind of doing business related stuff.

Steve:  31:08    Even before that and when I was 27, Achilleas age now, I had already started and run a couple businesses, several businesses by that time. And I knew of course far more at 27, nine, 17 and at 37 I would look back at 27 and just kind of shake my head and go home. I really didn't know anything when I was 27 and then at 47 I looked back at 37 and a go once again. Go home, man. You know, I really had a lot more to learn and I suspect when I'm 57, the same evolution will happen and as brilliant and as successful and as wonderful of life Achilleas is building, that's my, that's my own futuristic predictions and I think any of us, they can look back and say, yes, 10 years ago I had a great life, but it's even better now and it's better because I know more and it's better because I understand more and I feel more about myself and the world around me and the people that are close to me.

Steve:  32:07    I think that's really a great way to live and I can see Achilleas as well on his way to having an extraordinary life and a life way outside the life of normies. If you look at Greece as a metaphor, it really, you know, that so many people are tied up in the entitlement mentality, right? When they had to cut back the amount that they pay, people who are retired or you know, government employees and some of these, I forget the exact word they used, but essentially, you know, government owed or government paid subsidies. Everybody's kind of mad about it, but Achilleas isn't mad about it. He's making it his own way. He's making things happen because he's awesomer. So no matter where you are in the world, if you're surrounded by normies trying to break the paradigm, be awesomer, have fun with it.

Steve:  33:00    It really can be a great thing. So again, this is the third in our three part series with Achilleas, episode number 95 on the Awesomers podcast series. Just go to Awesomers.com/95 to see all the show notes and relevant details. Well, we've done it again, everybody. We have another episode of the Awesomers podcast ready for the world. Thank you for joining us. And we hope that you've enjoyed the program today. Now's a good time to take a moment to subscribe, like, and share this podcast. Heck, you could even leave a review if you wanted. Awesomers around you will appreciate your help. It's only with your participation and sharing that we'll be able to achieve our goals. Our success is literally in your hands. Thank you again for joining us. We are at your service. Find out more about me. Steve Simonson, our guests, team, and all the other Awesomers involved at Awesomers.com. Thank you again.