From Amazon Seller to Agency Builder

Joey Giazzon never felt comfortable accepting paths simply because they were presented as standard.

Authority always triggered questions rather than compliance. Even early on, he questioned nearly everything. That instinct showed up clearly after high school, when he enrolled in community college and quickly realized the environment did not match how he wanted to learn or work. “I couldn’t sit in those classes,” he says. “It just wasn’t for me.” After a couple of months, he stepped away. The decision aligned with something he already understood about himself.

Long before there was a company or a plan, Joey was experimenting. In middle school, he started selling items on eBay. He looked around his house, found things his family no longer used, and realized there was value sitting idle. “I figured out, you know, I can get money for this,” he says. That moment mattered. It showed him that effort could turn directly into results, and that learning did not require permission.

Through high school and into early adulthood, Joey tried nearly every way he could find to make money online. Ecommerce. Drop shipping. Print on demand. Day trading. “Really anything that you could do that was like make money online, I tried,” he says. Most attempts did not work the way he hoped. Some worked briefly. None offered a clean path forward. What mattered was not the outcome of each idea, but the accumulation of understanding. He wanted to build something for himself, and entrepreneurship felt like the clearest route.

Selling on Amazon became one of those experiments that turned into something lasting. Around 2016, just after graduating high school, Joey launched several products on the platform. Many failed. One succeeded. That brand still exists today in the fitness category and remains part of his life. At the time, there was no formal education path for learning how to sell on Amazon. “There’s no degree you can get in how to sell on Amazon,” he explains. He taught himself by watching YouTube videos, working through Amazon Seller University, and learning every step firsthand.

He figured out how to source products from China, label them correctly for FBA, design packaging, create logos, secure trademarks, and manage the backend systems required to operate on the platform. That process took time and persistence. It also revealed something else. Amazon was enormous. “Over sixty percent of all sales online happen on Amazon,” Joey notes. Many brands wanted to succeed there but did not understand how the system worked. He saw an opportunity to help.

Joey continued building his skills and began offering services to other businesses that needed support navigating the channel. That first agency grew to a decent size, but the workload eventually became unsustainable. He handled sales. He handled execution. He managed accounts. Over time, the pace led to burnout. Rather than push through blindly, he made a deliberate decision to step into a larger agency. The goal was learning. “You think you know everything when you’re twenty years old,” he says. “And then you realize there’s a lot more that goes into running a business.”

That experience changed how he viewed systems, leadership, and scale. It also led him to his future business partner, who at the time was his boss. They worked closely together and shared an entrepreneurial mindset. Joey respected the company and the people there, but eventually the pull to build something of his own returned. Together, they decided to start Flagship Growth.

Flagship Growth launched at the beginning of the year as a full service marketing agency focused on Amazon, Walmart, and TikTok Shop. The work goes far beyond surface level marketing. The team takes full ownership of each channel for their brand partners. Customer service. Inventory planning. Forecasting. Advertising. Everything in between. “We really take full ownership of that channel for all of our partners,” Joey explains.

Starting from zero brought immediate pressure. There was no existing revenue. No momentum to lean on. Joey’s goal was clear. Replace his income from employment as quickly as possible. Having a partner with complementary skills mattered. While one focused on managing accounts and day to day execution, Joey focused on sales and growth. That division created clarity and allowed both of them to stay fully accountable.

Finding a repeatable path to customers proved to be the hardest part of year one. Joey assumed certain things would move faster. They did not. “Whatever I thought was going to take three months took six months,” he says. Progress came through discipline rather than shortcuts. Cold outreach. Daily execution. Repetition. He stayed consistent even when results lagged behind effort.

Scrappiness defined how the company found early traction. Joey spent hours each day sending personalized Instagram messages to founders and brand operators. “I’m firing off fifty Instagram DMs on a daily basis,” he says. Each message was customized. He looked for context before reaching out. A recent product launch. A funding announcement. A retail expansion. The work was manual and time consuming, but it became one of the company’s most effective acquisition channels.

As Flagship Growth grew, the team expanded. Fifteen people joined within the first year. Growth brought new challenges. Managing people required a different mindset. Joey learned quickly that motivation varies from person to person. “You can’t apply a one size fits all approach,” he explains. Leadership meant understanding what drives each individual and communicating openly. Hiring also became its own discipline, leading the company to bring on a full time recruiter to support continued growth.

Looking ahead, Joey sees a clear path. He wants Flagship Growth to become a top five agency in the space, with over one hundred employees within the next few years. The ambition feels grounded. “The path is there,” he says. The challenge lies in scaling people, systems, and culture together.

When asked what advice he would offer someone interested in entrepreneurship, Joey points to learning first. “Go work for someone else who’s doing what you want to do,” he says. Hone a skill. Sales. Marketing. Operations. Learn how a business actually runs before trying to build one. He believes that foundation compresses the learning curve and creates long term leverage. “Sales will cure all in a business,” he adds. “If you can learn sales, that’s an extremely valuable skill set.”

The most influential advice he received came from his father, who spent his career in senior marketing roles. “If you want to make a lot of money, you can do two things,” Joey recalls. “You can work in sales or you can own your own business.” Owning a business, he learned, means always working. The tradeoff brings opportunity and responsibility together.

Today, Joey continues building Flagship Growth with the same mindset that drove him to sell items on eBay years earlier. Learn by doing. Stay close to the work. Adjust when reality contradicts assumptions. Progress compounds through consistency rather than shortcuts.

The work continues, shaped by what he has learned by doing it.

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