BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 26: Graduating College on Track for Financial Independence with Cody Berman

Episode Date: June 25, 2018

Cody Berman: Remember that name because this kid is going places. Currently traveling in Australia, Cody began his journey into personal finance and intentional living as a child, when his dad taught him about compound interest and the power of saving... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money Podcasts show number 26. For all the odd jobs and things I worked through high school, I saved probably upwards of 95%. So at the end of high school, I probably was sitting on maybe 15 grand. And during that time, I had bought a car. It's time for a new American dream, one that doesn't involve working in a cubicle for 40 years, barely scraping by. Whether you're looking to get your financial house in order, invest the money you already have, or discover new paths for wealth creation, you're in the right place. This show is for anyone who has money or wants more.

This is the Bigger Pockets Money Podcast. How's going everybody? I'm Scott Trench and I'm here with my co-host, Miss Mindy Jensen. How are you doing today, Mindy? Scott, I am doing fantastic today. It is a beautiful day to be alive. The sun is shining. We've had some rain lately, but the sun is shining.

My drive in was super easy. And we have a fantastic show today. Awesome. Same here. I've rained all day yesterday for us. So we had a little party here at my parents' house where we had some friends, but I'm glad to here. It's going well in Denver. It's beautiful in Denver. You're really missing out. So Scott is traveling today. Today is an international episode. Today's show is

normally for our listeners, but today's show is not for our listeners. I mean, that doesn't mean that we don't want them to not listen, but today's show is for your 12-year-old, your 15-year-old, your 20-year-old. The lessons that our guest shares today can literally change your child's entire financial future. Actually, today's show could be kind of second-handedly for our listeners. The ideas and concepts that Cody shares are great for older kids, but they can also be incorporated into financial teachings you share with your younger kids. Cody did a lot of things that I think set him up for a lot of options coming into life, starting at 14, you know, 10 years old in probably, elementary and middle school that then kind of translated all through high school. And I think as a parent,

you know, this is the kind of story that you'd want your kid to hear about at some point in that, in that phase that they can begin maybe to emulate some of these behaviors and some of this mindset. And then think about how, you know, what you as a parent can do to instill that behavior in your kit. Because Cody's parents, I think, probably did a couple of things here that gave him that great mindset. Yeah, I don't think Cody's parents did. I know Cody's parents did several things. He talks about his dad's 100% interest bank account program, which is pretty amazing. That's actually something I'm going to talk to my husband about doing for our kids, because it's one thing to tell your kids, oh, save money, but bank accounts are paying nothing right now.

If you can double their money, you know what? I don't want to spoil this. Yeah. Actually, his parents did a lot to help him. They instilled some pretty amazing values. And the best thing that they instilled in them is hard work. He learned from an early age that you have to work hard to get rewards. And he has done that his whole life.

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Well, should we go ahead and bring Cody in? Cody, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money Show. How's it going? It's going great. Thanks for having me, guys. Where are you right now? Okay, so I'm in Brisbane, Australia. Been here since mid-January, and I'm actually leaving in three weeks.

I'm kind of bummed out. I'm going to go back to the reality, but it's been great so far. All right, let's start off with a few quick highlights of your trip. What are some cool things you've been doing down there? Oh, man. So we just got back from an 11-day trip to Melbourne and Tasmania. We actually drove around the first. the island of Tasmania for eight days and slept in the back of a rev for yeah it's it's a living

like a college student that's just one of the trips that's probably the most extreme camper type trip we've done so far we also went to melbourne Sydney we went to new zealand for a week we're going up to the witsunday coast which is like these beautiful honeymoonish looking islands or actually going there next week we're leaving saturday yeah we just been popping all around also we started off on the west coast in perth so just been trying to see as much of this I can while I'm here. How did you get into this position? What led up to you kind of having a six-month period here in Australia? Okay, so I guess I met a really cool girl and now my girlfriend and she wanted to study abroad. I wanted to study abroad, but she's two years younger. And the way the program worked out,

she could only study abroad her second semester sophomore year since I was two years older. That would make it my second semester senior year. So I was like, oh, I don't really want to do that my last semester. So I was like, all right, I'm just going to graduate early. One, I'm not going to pay the university a boatload of money to go travel. I can do it on my dime and do it for as cheap as possible, like while still having fun. And I'll be able to go with my girlfriend. So I didn't have to go alone. Don't have to pay the university. So I'm just here on a working holiday visa is what they call it. So let's bring this back to personal finance here. So the reason that your this position is because you graduate early and you're kind of about

to start your your career and I guess journey here. Can you walk us through what you consider to be the starting point? Like, you know, what was the source? What was the story? the point at which you kind of began prepping yourself for college to be able to set yourself up to graduate early and maybe in the financial position you're in today? So I think that started at a really young age. My parents were always really into making me study and just work hard, get my school work done, earn the things I had to do. Like we used to have to do, I don't know if you ever used puzzle mania and math mania books that might be like within your age range. You're only a few years older than me, but there's these little books with like math problems or English problems.

and I had to use to do those. I'd have to finish a page to like watch a half an hour of TV when I was a kid. So I just had this like I had this really good work ethic. And like at the same time to go back to finance, my parents would always just save, save, save. They kind of pound that into my head. And so by the time I actually started earning money, I knew that I needed to save this money. The power of compound interest is just insane. So actually something my dad did for me up until age 10 because that's when I wasn't really

getting any money at all. Every contribution I'd make to my bank, he would match. with 100% interest overnight. So I'd put like 50 bucks in from my grandma and the next day it would be 100. I'd be like, wow, that is the coolest thing ever. My money just doubled overnight. Super unrealistic interest rate in the real world, but it definitely taught me the value of if you put money away in an account that can

gain interest for you and make money for you, that you can have a really powerful financial future. Okay, hang on. I got to take notes because I got small kids. I really like this idea. I haven't done this. And really, what's $50 to me? as the mom, but $50, and they're not putting $50 and they're only eight and 11.

But this is amazing. I like this tip a lot. Yeah, I mean, I'm no parent, but it definitely worked as from the child side of view, just to teach me about frugality and saving and how important it is. And he used to have me do like compound interest calculations where he'd be like, what's two times two, what's four times four to show me how fast money can double. And it was crazy to me. So were there any rules on this?

Would you have to keep it in there for a certain amount of time? or, you know, could you not spend it within a couple weeks? Because it seems like you put it the money in, doubles overnight. You pull it right out and you have twice as much to spend is that, you know, that seems like there's got to be some rules around that. Good point. So actually, I mean, I think it was more of just the framework that he built. So, I mean, from age zero to 10, you're not exactly going out and spending your own money.

You know, like I kind of got that mindset ingrained to me that early. Like I'd have to ask my mom to go to the store to buy me a toy at Toys R Us. And at that age, she'd either say no or is she. she'd buy it for me if she thought it was reasonable. But I wasn't really making too many purchases on my own. So I guess by the time I started earning money, which I started making $5 an hour at age 10. That's why my dad stopped contributing to my 100% interest bank account. I started working at my uncle's disc golf shop in the snack shack just selling like chips and giving back lost discs. So yeah, that's when I started my career.

Well, that kind of parlayed itself into a career. Spoiler alert. Yes. Cody has a lot to do with disc golf, but we'll get to that in a minute. Well, let's fast forward here. So at age, let's say, with 14, how much money were you kind of sitting on and what were you kind of financial choices looking like at that point? I probably had maybe two or $3,000 by like 14 just from working. I mean, it didn't work that much, but worked a decent amount and all of my savings got doubled. My savings rate was probably literally like 99%.

I would just, I would loathe spending money because I loved seeing it double in the bank. It was like the coolest thing ever. So when I started actually working, I got my first job as a host at a restaurant. And I was making still pretty crappy money. But I was putting everything away. Still living with my parents, obviously. Well, I guess not obviously some people have less fortunate situations at age 14. But I was living with my parents.

I could save pretty much everything I made. And for all the odd jobs and things I worked through high school, I saved probably upwards of 95%. So at the end of high school, I probably was sitting on maybe 15 grand. And during that time, I had bought a car. and I kind of wish I bought a cheaper car at the time. My dad convinced me me to get a little more expensive car, but that's beside the point. So yeah, at the end of high school is definitely an advantageous situation.

Awesome. And so, you know, I assume with working on this job for this many hours per week, that your grades really suffered during this period, right? No. So kind of like I mentioned before, I just had a really good work ethic. And like if I got less than a day, it's not like I got like beaten or anything like that. But it was just like just a bad look for me to get like poor grades. So me and my brother really had that ingrained in our head.

Like, you have to get good grades to succeed. It's really important for you to learn to, like, educate yourself to become better. And so just throughout high school, I was always just aiming for the top, like shooting for the top. I'd always do like extra credit. I'd always go above and beyond. And yeah, I did graduate with a pretty good GPA. Actually graduated, graduated sixth in my class. So it didn't suffer too much from the sports and the work.

All right. So a couple quick questions here. What advantages do you think that it, you know, having, starting with, two or $3,000 at age 14 and then kind of spilling up, you know, maybe another 10 to 12 throughout high school afforded you. I know you talked about a car. Can you tell us about that purchase and maybe some of the other advantages that, you know, how that impacted your life positively in high school? Yeah. So I guess I'll go back to the car, which is a mistake that I really wish I could take back. I'm basically crying, talking about it now. But I bought a,

In 2012, I bought a 2009 Volvo, like S-40 with a sports package. It was just, I bought it for 12 grand. And that was a deal because my dad knew the guy. He was like best friends from primary school or something. And he sold to me for 50% off. And like that, and that was a deal. But I mean, if I could go back, I wish I bought like a $2,000 beater and just drove it to the end of high school.

I'm just thinking about the compound returns from age 16 when I bought the car until 22. Now I'm like, oh, I could have like, I could have like, almost double the money with the stock market of the last six years. Well, so did you pay cash for this car? Yes, I paid cash just straight out of my bank account. So that's, I mean, that's a huge advantage here. I mean, because of the work ethic you put in starting at age 10 to 14 and then they increased there in high school, you're able to pay cash for a pretty cool car right there in high

school. And you're talking about it as a mistake, you could have invested. But still, like, that's a really good situation. You're driving up in a sporty Volvo every, you know. Yeah, no, it definitely was a cool car. at the time, I thought it was the coolest thing ever. But then looking back after you get into this five world, I'm like, oh, man, all you think about is the compound interest.

So I would like to say that you can't go back and change time. So stop beating yourself up over it. You're still slightly ahead of the, I'm sorry, how old are you, Cody? 22. 22. So I would venture a guess that you are slightly ahead of the average 22-year-old. Well, let's ask two more questions here about the high school space. So first off, what do you think, what prevented your peers from doing this kind of similar thing?

Because most kids do not go through high school, accumulating, playing three sports, getting good grades, graduating the top 10 of the class, and then accumulating close to $30,000 by the time they graduate high school from hard work. And yes, some of that was matched, especially in the early years by your parents. Yeah. But what was preventing the other students from kind of achieving this? Okay, I think I think just in society today is kind of the entitlement mindset. And I've seen that a lot growing up. Like in just primary school, in middle school, high school, college, it's like you should, like I should get a good grade.

That's what people are thinking. I should do the minimal amount of work and receive an A. And I don't know where or when that started. I kind of noticed it. And I know that a lot of people in the generation above me have mentioned like they didn't get trophies when they lost a soccer game when they were kids. And now everybody's a winner. You know, it's kind of just like this intent of.

entitlement mindset where everybody wins, everybody deserves the best. And so people don't want to work for it. And I think that's what I saw a lot. People would want to spend the minimal amount of time on their homework. Even it was something that maybe interested them. They just want to get it over with. They don't care about the learning aspect. They just want to do the homework, get the grade. And they're hoping that that grade is a good grade. But it doesn't make too much sense if you're putting the effort in. And so you think that the difference that kind of separated you is that you put 100% into everything you were doing at this point, school, sports work. And And that was what kind of allowed you to make that distinguishment in all those areas.

I assume you're a good athlete in addition to your grades and your finances here. He won the pull-up contest at Camp in January of 2018. We'll plug there for Cody. Thanks, Scott. Yeah, so I guess the things that set me up was just my parents, again, going back to, like, you have to work hard to succeed in this world. And that was just something that they really instilled into me. And I guess I just carried that through high school and through college.

Yeah, that's, uh, that everybody gets the same thing no matter what effort is put forth. Isn't that called communism? And that doesn't work. And well, or on the other side, oh, why should I do anything? I get everything that everybody else gets no matter how little effort I put into there. So yeah, that entitlement mindset is a huge, huge thing. That is, uh, I don't even know how I want to say this. What prevented your peers from doing the same thing?

Being entitled. Yeah, you're not going to get anywhere when you feel like you are owed anything. I think that it's interesting that your work ethic, though, we're pointing out here, has contributed to excellence in multiple areas. It's not like you're just like a good athlete and that's it. And that's right. Or you have the grades. It's or you are able to work hard and save money. No, you're, you're excelling in all these different areas because of that.

What can, you know, you talked about some of the things that your parents have done here and done that. What kind of specific things do you remember that your parents were doing that might have contributed to this for you? I think a thing that they kind of taught me to do is goal setting. And so I've always been a goal setter. And I think that really helps you just accomplish goals. Nice. But yeah, if you set mini checkpoints along the way, it just feels good accomplishing. And like once you get rolling, it's hard to stop the bowler once it starts rolling.

And if you set goals for yourself, you're like, okay, I want to get myself back to sports. I want to get my 40 yard dash down to a, I don't know, 4.7 or I want to get a X grade on this test. and just like working constantly towards a goal really helps you kind of shape the activities that you want to do to achieve that goal. I think that's something that's really, really helped me. Awesome. So a couple of things that you've mentioned here as well

is you have the goal setting. You have the matching on the savings account. You have just like a general example that sounds like they set up just this kind of hard work. And all these things seem to really have helped you a lot here, which I find really interesting and very simple and straightforward. Yeah, definitely. I don't know if I'll just hop into it now. Another thing that was huge in high school was AP exams. And that's something that people shy away from just because of the name. I think people are just like, oh, like, why would I want to go through that extra work? It doesn't even matter anyway. Because for some reason, they don't teach you the incredible savings that AP and also Klep exams. Clap exams I did not have the liberty of taking advantage of in high school because I learned about him a little too late after I started like really getting into the hack in the college game. But AP, an AP, an AP, exam for people who don't know is an advanced placement exam and basically it will be on a subject

like social studies or science or English and you take the exam if you score it's usually a four or five that's a scale out of five is a zero to five you score a four or five you're exempt from taking that class in college so it counts as college credit so if you're going to a private university that costs 60,000 a year to go and say you take four classes a semester so you have eight classes for the year just some back of the envelope math so each class is like around 7,000 you're saving $7,000 by taking an AP exam. And all it is is just taking a different class. You're taking AP science instead of regular science in high school. It's just, it's a crazy small choice that can make an enormous difference in your financial future. And then the, the Klep exams,

all right, don't ask me what it stands for. It's C-L-E-P exams. I totally forget what it stands for, but it's basically the same as an AP. It's just on a specific subject. You actually don't have to take like a course. You don't have to take a KLEP course. You could just say, oh, I'm really good at calculus. I'm going to take the KLEP calculus course. You can go onto the KLEP website, sign up. I think it's maybe two or $300 for a course, but that's a lot better than $7,000 or even a few grand at a public university. And you can just get that general education requirement knocked out. And you could, I know people who have got two years ahead, like just coming into college with 60 college credits out of 120 by taking AP and Klapp exams. It's just absolutely insane.

Okay. I'm going to dive a little bit deeper into this because I have children. And like we said, earlier, this episode is for like the older kids, the 12-year-old, the 15-year-old, the 20-year-old. Let's pretend I'm in high school. And when can you start taking AP classes? Yeah. So I think typically the first year is sophomore year. Anyway, in my high school, it depends on the high school. My high school was pretty good at offering AP.

If you're at a really like rural high school, they might have very few AP. You can take independent AP courses by yourself online. I know it's a little harder to stay motivated. You don't have a teacher, but you do have an online guide. I had a few friends who did that. But I'd say, I mean, you can start sophomore year. So if your kids wanted to start, you could just start prepping them. You could get them signed up for sophomore year.

They could take upwards of four or five AP classes in one semester. I mean, you could take 20 by the time you graduate. It's pretty crazy. It's almost every subject. You can take 20 classes in high school that count for your high school diploma and also count for your college courses. And I'm assuming these are free because you're taking them in high school. Like you don't pay to go to high school.

Well, I'm sorry, a public high school. Yes. So the courses are free, like an AP course in high school is free. I think the AP exam, a lot of the, a lot of them are subsidized by the high school. I think I paid like $75 for all for each one of my AP exams. I took four. So it wasn't a big hit. But I got exempt from all those in college.

So I mean, that's like, that was just a huge savings for me. And I was like more than a semester ahead coming into college. So every. AP exam that you take, like the $75 charge or whatever, gets you, I'm assuming you have to pass the exam, but then that gets you out of a class in college. You don't have to pay for it, but you still get credit for it. So, for example, I take AP English. That was the one I took, AP English in high school. You take the test. If you get a, the scale is from zero to five. If you get a four or five, it counts as college credit. Pretty much at any university, like I'd say 99.9% of universities accept AP exams as credit,

unless you're at some crazy university to that. I've never. ever heard of. But yeah, and you just are completely just checked off the checkbox. It says general education, English requirement, done when you're in college. You don't have to take it. Wow. I thought my big hack was going to a community college for this. But it's still, I mean, I'm a little older than you. It was a couple of hundred dollars for the classes when I went to college, probably before you were born. I also had a number of AP classes in high school as well. and they helped me avoid some of these classes in college. And instead of graduating early, like Cody,

I actually got a dual major and double minor, partially because I had taken some of those AP classes that counted towards college credit. The one that I had wished that I had done in high school, but skipped on, was the foreign language. Because if you get the foreign language, you actually can avoid a very lengthy amount of hours. Like, I had to take two semesters of Spanish in college

in order, because I did not pass. this AP exam in high school. If I had just done that, I might have been able to skip this and not have to take it. And obviously, Spanish is a great language study, but it wasn't really relevant to the career I was pursuing. So it was a very large amount of time I had to invest to the senior year of college. Oh. But yeah, these AP exam, these AP classes, I mean, these were around when I was in high school, you know, 10 years ago or so. But in order to, you know, a couple things to do here is you didn't mention this, but I bet you that you prepared in a lot of ways to take these classes in middle school, right, by taking kind of the advanced classes

there, doing your homework, getting good grades, that you could place into these advanced classes in high school. And I think you can still take them if you are already in high school and moving on, but it gets a lot easier if you can kind of keep your grades up and get these things in place prior to high school and work hard then so that the coursework is much easier and you're able to get into those. Is that correct? So yeah, totally agree. I mean, if you start taking those advanced classes earlier, I think the one they start branching out is like six. grade, they start like kind of tearing out the student learning levels. But it's not like if your kid is not in an advanced class right now, they're absolutely screwed for AP exams. You don't have to have

like certain prerequisites anybody can enroll in an AP course. It just, you just have to have the grit and the determination to finish and work a little bit harder. Honestly, it's not that much harder than the regular class. You're just kind of learning more geared toward the test rather than just like learning random facts your teacher might want you to know about the subject. This is an amazing way to just skip some huge college debt. I mean, everybody talks about how difficult it is to pay for college. A couple of weeks ago, I think it was episode 22, we had Travis Hornsby on from the student loan planner. And he talked about how you can pay off or defer your student loans, your six-figure student loans. Here's a way to defer or just completely absolve yourself of these student loans by, of some of these student loans just by bringing in some high school credit. I mean, what are you doing in high school? I would much rather have my kids not be working a job and instead working on not having to take all these college classes.

I mean, how soon did you get out of college? You were a semester early? Yes, so three and a half years. Okay. And I actually, I could have graduated in three years, but I kind of wanted to just live at college one more year. One more semester. Honestly, that's the reason. I just, I really liked a friend group I was with.

we're living in an awesome house. And yeah, I just, I was like, all right, I'll just take it out another semester. The last semester of college, I just took, it was the most amazing feeling. I just took classes that I actually wanted to learn. And it sounds crazy that like, that's not what college is. But a lot of the classes you take, it's just classes you have to take for your major. I don't know, I don't know who set that up or why it's like that. But you really don't get to just pick and choose the exact classes you want.

Like you have to take this class to get to this class. And it's just all of these hoops and hurdles you have to jump. through to get the degree. But the last semester, I really got to take the classes I wanted. Awesome. And one other point about these AP classes, by the way, is that these are often looked for by college admissions. They're not looking to have you skip their semester or half a semester or whatever. They're looking because they know that you're taking rigorous coursework and excelling in it. And they can tell that by an objective national standard on these test scores for these AP exams that tell you if you pass or not. Can you quickly give us a, it sounds like this Klep stuff,

is exact same thing as AP, except for it's an online course that you take outside the scope of your normal high school curriculum doesn't count for high school credit or anything, but it can be used to give you a college credit that you can do in addition to your AP work. Is that correct? Yes, that is completely correct. So I wouldn't, I would say in addition, in the terms of to supplement a class that's not offered by AP, but I wouldn't take like the, you wouldn't take AP calculus and then take the Klep exam for calculus. That's redundant and you'd just be knocking out the same class. But yeah, a Klep exam is basically a self-studied exam. And I think there are online courses and stuff.

I don't know the specifics because I didn't do it, but I know that most high schools don't offer CLEP courses, but I'd say 90% of high schools do offer AP courses. I think it's honestly just up to preference. I really don't know if there's an advantage to either. You can also do self-study AP exam. So I could, if my school didn't offer AP English, for example, I could get the AP English book, take an online course and take the AP English exam without taking the class in high school. Gotcha.

So you made all these great choices, academics, sports, finances, all that kind of stuff. Let's move on to the selection of your college and kind of how you finance that. So what were you looking for in a college? So I was actually torn between, so I knew I was going to study finance and economics. So I was kind of geared towards that. And honestly, for a bad reason, I guess, because I heard I just, after doing a lot of Google searches, I learned that you can make a lot of money in finance after four years of a college degree. And that's kind of what drove me because I was kind of obsessed with money at that point from,

I mean, you guys know from my upbringing and just the savings rate and everything like that. I was like, oh, I'm going to earn so much money. It's going to be awesome. So I started looking at schools for like finance and economics. I was down to like I looked at. I applied to a bunch of schools. I was down to two final schools, one with the state school. One is a private university.

The private university, I actually got a half off like academic scholarship. And it was still 30 grand per year. And I was like, oh, that's going to hurt. So I ended up choosing the state university basically just from my frugal roots. I was like, I can't, I don't want to come out with student debt. My parents said they'll help me as much as they can, but I knew that they weren't going to be able to take on a 30 grand a year bill. So I ended up going to State University and paying only about five grand a year. So that worked out a lot better.

I came out at the end of three and a half years with a little over 15 grand paid. No debt. My parents paid most of it for me. I helped out when I could. But that was just the choice that set me up for like huge financial success. Because I remember that episode with Travis. And student loan debt just cripples people, especially when people get up into the hundreds of thousands. It takes years and years to pay back.

Yeah. Some of the comments that we got from that episode, one guy sent in, he said, I know a guy who was a veterinarian and he committed suicide because he had such crippling student loan debt. And getting a 50% scholarship is really awesome until you do the math. And the 50% is still, what, six times as much as it would cost you to go to the state school? What do you think would be your level of education going to the private school versus

going to the state school? I mean, did you get six times less of an education? No, definitely not. So, yeah, that's something I like to highlight. I mean, there are definitely advantages to private school, but there are advantages to public school or state school as well. So private school is something I've noticed, especially in the business space, they do have a really tight network. So you might have a company that literally recruits from X university. Like, say, you go to Harvard. They might only recruit from Harvard. And that's just a thing that you can't really work around. It's very hard to break into a role that only recruits from a certain college. But at the state university level, if you go to a state university, oftentimes they have a huge alumni network because a lot of people go to state schools because they're cheaper.

So you have access to people who work at hundreds or thousands of company within your industry. So something I did was like I'd reach out to people on LinkedIn when I was in college. And I had an alumni at almost every, like pretty much every major financial institution that I wanted to work at. So I always kind of out a foot in the door if I could get the conversation rolling. That was a huge advantage of the state school. And obviously the cost savings is the biggest advantage. but state schools are not as bad as it seems. It's really all going back to that entitlement mindset.

I think private schools might have smaller classrooms so they can kind of push you a little harder on an individual student level. If you have a 400 people in a lecture hall, the teacher isn't going to point you out and say, hey, you should work a little harder, you know, because they don't really know you. But if you're the type of person who already has that hardworking mindset,

I think you can really excel and learn a ton from a state university. Wow. You mentioned using LinkedIn. Did you just? Yes. randomly, I don't use LinkedIn very much. Did you just randomly send notes to people? Yes. So this was something that was actually like baffling to me.

When I first joined this thing called the Finance Society when I got into school. And the kid, the senior that ran it, he was just a whiz kind of just, he was like going into investment banking and he was just teaching us all the tips and tricks, like how to talk, how to eat, how to connect the people like in a business sense. So he was like, reach out to three people on LinkedIn every single day and just send them a message saying you're interested in what they do at their company and try to set up a phone call. He's like 90% of the people won't even answer you, but the 10% that will just help you will help you tremendously in your road to like success or lending a career down the road.

And so that's what I did. I was reaching out to two to three people pretty much every single day. And I had an Excel document of over 500 contacts that I'd contacted over my college career from companies that I was interested in and just like getting these phone calls and kind of getting your foot in the door. And I mean, talking to these people on the phone makes you a lot more presentable in interviews. You can actually talk. You don't just freeze up that you're actually conversational. You can talk about the markets. You can talk about whatever the job might be, like, whatever might be specific to the job. One word of caution is don't reach out to people and

say, hey, can I have an internship? Because they're just going to say, who the heck is this guy asking me for an internship? You just, you want to say something like, hey, I noticed you work at ex-company. I'm really interested in that field. Like, could you tell me more about what you do? And like how you got there. Also another word to the wise is aim for people who are younger. So on LinkedIn, you can tell people's age usually just by their picture. If you're reaching out to a 50 or 60 year old managing director, chances are they're not going to answer you and they're not going to have time for a phone call. If you're reaching out to someone who looks like me or someone in their early 20s, they're probably going to pick up the phone. They just got in their analyst or

associate role and they'd be more than happy to have a conversation with a college student. And that's just you can just get your foot in the door so that they can push your resume to HR say, hey, this awesome kid just reach out to me. So I definitely aim for younger, but if you can get a conversation with those, and then you can leverage conversations with higher-ups. Yeah, so you're reaching out to two to three. This is a great tip, by the way. And this is, and this may not even be a tip just for college students. This might be for everyone in their careers of all time, you know, like, just keep reaching out to people and getting to know people and seeing how you can learn from them. Like, people love talking about what they do, right?

Yeah. How they do it, right? You said that two or three, reach out two or three people today, day or a day, would you have one call a week then or how much time, how many people were responding to you? Did you see an improvement in that success rate above 90% not responding over time? Or how'd that work? Over time, definitely. Sophomore year, people did not care at all that I was reaching out to and they're like, who is this guy? I'm just going to click delete. I maybe had like one or two phone calls a week, but I mean, I was peddling pretty hard. I guess as I, as my career advanced, my resume got stronger and I had internships and a lot of

experience, I started getting like maybe a 40% call setup rate, like senior year and junior year. So it definitely got better as time went on. Awesome. What were your, I'm sorry to abruptly transition here, but what were your extracurriculars like while you were doing this? You mentioned the finance society here. What else were you doing in college besides that? Yeah.

So finance society, I only did for maybe the first two years was kind of like the intro level stuff. And I didn't, I kind of stopped attending meetings after the first two years. The most like instrumental thing in my college learning, though, was this thing called the Minimum Fixed Income Fund. So we actually traded corporate credit on the schools endowment money. And so I was looking at bonds, mostly like in junk bonds, because they actually move more than like high,

like then really stable blue chip credit. Like a Disney bond is not going to move many points in a day. But we were looking at high yield bonds. It's basically like equity analysis, like you're valuing a stock, finding free cash flow, finding intrinsic value, except you're taking it one step farther

because you're looking at debt and cash flow. And just it's just a different part the cap structure, but it's basically the same financial modeling and same stuff. So that was, I mean, I think I learned more in that fund, which probably took up 20 hours a week than I did in all of my college classes. What is this fund called the Minuteman? What? You said that really fast. The Minuteman Fix income fund. And this is a mutual fund? No. So it's, it was the school I went to is endowment fund. Oh, oh, I'm sorry. Okay. Not the full endowment. We got a piece of the endowment to manage, which was like awesome because we were managing real money. So we had to be good.

You had to like, it wasn't like anybody could join this group. I had to go through like a pretty extensive interview process to get in. And then yeah, just work my butt off over the next two years after I got in. I got in my first semester sophomore year. And then I saw I guess to add on, I was also part of the investment club. So that kind of sprung my financial interest, I guess, investment club. That's where I first did like, I did a soccer pitch competition. So that kind of spied my interest just into looking into companies. I was like, oh, finance is pretty cool. And that catapulted me into the fixed income fund. So those were the most, those are the two most influential extracurriculars I was a part of.

I guess fun extracurriculars, I played intramural basketball, flag football. So I was still doing fun stuff. It wasn't just a, I'm not just this finance nerd in these weird clubs. I'm a normal guy. Yeah, I was going to say, basically these clubs seem to have nothing to do with the concept of financial independence at all, right? Oh, no. Just kidding.

That was a bad joke. You love those. You're totally right. You're totally, yeah, you do love those. I appreciate those, Scott. I like those jokes on the show. I remember actually talking to you about this, I can't fly. It's very different being smart financially from a corporate perspective

and being smart financially from a personal perspective. They are two completely different animals. And that's something I noticed. I mean, I have friends who have spent 10 grand in a day because that's what they got for their signing bonus. And I'm just like, oh. Yeah, so why do you think that is? Why do you think these people in your clubs here?

These are people who are interested in finance who theoretically understand finance, who are managing maybe millions of dollars. for this endowment fund, I imagine. Why are they not interested in learning about their personal finances? I think the idea... Why did you become interested in it versus them, I guess? Okay, so I'll tackle your first question first.

Why aren't they interested? I think just the mindset in finance especially is just money-hungry, power crazy. That's like the typical Wall Street investment banker mindset. Sorry to any Wall Street investment bankers listening to this. I've had a lot of conversations with them, and I had like a lot of interviews. And it's just, that's just the mindset and vibe you get from those. offices. People are just out to make more money, make more money, make more money. And so they don't really worry about their expenses. They don't care how much they spend because they can always

make more money. That's the mindset. That's the mindset. It doesn't matter. Like, I'll make $500,000 next year. I can spend $500,000 this year. And it's just this crazy mindset that just perpetuates. And when you're 40 years old and you're in $500,000 worth of debt because you have three houses in a yacht. You're like, oh, wow, I really wish I could have turned back the clock. And started when you were 10? Yeah, it started when you were 10. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I like Monarch. It helps you see exactly where your money is going, and more importantly, where your tax refund can make the biggest impact. Because the goal isn't just to look backward, it's to actually make progress. Simplify your finances with Monarch. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life, including budgeting, accounts and investments, net worth, and future planning, to do you. together in one dashboard on your phone or your laptop.

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Yeah. So I kind of did have that money hungry thing. I told you that's why I kind of chose finance going into college. And I really thought, I was like, oh, I can't wait to be an investment banker. I'm going to make so much money. It's going to be awesome. But I still have those roots of savings. So I was like, I'm going to make a hundred plus thousand dollars straight out of college. and I'm going to save it all. I'm going to be rich. And yeah, so I guess that was the difference. It's just that foundation that my parents had laid for me, that savings mindset. I did think that I was just going to keep making money, making money, making money. But I also thought I was going to save it. And I always kind of had this financial independence thought in my head. I never really had a

framework to it or could put words to it. I didn't really know the concept. I didn't know anything about the 4% rule. I didn't know anything about like Roth conversion ladders and all these crazy tips and tricks you hear in the financial independence community. But I mean, after I got introduced at age 19 actually. I was fortunate. My mom told me because I was always kind of had an entrepreneurial spirit to me. She's like, you should read this book. It was a four hour work week by Tim Ferriss. And I was like, okay, gave it a read. Now it was just hooked. I was like, this is the coolest thing ever. You can earn it. Like you can get, you can earn income while working. Like you can make, set up these passive income streams that pay you for your life.

I was like, that's the coolest thing ever. So I just started like brainstorming right away. And I did have two failed businesses. Scott, I actually did have a, I know you have the trenches tease i think you mentioned i also had a failed clothing company just because i didn't really put any effort into it and i also had a tutoring company i tried to start and i was going to like be the head of it and hire all these tutors that didn't work at all just because i didn't put the effort in but i know we'll jump back to this a little after i talked about the more college stuff but i did finally have some successful ventures after reading about the tim ferris in the four-hour work week so that kind of just jump started my financial independence journey did you work during college

yes so i was a actually this is the best job ever i got I got really lucky that I got this job. I'm not smarter than the rest, not better. I just got lucky that I got this teacher's assistant job. I had a senior who was working in Operation Information Management. So basically, just to sum it up, that is a course about Microsoft Office, so Excel, PowerPoint, access. And she was graduating, and she knew me from my hometown. So I hadn't talked to her in like two or three years, but she's like, hey, do you want this job?

You're a pretty smart kid. I was like, oh, all right, cool. Took the job and it was just the best job I could ever ask for. not only did I learn, become like an Excel guru, not to my own horn, but I'm really good at Excel because I've spent probably thousands of hours on it and teaching a course on it. I independently taught like a 30 person course on Excel, but I also had lab hours and what lab hours were where I monitored the lab. And so I'd sit in the lab for 20 hours a week and do my homework and maybe answer questions for an hour out of that 20 hours and get paid $13 an hour the whole time.

So I was making like $400 every other week doing lab hours. Homework. Yeah. Yeah. So that was huge. There were a lot of jobs like this at my school as well. And a big regret of mine is that I didn't take one and do exactly that. You know, it's a boon to your grades and your finances.

And it's just all during the day. It doesn't impact your social life. It's great. Yeah. I mean, I was, I mean, again, I was saving 95% of my income. I did help somewhat pay for school. But what were my expenses? I had my, luckily my first two years, I had my dining paid for by my parents, which was,

wasn't too expensive. And I actually, the scholarships I got, which I'll talk about in a minute, I helped out with that. They actually, they helped pay for food. But my real expenses were alcohol, which was like a $12, a $12 handle a week. Nice. What was the handle of choice? Rubenoff. Ah, there you go.

There you go. It's Rubenoff. Oh, it's, it's. Only after 21, of course, right? Only after 21, yes. I strategically came into college at age 21. Nice. Good job.

Yeah. Okay, so how does somebody find these jobs, these air quotes around the word jobs? Because you're not really working, but you are getting paid for it. I mean, I'm not saying that you're slacking. But, I mean, if there's nobody asking you questions, what are you supposed to do? Hound people and say, hey, can I help you with anything? Do you have any questions? They're like, no, go away.

I'm just doing my homework. So how do you find those? So I guess I didn't really know the concept until I got the job. But then I realized, wow, there's a lot of these jobs. So in like the engineering and tech space, there's the same exact lab positions where you just basically sit in a computer lab and monitor the lab. They just want to make sure people aren't defacing the property, stealing computers, stuff like that. And I'm pretty sure most universities that I've ever been to have a computer lab or some

kind of library lab or something like that. But my best word of advice is just get a job somewhat related to your major. So Microsoft Excel is huge in finance. So I was really fortunate to get that. But even if not, just get one of those like lab type jobs or a library office job, and you will definitely have time to do your homework. What not to do is to get a like cafeteria or cafe job at your university because you have no networking opportunities. You get paid terribly and you can't do your homework at all. So that's my biggest word of advice.

I mean, obviously if you can't find any other jobs and you need money, then sure, do that. But there are definitely those jobs where you can do your homework and get paid. and it's awesome. And I think it's just about keeping your eyes open and looking for them, right? And saying yes to opportunities that go down that rabbit hole. I mean, I didn't even look for them until it was too late. I think you start a semester ahead of time and you can get it for the next semester. Exactly.

Yes. And I got it by first semester sophomore year, like I said. So it wasn't like I just hopped in. Obviously, if I hadn't taken the course, I probably shouldn't be a teacher's assistant anyway. But yeah, so, I mean, it did take a little bit. And I had to network a little bit. I had that friend from high school, but I also had to interview for the position. So just leveraging myself having the exposure because I was talking to those finance professionals.

So I had interview practice. I practiced talking in the phone. So that helped a lot. So just kind of setting yourself up for this opportunities. I know, Scott, you like create your own luck. And I like that too. Yeah. Last week's episode, Debbie said, you find what you're looking for.

And if you're not looking for this job, you're not going to find it. Exactly. Yeah. You just got to look. I mean, you really just got to look. And the opportunities will start to present themselves. if you just put yourself out there. All right.

So how are you able to apply to so many different scholarships and set yourself up to get these kind of options going into college? Yeah. So I guess one thing I did was what I like to call templifying everything. So with scholarships, I'd say it's like the 80-20 rule. 80% of the scholarships, you can use the same five or six essays with give or take a few tweaks to apply. So I mean, I probably applied to 100,

maybe a little more than 100 scholarships over my four years of college. And some of them, if you get in early, so I also applying it in high school as well. Yeah, I should mention, take a step back. If your kids in high school or you're in high school listening to this, start applying now, even junior year year in high school, you can start locking in four-year scholarships for college. It's absolutely insane. So I have two favorite scholarship sites. One is Scully, and the other one is S-C-H-O-L-L-Y.com.

That one is $299 per month, but I can guarantee you that you will make your money back, like, not 10-fold, a thousand-fold. or even more. I mean, just earning one $500 scholarship, you're going to pay that back. Is that $2.99 a month or $2.00. No, no, no, sorry, $2.99 per month. Oh, my God, that's even better. Oh, no, I would never ever tell someone to sign up for a potential scholarship site for $299 a month. No, no. I think a lot of people are thinking that that's even worthwhile at $2.99 a month. Okay, no, $2.99 a month. And they're just, they, from my perspective, have the best matchmaking, like your skill set and your background to scholarships that I've ever seen.

So you type in all your criteria, you type in your major, like your ethnicity, your, I don't know, your gender, like everything, every little thing, your heritage, like where you grew up, like every little thing can factor into different scholarships. So you could be, you guys could get the Colorado scholarship, you know, and there's just all these little scholarships from for every different little niche. And there could maybe only be five people applying to the scholarship. So it's really worth just checking out. So that's scully.com. Scholarships.com is also pretty good. That one is free, but it's not as good matchmaking. Again, I think you do get what you pay for, even though it's $2.99 a month. It is a little better matchmaking. So I did find a lot more personalized and specific scholarships to my skill set and my background on Scali. So that was huge. And so even applying to one, just like set a reminder on your phone or apply to one every day or every other day. And if you already have these

five or six template set up with these like general questions like why do you want to pursue X major what's your biggest goal in life tell me about your biggest failure what you learn from it those are just like the generic scholarship questions you hear about all the time and you can like you can just set up these templates and maybe make a few tweaks to them but it should take maybe 20 or 30 minutes to make a tweak to X scholarship and you can probably do one of these every day or every other day and by the end of your scholarship hunting period you've applied to the 50 or 100 scholarships and you're bound to get at least one I mean if you don't get one that's just really, really unfortunate. And you're probably doing something wrong. But the barriers to

entry are not too high on some of these scholarships. I mean, there's honestly 10 or less people that are applying to some of these local community scholarships. And you might not even know they exist unless you, unless you start looking. And the same thing can be said for internships. So do the exact same thing with what's called the cover letter. So I'm sure people are familiar with what a resume is. It's usually a one page piece of paper just detailing your work experience, what your skills are, stuff like that. A cover letter is expressing your interest in X company. So I want to work for Google, say. You're like, okay, you just tell them why you want and work and work for Google, why you could be an asset for their company. And it's basically the

same thing as the scholarship. You write four, five or six cover letters detailed to different companies within your specific subset. So like I had a cover letter for wealth management positions. I had a cover letter for investment banking positions. I had a cover letter for analyst positions. And they were all just slightly different. But you make it a little personalized. Maybe you include a person's name that you reached out to on LinkedIn going back to the networking thing. you read oh i talked to i talked to scott on the phone i met him on lincoln like and they're like oh that he knows scott and then the hr recruiter brings it to scott's desk and scott's like yeah this kid's awesome it's just getting your foot in the door that way and if you have these

templates set up you can kind of mass apply to internships and same thing with scholarships it's just a huge advantage i really think maybe in some specific cases it's quality over quantity if there's one company you want to work for it then don't do a mass cover letter make a really personalized cover letter, talk about like those really fine grain specifics why you want to work for that company. But I really think it's quantity over quality with these types of things, with scholarships, especially internships in the early years, because you don't know what you want to do. You just want to get your foot in the door. I have a comment about this. So I didn't apply for scholarships and internships, but I did apply for a lot of jobs once. I was, I decided I was done with my current job.

I wanted a new one. My tip is reread right before you send it. I was, this was back in the day of fax machines, but read. reread the whole thing before you send it because I sent a note to XYZ company professing my profound desire to work for ABC company. So there was, I'm like, oh, well, I'm not going to get that job. I already had send. You can't like suck it back in. So I just, I didn't even follow up because I knew they weren't going to call me.

So just one last time right before you send it, make sure that the email address that you're sending to Bob at XYZ company is also. the cover letter that says, I want to work at X, Y, Z company. Yes. So I guess just a little tip, just another little actionable tip that people use. So all the parts that I change, I keep in capital letters and red font. So until all of the red font capital letters are gone, I do not send it because that is all the company names. That's all the specifics about the company.

I have like several sentences in capital red letters. Like, do not send this out unless this is specific to X company. And so, yeah, every time I redo one, it's not like I already have Google in there. And then I'm applying to Facebook. and I just have to like look for Google in the document. It's all, I have a template that's all bold, highlighted, red text that makes sure you change this. Nice. Yeah, that's a great tip.

I use this all the time in my work for what I do professionally. And one thing I'll say is that if you have a typo in the meat of this letter, that's the part you're not editing, it also gets sent out to everyone that you send these things to. So make sure that you have a very professional template before you go in and double and triple and quadruple check that. before you start blasting these out. I've had a couple of embarrassing ones. Oh, man. A great tool for that. I don't know if you guys use it or if your listeners use it is grammarly.

And it's just a, it's a Chrome extension. And it checks your grammar and like syntax and everything for you. So if you screw up a word or if you forget a comma, it will tell you and you can fix it. It's pretty awesome. Yes, I was going to bring that up because we use that at bigger pockets. And it's amazing. I like to think that I'm pretty spot. on, but I get fat finger typing and you know, you get the wrong subject verb agreement. It's

really a great extension. It's awesome. And I guess I just want to touch on one last thing with the interviews and not so much scholarships because it's not so much face-to-face. But with like an interview, whether it's full-time or internship, so this is something that I kind of started to think about once the minimum fixed income fund. You have to interview into it, like I said before. So once I got to a senior level, I started interviewing people. It was weird being on that side of the table, especially at such a young age because you only know being on the interview east out of the table. But something that I urge people to think about is think like an employer when you're at an interview. So if you just go in and you're pretty bland and you're like,

oh, I kind of want to work for you guys. And I'm pretty average. Then you're not going to be remembered. They're not going to remember your name. They're not going to leave a memory in that employer's mind. But if you're thinking like an employer, like I need to do something that really stands out. So for example, I can't speak to every major, but I would bring a binded report in, like a 20 page binded laminated report of a company I covered. And right off the bat, like this kids legit. Like nobody else is doing that. So it just, it set me apart right away. And just thinking like an employer, having that mindset, it just, it made you seem a lot more legit. It made you seem a lot more professional than the competition. And you stand out, you just stand

out right away. Awesome. I think it's great tip. That is a wonderful tip. Okay. So we've heard a lot about your successes. Let's hear about your failures. These failed clothing company business. I don't even know how you could fail at that because everybody wears clothes. Oh, wait, wait, you didn't put any effort into it. Are you a millennial and you're just entitled? And I started this company. I made a website. Come to me.

If you build it, they will come, right? Why didn't that work out? So I did start social media. I had like Instagram, Twitter. I had the whole shabang. And I also started a website. It wasn't great website. Didn't put too much effort into it.

But I don't want to spoil my idea in case I do it later on. I won't tell you the name of the company or exactly. what, it's a specialty clothing company. Okay. Fair enough. But I just, I was just way over my head. And I was like, all right, I really don't know what I'm doing here. And like getting manufactured T-shirts from this warehouse in China and getting like specific customizations and stuff.

I was like, I'm in way over my head. Kind of just dropped the whole idea and said, all right, this adventure is not for me. So I guess it was a lack of effort, but also just kind of jumping in over my head. Honestly, maybe if I stuck with it and just didn't give up myself, it could have been successful. Who knows? I can't turn back time like you said, Mindy, but yeah, it did fail. Also, another problem with this is this was an entrepreneurial venture. I assume that needed some capital to get going, right?

You probably needed like a couple thousand, maybe a couple of a couple hundred, maybe to a couple thousand. And that's very scary for a college student to kind of put up that kind of money to start something, right? So I assume that your next venture here was probably something that was much less capital intensive. Is that correct with the tutoring? The tutoring was actually before. I said him in the wrong order.

The tutor was first. I see. That was zero capital. That was like no capital intensity at all. I actually started, yeah, I didn't even start a website. Didn't have social media or anything. Just kind of like wrote a word document of my business plan and started to advertise on Craigslist.

And what do you know? Nobody contacted me. I was just going to start by myself, build it up, and then hire tutors. Didn't work like that at all. And I did some tutoring back in high school. So I was like, oh, I got the expertise. You know, these people are going to hire me. Like, they can seem I had my resume attached to the tutoring thing.

I was like, oh, yeah, this is going to be a gold mine. Nobody, nobody reached out to me. But it was total, total lack of effort. I mean, I definitely could have built a successful tutoring platform if I wanted to, but I think that was more of just sort of kind of giving up. That was freshman year. So I was kind of just testing out college, you know, hanging out, probably drinking a few too many nights.

All right, so let's move on to the one that did work. When did you start the one that did work? And what is that business? Okay, so I started Arsenal Discs June of 2016, and like I told you before, I worked at a disc golf college was that for you. Junior year of college. Yeah, so junior year of college, I already had this disc golf background. Like I said, it worked at the disc golf snack shack at my uncle's disc golf course, which is conveniently right across the street. So I've been playing since I was about seven or eight years old, though super into the sport.

For people who don't know, disc golf is just like ball golf, except you're throwing a plastic disc into what's called a pin. it's like a metal basket with chains. You throw the disc in. There's drivers, mid-ranges, putters. The whole thing, it's basically the same as golf, except instead of hitting a club. And swinging a club, hitting a ball into a hole, you're throwing a disc, a piece of plastic,

into a chain or a basket. So just a quick background, because I know a lot of people are, what's disc golf? So yeah, long story short, into disc golf, really into the community. I had a lot of friends in the disc golf community. I knew everyone that came to play.

And so I was like, I want to start a disc golf business because the market was kind of unsaturated. There wasn't too many competitors. There was maybe eight or 10 major players. And there was almost two, eight or men, eight or ten major players in the manufacturing market. There's probably like two or three million global players. So I was like, this seems like a pretty good market.

I could definitely, even with a 1% market share, I could start making some money. I just start growing a business, having fun with this. So yeah, I reached out to my mechanical engineer friend. This is a friend from high school who was like just super into creating. and because I don't have any of the expertise. I don't know how to create a CAD file. I don't know how to run flow tests on all these crazy programs. But he was into that.

So he was like, all right, I'll work with you. I want to create these disks. So we started looking at like competitors just, what made them successful, what made them not? And we just kind of started at the drawing board. He started creating these CAD files, which is computer automated design or drawing. Don't ask me.

I'm not an engineer. You engineers will however correct me and make fun of me that are listening to this episode. But yeah, he was making the CAD drawings. We do wind tunnel. tests, we do flow tests. These are all like on the computer. And then we'd get them prototyped in China. We'd get them shipped back over to us for a very cheap cost. And then if we like the design, we'd keep it. If not, we'd send it back. And then after we got five disc designs that we liked, we went and bought what are called molds. So this was a capital intensive project. Mold is basically

a big steel block. And in the middle of the steel block is the shape of the disc. So think of like a frisbee except it's a little more compact with a bevel rim. So basically it's a big steel block. The middle is the shape of the disc fills up with hot plastic it cools off opens up the disc pops out that's what a mold is so we bought the molds we bought five molds it was a little over 12 grand we went half and half i had been making a lot of money in college doing that like i said i was making 400 almost every other week doing the tutoring i was also doing alcohol sampling on the weekends that does not sound as good as it actually was it's not me tasting alcohol it's me standing in the liquor store saying hey you want to try this alcohol

Yeah, exactly. So it's not as glorious as it sounds. I was also doing sad jobs. I was like raking, shoveling. I mean, I was just crazy about making money in college. So I had quite a stockpile. I probably had a... Your only expense was this $12 handle of booze, right? Exactly. I mean, honestly, the pretty much my only expense was eating out, which was going to Applebee's once a month. So my expenses were less than a hundred a month. And I was bringing in probably 3,000, maybe a little higher than 3,000 a month. So I mean, my savings rate was pretty huge. And so by the time we started the company, I probably had 15 to 20 grand saved up. So I had the capital to build that mold.

But that's not where the story ends. I mean, there was a lot more work getting the marketing, advertising set up, getting the online store set up, going through all the legality, getting the design patents and all that stuff. It's a big process when you're actually manufacturing a product from scratch. At the end of the day, after we got all the manufacturing done, did all prototyping, we were about 35 grand down in the hole, I guess. this is so this is split between me and my partners who were 17-5 each we did take a small

personal loan from a family unfortunately with interest because we I didn't want to just completely deplete my savings so I had some money left over but like in case my car broke down you never know I was like having a little bit of cash just sitting around so we did take a small family loan that we did pay back with interest unfortunately but yeah so that was quite a capital intensive project but I mean we were really really into it and I still am super into it. But as of this point, we've probably done 25 grand in sales. So we're about 15 grand, still in the red. But I think at this, like probably this year we'll break even. And then after that, we'll just be smooth sailing, fun and profits. Awesome. This is what I wish I would have done

differently in college. I think like I had a, I had a great time. I made some great friends. I got good grades, got a good job afterwards. But there's no reason why I couldn't have found a little bit more time to try my hand at a couple of businesses, like you did in college, where there's a chance to, you know, there's no risk. I mean, yours was a big risk. Let's be clear. Yeah, it was. $35,000 invested in this business between two people that are college students, but, you know, taking a little bit of debt from the family. That's a big, big risk. But, you know, the other things you tried were not that capital intensive and didn't require that much money.

And you can do that in college and fit that in with your schedule, even when you're working a couple of jobs and making $3,000 a month and I assume getting good grades and preparing yourself for the job market. And this is what I think is a real power that is really being squandered by a lot of people that are in college, including myself when I was there. It was something that you could have done without too much impact on the college experience and whatever else you're trying to do to prepare yourself for the workforce. And I totally agree. And people commend me like, oh, wow, you're awesome. You started a company. But I mean, if I could turn back time, I would have done it with a lot less capital. After, I don't know if you guys, you guys definitely know, Alan Daud and

getting from the pop-up business school. After hearing him and talking to him, there's so many ways I could have done this for less money, but I didn't know. I mean, I was 19 at the time. I thought this is going to be the best thing ever. And I mean, I was definitely like financially savvy and frugal, but I thought that this was like an absolutely no-fail venture. I mean, luckily, I did have some failed ventures. I picked up a lot of skills during my failures. I know, I think as Jamilu's who front that coined failing forward, I really like that concept. I learned so much for my failures just like setting up websites. So by the time I started this company, I was like, okay, I kind of know what I'm doing

a little bit. But I think if I couldn't turn back time, I would have maybe looked for like an equity split with like one of the bigger companies and tried to manufacture artists through them. Be like, listen, we have this awesome new concept. We'll like do a 50% profit share. As long as you give us the facility and you let us like use your like molds and we can just make tweaks to it.

That's probably something I would have pursued now. And it would have been like maybe two to $3,000 investment instead of $35,000. But like you said, Mindy, no trending back time. No regrets. I did learn. I mean, the information I've learned from starting that business is just like insane. Like it's so much more than I've learned in college, just jumping into the real world, starting a real business.

You learn so much. And I really urge anyone who has like any inkling of starting anything to just start. And even if you fail miserably, you learn so much along the way. Yes, yes, yes. Alan, you mentioned Alan Donagan's episode. I believe he was on episode 17, and he just dropped so much knowledge on how to start a business super inexpensively. And like you said, you learn so much from doing it. Bigger Pockets is generally a real estate website.

And people keep saying, how do I get started? How do I get started? Just start. You will learn so much more. Even if you lose money on your first deal, you will learn so much more than you could possibly learn from just reading books or listen to. listening to podcasts. I mean, those are very helpful to get you enough knowledge to get started, but then jump in with both feet. See what happens. I mean, don't, don't, obviously don't jump in with both feet and take out, you know, a $50 million loan that you can't ever pay back.

But, you know, there's a lot of ways to start for a lot less money. There really is. It's, it was mind boggling when I listened to. I think I heard him on yours, you guys podcast. I listened to him on the Choose a Five podcast. And just some of the stories that people had of starting in business was like, wow, like I never even thought of that. Like the person to open a restaurant and a cafe that closed at 4 p.m. or something, I was like, that is the most genius idea ever. Brilliant. People don't think outside of the box. I mean, myself included, I could have done it for way cheaper. I mean, luckily it's working out and like it is successful, but it could have failed miserably and we just have to suck it up and pay back and just like eat our loss. But I mean,

there's just so many ways to do it better. All right. So let's move on to last little bit here. What did you end up doing? So you graduated early from college and three and a half semesters, right? did you have a job lined up? And kind of what's your plan kind of coming out of this trip to Australia that we started with? Yeah, sure. So I actually was very, I'll hop back a little bit to sophomore year. This is kind of where I'll change. Like I said, I got the five mindset. I got the five bug. I really wanted to do investment baking because, I mean, you can really make some insane money. You make like, you can make 125 grand easy out of call out of a four year degree. That's just like unheard of money. And I was like, that is the best thing ever. But I didn't know that you worked 90 to 100 hours

a week and you didn't have Saturdays, staying out with your friends or girlfriend or your family, you literally work 90 or 100 hours a week. And I was like, that is not the life for me, especially after reading about passive income and all these other routes. So I actually chose a less stressful job. I found a finance job that actually compensates for overtime, which is pretty rare in the finance space. It's pretty awesome. Yeah, so definitely a better work-life balance. They actually respect to you and don't treat you like a pawn. They treat you like a person, which is also pretty abnormal in the finance space. I know, Scott, you work for the worst company in America, I've heard you say. So you know how it is to just be treated like absolute

dirt and they don't care about you. You know, you're just another pawn. So yeah, so I did, I worked a private equity gig after my sophomore year and that was just really high intensity. I kind of realized that I did not want to do that. And then going to into junior year, that's kind of where I found, I found five sophomore year. Junior year, I got this better work life balance internship actually doing, it's doing commercial real estate, so kind of bigger pockets desk. But at the end of the internship, they gave me the full-time offer for next year. So I had, going into senior year of college at the end of August, I had a full-time offer. So I knew I was set even before I planned, like leaving for Australia, which is huge. Like, I don't have to look

for a job. I'm just kind of hanging out. Awesome. What's your kind of plan coming back now? You're going to start this job, I assume, in the next couple of months and begin your journey to FI. Is that correct? So, yeah, I start two weeks, two and a half weeks after I get back. So I get back from Australia on June 26th, and then I start work in July 9th. So, disclaimer, I'm probably only going to work there for like a year. It's just so hard to, just being exposed to this community and listen to the absolutely incredible stories of people, branching out and just doing amazing things. I cannot sit at a disc from 9 to 5.

I'm really just going to go out there. I already have the disc golf business going. I really think that's going to start picking up soon, especially we just moved to a new manufacturing facility. So things are going awesome. I really want to do stuff that I enjoy. And a thing that I, I guess, a beef I have with the financial independence community is that, like, work hard for 10 to 15 years. As hard as you can, just making as much money as you possibly can.

And if you're not enjoying life here in those 15 years, I don't see the point. I'm really about like do what I want when I want to do it type of mindset. And so that's kind of what I'm about. I really think I might only last like a year just to say I did it and just to say I didn't wimp out and then kind of go off my own doing entrepreneurial stuff. So that's my game plan. Long story short. Awesome. Yeah. I think I will warn you, I had a kind of a similar mindset, but then I discovered a job I really loved at a company. Exactly, which is totally different. That may be something that you'll find is, you know, if you kind of approach life with this mindset where you're going through it and, hey,

you know, I'm going to be able to do what I want. I'm going to build work towards FI. Well, options begin expanding very rapidly for you very quickly within that first year. And you're going to only tolerate a position that you love pretty pretty soon at thereafter. I would suspect. So I think you're going to have a lot of good options for coming up for you, including entrepreneurship, maybe a job you love or whatever going forward. I totally agree. I mean, I think just from hearing what you guys say, Bigger Pocket seems like an awesome place to work. And you guys have a blast and it's like fun in the office. But I mean, my office is pretty, it's pretty cool. And my boss is a really

awesome guy. It's just like, I don't love it. You know, I love doing the disc golf company. I love writing and teaching people about personal financial finance. Like I like helping my family and friends set up their Vanguard accounts. Like that's, it's cool to me. Like, I feel like I'm benefiting society. When I at my job, I really don't feel like I'm doing that very much. So, I don't know, that's just an important thing for me. So I kind of think that's why I'm going to branch out because I really want, I really like having that sense of fulfillment, feeling like I'm making an impact on the world. But if you love your job, I mean, by all means, just do it, do it as long as you can. I'm not, I just don't like the people who work 10 to 15 years in a job,

they loathe just to hit that by number. And then they expect themselves to magically be happy. Yeah, no, you are not going to magic. be happy if you're sitting there at a job that you absolutely hate. And, you know, even if you do, you slug it out through this horrible job, you get to FI, your life doesn't automatically change. Like, whatever you were doing before retirement is what you're going to be doing after retirement. So if you slug it out at work, you go home and you watch TV or you read a book or you just go to bed, that's what you're going to do even more of after you hit FI. So you need to have a plan for financial independence, not just be working towards it and

then stop. Exactly. I'm in total agreeance. You really need the two. Like you need to retire to something or else you're going to be miserable once you hit five. Yes. Unless you really like watching TV. There's not that many good shows. There's not that many good shows. All right. Now it's time for the famous four. These are the same four questions that we ask every guest. actually five because we don't know how to count. The first question is, what is your favorite finance book? So I'm going to have to go with the four-hour work week just because that kind of jump started by FI mindset and just the idea that you could make passive income that you

didn't have to trade your time for your money. That was just a breakthrough moment in my FI journey. You don't have to trade your time for money. You can set up these passive vehicles. That's a really powerful statement. Yeah, that was definitely one of the most powerful ones for me as well. So if you haven't checked that out, go check it out. It's a staple, I think, of this mindset.

It goes along right up there with Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and all these other books that talk about how to accumulate wealth and separate your time for your money. Definitely. All right. So what was your biggest money mistake that you made? So I kind of already covered this, but it's definitely the car. If I could go back in time, I would have literally bought a $1,500 beater that barely made it to school every day and just invested the rest. I would have had like $30,000 by now. I think it's great.

I think we commonly hear this. It's the opportunity cost that really kills people. It is. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think it might have been really that's not taking a more entrepreneur shot a little bit sooner, maybe the way that Cody did with his disc golf company. Like that's really,

that's really the big advantage that you, I think that is one of the big advantages that you have kind of going into the world is you have an expectation of solid sales every year from the side hustle you have, right? I think another huge thing, just my age, obviously it's not a fact. that everyone can use their advantage, but I have the freedom to fail. So at this point, I'm not used to eating fancy food. I'm not used to drinking expensive alcohol. I'm used to living like a college kid.

Like I shared a six-bedroom house with eight guys last semester, paying like paying 350 a month for rent. So I mean, I'm not living this lavish lifestyle. And it's not hard for me to kind of just maintain that lifestyle. And honestly, if all else fails, if I'm on the road and don't have a job and I'm living in a cardboard box, my mom would probably take me back in. So at this age, I just have the freedom to fail, which is huge. And if you can take advantage of that early, and like you said, just jump into entrepreneurship, just try your hand at whatever. You can get a huge head start in competition. Yeah, that's great. I don't think it'll come to a cardboard box for you. Hopefully not. I bet your mom would take you back. I hope so. Okay, so what is your best

piece of advice for people who are just starting out? Oh, man. I wish I could, yeah, I wish I could rewind my sentences from the last answer. But I think it's, I think it's honestly, so for anybody of any age. I mean, even if you're 60 years old and you have a few more years, you have 10 more years to retire, just start a side hustle or start a side business or anything. There's so many ways to make extra money nowadays with the internet and just online. And you can learn so much. You can learn almost anything on YouTube and Google. Like, if you don't know how to build a website, you can learn in 24 hours just by YouTube and Googling. You can build yourself a decent website. So yeah, just jumping in and making the leap to

not from a financial standpoint, don't jump in with your 401K and make the leap. Jump in emotionally and just don't be afraid to fail because you're going to learn mounds more from your failures than you are from your successes. From your successes, you're like, oh, this works. But from your failures, you'll learn what doesn't work. And then you'll learn how to change that, how to make it better. And you'll just become a better person over and over again as you fail. The failures can be tiny.

You can make a little change today. You can make a or just take a step toward an entrepreneurial venture today. And even if it doesn't work out, you're going to learn something along the way. That's my biggest advice. Just do it. I think that's great advice. I mean, everyone can try something. And if you're not sure where to start, go back and listen to the Alan Donagin podcast.

I think that was episode number. Ellen was episode 17. So you can find that at biggerpockets.com slash money show 17. And in two weeks, we have Nick Loper from Side Hustle Nation will be our guest. And we're going to cover the concept of side hustles, who it's good for. everybody, spoiler alerts. Yeah, and note that Cody's side hustle here is disc golf, something that he has been a part of since he was 10 years old, right, in some capacity

another, maybe earlier playing from when he first started playing. And that's, there's some sort of some synergy there that probably gave you a little bit of an opportunity or, you know, incentive or desire to be successful in this particular one. So I think that's a good, some to point out, that you use a synergy that was in your, unique to your situation. Exactly. And I think another point is that like my synergies are different from my business partner James Synergies, the mechanical engineer. So I'm good at marketing and finance, but I mean, I'm terrible engineering, but like synergizing together, we kind of are the perfect crew for a disc golf company because I can handle the finances. He doesn't know, he would have no clue

what profit margins are. I mean, sorry, sorry, Jim, sorry if you're listening, but I mean, he wouldn't know exactly what to expect for profit margins selling at wholesale prices. And like, I kind of did have that background and I knew how to model and knew how to tell if we're going to be profitable. And just combining those and synthesizing our talents made us successful. You don't have to be the best at everything. And things that you aren't good at, just find somebody who is and connect with them. Exactly. Love it.

All right. So the toughest question of the famous four here. And sounds like you had some plenty of opportunities to tell these. But what is your favorite joke to tell at all those parties you've been at? All right, Scott. So I think you'll appreciate this one. So why can't you run through a campground? I don't know.

What way? You can only ran because it's past tense. Oh, that joke was intense. The joke was awful. Sorry, Mindy. I know you don't like those, but I had to give it for Scott. That's okay. This isn't just the Mindy show.

It's also the Scott show. Okay. Cody, where can people find more about you? So on my blog, Flatify, I pretty much blog about personal finance, lifestyle, and life optimization. It's kind of a learn as you go type of thing. So I'm young. I can fail, like I said before. So I kind of just try my hand at different ventures, different investment strategies, different side hustles, and kind of just document my journey, share the things I've learned.

So people want to check me out. I will probably, I'll reach back out to you within 24 hours. I'm pretty good at responding. If you just hit up the contact forum on flydify.com, so fly to fI. A quick plug is just that I do have the ultimate college guide post on my site, Fly to FI. And so that will cover pretty much anything that I missed or that people would like to hear about. I mean, we can only cover so much in a conversation on this podcast. But it's a pretty extensive document just showing pretty much every tip and trick I use,

all the scholarship websites, all the internship tricks, all the LinkedIn tricks, like a template, email, just a bunch of helpful stuff. So if people want to check that out or show their kid or whatever, I think that would be an awesome resource. Yep. And I'll put that in the, I'll put that in the show notes. The show notes for this show can be found at www. www.biggerpockets.com slash money show 26. That's Money Show 26. Awesome. Awesome.

Well, Cody, thank you so much for getting up at the Cracken on to come talk to us. Yeah, no problem. It's been a blast. All the way from halfway across the world. Yes, yes. Yeah, we really appreciate your time. Thank you so much. In the States in a couple of weeks. Yeah, I'll see you guys at FinCon. That'll be fun.

Oh, you'll be a FinCon too. Oh, fantastic. Then we'll see you in September. Yeah, see you in September. Okay, awesome. Have a good day. You too. See you later.

Thanks for coming. Wow, Scott, Mike dropped. I love Cody. He is so forward thinking and just an absolutely perfect example of how to plan your future and how small tweaks now or even some bigger tweaks can yield huge results down the road. Yeah, I think it's a fantastic story. I mean, just a lot of good example in there. Cody's obviously not missing out on what you traditionally think of as a great college experience,

great high school experience. I mean, excellence in a lot of different areas. It sounds like a lot of fun. He's going on a trip of lifetime for six and a half months, seven months or so, almost, right? And then he's going to start a great job. And he's got a bunch of different options here that he can pursue a great mindset of, hey, I'm going to keep my expenses low and then see what happens. And I just think it's going to be so exciting to watch his career and the things that

he goes on and does outside of college over the next couple of years. I'm very excited to see that and follow his journey. Yeah, it's amazing what small changes now and a huge mindset shift can just change your life without changing your life. I mean, he's not missing out on anything like you said. It doesn't change his life to drive a crappy car or live with a bunch of roommates or, you know, do all these things. But it changes his life down the road when he's able to retire when he's.

24 or whatever ridiculous time frame he has for himself. And he's going to do it too. He is just and I'm going to do it. And then that's like written in stone. This is how it happens. And it just it's like it just falls into place. But it doesn't because he puts the hard work into it. Yeah. I mean, it's 10 years of smart decisions before this that have gotten him to this point. And that's where the options are kind of, you can, that's why the options are materializing for him now. Yeah. Wow. Such a great show. So I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. Scott, do you have anything else to add before we get out of here? This show ran really long because Cody just kept knocking it out.

Nope. Again, I think it's just a great show for you to listen to. And then to think about who this could apply for, that's in, again, high school, middle school, college. That's kind of how do they think about how to start themselves up for a life of options. Yep. And if you have little kids, think of how you can help them start learning about money, start learning about hard work. Because throughout Cody's whole story, it was just hard work got me here. hard work got me here. Hard work got me here where I could make connections, which got me here.

And just over and over repeat, hard work is, and when he didn't do the hard work, he didn't have success. Smart hard work. Smart hard work will get you every time. Okay. From episode 26 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, this is Mindy Jensen over and out.