BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 45: The Truth About Entrepreneurship with Matt Giovanisci

Episode Date: November 5, 2018

Matt Giovanisci is a serial entrepreneur. He decided early on that “working for the man” was not in his cards, and set out to never have to do that again, creating side hustles that generated income so he could be his own boss and do everything on... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bicker Pockets Money Podcasts Show Number 45, where we interview Matt from MoneyLab.com. I was okay with bootstrapping. And I used to tell my mom used to get on me because I would say, she's like, well, how are you going to make money? Like what happens when unemployment runs out? When are you going to get a job? I'm like, I'm not getting a job. This is my job. My job is going to be this. I'm going to make money by myself. I'm going to be a freelancer at the the very worst. I'm going to be on my own website and make a ton of money passively at the very best. And I said, I'd rather honestly live in a cardboard box than work for anyone else other than myself. 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 it going everybody? I'm Scott Trench. I'm here with my co-host, Ms. Mindy Jensen. How you doing today, Mindy? I'm doing fantastic today. Scott, how are you today? I am doing great. This was a very fun interview, and I'm really excited to get to it. I think that it really highlights some of the challenges that come with entrepreneurship. We paint it as this kind of big end goal to become self-employed, work for yourself, you know, not have to work for the man kind of deal. And I think that Matt has been extremely successful in doing that, but not without a large amount of challenges and hurdles. to overcome along the way. So I think this is a really good perspective for a lot of people who kind of paint that as the grass is green on the other side.

Yes. And you know, you said something that I don't think people really realize. You said when you work for yourself, there's this different mentality than when you work for somebody else. When you work for yourself, if you're going to make your job successful, if you're going to make your side hustle, your entrepreneurial pursuits successful, it's still work. You just don't have somebody else telling you what to do. that's great, that's really liberating, that's freeing, but that's also all the stress on you,

all the pressure on you. Because if you are the one that messes up, you are the one who has to pay for it, as opposed to when you work for a company and you mess up, you're like, oops. Or as you say, whoopsies. But that said, if you want to become an entrepreneur and you want to go through this, Matt's a great resource to learn from. And this interview will be extremely helpful perspective in general because it does highlight a very different outlook on how to handle.

money and approach finances. That's not necessarily wrong. It's just different. Yes. And Matt definitely has a different way of approaching his finances. And, you know, I really like this episode because he's taking off the rose-colored entrepreneur glasses and telling you the real way it is. This is what I did. This is how long it took me. This is my experience with running my own company. And it's not always glossy and beautiful. Absolutely. Well, should we bring him in? 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 get the money. in one dashboard on your phone or your laptop. Feel aware and in control of your finances this tax season

and get 50% off your Monarch subscription with the code Pockets. What I personally like is that Monarch keeps you focused on achieving, not just tracking. You can see your budgets, debt payoff, savings goals, and net worth all in one place. So every decision actually moves the needle. Achieve your financial goals for good with Monarch, the all-in-one tool that makes money management simple. Use the code Pockets at Monarch.com for half off your first year. That's 50% off at Monarch.com code Pockets.

I love math, said no one ever. Nobody starts a business thinking, you know what would make this more fun? Calculating quarterly estimated taxes. But somehow, every small business owner ends up doing it. Your dreams of creating, selling, and growing get replaced by late nights chasing receipts, juggling invoices, and wondering if that bad sushi lunch with Scott counts as a right-off. Change all that with Found. Found is a business banking platform built to take the pain out of managing money.

It automatically tracks expenses, organizes invoices, and even preps you for tax season, without you doing the heavy lifting. You can set aside money for business goals, control. spending with virtual cards and find tax write-offs you didn't even know existed. It saves time, money, and probably a few years of life expectancy. Found has over 30,000 five-star reviews from owners who say, Sound makes everything easier, expenses, income, profits, taxes, invoices even. So reclaim your time and your sanity. Open a found account for free at found.com. That's f-o-u-und-d.com. Found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Bank. Banking services are provided by

lead bank, member FDIC. Don't put this one off. Join thousands of small business owners who have streamlined their finances with Found. Audible has been a core part of my routine for more than a decade. I started listening years ago to make better use of drive time and workouts, and it stuck. At this point, I've logged over 229 audiobook completions on Audible alone, and I still regularly re-listen to the highest impact titles. Lately, I've been listening to Bigger Leen or Stronger for Fitness, the anxious generation for parenting perspective, and several Arthur Brooks' audiobooks that have been excellent for mental well-being. What makes Audible so powerful is its breadth. Beyond audiobooks, you all

also get Audible originals, podcasts, and a massive back catalog across business, health, parenting, and more, all accessible in one app. If you're looking to turn everyday moments into real progress, Audible has been indispensable for me over over 10 years. Kickstart your well-being journey with your first audiobook free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash BP Money. Matt, whose last name I can never pronounce properly, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. How's it going today? Good, thanks for having me. Can you please tell everybody your last name?

I always pronounce it wrong and it's not you, it's me. It's Jivenici. Jivinezzi. Or if you're really Italian, it's Joveishi. Yeah, I'm not either. So Matt, tell us about you. I was born in a small town in South Jersey, so not like Jersey Shore Jersey, but like Philadelphia, Jersey. So I had my first job when I was 13 years old.

I worked in a pool store, a local pool store in my town. And I did that from 13 to 17. And then I moved to another pool company. And I was the youngest employee ever at that pool company at this another bigger pool company. And I had prior experience in the pool industry. And they were like, how is that even possible? I was like, yes, I know how to test water. I know how to know what chemicals are.

So I got hired there and worked there for a super long time. Was assistant manager at one point. and then got poached by another pool company and was the manager at this other pool company for a year and then got poached back by the same company and worked there. And then I got pulled away and was a website designer for another company for six months and then got poached back to the same pool company. But this time I ended up in the marketing department in the corporate headquarters. And that was when I was 25. So like I basically have been in the pool industry from 13 to 25, stocking shelves, testing people's pool water, and doing all those things.

So you have worked in the pool industry since you were 13. I find it interesting that you said that at age 17, you were the youngest employee at the new place, but you didn't mention that at age 13, you were the youngest person there. Did they have a 12-year-old there? Yeah, I don't think it was. Yeah, I'm serious. I'm serious. But I was told multiple times I was the youngest at the newer company, yeah.

Okay. It just wasn't a family-owned business. The first one was a family-owned business. The second one was not. Thank you. I was going to clarify that for the listeners who don't know already your story. Okay. So now you're in the marketing department. I'm assuming that this is some foreshadowing to your future life. Yes. So I'm in the marketing department. You know, I know how to do website design. I know how to do video. I know how to do graphic design. I know how to do all these things. And so I parlayed that into my own business, which is called swimuniversity.com. It's still exists. today. It is my bread and butter nowadays. And it's a website where I teach people how to take care of their pools and hot tubs because I know that world very well. So I took my knowledge of pool care and my knowledge of building websites and I passion mashed them together. And here we are

with like what I do. So yeah, that's sort of like how I got into the make money online space. But prior to that, I was not very good at that. I got a question here. So from from 17 to 25, you're working full time in the pool industry. What are you doing with your money during this period of time? Spending it uncontrollably. When I turned 18, I got a credit card in the mail. And it was a credit limit of $500. I remember that. And I remember I showed my parents and they're like, cool, throw it out. And I was like, why? They're like, because you shouldn't have a credit card. Of course, I disobeyed them hard. And I opened it up. I immediately spent it all at Target. I bought like a water fountain for my desk,

some candy, I'm sure, some beef jerky, whatever. I spent $500 in a single day at Target on this credit card and then didn't even, didn't pay it for,

I don't know, a year because no one taught me that I needed to do that. So I went into credit card debt almost instantly. That was the first moment you could possibly have done it. It was right at 18,

get your credit card. Yeah. As soon as you could possibly screw up your, your finances you did. I think you're the youngest financial screw up that we've had so far. So congratulations. The youngest in that too. I do want to point out that spending $500 a target in one sitting is not some sort of

unique thing. If you knew what I spent it on, you'd be like, that's impressive. Well, the essentials. A drinking fountain for your desk, candy, beef jerky. Like, what else do you need, soda? And then you're golden. Yeah, pretty much it. Okay.

So you're a financial deadbeat. When you say you didn't pay your credit card bill for a year, did you mean that you paid the minimum? Nope. Or you made no payments at all. And now your credit score is like zero or like four. No payments at all until my friend said to me, you know you have to pay that every month.

I'm like, no, no, no, no. It's credit. It just sits there and I'll pay it when I have $500. I'll pay it. He goes, that's not how credit cards work. What do you mean? He's like, well, every month you're accruing interest. It's like going, like you're owing more and more each month.

I'm like, not to mention I'm killing my credit score. Again, didn't know. I had no idea because, I mean, not to blame my parents for everything, but they were, they were just, they just told me you don't get a credit card. And so didn't learn in school. Didn't learn it from my parents. Learned it from my friend who was my contemporary, same age as me. Well, in your parents' benefit, they did tell you not to and you just disobeyed them.

Okay. So what happened after your friend tells you, hey, you do have to pay this and you're like, oh, really? I didn't know that. What did you do next? I remember, I think it went up to like $1,500 I owed on it. Oh my God. Yeah, because I mean $500 wasn't, but I didn't have $1,500 just laying around.

So what I actually did was I did it again. I opened another credit card because I was out of the $500. That one had $1,000 and a 26% interest rate, I think, if I remember correctly, and rack that up and then didn't pay that off either. And so, yeah, I had two credit cards. Would you spend $1,000 on? That I don't remember. probably more fountains for my desk and bubble gum and beef jerky and other dumb things for my

for my life. I don't know. Cap guns maybe. I don't know. Scott, why is this guy on the show? Well, I will say that I was basically had no education in money or finances whatsoever. I also was working full time. I was not in college. I did go to college twice for two weeks. So that means that in 2001, I went to college for two weeks and dropped out. And then I tried to go again the following semester for two more weeks and then also dropped out. Community college, nothing crazy. So, but I was working. I was making money. And so I didn't really didn't think I needed a college. I was good in school, but I just was not good in college because I was a ham. And no one liked, none of the teachers really liked that. Yeah, they don't like a class class. How much were you making

at this pool job in that period? I was probably $20 an hour. hour maybe at the time. I mean, we're talking like close to 15 years ago. So that was pretty good for, you know, a 17 year old. That's really good. I was thinking 10 an hour when I was 17 and thinking that I was just the cat's meow. Yeah. And I just kept going up. I remember when I was finally 25 and working in corporate, I was doing 40 to 60 somewhere in that 1,000 a year. And so when I turned 25, I bought a house. I bought a condo, a brand new condo. And I've talked about this on bigger pockets before, actually. I am a accidental landlord because I bought a condo with no money down. My credit score was, I think, 575 maybe. And this was October 3rd, 2008.

So Black Monday, as it's now referred, the day the stock market crashed, I was closing the deal on a brand new condo. And how much was it? $180,000. Yeah. Peak market value for the for this condo. Where was it again? It was in South Jersey. South Jersey, okay. Yeah, 20 minutes outside of Philadelphia. So still own it because I can't sell it because I still owe money on it.

And now it's under litigation. So now I really can't sell it. So the builders are being sued by our HOA. So it's just a nightmare. But so there is this moment, I think 25, 26 years old. I have this side business. It's making some money. This Swimuniversity.com side business.

I got fired from my pool job. because my boss found out that I started this pool website on the side and thought it was a conflict of interest and let me go. So wait, the pool place that you were working at, what did they do? They sold in-ground pools, above-ground pools, and they owned four retail stores. So you're teaching people how to take care of the products that your company sells? I don't see that as a conflict of interest. Yes, I don't either. But he did.

Well, I guess his opinion is the only one that counts. Yeah. So that was fine because I had another job lined up for a couple of years. And for those couple of years, I was doing marketing, but it was for a restoration company, so a property restoration. And I ended up getting laid off from that job. And I had a year of unemployment, basically. And I decided to take that year and focus on building my side business.

to full time. But not only that, I also decided to learn how to be better with money because I was kind of sick and tired of living paycheck to paycheck. I was sick and tired of being a deadbeat or not even like in the credit card world. I think they call people who pay their credit cards on time dead beats. But I was not that person. So I just was tired. And I was in debt. Credit card debt was probably about $10,000 in credit card debt. And I'm like, I can't start a business. I owned a BMW. I was like, because I was making like 60 grand.

I was first of my friends to own a house, first to have a paying job because everyone was in college at the time. So I just decided that if I'm going to start my own business and I have to bootstrap it, that I need to really get better with my personal finances. And no one could help me. No one in my life really was good with money. really, that I could be my, like, maybe financial mentor. So I started reading books, and that's how I learned everything,

just through just like reading books and getting better with basically how I handled my money because I was, again, really terrible at it. So what year was this? You're just gotten fired. You bought the house. What's the time frame for you leaving this job and kind of just saying, I'm going to turn around here? Yeah, I think I was 27 because I bought my house when I was 25. I was about two years in and 27, 28 years old.

When I finally was like, okay, like, I was making good money. I was living paycheck to paycheck. I was making good money, but my credit score was still pretty low. And, you know, I had no savings. I had nothing in retirement accounts or any of that stuff. And I just basically ended up figuring out that the books that I read specifically were, first book I read was the simple dollar. His name's Trent Ham, I believe, who wrote that book? And then I read, I Will Teach You to Be Rich. And those were the two books. And I remember I

Will Teach You to Be Rich was the one that taught the automation stuff. And that's kind of, I was in the internet world. So the automation of your finances like really helped me figure it out. And then I started doing the debt avalanche method for getting rid of credit card. debt. So I had a whiteboard of all of my credit cards, and I started with my highest interest credit card first and worked to pay that off and then worked to pay the second one off. And I went in order of what is a credit card interest, high interest, low interest, instead of the other way around. So I was able to do that relatively quickly because I was working part time as a freelance website designer. I had an unemployment coming in. And I had a little bit of income coming in from my

swim university business. And I decided, though, that my nut was probably like $4,500 a month. So like with my condo and my BMW and all these expenses, I just felt really bad and really stupid having all of those things while I was on unemployment. So I got rid of them. I ended up renting out my condo and moved in with my younger brother into he had a house and I moved in with him. And I sold my BMW for a cheap Honda Civic Coop and basically lowered my expenses from $4,500 a month to about $1,300 a month. And I did that for two years while I focused nonstop on building everything else. Okay, I'm going to stop you right there and just say by taking your property and renting it out, getting rid of your expensive BMW to go with a cheaper car, you took your expenses from 45

$500 to $1,300. I read in the bigger pockets forums and I hear from people all the time, oh, I don't know what to do. My housing is so expensive. My car is $600 a month or, you know, all these things. I'm like, sell the car. Oh, I just got it. Sell it.

It's $600 a month every month if you have it. I had the BMW for one year. Sometimes you make bad decisions. And I took a bath on it too, like for sure. Yeah. And I moved in with my brother. Now, so I moved in with my younger brother. he was charging me $500 a month for the room in his house,

which is pretty much all I paid. I didn't pay for utilities or anything. But my alternative was moving back in with my parents. And I also had no problem doing that because to me, it was more important that I start my business and make money on my own terms than I cared where I lived at the time. So I was okay with bootstrapping. And I used to tell my mom used to get on me because I would say,

she's like, well, how are you going to make money? Like what happens when unemployment runs out? When are you going to get a job? I'm like, I'm not getting a job. This is my job. My job is going to be this. I'm going to make money by myself. I'm going to be a freelancer at the very worst.

I'm going to be on my own website and make a ton of money passively at the very best. And I said I'd rather honestly live in a cardboard box than work for anyone else other than myself. And that was just my driving force of doing this. Now, granted, I have no kids. I had no significant other. I had a dog. I had a dog that my parents now have because they have a yard and I didn't have anywhere to put him and they wanted him. And so he lives there now. But yeah, I did it. And I gave myself one year. And I did to supplement the unemployment that I was getting. I was also doing

website design work. So I was getting like freelance clients. I took that money and I paid off my debt with it. A low monthly expenses. And so I used the rest of it to just get rid of my credit card debt as fast as humanly possible. and that was everything. And the debt that you're talking about is the $10,000 in credit card debt? Was there anything else? No, I had no student loans because I didn't go to college. Yeah, that was pretty much it.

So as far as debt goes, I would call myself lucky because I know a lot of other people who are in much greater credit card debt and who have student loans, which I can't imagine at all. I'm so thankful I didn't go to college, to be honest, because where I am now, I would not I would not be here if I went to college for sure. All right. So, I mean, this is awesome. Like, this is a great story of just like not knowing about money, having that turning

point, reading, educating, and then making drastic changes to the obviously big levers in your spending, accumulating a lot of, or at least paying off a lot of debt. Let's go to the, I'm assuming this is the success part here, right? But we're just getting to the meteoric rise of your legendary career. You're assuming their success. Yeah, you assume it. Yeah. Yeah. Not to spoil any surprises.

Yeah, spoiler alert. Matt's life doesn't continue to suck forever. No, it doesn't. But I will say that it's not a meteoric rise. I believe meteoric, like nothing happened fast. It was incredibly slow. And I've never had that hockey stick moment of like, oh, all of a sudden, like, Neil deGrasse Tyson linked to Swim University and I started getting all this traffic. And now I'm making all the money. No, absolutely not. I mean, there's so many ups and downs with, I'm such a scatterbrain type of like dreamer when it comes to this business stuff. So that the first year I was like gung ho on Swim University. I'm like working my ass off on it. And I ended up starting, I remember I started a website built a social network for dogs for like a couple months. So I was like, oh, you know, like people are putting their dogs on Facebook and like talking like them. So like what if I built an entire network? of that. And then so I did. And then I was like, wait a minute, I don't like dogs this much. Why am I getting into this business? And so I shut that down. But that was, you know, that was a detour

from what I was supposed to be working on. And then maybe like the first full year of, you know, unemployment eventually ran out. And I think Swimming Diversity was making about $20,000 a year, that first year. The rest of my income came from, you know, the freelance web stuff. And then I started a podcast with my buddy Andrew called Listen Money Matters that took eight months for it to see any success. But that's where all my time was. And I was helping build the site. And meanwhile, Zoom University just kind of sat there. And I was kind of hoping, oh, I'd have both swim you and I'd have listen Money Matters. And that would be my thing. And then we started doing a daily podcast. And it really blew up. I mean, it really had that hockey stick moment where like we were getting a lot of downloads.

and then we could get sponsors. And then like, I just got super burned out by the end of the year and realized we didn't hadn't made any money the entire year. And so I quit that whole project and looked at Swim University and said, okay, like now I'm back at Swimu. You need to make money. And I'm talking to a computer screen at this point. You have to make money.

And so I spent the next year after that trying to take Swim U to $40,000 a year. And I did that, which is still not a lot of money, but I was still living with my brother at the time. And then after that, it just started to slowly go up. So let's walk through. How were you making money at SwimU? And what did you do to increase it, to double that on your online business? So at the time, it had three revenue streams. One was affiliate links. So I had affiliate links to this company.

So anytime I mentioned a chemical that I recommended or a robotic pool cleaner that I recommended, I would link to the company and they would buy it and I would get a small. commission affiliate marketing. The other way I did it was through sponsorships. So I had a decent size email list, maybe about like 10,000 people. And I had some traffic to the website that was pretty good. And I was the only unbiased third party like website that would, not third party, but unbiased website in the pool industry. So I was able to take sponsors because I had no affiliation to anyone. And so I did some sponsorship work, meaning like banner ads on the site, banner ads and the emails and stuff. And then the third way was I actually wrote,

a book at the time called the hot tub handbook. So it was an e-book that I charged, I think, $19 for. And then I ended up writing another book. So now I currently have two books on the site. Both are $29. And so that's the one revenue stream, sponsorships, and affiliate marketing. And then to ramp those up, I did a few things. One is I just kept writing content on the website to improve its traffic. So the more traffic, the more people were clicking my affiliate links and buying my products, and the more I could charge for sponsorships. But then I also built my own plugin to keep track of and display affiliate links on my own website. And I am not a programmer. I'm not a very good programmer, but I hacked something together using the Amazon API that took me like a month

and a half to figure out. But it, you know, it's my full-time job. So I had a full month. And it was my income. So I put everything I had into building this thing. And it certainly helped because it allowed me to display the products within the content and their pricing and their pictures and a nice big button. So that really helped drive up the amount of affiliate revenue that I was earning from that site. Oh, wait. So you'll mention a pool chemical. Yeah. And your self-built plugin goes and grabs it from Amazon. Hey, this is what it looks like. This is what it is. Click right here to order. Yep. Oh.

Did you sell that later on? Yes. Okay. Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. So yeah, that's basically the, that was the base of it. And I just grew it by, at that point, it was just all about traffic. So it was getting as much traffic to the website as possible through writing more content.

So I was doing a lot of writing, filming videos for YouTube. I was doing that a lot and posting Pinterest images and all the social media thingies. So it was really just that for a long time. So how long were you working on SwimU? Like how many hours a week? Was this your 40 hour a week job? Your 10 hour a week job? Certain years.

Certain years because I tend to flip back and forth between projects because I get very bored. But the consistency of it was I had started Swim U in 2004. I built it. It took me two years to do anything with it. I lost a domain name. I'd buy it back. And then it started officially in 2006. And I kind of worked on it at night while I still had a full-time job.

And it was really hard because I don't like writing. I'm not a good writer. So I was writing like these 300 word articles that were pretty awful. And I was, but I was doing like infographics. So a lot of that helped the site early on. And I was doing it all on the side. So again, like I would be working a full time job at a pool store or even in the corporate world doing the website for the pool company.

And then I'd come home and do more pool stuff. So it was just like, it's all I was doing for a while. And so you get burned out on that. And then that's when you start building. building social networks for dogs and you start, you know, a podcast about personal finance, you do all these other things. But it's always been there. And every time I kind of divert and do this other project, the Swimu kind of always sits there. It always slowly builds traffic because it's like one of the only games in town to learn that information. So I would say like

when I'm really focused on it, it's absolutely more than 40 hours a week now because it would be what I mean for an entire year, you know, I filmed a rat video and how to take care of a pool. I did, I did infographics, like lots of infographics that would take me weeks to make. I would write and writing was such a nightmare for me. So they would take me very long and like I coded the whole site from scratch and did everything. I mean, I did every single piece of it that I could. So that was, yeah, it was definitely more than 40 hours a week. And obviously like you have to promote it. And, you know, I was still doing website design on the side. So there's just a lot of work to do all of that. And, you know, I still have my divergence. I see this shiny

object and I'll go do that for a while. And then the Swimu kind of always remains. It's always there and always like slowly grows over time. So this is like the, this is kind of the classic entrepreneurial hustle, right? You're working 80 hours a week between your part time gig and your business here. So that you can avoid working 40. Right. Right. When do you see the lifestyle results, I guess, or the income that you're looking for. It sounds like you really dive full-time into this in 2010 at 27. Yeah. When do you start seeing the results begin piling up to where you can start

supporting a lifestyle that's not living with your brother or parents? Yeah. 2015. So it takes you five years of this. Yeah. What I normally tell people is if anyone's like starting an online business for the first time, I'm like, it takes four years. It takes four years to do.

And so for four years, you're not going to make any money. And I mean developing a content site. There are other ways to do this much faster. You know, if you were a programmer, you could build a SaaS product and do it much faster. But it takes four years. It's been everybody I've ever talked to and myself included with any project, it's always taken four years for it to get me significant. So for me, it took five. So, you know, I stayed in college at one extra year because I didn't know what I really wanted. So five years and I was finally, I think at five years, I was making $100,000 a year from it. And I remember because when I was living with my brother, I had my own room and I had a whiteboard and I had one of those,

I drew with a red marker and the whiteboard the thermometer. And at the top of the thermometer was $100,000. And so every month I would fill in the thermometer until I got there. And that was my goal for the year in 2000, I think 14 or 15, my goal was that. And I achieved it. But by the skin of my teeth, I think I really did like $99,410 or some random, you know, slightly under. I was like, yeah, I filled the rest in.

It's like, what's another 500 bucks? And then I met my girlfriend at FinCon because I was also was in personal finance. And I mean, at that point, I was making enough money from swimming diversity that like I had a lifestyle business. But I never considered it to be 80 hours or trying to be to work. I was never striving for the four hour work week. I was this, I love all of this. It's a hobby. Like I wake up in the morning and go to.

on my computer because I want to. It's like it's I actually enjoy working on Labor Day, you know, which I just did. So it's it is a, it's a hobby and I don't treat it like work. Sometimes it's very frustrating and more times than not, it's stressful. I am more stressed out now working for myself than I ever was working for anybody else. So that's the tradeoff. It's like, I don't have a boss, but now if I don't make money one month, like it stresses me out or if Amazon changes their business model, I get screwed and that's stressful. And, you know, if my internet goes down, I'm stressed, you know, all that is just much more stress for sure. 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 together in one dashboard on your phone or your laptop. Feel aware and in control of your finances this tax season and get 50% off your Monarch subscription

with the code pockets. What I personally like is that Monarch keeps you focused on achieving, not just tracking. You can see your budgets, debt payoff, savings goals, and net worth all in one place. So every decision actually moves in a needle. Achieve your financial goals for good with Monarch, the all-in-one tool that makes money management simple. Use the code Pockets at Monarch.com for half off your first year. That's 50% off at monarch.com code pockets. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast?

Easy. Just use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. That means you can stop struggling to get your job notice on other job sites. Indeed's sponsor jobs helps you stand out and hire the right people quickly. Your job post jumps straight to the top of the page. where your ideal candidates are looking. And it works. Sponsored jobs on Indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsored posts. The best part? No monthly subscriptions or long-term contracts. You only pay for results. And speaking of results, in the minute I've been talking to you, 23 people just got hired through Indeed worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash bigger pockets. Just go to. to Indeed.com slash bigger pockets right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash bigger pockets. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, Indeed is all you need.

When you want more, start your business with Northwest Registered Agent and get access to thousands of free guides, tools, and legal forms to help you launch and protect your business all in one place. Build your complete business identity with Northwest today. Northwest Registered Agent has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They're the largest registered agent and LLC service in the U.S. With over 1,500 corporate guides who are real people who know your local laws and can help you and your business every step of the way. Northwest makes life easy for business owners.

They don't just help you form your business. They give you the free tools you need after you form it, like operating agreements, meeting minutes, and thousands of how-to guides that explain the complicated ins and outs of running a business. And with Northwest, privacy is automatic. They never sell your data. And all services are handled in-house because privacy by default is their pledge to all customers. Visit northwest registeredagent.com

slash money-free and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at Northwest Registered Agent.com slash money-free. One plus one equals more of the greatest stories. Hulu on Disney Plus. Stories about survivors. The most dangerous planet. Family.

Retribution. Murder. Prophecy. Beer and propane. How are we doing? Ultimate soldier. Chicago. All right.

The best of the best stories now with even more from Hulu. Amazing. Have it all with 3-1 Disney Plus. So are you still working 40 hours a week? Yeah, 100%. But I mean, is it only 40 hours a week? Is it more than, I know that you love your job? I love my job.

I probably work more than 40 hours a week, but, you know, it is what it is. Yeah, I try to take off on the weekends. So I would say maybe 50 hours. So like today, I don't get started with work until maybe 10. and then I stop at six and eat dinner, but then I might work after dinner. And then, yeah, I would say I work maybe 50 hours a week. Obviously, some weeks are more labor intensive than others

because if you look at my site, I have challenges where I am like heads down for multiple days and I'm a zombie. Like you can't talk to me. I'm just in the zone. But for the most part, yeah, I try to take off. Try to have fun. Can.

Okay. If you didn't do anything at Swim University for today or next week, how long could it run by itself? It could run by itself for probably five years. Okay. Yeah. I mean, again, I've been doing it for 10 years. It's a resource site. It's a book that lives online.

And as long as Amazon doesn't change their affiliate link structure and maybe some plugins need to be updated here and there and the website, you know, obviously some things change on the internet. So sometimes you have to do some code tweaks, but it could be a passive site. But that's not how I treat it. I do have a small team of people that help me consistently create content on it and help me create more products. But it's a small team of four people.

It's me and three other people. And I want to keep it going and I want to nurture it. And so I do work on it. I've been recently doing videos for it. And I still do some of the social media stuff. So mainly because I like it. But yeah, if I let it go, oh, it could last for a very long time.

And I could sell it if I wanted to, too. Awesome. What are you doing with your money while you're accumulating it right now? You're earning all this money. You got to 100K a couple of years ago. How are you kind of managing it? What's your kind of goal with your personal finances? Well, that actually all changed yesterday.

So I would like to say that before that, I was paying myself a salary of, I think, $5,000 a month through a payroll company. So what am I making? maybe $3,500 a month, right? And most of that money was going to paying staff. So I had a lot of staff before. And I was trying to build a big media company. I wanted a big digital media company similar to like Vox BuzzFeed, vice, those kind of companies, but more in the very niche pool and home brewing and coffee space, which is what the websites that I ran. So I really was hoping to do that. And I spent a lot of money in the last couple years. The company was doing very well.

I thought, let's reinvest that money into the company and try to really grow it. And I failed at that because ultimately, when it comes down to it, I consider myself like a craftsman and I was trying to be a businessman. And I'm very quick to spend money for quality stuff, but very slow to see if it actually is paying off or not. So for that reason, a lot of the money that I was making was really just a little bit of it was going into a betterment account. So I have two accounts there. I have an IRA that I've had for multiple years. So I max out my IRA every year. And I have a brokerage account through betterment, which I put $500 a month into my IRA and have for like five or six years. And I do about on a good month, because I have a seasonal business, you know, during the summertime, I make more

money than I do in the wintertime since it's about swimming pools. I try to put more away in the summer into a brokerage account and less in the wintertime when I don't have money. So those are the two places that I do the most investing. And then I have a checking account that kind of pays, that I use to pay my bills. And recently, I've decided to like be more of a lifestyle business and not try to build this massive company. And so I downsized our staff. So it's just a small team of us. And I'm going to take some of that money for myself and start to invest it into a savings account. So put a lot away in a savings, just like, you know, high yield savings account. and obviously add more to betterment.

And if I can maybe start another type of investment account and a retirement account, like a 401k or maybe another IRA, I'm going to do that as well. And I'm trying to save up to buy a home because right now I am renting. I had, you know, after I had moved out with my brother and I met my girlfriend, we decided to move from South Jersey to Colorado. And we've been living in Colorado now for three years. And we've been renting. So now I'm kind of like, you know,

even though I already own my own home and back in Jersey, I want to buy one that, you know, I kind of want to die in is kind of the way I'm looking at it. So I'm not looking at an investment property. I'm looking at the home I die in. Wow. What a morbid, but yeah. Yeah, what a happy thought? Okay. So what are you doing for health insurance right now? You don't have a real job where you go and I, you know what? I'm sorry. I shouldn't say real job, not because of you, but I don't want to offend other people that are listening who are maybe working for themselves. You don't have a boss. I don't have a real job. You don't have. I know that. But for people who are listening who may be in the same situation. I'm self-employed. You're self-employed. So what do you do for health insurance?

And I pay for the state of Colorado's, I think, catastrophe insurance. Yeah. So I basically pay, I think it's like $335 a month that might be entirely accurate to basically not have to be penalized through my taxes at the end of every year, which can't. keeps going up. So yeah, that's just my base health insurance. I don't use it. I pay everything else in cash. So if I have to go, I just went to the dentist to get a crown put in. And I had to pay $3,000 out of pocket to get all that work done. I had to replace four cavities for two deep cleanings and a regular cleaning. And I actually buy the health insurance. They offer their own version of a dental plan at this one dentist that I go to. And so I think it's like 350 bucks a year, but I get two free cleanings. I'm free. I mean, I'm paying for it. And 20% off any procedures that need to be done. And I needed a lot of procedures done. So I, yeah,

I paid for it out of pocket. You know, I had to go to the foot doctor once and I paid for that out of pocket. And I've been doing that for years. I mean, even before mandatory health insurance, I mean, I just didn't have it and I just paid cash for things. But now that it's mandatory, I do pay into the system because I want to. And I do like the idea that if something horrible happens, there's a cap at least with my deductible. So catastrophe insurance is fine for me. And I don't have any other, I don't take any prescriptions. I don't wear glasses.

So I don't have any like recurring medical bills that I need to worry about too much. So it's okay right now for me to have pretty low insurance and pay for things out of pocket. But, you know, obviously as I get older, that may change. So things may move into a more aggressive health insurance plan. Okay. We have recently spoken to PT, Philip Taylor, from FinCon. And his family is on the health sharing plan. One of those like Liberty.

I can't remember what the name of his was. Is it through a church? His is through a church. But there are other ones that don't have such a stringent religion aspect of it. Have you ever considered one of those? or is that just not good for your situation? I just kind of want to make it easy on myself. I don't have a family.

So right now I'm okay with paying what I'm paying. You know, I have money now, so it's much easier for me to say this. But I usually pay for convenience. And so if something costs more money, but it's convenient for me, I'm going to pay for it. I don't really like doing a lot of research. I'm not a tax dodger.

I'm not looking into my taxes like, ooh, how can I change this and do that? so I can shave a little off the top for myself. I tend to just go like, hey, whatever I can just click a button and pay, it's fine. You know, like that's kind of how I approach a lot of things. Like I had this anecdote that's really stupid. But if milk costs $3, but you have to walk to the back of the store to get it, as opposed to a $5 gallon of milk at the front of the store,

I'm the guy who's going to pay $5 for a gallon of milk because I don't want to walk to the back of the store. Okay, so Matt and I are different people. Yes. Yeah, I am not. I am not frugal by any means. And that comes from my previous life. You know I spent $500 a target that I didn't have. So I am not a frugal person, but I use money as a tool for an easier life and a more fun life. And so, you know, if money lets me not do something that I hate doing, I'm going to use it for that. If money is going to help me avoid stress, I'm going to do that.

And so I'm not a hoarder, a miser. I'm not like pinching every penny. I'm more concerned about my well-being as a mentally, you know, going through the rest of this life. Well, and that's valid. I mean, you have to be able to live the life. Some people really want to clip 3,000 coupons. And I did that once. And I'm like, yeah, I'm done with that. Yeah.

I need to save 25 cents. Because I'm not interested in that, you know? If I was interested, just like for me, my time is better spent and I have more fun working on my business and increasing my income versus I have a static income and I have to, you know, make every dollar count. the way that I built my life, I actually can spend time the other way. Whereas, like, if you do have a real job, it's very hard to make more money faster because you're kind of capped. You have to keep going and asking for a raise versus me. I could sit at the computer for 30 days straight

without showering and make more money, as long as I put the time in. I love it. And what are you talking about is basically, like, it's very commonsensical in a lot of ways in the sense that you, unlike maybe most of the many of the listeners onto this podcast, have control over your income. You can apply the levers there and increase that and drive that versus your full-time median upper-middle-class wage earner. You know, you got your pattern set. Here's your salary. You're looking at a 5, 10, 15% raise if you're really good over the next year. And how do I build wealth? Well, I have to save, spend as little as possible and invest that as efficiently as possible in order to move my financial position forward. You're like, hey, same.

saving is could be irrelevant. I could potentially double my income next year if I work my business and apply the correct pressure in their correct spots. Yeah. And I also, I used to have this mindset of why save? What if I get hit by a bus tomorrow? All that saving was for nothing. But we just talked about why you save, right? I know. You may not have considered it saving. You got started in this business by living on $1,300 a month and selling off all of the things that were a drag on your finances, which enables you to put this business together. And now you don't don't need to. But if you lost your business, I bet you'd be right back to that frugal lifestyle, and then you'd do it again until you didn't need to anymore. To be honest. And yeah, I, yeah,

100%. And I say I used to say that. I don't say that anymore, obviously. But that frugleness still applies because, yes, I may not be frugal in the milk scenario, right? And we're talking about $2 there. When I came to my business, even when my business was doing like six figures plus, I was doing very well. And I was still making less than I was making at my second job because I was putting all that money back into the business, hoping to grow it even more so that later I could make even more money. But the problem is you get stuck in this like trap of constantly adding more to your business and not giving anything to yourself. And I was self-sacrificing. And so, you know, recently I've decided that maybe it's time to sort of like scale back. I don't need to just push this business as hard as I need to. I don't need to turn it into a real, quote, unquote, business.

Because I don't like the term lifestyle business, but look, let's be honest, that's essentially what's what I've built. And if I stop spending money to grow it aggressively, then it is a lifestyle business. And if that money is going to me and it's making decent money, and if I use my own hours to pull those levers to make more money, then great. I could also use the money as a tool to hire somebody else to pull those levers for me. And that could work too, which ultimately, I feel. failed at recently. And so I'm kind of going back the other way. And so even as early as last year,

I was struggling with income coming in, you know, because I was paying so much out of pocket to have things done for me. So now I am sort of reevaluating that and going, well, it's okay to sit down on my computer and do some work, pull those levers myself, and maybe give myself a bigger cut and actually reap the awards of the thing that I've been building for 10 years finally. So, and then look to buy a house. That would be nice. But you just said in a nutshell is, I'm not frugal. I have a spender's mentality. Yeah. I just don't give myself any money and I invest all of it in my business. Yeah. So I'm forced to live through them. That's spending. That's spending though, right?

That's investing, right? It's investing if it works. Yeah. It's spending if it doesn't. I think what you're embodying sound financial management, right? You're saying, I can't do this. I'm not, I'm a spender at heart. But you're not giving yourself. the chance to spend any money because you've been investing in your business, which I think is like something that you're paying yourself first, basically, in some form. Yes, I mean, you're right. Fundamentally, you're right. I sometimes find it hard to see it that way because it's literally dollars going out of the door. But yes, you're right. All that money was basically being reinvested in the business and could absolutely pay off in the future and still might pay off in

the future, even if it didn't work today. But you're right. I mean, like, the thing is, is that spending mentality is just me like throwing money out the door. Like I'm very quick to just make a decision going, yeah, just throw money at the problem. Like just throw money at it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then more recently now I'm thinking maybe not do that so much. So willy-nilly, for lack of a better term. Okay, I've got like 27 questions.

Really quickly, what does lifestyle business mean? Because I've heard that term, but I don't actually know what you're talking about. I think lifestyle business means that you have a business that allows you to do whatever you want to do. Okay. And that's pretty much in a nutshell. And it usually means like having a small team of people or just being a solopreneur in some cases. And basically having your hours freed up, you know, where you don't have to work, you can work a four hour work week if you really wanted to. Or you can work an 80 hour week. If that's what you choose to do. Okay. You took Swibew from $20,000 a year to $100,000 a year in just five short years. So what were you doing?

differently that made the income so much more? Yeah. The biggest thing, there was two changes that I made. One was I started writing better content. And now I can give you literal examples of that. So early in my career when I was starting from university, I was writing 300 word articles that were terrible. I'm not good at English.

So what I did was I learned English online and just like, you know, read a bunch of blogs, read some books on how to write and learned grammar again. I guess maybe I never really learned it in the first place. I was pretty bad at English even in high school. And I started writing longer form articles. So I started writing, going from 300 words to more like 3,000 words. And I was targeting keywords that I had already targeted, but were just really weak. And really like the content itself was really weak. So I spent so much time like just writing. words, which is so boring to me, but that's what I had to do. And on top of that, creating graphic visual aid, for lack of a better term, again, to showcase like what I was

teaching. Like if I was talking about how to get rid of pool algae in your water, I would create like an infographic. I would create these little graphics to explain like what is algae, how does, you know, chlorine kill algae, whatever. And then the second big thing that I did, which was also content base, is I started making YouTube videos. And When I started making YouTube videos, no one else at the time was really doing it. And to be honest, like no one's really doing it that well now in my particular industry. And so that was my competitive edge. And I was able to grow the traffic significantly from creating content that was just better than everybody else's.

And so that grew the traffic. And that started bringing in sponsors because they could see my face. They knew who I was. they were impressed with my work. And I was just getting more traffic, which meant more clicks to my affiliate links, which made more money. And then the final part of that was I wrote books.

I actually created my own products, which I hadn't had the first six years of my business. And when I created my own products, that started to help bring in a little bit more income. So it was really just doing better work, actually. Okay. That makes sense. You know, here at Bigger Pockets is a company as well.

that's in the online space, right? And, you know, the business, if you look at it from like a metrics perspective, there's how many people are you reaching? And then how many dollars are you generating per visit? And those are two ways to kind of measure the business. It sounds like you just applied pressure at both points in that funnel. How do I get more people to my site? And then how do I make more money per visitor? By providing useful content and features in front of each of my visitors. Yep. Exactly how I did it. But the first four or five years was just like, I learned some bad things and I was reading some bad books and I was writing a lot of crappy content and a lot of it. I mean, like, when I say I was writing 300 word articles, it wasn't just like one.

I wrote like hundreds and hundreds of 300 word articles and posted them everywhere and none of them paid off. So I was doing a lot of work. It just was the wrong kind of work. Okay. So how can we kind of suppose that you're putting yourself in the shoes as somebody listened to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. And you're somebody who's working toward financial freedom, you've got a good job or you know, you're starting to save up some money, beginning to invest. How do you use kind of the things that you've learned about building online businesses to advance your financial position? That's a tough question. And I'll say this. The thing for me was focusing on my existing strengths. So like at the time when I started my online business, I knew how to

design a website. That I knew. The biggest hurdle to starting an online business is actually just starting a website. People don't know how to do that. It's a technical hurdle. I had already had that knowledge. That was something I based it on. The other thing I knew was pools. I already had that knowledge. So that was the industry that I chose to go into, right? I was a terrible writer, but I was good at graphic design and I was good at making videos. And that was ultimately what I later decided the strength was. Now, I'm saying that, you know, in hindsight, this is the things that I would have focused on early in my career, I would have focused less on words and more on video had I known, you know, my strengths at the time. And so if there's somebody out there who wants

to start on any kind of online business, no matter what it is, it's really just like shut the lights off, sit in a quiet room, light a candle, I don't care. And just like be honest with yourself, you know, practice some self-awareness and figure out what are you good at? Just what are you good at? What are your friends tell you you're good at? Maybe it's cooking. Like maybe like you're just like the awesome, you're an awesome pie baker, you know? So maybe your website should be about pies, or maybe you start a pie business that's not online or maybe, I don't know, like, I think the biggest thing you have to do is, is not try to do, not try to emulate somebody else because you see success. If I saw, you know, somebody else out there, like, I'll give you a great example.

I mean, you guys are bigger pockets. I mean, property, you know, investment properties is what you guys do and what you guys talk about. And if I followed you guys kind of like at a distance and go like, oh, look, those guys like, yeah, property investment. That's where the money's at. Okay. Yeah, I'm going to do that. I would be in so much debt. I am. I am currently in so much debt. It is my weakness. I don't like real estate. I don't find any of it interesting. But yet here I am thinking, oh, look at those people. They're crushing it. I want to be like those people. And I have no previous strength in that field whatsoever. I have no interest, but I don't know that. So I go down this path and I'm stressed constantly, whatever, versus just being alone and going, what am I good at?

And just kind of like taking that and scaling that experience and that skill set. So I got a question for you. So one of your businesses was the dog social network, right? It never ended up becoming a business, but I did build it. Well, I was saying, is this a good example of something that you maybe didn't have much experience in? A hundred percent. Yes. A classic example of I realized, I don't like dogs that much. Like, I'm not. And the reason I built it was my girlfriend at the time was like that.

She's like, she carried her teacup, Yorkshire Terrier around. And like, it was her daughter, whatever. And she knew other people like that. So I'm like, oh, my God, there's this community of people who want to, like, embody their dogs. And like, it's a thing. and I'm like, I need to capitalize on that. And it turns out, like after I had built it, I'm like, wait a minute. Like, my dog's cool and everything, but I don't like talk as him.

You know, I don't post pictures of him at all on Facebook. So I wasn't the target customer and I knew nothing about the world. And I realized that after building the whole thing. So yes, I did. The one strength I had was I actually knew how to build a website, but I actually had to learn how to develop a social network site. So it was two things that I was bad at. One was dogs and two was building a SaaS product, basically.

See, now I live down the street from you, Matt, and we live in an area where people are just like your ex-girlfriend very, very much in love with their dogs. Yes. I think you could make a boatload of money, just throw it back up online now. You still have all the code, right? I don't. It's so dated. It's so bad.

I would never put it back up online. But honestly, I wouldn't like doing it. I just wouldn't like it. Just put it up there and sell it. I could do that, but there's so. stress, they're stressed in every level of it. And I know that now, because I've done so many projects now. I've done two software companies that I'm like, I am bad at this. And I've done it twice and I've sold both. And I give that advice in hindsight, right? I was definitely

not the person years ago who sat in a quiet room with a candle and thought, what are my strengths? I was not that person. It's looking back on the last 10 years and going like, oh, yeah, that worked because that was a previous strength of mine. Oh, yeah, that worked because of that. Oh, that didn't work because I was never good at that and never liked doing that. And you idiot. Like, why did you even do that? But again, you see people out there building SaaS products, making a ton of money. And you're like, I could do that.

I can be that guy. And then I do it and I'm stressed out and I don't know what I'm doing. And then I give up or worse, life can fall apart. I think that makes a ton of sense. Like so many people think, oh, I'm going to go out and start this online business, one of these 50 ideas I heard because that's a good idea. but that has nothing to do with my skill set, nothing to do with anything I'm interested in,

and I'm going to have to completely learn a new, hard skill that is just going to be completely on the side and completely tangential to my work. Why would you go down that path? That's very impractical relative to if you could just think through, like, what is it that you're good at and know how to do? And that will come very easily and naturally to you while you pursue this interest over the next five years, making no money.

Yeah, I mean, the why is so simple. I mean, why do people start selling herbal life? You know, it's like they heard someone else made a ton of money. Do you drink like health shakes? No. Do you care about any of the stuff? No. Have you ever sold anything ever?

Probably not. But you heard one nobody, one fake, probably fake story of a nobody going from $0 to a million dollars in three days. It's like their why is so simple. I mean, even I fall for it. it. The things that I fall for are not make money fast schemes, although I don't know. That could be true. I see somebody out there who made a WordPress plugin. And in six months, they're making $2,500 a month. I'm like, I could do that. Hell yeah, without even thinking about what my

skill set actually is. My skill set isn't those things. And maybe those things you learn way later down the line. Like, you know, I had built this plugin that I talked about earlier and I ended up selling it later, but later I found out that, oh, wow, I'm actually incredibly stressed because I have to hire a developer and I don't know the terminology for some things. That's not a skill set. Oh, wow. Like, I have to answer customer service questions. This sucks. You know, like, this is not something I want to do with my life. And I found all of that, like, all of those byproducts, like, you know, these people online who are like, oh, yeah, just build a SaaS brat. You can make a billion dollars. You know, they're not telling you the crap. They're not

telling you all of the stress involved with it. And when I started Money Lab and I started doing all these experiments, you know, building little SaaS products and doing like big challenges and small challenges or whatever, my whole goal was I'm not going to tell you how to do anything. I'm just going to show you what I'm doing. And I'm going to show you even the worst bits of this. Even when everything goes to hell or I am just at my wits end that I'm stressed out or when I'm going to tell you when I give up because those are the things you don't hear about in this space when you build an online business. You don't hear about, you know, I would assume like the whole reason I would ever get into like real estate investments because I've heard only good stories.

If you heard a slew of miserable stories, basically if you heard my story a billion times from a billion different people, you'd be like, wow, that's the seems like the worst thing ever. But you don't hear that. You hear all the positive. And that goes for every industry. I mean, negativity does not sell. Right. It's like. positivity is what sells. And so, and there are a lot more people who are successful with these things than I am. And so I am definitely the minority in that case. But I think that I am not the minority in the online business space. I think there's a lot of people out there who try and fail. And especially in business in general, I mean, what is it? Like 90% of all businesses

fail. You just hear that number, but you don't hear those individual stories all stacked up against one positive one. You know, I hear that comment, the 90% of all small businesses fail within the first two years. I hear that comment all the time. And I think about this clothing company that opened up by my house when I lived in Wisconsin. And they were selling like gangster wrapper clothes in probably the whitest neighborhood on the planet. Yeah, we had one of those too. Like everything about this business model was awful.

I could tell it was going to. to be a failure by the zero people that were ever in the store. Right. It's like opening up a bikini store in an Amish neighborhood. You have no clients. Your customers aren't there. You know what? You know what that could be in reverse?

You know how the saying of like, oh, he can sell ketchup popsicles to a woman in white gloves? It can be like, oh, that guy could sell bikinis in an Amish neighborhood. Like that's how good that salesperson is. The point of that is that that's not the place. to build your business. And a lot of people build businesses that are just like, why are you going there? Yeah.

Yeah, I think it would be like trying to start a pool company in the Pacific Northwest. It's just doesn't make sense to do it up there because it's constantly raining and it's usually below 70 degrees, right? Yeah. But I think that really highlights what you're saying is know your strengths and do what you're going to do well. That same bikini store is going to go out of business in Amish country. It's going to flourish in San Diego.

because that's where your customers are. And it depends. Like, what is that person good at? Are they good at bikinis? Like, are they good at crafting bikinis? Because if so, then you can craft bikinis, put them online and sell them. And that's what you're good at. Like, that's a skill set that you're utilizing.

If you're good at living in intercourse PA, I would say that's not a skill. And if you're like, well, it looks like the bikini market's blowing up over there in San Diego. Let me bring it. You know, I see it from a distance doing well without any content. context whatsoever and then trying to replicate that with zero knowledge. And that's where people get in trouble as they see the success stories and they have no context as to like what happened there. Like I had this whole bit on Money Lab where it's like how I built a mildly successful

six figure business in 14 years. You know, and my, the idea was like how I built a business in 30 years overnight. You know, it's like this idea that. that if I just told you my story from yesterday to today, you'd be like, wow, that feels like you did that overnight. And it's like, sure, because I told, I just gave you all the context. And then if I told you, it took me 10 years, you're like, wow, only 10 years, that's great. I could spend 10 years doing that.

I'm like, oh, well, hold on. Like, let me tell you about every time I cried and every time I got yelled at by my boss or every time my parents would say, when are you going to get a job? When you're going to get a job? When you're going to get a job? And when I was out of money, let me tell you every single and stack all of those stories up on top of each other. And it's like, whoa, I don't want to do any of that. That sounds terrible. I'm just going to go stick working here at the Amish bikini store. And by the way, like this is not the first time I've heard this kind of story.

Sure. You're an entrepreneur. Your self-employed, your entrepreneur, you're building businesses. You're working for yourself. You've done this for a long time, right? Almost everyone I know in that area has gone through similar types of pain and struggle. and has at certain points had to practice that extreme frugality that we heard from that. And frankly, I'm an employee, right? I work here at Bigger Pockets, and I will never have the experience of pain and suffering that you kind of went through. Yeah. Because I just saved up some money and have bought some investments more passively over the past four or five years.

And so I think that there's a big case to be made of like, don't go down this path if it's just the money that you're interested in, right? Because there's easier ways to get the money, I think. Yes. I mean, I was just going to go down that road with you and you just said it. If your motivation for starting an online business is to be rich or to make more money, you were doing it for the wrong reason. And I say that because my reason, my reason for doing any of this was actually a negative. I wanted to never work for someone else again.

And I would have done anything it took to, and that was my only metric, was like, hey, am I not working for someone else today? I win. But how much are you making? Like, don't worry about that. It was not, you know, like, I'm making, I made $5 today. That was never my metric. So even the year that I was making $20,000 a year and had to sell all of my assets

and moving with my younger brother, I was still winning. My metric was met at that moment. You know, even when I was unemployed, I won because my metric was met immediately. I was like, guess what? I'm not working for anybody. Like, yeah, you're a deadbeat. You're not working on employment. Yeah, but I'm not working for anybody.

Gotcha. So yeah, I think the motivation of like getting rich quickly or thinking you're going to make a ton of money. I mean, I thought I was going to make a ton of money. But that wasn't my motivation. But yeah, I'm definitely not at that point right now. It's definitely better than most. But I mean, I'm not in the 1% and I'm probably not even in the top 10%. So and I have way more stress than the average person.

At least I think I do. But yeah, from the other, outside looking in, it looks pretty great. Looks pretty great. It does. Yeah, I'm sitting here listening to you, say all this stuff and this is the best thing to do is to start your own online business to make no money and have way more stress than you would if you work for somebody because according to Matt, you're winning. When you're not working for anybody, you're winning, even if you're making if that's your motivation. That was definitely mine. Okay, Matt, this has been super, super informative and a really good look at what it takes to start an online business. It isn't just,

oh, I'm going to review swim products. Now I'm a millionaire. I started it yesterday. Like, that's not going to happen. It can be a good source of passive income down the road. Like you said, you could let it run for five years and it would go by itself pretty easily. So you can't take a break. I mean, just like, property, I mean, look, I own a property and right now it doesn't make

money, but I know in five years it will. It's hard for me to live right now and go, oh, it's this costing me money right now. But I know in my heart of hearts, I just hold on. I am not a long-term thinker. By nature, I have to train myself to be a long-term thinker. But when I do, all of these things will pay off if you nurture and you pay attention and you care for it just like a pool or anything else. Like the more you take care of it, the longer it'll last and the better and more it'll pay off over time. So it is an investment.

It's an investment in time for sure. Okay. Now it's time for our famous four questions. These are the same five questions that we ask every one of our guests. What is your favorite finance book? Yes, I would say, I will teach you to be rich, changed my financial life. Okay. And that is, I'm going to make you pronounce his name too.

Yes, uh, Rameet Setti. Setti. I've always read that as Sethy and until I heard somebody say it and I felt like an idiot. Yeah, it's kind of, uh, I would say a bad title. It feels very, uh, shwarmie. scammy sort of title, but it is anything but the base substance that you'll get from it is, I think the automation piece of it is now that we live in a digital age, you know, instead of you having to be responsible and take out 10% for yourself, you know, pay yourself

first sort of mentality, there's actually computers that will pay yourself first for you. What was your biggest money mistake? I think I mentioned that too, the credit card. But that was only 500 bucks, right? Yeah, it was only 500 bucks. At the beginning, it was only 500 bucks. Funny mistake. Yeah, that was.

That's true. Oh, man. Oh, I would say that my house, my condo was my biggest money mistake. And the way I look at it now is, and I don't know if this is true. A lot of people would say, oh, I regret going to college because, like, I'm not even using my degree. And I owe 30, 40, 80, $800,000 in student loan debt. And I made this mistake, you know, when I was right out of high school.

and I've been paying for it ever since. That is sort of how I feel about my condo is I bought it without any knowledge whatsoever of buying a house. I didn't deserve to own a house. I had no money. I had a terrible credit score, but I just wanted a house

and then they were giving out houses like candy at the bank. So I just took it. And I've been paying for it. I mean, definitely less than a student loan mortgage because I have a renter in there, a student loan. But it's been a burden. for the last six years now, or no, yeah, six years.

And it really don't see any signs of it paying off anytime soon. But I mean, fingers crossed, long-term thinking, got to train myself, just keep going. It's really sad. And, you know, alarming, though, that, hey, I bought this condo at the worst possible date in history to buy a condo. And it crashed. And it's way better than having a corresponding amount of student loan debt. Yeah.

Because I could put a tenant in there, right? And it's just like, that's a number. amazing statement, right? That, hey, possibly the worst financial decision you could have made at the time, you know, if you were trying. Right. That's still not as bad as as a student loan. If you're going to come out with a job income that's at the same level that you were earning it, that's at. Yeah. Or if you're not even using the degree, like the job that you have now is not even the job that you trained four years for. So yeah, you're right. I could put a tenant in there, which I absolutely did. And it softens the blow for sure, but it is still a blow. You know, I'm still

spending money every single month to have that place. So it is my biggest financial mistake, I think. Absolutely. What is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out? I think the best way to start out with finances, I mean, is the way that I did, because it certainly helped me. It was just like, first of all, you have to want to be better. You have to want to be better with your money. And then you will read. And I think you should read books. I don't think you should read some blogs because I say that now in this wild west of the internet that we live in right now where we don't know what's good or bad. I know recently as being in this industry, Google did a huge update August 1st and just crushed a lot of sites and a lot of them were in

the personal finance space and the medical space. So if that gives you any context as to like the information that's out there that may not be good. I think time tested books that people have been reading forever. I think are great. I think the richest man in Babylon's a great book. Thinking Grow Rich is a great book. I think I will teach you to be rich has been recommended thousands of times to me. And look for book recommendations that have been recommended to you by people who are not in the same situation as you. You know, like I would say if someone's like, hey, you should read the millionaire next door. You should read, you know, rich dad, poor dad. And you're like, but you're poor.

It's like, yeah, maybe don't read that one. You know, maybe read something that's that, you know, a rich uncle or a rich aunt is like, yeah, this is the book that got me off the ground. It's like, oh, okay, she knows her stuff. Yeah, good advice from people about money who knows something about money. Yes, yes. It seems. I think that's kind of one of the tenants of richest man in Babylon.

It might be, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know it was like one of the tenants was pay yourself first. I remember that. Pay yourself first, invest with people who know what they're talking about. Yes. You know, take advice from people who know what they're talking about.

Yeah. And I mean, I guess as far as business, again, focus on your strengths, you know, sit down with yourself, figure out what you're good at and capitalize on what you're already good at. All right. What is your favorite joke to tell at parties? I don't have one. What? I honestly, I like being funny at parties. I try to be the center of attention.

I try to make people laugh constantly. I don't have any go-to jokes. Like, I just don't have any jokes. And I have my dad's friend would come over like every other day and he would tell me a different joke and I would crack up laughing and I could never remember and recite them. And the ones that I do know, I can't recite them here. Thank you. So I will say that Christy is going to save your backside today. And she wrote in, some of our listeners write in and share their jokes with them.

us. So Christy says, how does the hamburger introduce his girlfriend? Hey, Bun. Hi, Patty. This is Patty. Meet Patty. Ah, yes. Sounds like, did we do the pirate joke? What is the pirate's favorite letter? Yeah, I know this one. What is the pirate's favorite letter? So I know the whole joke. The person says R. You're like, oh, you would think it'd be R, but actually it's the C. Wow, that's like word for word. Do you have access to my document? I guess I don't tell that joke at parties.

I'll tell you that. I just know it. I tell that joke at parties. That's a good one. It's a good icebreaker. Okay. Did we talk about why did the pirate put tape on the squid? No.

He was afraid it was Cracken. Oof. God, you have to know that. There's like to be smart to get that. Like, if you have to know what a Cracket is. Man, do people know, that an octopus is a crackin? And I don't even know if that's true.

I think that's more of a thing recently. There's some sort of something that's going on in the... Well, yeah, there's the rum, but there's also like little kids know it. My kid knows what a crackin is, but not because of the rum. Is it because of a SpongeBob? Could be. Yeah. Or Pirates of the Caribbean.

Or the Pirates of the Caribbean. Yeah. So anyway, that was Logan Fast. I want to make sure to give credit where credit is due or blame where blame is due. And now I'm out of jokes. So if you have an amazing joke and you've listened to this far to these horrible jokes, send them to Scott at biggerpockets.com or Mindy at biggerpockets.com. Matt G.

Where can people find out more about you? Well, people can find out about me if they go to moneylap.co, where I share everything about myself, my businesses, I do challenges, I do experiments. I also run a podcast there. It's a Money Lab podcast if you search for it. And the other place that I'm found is I'm on iTunes. I have two podcasts. I have the Money Lab podcast.

And I have another podcast called List and Money Matters, both of which I do with my co-host, Andrew Feberts. So one about personal finance, one about entrepreneurship. And that's where you can find me. Awesome. Matt, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time today. This is really fun.

Thank you for having me. Yeah, this is awesome. Okay, well, enjoy the rest of your day. And we'll talk to you soon. Thank you. That was Matt from MoneyLab.com. What did you think of today's episode, Mindy? I really like how he lays it bare.

And he's a funny guy, but he's not like, hey, this is all great. You should totally do it. He's like, you know what? Sometimes it sucks. And this is what my experience was. And I really love that he shared the true story of his overnight success in 10th short years. What I really liked and what I kind of mentioned earlier in the episode is that Matt has a different idea of how to manage money, which is correct for him. And I think in the Phi community,

there's this, there's sometimes gets to some preachiness about how frugality is the key leverage point. The only way to go. Yeah. Or index fund investing is the only way to go. Or real estate investing is the only way to go. And then you have these different sub segments of the community that are really, I guess, they idolatize certain methods of getting to financial freedom. And I think that it doesn't really matter. You see all these people achieving success in different ways by pulling the levers that make sense for them, right? Frugality applies to certain people as an important lever.

It doesn't really apply to business owners who are making, who have businesses that are earning over six figures, right? It's just if you spend $30,000 versus $60,000, it's not going to make the material difference in your wealth accumulation that that does make if you're a full-time employee. employee, right? And Matt recognizes that and he applies the pressure to his businesses. He builds and sells and scales businesses that he creates over the last 10 short years overnight. Yeah. And generally what works for one will work for someone else. But personal finances, personal entrepreneurship is also a personal journey. And, you know, what works for you is really all

that matters. Yep, absolutely. Scott, this episode ran super long today. So we should get out of here. Do you have anything else to say to our listeners before we go? I do not have anything else to say to the listeners. Goodbye, but I will see you next week. Okay. So from episode 41 of the Bigger Pockets Money Show, this is Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, and we're leaving.