Insight with Chris Van Vliet - Life Hacks To Optimize Every Aspect Of Your Life with Chris Hutchins - All The Hacks

Episode Date: November 3, 2021

Today's guest is Chris Hutchins. Chris is an entrepreneur and the host of the popular podcast "All The Hacks" which you can listen to wherever you're listening to this podcast right now. Chris shares with us some innovative ways to get cheap flights, free hotel stays, advice on how to land your dream job, how to start a successful podcast, clever investing hacks, and much more! For more information on Chris Hutchins and "All The Hacks" visit: https://allthehacks.com If you enjoyed this episode, could I ask you to please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcast/iTunes? It takes less than a minute and makes a huge difference in helping to spread the word about the show and also to convince some hard-to-get guests. For more information about CVV and INSIGHT go to: https://podcast.chrisvanvliet.com Follow CVV on social media: Instagram: instagram.com/ChrisVanVliet Twitter: twitter.com/ChrisVanVliet Facebook: facebook.com/ChrisVanVliet YouTube: youtube.com/ChrisVanVliet TikTok: tiktok.com/@Chris.VanVliet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All systems are going. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Van Blaine! Well, here we go, my friends. Welcome back to another audio adventure on Insight. I'm CVV, Chris Van Fleet. Thank you so much for being with us on this episode and on every single episode. And if it does happen to be your first time here, please take a second right now to click subscribe so you don't miss out on anything that we have

cooking up for you. That was my cooking up noise. My guest today is Chris Hutchins, who hosts the very popular podcast called All the Hacks. And as the name suggests, and as you'll hear during this interview, he does, in fact, have all the hacks from travel hacks like getting cheap flights and free hotel rooms to career hacks, investing hacks, time management hacks, parenting hacks, just so many great things to optimize your life. And it's just so interesting hearing how he breaks all of it down. how he approaches all of it.

You can find him on Twitter. He's just at Hutchins. On Instagram, he's at Chris Hutchins. If you're not following me already, I'm at Chris Van Fleet. Our fan of the week is Lunar Lynn, who says five stars with some star emojis after it. Insight with CVV is hands down my favorite podcast.

Chris is so uplifting and positive and always has such inspirational, motivational guests on his show. Can't wait to see who he has in store. for us next. Follow along for an amazing adventure. Well, thank you, Lunar Lynn, or Rachel Lynn, who wrote that. And you're right, it's an amazing adventure, an audio adventure, if you will. And I read one review on every single podcast. So if you want a shout out and you have Apple podcasts, leave a few words on there. Or if you've already left a review, go in add a few words, add an emoji, add your name. And we'll read it out on the show. And actually, since this is an

episode about hacks, I would say that this actually could be considered a podcast hack, because the more new subscribers, the more new reviews you get, the better your chance of climbing up the charts, little podcast hack. And we actually talk a lot about podcasting during this interview. So if you are a podcaster or an aspiring podcaster, make sure you're tuned in for this. All right, he knows all about that, which is why we talk about it. And you can find his podcast called All the Hacks, wherever you're listening to this right now. Please welcome Chris Hutchins. Always good to talk to a fellow Chris.

I know. I feel like we need more of us. The name is dying down a bit in popularity. That's such a good point. I don't know about you, but growing up in school, there was always like three or four Christophers in every class. Everyone. I remember the first time I met at Tofer.

I was like, oh my God, there's another way that I could say my name. Right. You did it the other way. You did the back half of the name. Tofra. That's so smart. I didn't know that was possible. Right.

So it was a fun moment when I met my first tofer. I've now met two of them. And I was like, man, these chrises really knew how to stand out. Man, I have been addicted to your podcast. Congratulations. All the hacks is, I mean, you're exploding with your show. Yeah. Thank you.

It's been, I guess when you take your lifelong passion and turn it into something you do with your time, it just feels natural. So for me, it's been, it just doesn't even feel like work. So you describe yourself as a die-hard optimist. and you've got spreadsheets for everything. So, like, what are we talking about you have spreadsheets for? I mean, I have a spreadsheet for tracking points in miles. I have a spreadsheet for what we're going to do when my in-laws are coming into town for the holidays.

I've got a spreadsheet. Gosh, for all the countries I've been to and all the countries that everyone in my family's been to. You know, spreadsheet for tracking what transfer partners there are from different credit card companies. You know, just literally so many things. I stretched sheet for strollers. I built this amazing spreadsheet for like every stroller that sorts by, does it hold, does it have an attachment for two kids, which car seat attachments does it work with? What are the dimensions, the weights?

Does it fit in an overhead bin? So I just, I have a problem sometimes with over optimization, but, you know, I just, I want to always get the best thing I can. There's going to be a lot of parents going, okay, what's the best stroller? So what's the best stroller then? I mean, there's no best, right? Right now we have one kid and I want something small. when we had our daughter, we were in San Francisco, so we went with the Upa Baby Baby

Baby Menu. That's what we started with. And then someone gave us a baby jogger stroller to jogging stroller. And that's been fantastic. It's a little bit bigger now that we live outside of the city. So your show is all about like finding the best ways to just hack things in your life. Where did this begin for you? I feel like I really wish I had a good answer here. And I blame my parents' memory because, Because I'm like, hey, I've got all these entrepreneurial stories as a kid, right? And they're like, I don't really remember them. You were doing stuff all the time.

Gosh, I think at one point in high school, a fun story was we had a rival and we were the all co-ed school and our rival was all boys school. And this is probably a, well, actually, let's cut this one. I realize I'm going to get myself in trouble here. I think the optimization game really started in college when I realized I could take a trip with a bunch of people to Mexico for free because I'd racked up a bunch of frequent flyer miles. Yeah. And I was like, oh my gosh, my parents had enrolled me in American and United's frequent flyer programs as a kid. And then by the time I got to college, they're like, hey, yeah, you know, you have this account and there's miles and you can use them.

And I did. And I was like, whoa. I just went to Cabo with a bunch of people in college. And I was pretty broke and I didn't have to pay for it. And that opened my eyes to everything. And I was like, wow, I got to get a credit card to earn points. And whenever we go to dinner, I'm going to be the one paying for dinner and asking everyone to pay me back. And I think that really spiraled me down this path of optimization for travel. And then I just realized that, wow, you can optimize everything, right?

You can optimize how you get a job. You can optimize how you cook. You can optimize everything in your life. And I just live for it. What has been your favorite hack that you've come across? I don't know if there could be a favorite. It's like picking your favorite child. Yes, which is easy.

I have one child. So that one I got down. But I probably have thousands of hacks. I'll share one interesting one, which I think is a really easy hack that I've gotten more feedback from listeners than any other hack about because it's so easy and it seems to work for so many people. And it's just when you book your hotel, book it with the hotel. Don't book it on Triple Advisor. Don't book it on Travelocity. Book with the hotel's website.

Email the hotel. Tell them you're excited to come and, you know, tell them if there's a special occasion. Just say, you know, I'm really excited to come. Let them know who you are. And this doesn't mean let them know who you are as a fancy person. Almost every listener just was a regular person. It said, hey, I'm coming to Disneyland, staying at your hotel for our anniversary. Really excited.

just wanted to say, you know, I hope it's great stay. I've gotten at least 20, 30 people in the last couple months that wrote back and said, we got upgraded, we got a bottle of champagne, there were chocolates in our room, you know, we're on a high floor with a great view of Disneyland. Like, every single one of those messages was like so magical because it wasn't extra work. It wasn't even that much extra time. It's just email the hotel and book on their website and you get something for free. Wow.

And it doesn't always work. Are we talking any hotel? Like, could I email the Holiday Inn and do this? Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure the Holiday Inn has has suites or room service, so you might not get it there. But these weren't, you know, just any hotel, a Marriott Hotel, a Hyatt Hotel, you know, just the idea is that hotels really want to build a relationship with people. And when you book on TripAdvisor or you book on Hotels.com, they literally know nothing about you. They get your name before you check in, but they have no relationship with you. So they assume that you're just the kind of person that's going to book wherever's cheapest and you don't really care about the brand.

And that's how you shop. When you book on the hotel's website, they're like, oh, this person went out of their way to build a relationship with us because they wanted to book with us. And then they emailed us. Why wouldn't the hotel want to put their best foot forward? Imagine you ran a restaurant and someone came in and said, hey, I moved into town. Your restaurant looked really good. I'm excited. I'm going to have a dinner here.

As an owner, you'd be like, wow, let's bring them over an appetizer. Let's do something nice because, you know, they clearly are the kinds of people that might want to come here more, you know, get to know us. Hotels are the same way. And I've had so many people get upgrades and, you know, champagne and all kinds of stuff. It doesn't always work. There might not be an upgrade. Wrong person might see it. If you don't have the email, just call the front desk and say, hey, I want to send an email in about my stay.

What's the right email? Get an email. That's such a great hack. And it's so easy to do. Yeah. So that, I love the easy hacks, right? When there's a hack that you can implement that takes not a lot of time and it just gives you something that, you know, you'd never pay for.

Like, I'm never going to pay the extra $200 to have a deluxe room. It's not that much better. But when you get that thing for free, wow, it just, you're like, that's what, that's what I love uncovering. And that's why we bring on guests that know way more about this stuff than I do. So that was with a, that's episode one, all the hacks.com slash one. We brought on a guy named Lee Rowan who runs a travel. company that works with really high-end hotels, but he's just figured this all out. He used to be

the COO, the points guy, and there's just chocked full of travel advice and ways to save money and have a better experience. So keeping with this theme of traveling, I'm trying to book a flight to go home to Toronto for Christmas. And it's funny because the flights just fluctuate in price like one day to the next. So if you're looking for the best deal on flights, how do you do that? Yeah, so episode five, we brought on Scott Kyes, who runs a site called Scott's cheap flights. And he wrote a whole book about finding cheap flights. And I'd say he's most well, well versed in flights that you pay for with dollars, not booking with points in miles. And, you know, not as many hacks on buying business class, because, you know, as a travel hacker himself, he uses, that's what he uses points for.

Yeah. So his advice was like, definitely don't wait till you're within 14 days, because at that point, everything doesn't seem to come down. I think he had some kind of magic number, but the magic number wasn't really magic. It was like, you know, if you're booking a year out, it's probably not the right time. If you're booking 14 days in, it probably is the wrong time. But somewhere in between there,

maybe a month or two out is probably, you know, the sweet spot. He was kind of like all these myths about buy it on a Tuesday at 4 in the morning. Those myths are all just that. They're myths. So I would say if right now, probably like a couple months out, I'd say it's probably a good time to, to get that ticket if you're going to pay cash. If you're going to book with miles,

sometimes the last minute availability is unbelievable. So sometimes, especially with all the flexibility now, you could buy that ticket now. And let's say you have a bunch of miles, maybe Air Canada, or if you have Amex points, you can transfer Amex points to Air Canada. You know, you could look the day before. And if you could get a business class seat for the equivalent of $250 in miles, cancel your paid ticket, book that business class seat,

get a great deal on it last minute, and you might have a credit with the airline, so make sure you'll be able to use it. But yeah, I think miles are pretty good, far out and last minute, and dollars are kind of good in that middle ground. That's a pretty good loophole right now with everything that's been going on in the world over the last year and a half,

where you can cancel a flight and you can get your money back or you can get a credit, which didn't really exist, except for like Southwest. It didn't really exist. like prior to this. Yeah, and it's a huge win for people with points because when you cancel a flight, as you mentioned, you might get a credit. But when you cancel with points, you just get the points back in your balance.

So if you're thinking, wow, you know what, maybe in March we should go to anywhere in the world and you book it with points, there's almost no risk to booking it with points because if you have to cancel it, you just get your points back. Whereas with dollars, you know, do I really want a tie airways credit for, you know, couple thousand bucks, probably not. But with Miles, it's super easy. The United States Soccer Federation presents the U.S. Soccer

podcast. My name is David Goss, and I'm joined by my co-host, Megan Klanmerberg. And now we're giving people an inside look at the World Cup. Times ticking. I think you can feel the intensity. All the guys are wanting to really take their claim, and they want to be on that World Cup roster. There's no doubt about it.

Hosting the World Cup on the home soil comes with its pressures, but we're just really excited just as the people are. The U.S. Soccer Podcast presented by Henko, follow and listen on your favorite platform. Do you know, the crazy thing is sitting next to someone on a plane or staying next to someone in a hotel and knowing that you paid either more or less than them? Because if you're in line of the grocery store, I know exactly how much you're paying for your apples and your cereal and your milk and everything else.

But it's crazy to think that there's such an arbitrage here. Yeah, I mean, I've had, we stayed, I felt bad. So we went to the Conrad in Bora Bora. which is an incredible hotel. And Conrad's part of the Hilton program. And I remember we booked it on points. And we met this other couple. And we got to know them pretty well.

We still stay in touch. He's always like, oh, I love that episode. He lives in Portugal now. And we were talking over dinner. And of course, points of miles seemed to come up. And, you know, he was both so excited to learn that we almost paid nothing for the hotel. And then he was like so sad that he had spent, you know, a couple thousand a night for an overwater bungalow that we got for free.

But yeah, it's an interesting experience when you realize how much value you can get from optimizing a game. And it's not just with points, right? I think points of miles are a great way to optimize travel. But, you know, I saved my mom $6,000 a couple months ago when she was trading in her lease. And it was literally something that took her an extra couple hours. Is this the idea? I heard someone talking about this recently.

Is this the idea that you can sell your lease to somebody? Yes. So you've always been able to sell your lease. Like you're like, oh, I'm one year in. I don't want it. I'll sell it to someone else. The crazy thing is when you're done with your lease, most people just turn their car back into the dealer and they get another car.

And then that dealer takes that car and they go sell it. Right now, the amount of money, the way a lease works is the dealer kind of comes up with what they think the car is going to be worth at the end of your lease before you even buy it. So it's a $50,000 car. The dealer says, well, we think in two years it'll be worth 35. So for your lease, you're going to pay $15,000 over two years, plus some financing costs and other stuff. And so you get to that end of the two years and the cars worth $35,000. They'll let you buy it for $35,000. But if you don't want it, you just give it back to them. Well, it turns out that right now cars are in such demand that that car is worth, in my mom's case, $6,000 more

than what they were going to turn around, what she could have bought. it for. But the last thing she wants to do is go buy a car, go take photos, go put it on Craigslist and all that stuff, and then pay taxes because she had to buy it and turn around and sell it. But what she did was she went on Carvana and she said, hey, I have a lease. I'm turning it in. Here's the residual. And they said, hey, let us buy your residual. So she didn't even have to buy it. She just let Carvana buy the residual and they paid her six grand. And this was not like a $100,000 car, right? This was like, you know, it was a huge markup. and that's an opportunity.

If you have a lease coming up in the next six months, I would say, you know, or just forever, really, go look online and see if someone like Vroom or Carvana will buy that lease and just pay you cash for it. I mean, as nice as it is to stay in an over-the-water bungalow in Borovora, getting six grand in your pocket you weren't expecting, I think that's even better. Yeah, and it was total serendipity. She was like listening to an episode I did with a woman who buys cars professionally. for clients, and she was like, oh, my gosh, I have a lease coming up.

Let me try that out. So I'm just glad I released that episode when I did. Otherwise, you know, maybe I'll get a worse gift than the holidays this year if I didn't give her that opportunity. What I think is great about your show is this isn't about like being cheap. This is about finding the best deal for something that exists out there. Yeah. So my wife and I have this joke.

And when we start the joke, whenever we're talking to people, we come across as like such a horrible people. We're like, yeah, we never want to cross an ocean in coach. It's just like, we never want to do that. Then we, then we caveat it with, but also like, we would never pay for business class. It's like, you know, that's just, that would be absurd to spend that much money to, you know, for a seat on a plane for a handful of hours. So yeah, I always say my goal is to, you know, upgrade life, have it be an incredible experience. Just find a way to do it for less. And, and find the tricks that aren't, I don't like breaking the rules. In fact, like, I love rules. And I feel like, you know, what would a sports game be if there were no rules? It'd just be people running around.

So the rules are what make it fun for me. And in every aspect of life, it's how do you, how do you play to those rules and find ways to get the best experience in life, whether it's, you know, saving, investing, traveling with your family, with your relationship, and all those aspects is, it's kind of what I love doing. Well, I think the big. biggest thing here is, if you don't ask, the answer is always no. So I think it's important to, if this is something that you're interested in or something you want to pursue, I think you need to at least ask. Yeah. I mean, I think people often don't think things are possible. I'm interviewing a guy named Ben Nemton in the future. He was part of this group and they made a

book in a show called The Buried Life. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, he basically was like, had these three friends and the four of them said, let's make a list of the craziest things we can do. And they said they had two rules. It was you have a $100 million budget. And you, what was the other? It was like, you have no restrictions. You can do anything you want.

So, of course, anything you want. They made crazy lists, right? They were like, we're going to play basketball with Obama. We're going to go on Oprah. We're going to go ride a bull. And they made a hundred item list. And they were like, they took a van. And they're like, let's travel around the country and see how much of this stuff we can do.

And they were forced themselves to dream so big. And then they did it. Like they played basketball with Obama, which like I haven't interviewed him yet. I'm dying to understand how that all came together. But I think it's hard for people to realize what's possible until you really put your mind to it. And I know that sounds like such a cheesy catchphrase, but, you know, this podcast is a great example. I started my podcast, you know, five years after I thought about starting it. And I kept telling myself, does anyone really want to listen to this?

Is this going to be worth my time? And finally, a friend of mine interviewed me on his podcast. And he was like, hey, he asked, so tell me about this podcast you're starting. And I was like, well, I haven't started a podcast. He's like, I know, you have five days to record the answer this question and send it to me because you've been saying you're going to start this podcast for five years. And it's about time you do it. I love that.

And so I was like, great, I'm doing it. And now I'm like, I can't believe I waited five years to do it. And so I'm a big fan of. kind of throwing yourself off the deep end, sending the email before you're ready, just kind of saying yes as much as you can and seeing what comes your way. When there's another message in there about just like holding yourself accountable, and I think that when you put something out there like, hey, I'm starting a podcast or, hey, I'm writing a book or, hey, I'm flying to Japan or something.

I think when you put that out there to your friends, and especially on social media, then people can go, hey, Chris, what happened to that podcast or what happened to that book you were writing. What happened to that diet? You've been eating a lot of donuts from the looks of things lately. I literally had donuts last night. I feel like you've been looking right into my soul. Yeah, I mean, I think just writing things down gives you a boost on accomplishing it, telling people about it, gives you a boost on accomplishing it. There's all these tricks, and these are just like other tricks, right? I think time management hacks are super fascinating. We've interviewed a handful of people about managing your time, becoming indistractable.

and there's just tricks to how you can think about your day that will really improve whatever you're trying to do. One I love, as we're speaking about donuts, imagine you've got a bunch of donuts sitting down in the kitchen and you go in and you say, you know what, I'm not going to deprive myself of the donuts. I'm just going to tell myself I can have it in 10 minutes. And something about the fact that you can have it

makes you so much more comfortable not having it in the moment. And then something about waiting 10 minutes makes you realize you could get over that craving. And so every time I go in the kitchen, I see something unhealthy, I'm like, you know what, I'm going to have this in 10 minutes. By the time 10 minutes comes, I've kind of moved on, the craving's gone. I realize I can be healthier than I wanted. And that's literally like just something that I learned from a guy named Nere A. All. And I consider that a hack. Like it's not a first class upgrade. But, you know, hopefully when I look in the mirror over the next few years, it'll be an upgrade.

What's another great time management hack that you started applying to your own life? So I started realizing that this interesting concept of distraction, I always thought the opposite of distraction was focus. It's like you're distracted. You can't stay focused. And I learned from this interview that the opposite of distraction is actually traction. And so it's like if you're not, if you're distracted, you're just not doing the things and making traction towards the things you care about. And so he challenged me to start timeboxing the day. And instead of having an endless to-do list, it's, okay, you want to do this thing, make time for it. And if you don't want to make time for it, that's fine. If you want to make time for playing games on your phone, that's fine, too.

Just make sure you're being a bit more intentional. And in similar vein, another lesson was this woman was talking to Laura Vandercam, who I interviewed early on, and she's written, I don't know, five or six books about productivity and time management. And they said, gosh, I know, I never have time for anything. And later in the conversation, she said, yeah, my hot water heater broke last week, had to spend six hours trying to figure out what to do. And she was like, well, how did you, you said you had no time. And she's like, well, I had to make time. She's like, well, see, it's not about how much time you have. It's about what's a priority. And like, everyone has had a situation where something happens, you know, you break your foot, which I did

three weeks ago. Well, I wouldn't have told you I had a whole Sunday afternoon to go to the emergency room. But, you know, we found a way to make that work. And so it's really a prioritization game. And I think realizing that has helped me kind of make sense of time management in a way that I wouldn't have before because I was always using that excuse of, I just don't have time. I don't have time. Yeah. And it's funny how people that are always working so much, when they have to leave work early on a Friday for a flight or for a doctor's appointment, somehow magically their eight hours of work just gets crammed into three or four hours that day. And it's funny. You're right. It's just all about intention.

and it's all about prioritizing things. Yeah, another super easy one, especially when a lot of people listening are probably still working from home at least a few days a week. We were always doing laundry on the weekends. So it's like Sunday morning was laundry time. Yeah.

And for some reason, laundry took a lot of time. So we started doing laundry on the weekdays. And it's like all the time laundry really takes is like run it to the, you know, run it to the washer, move it to the dryer. And you can do it kind of at any time. So it became this thing that you could do. do in the five minutes in between meetings.

Whereas somehow on the weekend, it was like, well, the next three hours are laundry time. It was like, not a good use of that time. When I asked someone like, what did you do yesterday? Like, I did laundry. I'm like, okay, after those 10 minutes were done, what else did you do? Yeah, but it's so easy to fill the void. She's like, well, I got 45 minutes. So, next thing.

I don't really have anything scheduled. It's Saturday morning and you kind of waste the whole morning. So we started doing that on the weekdays. we started doing things like, you know, tidying up the living room. It's like, let's just do that in the middle of the workday when you have five minutes instead of like, have it be this thing that at the end of the day, you're like, oh, I've got to clean up the house at the end of the day and kind of makes your evening feel terrible. Yeah, that's a powerful one.

You talk a lot about career hacks. And I had a podcast episode recently where I talked about passion is the secret sauce of life. And I think that if you have passion in whatever it is in your life, your life will instantly be better. And I think that the biggest part for a lot of people in their life, one of the biggest thing that they spend time on is their job. And so many people just do not enjoy going to their job at all. My biggest goal coming out of college was that I wanted to have a job that I didn't hate going to. That was the bar I had set, a job that I didn't hate going to. And it actually ended up springboarding my entire career from there. So what are some great career hacks here to have a job that

perhaps maybe you don't hate. Yeah, well, I'll first challenge the thing you said about passion. Well, I guess you said passionate life, which I totally agree. But I learned something interesting talking to my brother-in-law who used to be a professional golfer. And it just, he loved golf, played it through college and was like, I'm going to try being a pro golfer. And then he just hated it.

It was just like, it wasn't what it was before. And then he took a job in sales. And it turns out he really loved sales also. but now he's kind of an amateur golfer, and he loves golf again. And so I think one common misconception is that, you know, the phrase, pursue your passion. I'm a pretty big fan of pursue your passion. I think people will live more fulfilling lives if they spend their time doing things they care about and really thinking hard about what it is you care about, right?

You could probably peel that onion back three layers and realize that whatever you care about might have even more opportunity to excite you. But that doesn't mean it has to be your day job. There are a lot of things that people care about that are best left being things you do on the on the weekends, right? A lot of people that play musical instruments, it seems so obvious. It's like, you know, I'm not going to necessarily quit my job to go be a professional pianist, but I like playing the piano. I don't actually, but great example. But for some reason, when your hobbies are more kind of work-related, people think they have to do that.

Like, if you're a writer, it's like, well, maybe you write in the mornings and that's fine. You can write a blog. You don't have to be a blogger. But if you want to, you certainly should kind of jump in and try to see how you can make that happen. And it's never been easier to try something new with the abundance of kind of side hustle opportunities out there. So if you're worried about needing to, you know, take a break from work, there's so many, you could be a notary. You could go and drive for Lyft or Uber or buy groceries. Like these might not be the most glamorous things, but just think back 20, 30, 40 years ago.

It was pretty hard to work for 10 hours a week for three weeks and make some money. And now it's really easy. But when it comes to finding that thing, I interviewed a woman who runs a website called The Muse. Her name's Catherine Minchu. And so there's some great stuff in there about how to find what you love and how to think about your career. But one of the kind of big things I've done in my career that's been helpful is just always realizing that you don't know every person you meet, how they'll play a role in your life and trying to add. value as much as you can because someday, sometimes, something's going to happen and you need to do that. So I've found like preemptive networking, you know, not when you need it, but kind of before you need it

is pretty valuable. And then I don't subscribe to the philosophy of like, I need a job. I'm going to apply for 50 jobs. I'm like, if I want a job right now, let's find the company that I am most excited about, that's doing the thing I care about. And let's go like all in on trying to get a job there. And it doesn't always work, especially if you don't have the right skill set. But what I learned running a company was that there is nothing better than an employee that is so passionate about your business. And will I overlook whether they have the skills? No, right?

If I'm hiring an engineer to build a website and this person loves my company, has never done that? No, I'm not going to hire that person. Right. But if I'm looking at two candidates that could both probably do the same job and one of them is so passionate about the company, you know, I'm definitely going to take that person who's so passionate. And so finding ways to let people know that, I would say if you're trying to find a job at a startup and you, let's say you work in sales or business development, go bring them

a deal. Like go sell their product to some other company. And it doesn't matter if you close the deal. It's just, hey, I met this company. I told them how amazing your product is. You guys should talk to them. Like, who wouldn't want to hire that kind of a person? Yeah. It's an idea of bringing value. Like, bring value with whatever it is that you do. And it's so easy to do that when you're passionate about what it is. If this is a company, I'm excited about a product I want to see grow in the world, like, that's so easy. You know, I work at this company called Wealthfront,

and we build software and have services online and make it really easy for you to invest to build your wealth. And it's a thing I'm passionate about. My last startup, Grove was a personal financial planning startup. And so for me, I was like, when I met the CEO of Wealthfront, I was like, this is where I want to work. I want to help build these products. And I love thinking about different ways to help people save, invest, optimize their financial

situation. And so conversations at work are just like conversations with friends because I'm genuinely passionate about trying to solve this problem and building great products to do it. And so, you know, the only hard part is now I have my podcast. I'm like, gosh, I love both for the same reason, really, right? It's like I love helping people optimize their lives. And in one world, I get to build software to do it. And in another world, I get to interview experts and help share their stories.

What's a great investment hack since you mentioned investing? Yeah. So investing is tricky because, you know, the more regulations, the less loopholes. So I'll share two. One of them is kind of, you know, boring, but I think more powerful. And one of them is exciting and maybe slightly less powerful. Okay. The exciting one is the backdoor Roth.

So, a lot of companies have a 401K, and if they offer matching, you should take advantage of the free money. But if they don't, you know, I often say take advantage of tax-free accounts, like a Roth IRA. But if you make over a certain threshold, you're not eligible to contribute to a Roth IRA. And for reasons that I will never understand, the IRS does not allow you to directly contribute to a Roth IRA, but they do allow you to contribute to a traditional IRA, even if you're not eligible for the tax benefits, and then roll that money into a Roth IRA and then get the same equivalent tax benefits

of having put the money in the Roth IRA in the first place. You just couldn't because they're not eligible. There are a bunch of little edge cases. If you already have a bunch of money in a traditional IRA, it can be kind of complicated with taxes. But if you've never put money in an IRA and you're not eligible because your income, you can actually put it in a traditional IRA,

roll it over, now you have money in a Roth IRA, which you pay no taxes on any of the gains as long as you take it out in retirement. And that means that, you know, you can kind of invest it in anything. And, you know, the market generally historically has gone up and all of those gains are tax-free. But if you need to take that money out for any reason, you can take out your contributions without taxes and penalties. You can take money out to buy a house your first time. So there's, it's a little bit more flexible than a, in some retirement accounts. So that's the- So you're saying, if you're going to put money into a Roth, you should put it into a Roth rather than a traditional, or Roth IRA rather than a

traditional IRA? I'm saying if you want to put money into a Roth, but you're not eligible, you can put it in a traditional and roll it over and kind of skirt around the eligibility rules in a way that's been sanctioned. Like the IRS has said, oh, we're not going to come. Like, this is not, this is, wasn't the intention, but it's allowed in the rules and we're not going to, we're not going to have a problem with it. Now, that might change in the future. And honestly, it would be better if we could just let everyone contribute more to, to retirement account. It seems like it would be good. So that's the more exciting one because who doesn't like to find a way to do something

that the IRS is kind of making hard and get around it and get a tax break. Yeah. The more valuable one for me has just been automating my investments. So I do not subscribe to the philosophy that I know better than everyone else what to invest in. I try to play the broad market. And so I just put everything on autopilot. It's like I'm going to recurring, make this deposit. it. I put all of my long-term investing at Wealthfront and I just put the money on autopilot

automatically gets invested across index funds that cover the global stock markets. And for me, that's been the greatest way because if it's not automated, then you have to think about it. If you have to think about it, there's all this analysis paralysis, decision fatigue, when does it happen? And they kind of say time in the market is way more important than timing the market. So trying to get money in quickly is important. And the best way to do that is to take all the work out of it and just automate it. Yeah, I heard someone refer to this recently as taxing yourself. So, you know, if, for example, you make $1,000, you net $1,000 a week and the government had a new tax and now you only get $950 a week, you would somehow find a way to live on that $950 instead of the

thousand. This is the same thing. Just take that $50, invest it. You don't even see it because it's an automatic investment, and you're basically taxing yourself. Yeah. And I love to say, look, if you're not comfortable, start small and just raise it, right? I guarantee that if you put five bucks a month, you'll be able to make it work, and then 10, and then 15, and then 20. And next thing you know, that money is saving at a higher rate. It's growing at a higher rate. And, you know, there's nothing more exciting than seeing your net worth go up when it's because of the market, right? It's like, you didn't have, you know, you invested your money and it went up and you didn't have to save more or make more or spend less to have a greater net worth. That's a cool feeling.

Yeah. How about some podcast hacks? Because your podcast is growing at an insane rate that I feel like with the amount of episodes that you're in right now, this is like Dax Shepherd territory. Like this is like celebrity territory with the amount of downloads that you're getting. I mean, for me, it was let's take every, like this is the thing I want to commit to. So let's pull out all the favors. Let's ask around to see who knows someone interesting. Funny enough, something I learned going on the Tim Ferriss show and asking Tim about his podcast was, I think he said of the top 10 episodes, half of them were guests that nobody knew.

And so it really flipped this switch in my mind, which is like, it's really about finding people who you can connect with, who can tell a good story, who can add value to your listeners. And at the end of the day, the only game is creating good content. And so I think I've been fortunate that, you know, I started this late enough in my career that I'd built some relationships and, and kind of tried to pull out all the cards or pull out all the stops and ask all the favors at once. And so when we launched, I think, some quick, quick ones where have a couple episodes up there. Apple seems to have some crazy algorithm to determine how you end up on the charts. But, you know, once you're there, you kind of get a little sustaining boost because people find you on the charts. So at launch, I'm like all in on, you know, what can I do every, every person, send an email to

everyone I know saying, hey, I launched this, check it out, really appreciate it, leave a rating, leave a review. And that kind of helped give us that big initial boost. Everything after that was just creating content that I thought was good and, you know, not focusing on whether I thought everyone would love it, but whether I thought at least I would love it. And I think so many people get caught up in, will people like this? What do they think? If you just focus on what you like, then as long as there are more people like you out there,

you know, they'll probably enjoy your content more than if you focus on what someone else might like. Because you can kind of tell that it's not something you're genuinely interested in. And that genuine interest is important. Yeah, because if you sound excited about it during the interview, then your listeners will also be excited about it too, I feel like. Exactly. And at the end of the day, podcasts, as much as you might be here to disseminate information, right, people are doing this when they're not working, they're doing it on their free time. Maybe they're doing it when they're working too. But, you know, it's kind of entertainment. So I think I had to really process the fact that podcasting is another form of entertainment, right? You could watch a TV show. You could listen to music. And so you can't take everything too seriously, right? This isn't an academic course that people are, you know, enrolled in because they need a degree. So, yeah, have to kind of enjoy it, have a good time, make sure you realize that people are there just to be entertained and not take anything too seriously. You also did a couple of things. Look, I think

perception is reality. And I think you did a couple things that make people perceive your show to be a top show, even if maybe it wasn't. Like, you've got the website, you've got the dot com, all the hacks. I think that's important. You've got a great podcast logo. I think that's important. You've got great gear, which also, if it sounds good, people think it's good. If it sounds bad, people might think it's not a great show. Yeah, I mean, it is so cheap. When I started the show, I bought the Audio Technica ATR 2100X microphone. It's like 100 bucks.

And that was it. Plugged it into the computer. I went to a room that was really quiet. I just recorded straight on the computer. It wasn't a fancy setup, but the difference between recording on your computer, and recording on a $100 mic is a world of difference. And, you know, I'm happy to, if you have show notes, put the link to that mic. If you want to record anything, funny enough, after I started doing that, people at work in meetings

were like, gosh, you sound so good. And I was like, yeah, I bought this $100 mic. Like five people I work with now have a $100 mic at work. And they're like, I think people in meetings take me more seriously. And, you know, we probably all know someone at work who's got a light behind their screen. You can buy $20 light at work or on Amazon and put it behind your screen and brighten yourself up. But so few people invest in the mic. And it's such an easy upgrade to make yourself sound so much crisper.

And you don't even have to have a podcast, right? I'd be surprised if most people listening aren't on a video call at some point during the week. So just having something that sounds a little bit better, you know, may change perception. In the same way that we all make really snap judgments of. about things that were totally subconscious. So just sounding better is a quick hack for just workplace stuff. Man, there's so much, so much value here. Chris, it's been so great.

One of my life hacks, and I now end every episode with this, is gratitude. And I think that if you can start and end every day talking about the things that you have and you're grateful for that, it changes everything. So I end every episode asking my guests, what are three things in your life that you're grateful for? now? Three things. So, you know, the biggest one, we had a daughter during the pandemic. She's now for almost 15 months old. Congratulations. A COVID baby. I know. Although I would say everyone thought, oh, COVID baby, you know, nobody got to see them. And I was like, yeah, but that first year after

you have a kid, you can't really do anything. And in a normal year, all you're doing is watching all of your friends out there doing cool stuff while you're stuck at home. And I spent that whole year, I was like, you guys are all just sitting at home too. So I'm grateful, you know, we have a healthy, amazing daughter who is a good sleeper and a good eater. You know, that is probably like, you know, makes up for all three of the things I could be grateful for. But I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful that I found a company that I'm excited to work at, but most importantly, that lets me kind of explore my passion with the podcast on the side. And I guess most recently I'm grateful that I broke my foot at a wedding, dancing, and I am now able to walk without a walking boot on, which is just, you know, it might feel like a small thing, but it feels like a big thing for me.

I love it. Chris, thank you so much. Thank you for bringing the value. Thank you for your amazing podcast. All the hacks. So wherever people are listening to this right now, they can, find Chris's podcast, all the hacks. Yeah, check it out. Thanks for listening and thanks for having me. That is a lot of hacks. And hopefully there's something in there that'll make your life a little bit easier or save you a bunch of money. Thank you to my fellow Chris, Chris Hutchins, for joining us.

You can find all the hacks wherever you're listening to this right now. The show is growing like crazy. So I feel like if you start listening to it now, you'll be able to say, I used to listen to that show back at episode 26 and look at them now. Take a screenshot. Let us know that you're listening to this episode. Tag Chris on Twitter. He's at Hutchins.

Tag him on Instagram. He's at Chris Hutchins. Tag me. I'm at Chris Van Fleet. And I'll leave you with the words from the late great Jackie Robinson who said, life is not a spectator sport. If you're going to spend your whole life in the grandstand, just watching what's going on, in my opinion,

You're wasting your life. Be great. Be grateful. We'll see you on the next one for some more insight. Jim Rome takes on sports. Why? Because I have a job to do. With rapid fire takes.

So I don't want to hear from you lava pigs on this notion today. No idea what you're talking about. You're complaining more than you like to breathe air. It's like you get up in the morning only to complain and cry and moan on social media about things that you don't even understand. understand. He's the spitfire of sports smack. Ticket ban you of it. Get up in here. The Jim Rome Show podcast. What's your beef? Follow and listen on your favorite platform. You've been warned.