Rich Habits Podcast - 44: Your 8 Favorite Rich Habits from 2023

Episode Date: December 27, 2023

In this episode of the Rich Habits Podcast, Robert Croak and Austin Hankwitz revisit your favorite 8 rich habits from 2023!Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and we'll see you in 2024!---Be sure to check out Public's new ⁠High Yield Cash Account paying 5.1% APY.⁠ This is higher than anything else on the market and is FDIC insured up to $5M. ---Earn 5.1% APY using a Public HYCA, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Opt-in and share your email, ⁠⁠⁠⁠click here!⁠⁠⁠⁠Learn more about our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠4-module video course!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Download our FREE Budget Template, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠To learn more about Robert: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://stan.store/RobertJCroak⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠To learn more about Austin: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://stan.store/austinhankwitz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Contact: [e-mail] ---Hankwitz Group LLC has an existing business relationship with NEOS Investment Management LLC. The opinions expressed are those of the author, and the author owns several NEOS ETFs.

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everyone and welcome back to the rich habits podcast, a top 10 business podcast on Spotify. My name is Austin Hank Witts and as always, I'm joined by my co-host Robert Croke. Robert is a seasoned entrepreneur in his 50s with more than 200 million in company exits under his belt and I'm an entrepreneur in my late 20s with a background in finance and economics. Since quitting my full-time job in corporate finance a few years ago, I've built a seven-figure media business and I actively advise some of the most well-known fintech companies around the world. As the show name might suggest, every episode, we talk about rich habits as they relate to business, finance, and mindset. However, we try and bring you two unique perspectives, one from an industry veteran, which is Robert and the other myself,

someone who's still in the process of building wealth and figuring it all out. Robert, it's the last episode of the year. So what are we going to be talking about today? In this episode of the Rich Habits podcast, we're going to be breaking down your eight favorite wealth building strategies in this 2023 year and review episode. As you all know, we started this podcast in February of 2023 as a way for us to share our two different perspectives of business, finance, and mindset. Our 30-year age gap allows us to give you the listeners two sides of the story, both the boots on the business veteran side, as well as the new age entrepreneur side. This year has been one for the books. We've been able to climb the charts, grow our Instagram account to almost 10,000

followers, and build a wonderful community of like-minded individuals. 2024 is going to be even better. We're working on an email newsletter, monthly challenges, products, new digital downloads, and everything in between. So I couldn't be more excited for this episode. and rolling into 2024 with all of you. It's been one hell of a year, Robert, and we have so many people who trust us with an hour of their week, every single week, to learn, to hear different perspectives, to try and help them move forward in their wealth-building journeys. So we can't wait to continue to deliver immense value and opportunity by you all continuing

to tune in, listen up, stay engaged, and join our community. So this episode is actually going to be a little bit different. As you all know, we had so many great topics and strategies to share throughout the year. So in this episode, we're going to spend 30, 35 minutes now kind of revisiting your favorites. We looked in, we saw which episodes perform the best, which one had the highest engagement, the most comments, the most shares, all that fun stuff. And we took your favorite eight topics and wealth building strategies and compiled them now into this one episode. So, Robert, kick us off. Number one, fear of losing money. We all know it as analysis paralysis.

You sit on the sidelines. You listen to Uncle Bill. You read something on Facebook or Instagram. And it just prevents you from getting moving on your wealth-building journey. And I think 2023 has proven that this is a futile strategy and cannot happen. So many people going into 2023 stated that we were going into a recession. The markets were going to crash. real estate was going to crash. And meanwhile, everything from QQQ to VO to Bitcoin, everything has

been ripping. And that is why we have to cure this problem with fear of losing money and analysis paralysis, because sitting on the sidelines is worse. You think inflation takes your money and drags it down. You think you miss all of these opportunities. So there's opportunity cost involved. So many things go against this. And that's why you have to overcome your analysis paralysis. For me, Robert, I can really empathize with people who have this fear. At the end of the day, inflation is making our budgets tighter and tighter. The average American can't afford a $500 unexpected bill. There's a lot of factors working against people today that will continue to work against people in 2024. However, the rich habits podcast community are folks who

understand that, but who are now not scared of those factors working against them and instead want to overcome them, right? So here's what I mean by that. When we go into 2024, we want every single one of you to get over the fear of losing money because losing money, quite frankly, in the stock market and these investments, it's part of the journey. I would be lying if I said that I haven't lost a single penny investing, right? That's just not the case. So at the end of the day, though, if you invest in tried and true blue chip things, such as the S&P 500, the NASDAQ, Bitcoin, things of these long-standing track records, maybe Bitcoin's down as long as we might think. But certainly the stock market, over the long term, you will be in the green, right?

I think I saw a stat that was, after seven or eight years, there's a 98% chance that you have made money in the stock market if you bought on any day of the week and just held it for however many years, right? So, like, it doesn't matter if you're trying to timing it. long-term perspectives are what's most important. And Robert, I think this is a really interesting call-out. You know, we had this episode about how to invest during a recession. Keeping that long-term mentality, even during a recession, is so important. And I would argue that's how so many millionaires are made. Don't get me wrong, millionaires are made in bull markets for sure. But the real millionaires who

see past the fear, who see past the short-term thinking. And I'm sure you kind of had this mentality in 2008, Robert, with some of your real estate investments, right? But see, like, wait a second, The S&P 500 is down X amount of percent in 2022. That doesn't matter to me. I'm buying. I'm dollar cost averaging. Or, no, real estate's doing its thing. It doesn't matter to me.

I'm dollar cost averaging. I'm sticking to a plan. So I think what's really important for our listeners now going into 2024 is to know that if you don't get over this fear of losing money, you will never make money. You will never make generational wealth. And it's time to get over the fear. And it's time to get excited about investing next year. Yeah, 100%.

Everyone needs to understand that that millionaires truly are. made in recessions. People that have that mindset understand that when there's blood in the streets, there's just so much opportunity. That's how my brain works. I know that's how your brain works. And that's how everyone needs to think is that when the markets are down, real estate's down, and there's all of these opportunities out there, that's when you need to be buying. You don't want to be buying at the top when euphoria has struck and everyone's buying because that is the time when you're probably going to get wrecked in the markets because you waited too long by sitting on the sidelines. So such a great point. And I'm going to take us into point number two and get

that one started. Delayed gratification. This goes hand in hand with everything else in the episode as to when you should be spending that money and on what. And delayed gratification is so, so important in your wealth building journey because I see it every single day. People get a little money. They get a bonus. And instead of taking that money and investing it and getting started or going out and getting their first real estate property or whatever it may be, they immediately think, I'm going to go out and get the new iPhone. I'm going to go out and get that new shiny car that I've been looking at that I drive by the dealership or I'm looking at online. And that is just the worst possible scenario. Delayed gratification is so powerful. And if you can master that and really keep yourself held back on things

that you know you want and you desire, but you're going to get them when you get to the right point in your journey and not now, that is game-changing for people if they can master that. You know, Robert, as someone who is 27 years old, and I would imagine there's a bunch of people listening who are in their 20s and 30s right now, who, you know, there's still friends on Facebook with those people that went to college with. They still follow on Instagram or are followed by those people they went to college with and their buddies. And I feel like right now, especially at the age I'm at, a lot of my friends are like, how do I buy my first Rolex? I got to go do this. I want to go buy the car. I want to go flex on this or go on this European trip or whatever,

right? If you can afford those things, be my guest. But it's so funny, I was thinking this year, because I had a friend who, in no offense to my friend here, I'm not going to say any names, but I know for a fact that this friend should have not bought a Rolex. Like, I just know their situation. They should not have bought a Rolex, but they did anyway. And I'm happy for them. That's exciting. But I've not yet bought myself any fancy watches. And I'm worth 10 times this friend of mine, right? And I think that's because I would much rather have my money working for me, which is a theme we're going to get in here to a little bit, right? Velocity of money. But I would much rather have that $12, $15, $20,000 working for me and building wealth than sitting on my wrist,

especially considering my specific investment portfolio and the size of it versus where I want it to be. And so I know in the next three, five, 10, 12 years, I know maybe I can afford a Rolex or a cool car like this or that, but kind of having that delayed gratification mindset younger in your 20s and 30s is really, really important because if you're able to stay disciplined and you're able to kind of not give in to that fomo, the vacations or the materialistic things, you can instead take those thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars and experience the passive income, the portfolio income, the compound interest that comes with investing those throughout 2024 and beyond. Yeah, that is a great way to look at it. And so, so true. People get it backwards.

They go out and buy the fancy stuff first before they have financial stability. And it really all comes down to and you see this all the time. The goal is to be rich, not look rich. And as soon as everyone figures that out and they master delayed gratification, they're just going to crush it financially in the future. So yeah, I love this point. And I love this episode so far. This is so good. It just gives me goosebumps. I want you to say that one more time, actually, Robert, because that I think is really going to get people excited for 2024. Can we all make a pat here together on this episode that in In 2024, we are not going to try and look rich. We're going to actually try and get rich.

I like that. I love it. Yeah, because so many people have it backwards. I promise you they do. That's why I did a TikTok the other day talking about you see all these people with fancy cars and fancy clothes and you wonder how they made it. And I said, guess what? They didn't.

And those are the people that have high credit card debt. They're upside down on their cars. They have mortgages they can't afford. It just really comes down to understanding and mastering delayed gratification. So I love it. I love it. So number three goes right along with it. Changing your mindset. This one to me just is an amazing, amazing point that so many people struggle with. It's kind of two sides of the fence. Either they have this mindset that, you know, everyone else is evil that has money because they have a lack mindset or worse, they have this consumer-based mindset where as soon as

they get money, they think about how they can spend it rather than where they can invest it. And I think this is probably from one of my best videos and one of our best episodes of the year is if people can really make that mindset shift to a place where they understand and they think like an investor, it is the most mind-bending shift you can have in your life and you'll know it and you'll feel it as a person listening when you make that shift. Because when you get that extra $500, that's sitting in your savings account. You will already have a plan where that's going. You will have it dialed in and ready rather than going, oh, it's a Saturday afternoon. I just had a good lunch. I'm kind of bored. I'm going to go to the mall and just blow this $500. That mindset shift is what's

going to help set you up for the rest of your life, understanding that you have to think like an investor and not a consumer. You know, I think the first mindset shift you caught out is equally as important. I think some people, you know, it might be because of their upbringing. It might be because of their relationship with money, right? Everyone has a different relationship with money. And I think it takes a lot of self-reflection, self-awareness, and therapy and whatever else you have to do to get well as a human being mentally. But once you get to the spot where you have a healthy relationship with money and more of this abundance mindset than a lack mindset, you start to pivot away from this mindset of like, ooh, all those millionaires that live on that one side of the town and they're all

making this money and I hate them because they have all this money versus like, wait a second, if I play my cards right, I can do that too. I shouldn't resent someone or somebody because they played their cards right or because they had this understanding of something that I'm trying to learn as well. Now obviously privilege pulls into that and there's a lot of different perspectives there. But what we're trying to say is in 2024, you should not have the lack mindset of I hate people with money, but instead the abundance mindset of money is going to come to me. I'm going to invest. I'm going to start, I'm going to be this money focused person in 2024 and beyond. I think that's a very, very crucial. I think lack mindset is the killer of dreams. And so many people, I struggled with it

when I was very young. I'm very happy that I was able to overcome it early on in my career. Because once you realize money is abundant and success is abundant, then it just puts you in a situation where you just have to learn what works for you and implement those habits. And that's why we named the podcast Rich Habits is to get everyone to understand that having those rich habits will lead you to the promised land. And that really sets up the next point. Point number four, time sucks. This is one of my favorites today because I lost one of my closest friends probably 15 years ago, maybe 20 years ago. It was probably 15 years ago because he spent all of his time watching Netflix, watching football, doing fantasy drafts.

and playing golf. And he was so mad at the different trajectories of our financial lives. And I explained to him one day, I said, look, I don't do those things. I like to play sports, sure, but I don't waste 30, 40 hours a week on watching other men play a sport and betting on it. To me, that's just not a good use of my time. And time sucks really do ruin people's lives. And they don't even realize it because I believe it just is a stacking effect. First you get out of college, you start your job, you've got the good career, but you're getting involved with your buddies in your fantasy sports and you watch football every week. Totally fine if you watch football, but you just have to be cognizant about it because let's look at it. The NFL, college football, they've gotten really smart. Football used to just be

Saturdays and Sundays, but now it's Saturdays and Sundays, it's Mondays, it's Thursdays. All of a sudden, you're wrapped up five, six, seven days a week, two, three hours a day on these sports that you're watching that may bring you joy. That's totally great, but they're not helping your financial journey. So time sucks to me are very, very important. I'm never telling anyone to stop watching Netflix. I enjoy Netflix usually every night for an hour or two after everything is finished. I'm just saying be cognizant of what you're doing with your time and understanding the time value proposition of using your time wisely if you care to be financially free. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one.

For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero, More like Habinier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. Yeah, I think that last sort of segment there is what's really important. If you care, right, I think a lot of people right now, you know, if you are 100% happy, content, and you're feeling good about your financial situation, your financial future, you know, how much money you're earning every month.

Like, if you feel fine, dandy and perfect, then don't change anything. You're good. I mean, obviously you're content. But if you do have sort of this underlying, God, I wish I made more money or God, I wish I had more this or I wish I could do this more with my money. I really want to be this or that in the future. And you feel those things, but you're not doing anything about it because you say, oh, I don't have the time. But you're spending your time with these time socks, then like, you're, you know, that's what we're trying to say, right? Like, of course you have the time. You just don't realize the time you have because you think not having the time means, well, I can't give up my Saturday college football days or I can't give up my Thursday night football on my Monday night this or my Netflix at this or my video game that. of course you can.

Like it's, but it's how bad do you want it, right? It was just something we talked about. I think it was last episode, right? But it's like some people just, they want it, but they don't want it bad enough where they want to like sacrifice.

And we're not saying to make crazy sacrifices, but what we do want to encourage you all to do in 2024 is if you are unhappy with your current situation, figure out what sacrifices make sense where you can begin to inch toward the situation you want by trading those time sucks for, you know, learning a new skill or learning about something else or just whatever you can to move yourself forward.

And that's not even just for your financial journey. It's also for your health journey because health is wealth. I know so many people that make $40,000 a year, have a decent little house or an apartment, they have a car. They are the happiest people on earth. And then I know people that have $100 million that are miserable because they're so busy building their empire that they're not keeping up with their health. So it's all about balance for what works for you and everyone is different. And so I just think you just have to consider every.

thing in your life and what makes you the happiest. Because so many people live unhealthy lives, for instance, and say, oh, well, you have to die of something. And I think that's just one of the worst mindset issues you can have. Why not set yourself up for financial health, family, everything, and just have all of these things dialed. And that starts with managing your time well and making sure you're just not having all of these time sucks in your life. Okay. So we are on to point number five. velocity with your money. You hear me talk about positive arbitrage with your money all the time. Austin and I are always harping on this topic. I think it's so, so critical. And what does this mean? What does velocity mean relative to your money? Well, what it means in this instance is understanding

that you've made the money, but you can't just let it sit. I deal with people every single day, every week, where they made the money, they've got it in their savings account or their checking account or maybe it's under their mattress, but they're not doing anything with their money to keep up with inflation and have velocity on their money. So we look at it as dead money. If your money is earned and it's just sitting, that just put you in a situation where you're just not doing anything with it. So it's not growing. Earning is great, but that's only one tentacle of building wealth. From that, you have to put this money to work in the best strategies you can learn and get that money growing.

So that starts with having a goal in mind. You hear us preach all the time. You have to have goals, have this velocity on your money. And that just really comes with the overall strategy of what you're trying to accomplish. So there's so many ways to build that positive arbitrage with your money. So Austin, give us a couple ideas that the listeners can implement easily that we do within our portfolios to make sure that we always have the highest gains, we can with our money. Absolutely. So, you know, the first place my mind goes are the people who are sitting

on $5,000, $7,000, $15,000 in their savings account that's just sitting in a Bank of Tennessee savings account that's earning 0.004% interest or something, right? So if that is you, you absolutely should open up a high yield cash account on public.com. They just came out with it. 5.1%. It's more than wealth front. It's more than Robin Hood. It's more than SoFi. So you're earning the absolute most you possibly can. The second thing you should be thinking about as well is should you be investing this money, right? Is this money, you know, investable in the sense of a long term horizon? I think a lot of people make the mistake of, well, I might need the money or I might do this or might do that, which you might, but that's what the savings account is for, right? Once you've got your savings built

up, do what Robert said, have a goal. And that goal could be, oh, I want to max out my retirement account this year, $6,500, I guess $7,000 in 2024. That's great. Now to figure out how to invest that money. Are you going to open an account on Fidelity, on Wealthfront, on Charles Schwab? How are you going to do that, right? M1 finance, make a plan, have a goal and get aggressive, stay consistent and have velocity with your money. Now, another thing I think people should consider as it relates to velocity with their money is passive income, right? A lot of people are those kind of like visual learners, right? They see a number go up and down on a screen. Doesn't mean that. that much, but when they see that money hit their bank account, they're like, oh, wait, my money does

have velocity. So maybe you're investing into SPY or SCHD or other dividend-focused ETFs in single stocks, allowing you to make a little bit of passive income with your money. So it gets you excited about investing more. Whatever works for you, so you have velocity with your money, that's what we're trying to nail down here. I love it. And I'm glad you touched on dividends and diversity. That's just such an important part of building a sound strategy is making sure you're not all in on one sector. This doesn't get talked about enough. And many, many of the fake gurus that are selling you that high ticket real estate course, they're of course going to tell you that real estate is the great investment known to mankind. And it truly is one of the top three probably, but definitely

not the only one. So many times I get frustrated because they're telling you how you can get rich off of buying single family homes or multi-family, which is true. But it's a very, very long road. And it takes a long time to build up enough cash flow to live off of that. So you're still having to do your other jobs. So diversity is so important. And I'm glad you touched on dividends. All right.

So we are on to point number six, quitting your nine to five to pursue a side hustle. Now, Gary Vaynerchuk puts out a lot of great information, but this is one that I am 100 percent of point. opposed to with his teaching and his ramblings. And that is, he just tells everyone to go all in on their side hustle and guess what? That is not a good idea. You have to realize if you're going to build this side hustle, you have a dream, you have an idea, I want you to definitely do it and definitely be all in, but don't quit that nine to five just yet. And here's why. Gary kind of forgets maybe where he came from in not realizing that if you quit that nine to five that's paying your bills,

letting you eat, keeping your cell phone on, letting you pay your car insurance, and your side hustle doesn't work out right away. Guess what? You're not going to be able to be focused on the side hustle to be successful and grow it because all you're going to be thinking about on a daily basis is, where can I get money to pay my bills? So my recommendation is always keep the job. It doesn't have to be the job of your dreams. You don't have to love the job. But if it's paying you and giving you any kind of financial freedom at that moment, even if you're just breaking even on your bills, that allows you the stability to build the side hustle at nights, weekends, or whenever you have the time, then when the side hustle maybe gets earning you more money than the nine to five job and you're six months in or a year

in and it's really crushing it, then quit the nine to five job. So many people get it backwards and they're like, yeah, I'm going to go out and crush it. Well, guess what? I have companies right now that or two years old, one years old, three years old that I still haven't collected a paycheck from. Because when you're building that side hustle or you're building that startup, it can sometimes take years before you see any of the fruits of your labor. And having that nine to five gives you that stability so you can continue on with your life and stay focused because there's nothing worse in life than living with fear because you can't pay your bills. So please, please, this one is so important.

I couldn't agree more, Robert. I think a lot of people make the mistake of forgetting the total cost of quitting, right? They say, oh, my take home is like $4,000 a month or $5,000 a month, you know, whatever it is for you. But they forget, one, that's after tax. Two, your employer might be already doing some 401k matching. Three, you might also be forgetting about the cost of insurance, if that's dental, health. Like, there's so many different things that you might be forgetting about what that you will let go of in sacrifice when you do quit, right? I mean, I I was working my nine to five job at a healthcare company out of college. And I was making like 70 grand a year. I knew what I was doing. It was all cool. But then I realized like, oh, wait a second. Like I don't have insurance anymore. Oh, wait a second, I'm not getting my 401ks anymore, right? So it's like, I really need to start thinking about that on my own. And when you think about it, you're like, man, this is a little bit more expensive than I was thinking about it was going to be right in the beginning. So don't get us wrong. We want you to have the side hustle that turns into a billion dollar business. We want you to have the side hustle that's making you all the money. But we also want you to retire a millionaire.

And if you find yourself quitting your job so you can say, I'm going to go start a side hustle or go start a business of e-commerce or something drop shipping or be something, whatever, right and you quit your job first to go focus on that you now to robert's point will only be thinking about wait a second how do i pay my mortgage how do i pay my rent how do i put clothes on my kids how do i do a bc xyz instead of working from 9 p m to midnight every night for six months on the side hustle building it to whatever it's going to look like and then once you're making so much more with the side hustle than you are with your nine to five job then you can weigh the pros and cons but robert said it right people get it backwards so don't get it backwards in 2024 yeah when i first and really got into my entrepreneurial journey. I did exactly that. I worked as an F&I finance and insurance advisor for a car dealership, a family of car dealerships. I was crushing it. I was 23 years old. I was making so much money. I had a free car insurance and everything. And my grandmother passed away and I had the opportunity to buy our family's restaurant and bar that had been in the family at that time for like 35 years. And so what I did,

instead of quitting my job and going all in on that with the unknowns of, am I going to make money, how is it going to work with the new management, me renovating and all of that, I went to my boss at the car dealership and I said, hey, I have this great opportunity with my family. I would like to buy this business and keep the legacy going.

Can I take a demotion? So I talked him into allowing me to take a demotion back down to car salesman. I had specific hours based on my ability to be able to work the other position with building up the restaurant and bar and taking it over. And I did that for about a year and a half. And it was the smartest thing I did because they provided me a car. They provided me insurance and all of those things. And I think that was one of the smartest things I did early on in my career was allowing myself to still thrive while growing this other business. And when the other business took off, then I resigned from the car dealership and the rest was history. And that was around 23 years old.

So that's why I'm just a strong proponent. Keep your stability, no matter if you love the job or not, until you surpass that income amount and you know you can kind of pass the torch to your own thing and still have that stability. I love it. What a great story. Okay. Let's go into, and this leads right into number seven, starting or optimizing your small

business. I think there's three really key points that people lack. And this was a really, really good one throughout the year that everyone, latched on to. And that really starts with lack of funding, I think, is the number one thing that hurts small business owners. They start with an idea and people just tend to not realize everything takes longer and costs more. So lack of funding is always a big issue that can hurt the best idea. I don't care if it's lawn care, restaurant, barbershop, electrical contractor. If you're underfunded, it goes back to that point where you're focusing on getting money and not growing the business,

that's a big, big issue. So lack of funding for me is a big one. Number two is understanding having your website optimize to make sure you have all the search engine optimization things handled. So you get the traffic you need because word of mouth is great. But having that free traffic from Google and Bing and these other web sources is better because that is just traffic that's coming in that you can optimize. And then third, right along with that is having your marketing.

and funnel optimized. I did a big project just a year ago where the founders and the original investors of that project did not think they needed to have this marketing and their funnel optimized because they said the business was going to be so incredibly busy that adding marketing to it would just be a waste of money. And unfortunately,

they learned the hard way by being late to that marketing. Like, you know, as they say, you can't unring the bell. And it was just one of those fights where I've seen it for decades, of partners of mine and other people that think that marketing should come last when owning or operating a small business. And it's absolutely incorrect. Marketing should be first. You can have the best hamburger, give the best haircuts, or mow the lawn better than anyone

else. But if you don't have eyeballs, you're not going to succeed. So everyone needs to understand and everyone following along, please, please understand that as you're growing your businesses and growing your personal brand, marketing and eyeballs are paramount. your future success. You know, I saw this post about OliPop on Twitter or LinkedIn or one of these platforms saying how OliPop did 30 million in revenue in 2021, which is also, you know, just a wild success to begin with. But because they doubled down on user generated content on TikTok and not this weird like, you know, the traditional paid marketing, you know, I'm going to run a commercial on TV, newspaper ad type vibes. But instead went all in on TikTok and Instagram and Twitter,

these platforms that all of you small business owners listening right now have access to, they grew their revenue to over $200 million in 2023. That is absolutely bonkers to me, right? So if you are a small business owner listening right now and you sell a product, you sell a service, if it's national, if it's regional, whatever you're doing, do yourself a favor in 2024, make content about it, tell the world about it, document the process, like whatever you have to do, but start publishing content about what you're doing because that video that you

publish of your t-shirt company might get put in front of the eyeballs of a podcast producer, and then they want to interview you on their podcast because of your small business. And then that gets you 500 more customers, right? Like, who knows who's going to see these videos? But by not making them, you guarantee that no one is going to find it and no one's going to see it. So just give yourself the chance. I love this take from you because, and we talked about this a few months ago, just one

short year ago, I was teased by some business associates. And they said to me one day, and it was shocking to me, they said, why are you on TikTok? Isn't TikTok just for high school girls to dance? And that really presents a mindset issue. They didn't understand what the value of TikTok was at the time for me in my 50s. And it was just shocking to me that they would take that mindset approach and that kind of, you know, passive aggressive approach with me of not understanding the value. So if people don't understand something, they generally last. out and show fear because of their lack of knowledge. And it's so important for people because I

deal with it now all the time where brands could be doing $5 million, $10 million, $2 million a year, or maybe even only $500,000 a year and they're just getting started. And they're not on TikTok. And TikTok right now is the most powerful commerce platform there is for personal brands and consumer brands or any kind of service-based business. So don't fear the unknown. Go at the unknown and figure it out. I remember this is going way back long before Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter back in the day for silly bands when we had our huge, huge success, let's call it 2010. I remember people thought I was crazy because I was spending over $20,000 a day on Google AdWords and they thought I was nuts. They were like, are you just, they just didn't get it.

And I got so tired of explaining to everyone. If they don't understand it, it doesn't mean it's bad and I would literally waste my time explaining the ROI that by spending that 20,000 a day, we were doing 150,000 a day in sales. And people couldn't understand that. So never let people that aren't going where you're going that have the knowledge and the understanding of your industry tell you what you should do because you will make big mistakes if you listen to people that aren't going where you're going. Couldn't agree more, Robert. And this brings us to number eight, our final wealth-building strategy that is tried and true and is going to follow us into 20-24 and beyond, and that is time in the market is more important than timing the market. I think at the end of the

day, a lot of people make the mistake of seeing Apple or Microsoft or Bitcoin or Ethereum or whatever the security might be, be up or down or left or right. And they say, oh, it's up. I'm going to buy it. It's going to keep going. Or, oh, it's doing this. I got to keep moving and keep trading it. Up and down. Up and down. And I'm in and I'm out. I'm in and I'm out. One, that's exhausting. Just saying that made me have to take a breath, first off. But more importantly, people make the mistake of turning investing into what could be a damn full-time job for them because they're trying to time the market, come in and come out and make all this money. 78% of day traders lose money in the first year of day trading, right? I think that is such an

important statistic because we're shown by these fake gurus or the headlines or the people on Twitter or Instagram or TikTok. Yeah, if you bought bank cryptocurrency at 4.000, billionths of a cent, you would have a trillion dollars now. Don't you feel bad? How do you feel about that? And so we have this weird fomo of like, oh my gosh, what did I do wrong? I should have bought my crazy crypto and I could have been a bigillionaire by now. I'm doing all this wrong. Okay, let's take a step back. But that's not the case, right? We are all investing over the long term and the S&P 500 and these other index funds that we've been talking about for the last year. And what's so important to me to understand and for you all to understand is that being in the market is more important.

than trying to time the market because of the best most profitable days in the market compounding on themselves year over year. Here's an example for you, Robert. $10,000 invested in 2008, right? Recession. Very bottom would be worth about $40,000 right now. Okay. And that's if you stayed in and wrote it to the top. But if you tried to jump in and jump out like the headlines and the fake gurus are trying to tell you to, if you missed the best 20 days, only 20 days out of 15 freaking years, Robert, 20 days. I can't even begin to imagine the statistics on that, right? But 20 days and you missed them because you were out of the market, jumping in and out, trying to optimize and time and do all this crazy stuff, you would only have $9,600. You would have less than what

you started with 15 years ago because you tried to jump in and out of the market, trying to time it, trying to day trade, whatever the heck you're trying to do. Please don't do that in 24, buy, hold, set it and forget it, automation, every single paycheck, just do it that way. It's so much easier. I love this and I'm so glad we made it the last point of this amazing episode. Just because like this week, you mentioned bonk, my lives this week have been riddled with Bonk and Cybria or Cybria, the two moonshots that have happened in the last couple weeks in the crypto industry.

And yes, those are great. If you catch one of those, awesome, good for you. You turned $1,000 into $100,000. But for the 99.9% of the people that don't, that's why you need to have tried and true practices and strategies to build wealth. We are not in the crystal ball business. We are in the education business. And we try to educate everyone on tried and true practices to build wealth over time in all sectors,

whether it is cryptocurrency, it's real estate, it's stocks, it's index funds. It doesn't matter. It's all about having a good strategy sticking with it because it's not about timing the market. It is time in the market. One of my favorite things to put out there. And I'm so glad we ended this episode with that phrase. As am I, Robert. You know, everyone that celebrates Christmas just celebrated Christmas yesterday. Everyone else that celebrates incredible holidays. We hope you had an incredible holiday and a great holiday season over the last several weeks. We are so grateful that you came back and listen every single week to the Rich Habits podcast. More than 60,000 of you, 80,000 of you have your notifications turned on on Spotify. That is mind-boggling to us. We've almost hit 10,000

followers on our Instagram account. We get dozens of DMs every single day with questions. 2024 is going to be a blast. Robert alluded to it before. We're coming out with the email newsletter. We're coming out with the products. We got the website cooking. We're doing all these fun thing so this community can grow and thrive next year. And we are so grateful that you are joining us in that journey. Again, as Austin stated, we are over the moon and so grateful for all of you that support us on this journey. And we all learn and grow together. So if you love the podcast, please, please give it a five-star review, share it with a friend, share it with a relative, and just keep following along with us on this rich habits journey so we can all enjoy financial

freedom and have wonderful, wonderful holidays. With that being said, have a very happy new year. We'll see you in 2024.