Rich Habits Podcast - Q&A: LLC vs. Sole Prop, Consolidating Investments, and the Avalanche Method

Episode Date: February 15, 2024

In this episode of the Rich Habits Podcast, Robert Croak and Austin Hankwitz answer your questions!---Public has finally released options trading on their platform! To learn more about all of the prod...uct features Public offers, ⁠⁠⁠click here!⁠⁠⁠---Watch the replay of our Covered Call webinar, click here!Check out our ⁠Credit Card Benefit Matrix, click here!⁠---⭐ Download our FREE Budgeting Template – click here⭐ Earn 5.1% on your savings with a High-Yield Cash Account – click here⭐ Automatically buy stock where you shop with Grifin – click here⭐ Protect your family with term life insurance from Suriance – click here⭐ Use code “Spotify” for 15% off our 4-module video course – click here⭐ Optimize your portfolio with Seeking Alpha – click here---👤 Explore everything Austin does – click here 👤 Explore everything Robert does – click here❓ Ask us questions for our Q&A episodes – @richhabitspodcast on Instagram📬 Inquire about working together – christian@witz.vc---Options are not suitable for all investors and carry significant risk.  Certain complex options strategies carry additional risk. Options can be risky and are not suitable for all investors. See the ⁠⁠Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options⁠⁠ to learn more.For each options transaction, Public Investing shares 50% of their order flow revenue as a rebate to help reduce your trading costs. This rebate will be displayed as a negative number in the “Additional Fees” column of your Trade Confirmation Statement and will be immediately reflected in the total dollars paid or received for the transaction. Order flow rebates are only issued for options trades and not for transactions involving other assets, including equities. For more information, refer to the ⁠⁠Fee Schedule⁠⁠.All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principal. Brokerage services for US-listed, registered securities, options and bonds in a self-directed account are offered by Open to the Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA & SIPC. See ⁠⁠public.com/#disclosures-main⁠⁠ for more information.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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Starting point is 00:01:08 video right now to see Robert and I sitting next to each other in his office. We've built a nice little studio specifically for this episode. We might come back and use it a little bit more in the future, but we are really excited to be in person together here answering your questions. Yes, couldn't be more excited to have Austin here in sunny South Florida and we get to film in for only the second time in over a year. So this is going to be fun answering all of your amazing questions in today's episode. But before we jump into the questions, we have to give our title sponsor, Public.com, their flowers.
Starting point is 00:01:46 As you might know, public.com is the all-in-one investing platform. And now they've launched options trading. And with it, they're doing something no other brokerage has ever done before. Public is sharing 50% of their options trading revenue directly, you the customer. So whenever you trade options on public, you get something back. And of course, there are no commissions or per contract fees either. By sharing 50% of their options revenue, you'll know exactly how much they make from your options trades, because public is literally giving you half of it. In other words, it's a much more transparent approach to options with no
Starting point is 00:02:25 fees and you get something back on every single trade. So go to public.com. and activate options trading by March 31st and lock in your lifetime rebate. And as a quick reminder, this was paid for by public investing. You must activate this options account by March 31st for the revenue share. And, you know, options are not suitable for all investors and do carry significant risk. Full disclosures, however, are in the podcast description. Go check that out. And of course, this is U.S. members only.
Starting point is 00:02:56 With that being said, let's jump into our very first question brought to us by May. May says, Hey, everyone. I am seriously your biggest fan. Your podcast has changed my life completely. I have a couple of questions that maybe you can clear up for me. I used an app called Fidelity to buy my first index fund. It's kind of a weird app and I'm having a hard time understanding it. I'm wondering if you're able to shed light on where I should go to buy index funds on a regular basis. That's a little bit easier to use. Right now I'm using Cash App, Fidelity, and SoFi for all of my investing needs. Robert, you want to kick this one off?
Starting point is 00:03:29 Yeah, May, great question. And it's really kind of a complex one, but we're going to break it down the best we can. In this situation, I think you should condense down. I would look at public.com because it is, in my opinion, the easiest platform to use. And with public, what is great about them is you can do your crypto purchases there. You can invest in music royalties, treasury bills. There's so many different aspects of it. But the UX, the user experience is so simple. So for people just starting out, it's definitely our favorite platform. So I would start there. But there are many other platforms that we use as well, but I think public would be the start. Public.com, super easy to use, May. You're going to love it. I think what's also important to mention, and Robert called this out, is you don't want to have all of your investments scattered across 17 different investment accounts that you can't keep track of, right?
Starting point is 00:04:21 The only way you're going to be able to meaningfully build wealth throughout your life is being able to easily track how that is being built. You want to know exactly how much is being invested, where that's being invested, what funds, stocks, or assets you have that money inside of. And it's really hard to do that if you have 12 different accounts you have to check up on every single week or month or quarter, however often you rebalance your portfolio. So do your best to consolidate that if that's on public, if that's on an Excel spreadsheet. But whatever you got to do, don't do this. Cash app, fidelity, so-fi, don't do any of that, right? Consolidate on public. and get after it.
Starting point is 00:04:57 And really, it's not a one-size-fits-all approach. So do what works best for you. Figure out the platforms that are the easiest because I'm going to tell you what. If you're nervous or scared that you're going to make a mistake, you're not going to be consistent. That's why we want you to use what works best for you
Starting point is 00:05:15 because this is never going to be a one-size-fits-all kind of educational process or learning curve. So just really understand what works best for you, consolidate it down, and then be able to be consistent. Those are the key takeaways here. Yeah, Robert, we were actually on a live stream last night. I think it was on TikTok.
Starting point is 00:05:33 Robert and I go live every Thursday night around 8 o'clock p.m. Eastern time. And there was a woman who had added a comment in the chat that said, I'm starting to invest for the first time and I'm using cash app. Is that okay? Of course it's okay because you're starting to invest, right? You're taking that first baby step toward the right direction. So what we're saying here to Robert's point is it doesn't matter what app you use. It's whatever it works for you so that you can be consistent and you're always motivated
Starting point is 00:06:00 and continually adding more to the markets over time. Amen. That is perfect. All right. Our next question comes from Mikas. Mikos says, I recently found your podcast on Spotify and have gained so much knowledge. And even though I'm only on episode 10, I'm learning a lot. Now, here's the deal. My student loan debt is currently around the $90,000 to $100,000 mark. And I'm a little confused by when you guys say that I should be attacking consumer debt aggressively. How does someone attack consumer debt aggressively? Does that mean the snowball, the avalanche method? What should I be focused on here? All right, I'm going to try and take a first stab at this one, Robert. When we say that, and the reason we say that here is if we think about our financial picture holistically here for a moment, which really important is you want to be
Starting point is 00:06:46 focused on that high interest debt. Robert always talks about arbitrage with your money, right? So, for example, I have a 3% interest rate on my mortgage. I've got a mortgage of about $250,000. I would much rather take that $250,000 and invest it into the S&P 500, which we know returns 8, 9, 10, 11% annually over a long period of time than use it to pay off something that's only charging me 3% interest, right? That 10% minus the 3% interest is that 7% arbitrage that Robert alludes to. Now, when you're ready to pay off the consumer debt, the high interest consumer debt. If that's credit cards, if that's student loans, personal loans, whatever that might be, the best way that Robert and I mathematically like to approach it is the avalanche method. Here's what we mean
Starting point is 00:07:32 by that. If you guys listen or have heard of Dave Ramsey, you probably heard of the snowball method. That's what he uses. And, you know, it works for people. I get that. But mathematically speaking, it's not the fastest and most effective way to pay off your debt. And that's what Robert and I want to do. So the avalanche method, essentially what you're doing here is you're focusing on paying off the debt with the highest amount of interest every single loan there. So, for example, if you have credit card debt, that's a 30% interest, and you have student loan debt, that's only at 8% interest, you want to pay off the 30%. You can't out-invest high-interest credit card debt.
Starting point is 00:08:06 Now, as we think about the avalanche method for you here, Mekas, what you want to be doing is you want to write down on a piece of paper or whatever you can do, but write down all your different loans and the interest rates next to them, and then categorize them in priority of highest interest rate first. When you do that, you know exactly what loan needs to be paid off that month. Now, Robert, talk a little bit more about what it means to attack the debt aggressively. What changes does MECOS have to do on a weekly, monthly basis with his money to ensure success? Yeah, you crush that and there's just a couple things I want to add.
Starting point is 00:08:39 And that is really having that hard conversation with yourself, your wife, your husband, whatever it is in your situation, to understand you have to take this very very. very, very seriously because, and that's why we say attack it aggressively. Because if you just make these minimum payments and you're casual about it, you're never going to get to a position of that positive arbitrage where you're building towards your future wealth because you're always going to be backpedaling trying to pay on these high interest payments. So what we say and what we mean by this is do whatever you have to do. Look at all your bills. Do that honest budget to figure out exactly where you're at each month and then make drastic changes. I see people every single week and every
Starting point is 00:09:25 single month that make little changes, but they're still paying on these high interest debts for years and years and years. You're not going to do that because you're watching the rich habits podcast. You're going to stop in your tracks right now, sit down with a notepad, figure it out, and then you're going to go hard on getting these paid off. That might mean taking a second job. That might mean getting a side hustle on weekends. Whatever it takes, selling items for your house. I don't care what you do as long as you take it seriously and you attack it with vigor to get these high interest debts paid off as soon as possible because, as we always say, you can't out invest high interest debt. So you have to be very serious about it and
Starting point is 00:10:05 get after it right away. And I mean, listen, Robert, you just gave three examples on how people could put more money in their bank account every month, the side hustle, the second job, the selling the items, sometimes getting aggressive with consumer debt also means making sure more money doesn't leave the bank account. So you're not buying those brand new on-cloud shoes. You're not buying the Lulu lemons. You're not eating out with your buddies. You're not going to the bar, right? You're putting more money, being intentional with how you're spending your money so that you can then allocate this margin that you've created in your budget to paying off this debt. Our next question comes from Michelle. Michelle says, I've heard you mention these new options,
Starting point is 00:10:43 opportunities on public.com. I've clicked and I've created the account. I've locked in my 50% rebate. But something mentioned on the disclosure caught my eye that I'm not sure what it meant. It said I had to open a margin account. Can you all explain to me what a margin account is and why I need one to trade options? Okay, Michelle, great question. And I'm sure other people listening right now probably also have that question if they have gone on to public and created one of these option trading accounts. Essentially, what a margin account is is, one, go listen to our, I think, our recent episode, we talked about how a guy took a margin loan on his portfolio. But essentially what you're doing here is you're going into debt to invest. Now, before everyone freaks out,
Starting point is 00:11:27 no, we're not telling people to go into debt to invest. However, the underlying financial instrument of option contracts have a leverage aspect to them, if that's calls, put, whatever your strategy is, they have a leverage opportunity that come with them. And that is what they want to make sure that you understand. Again, we're not telling people to go leverage themselves up to their eyeballs and go all in on Tesla stock. That's silly. But you do need to know if you do purchase a call option, you're essentially making a leveraged bet on a stock price to go up, just like if it was a put option, a leverage bet for the stock price to go down. or if you do what I do, you actually own all 100 shares of stock, which honestly is I think
Starting point is 00:12:12 the only way people should be thinking about options, but you own 100 shares of stock and then you write a covered call option contract against the stock you already own, allowing you to generate income inside of your portfolio passively. Robert and I had a whole webinar where we explained all of this. We sat down together for about an hour and a half. We had visuals, we had guests. We even had people from the NEOs team, right? The Wall Street experts that have been doing this for 20 years come in and demystify everything. There's going to be a link in the show notes below to go watch the replay there. But Robert, do you have any perspective here about this sort of misnomer of what a margin account might be as it relates to trading options?
Starting point is 00:12:52 Yes, I do. And I love that explanation. And you got really excited about that and really went down the rabbit hole here. So I'm going to back this train up. I don't know if there's a song lyric that can go with this, but we're going to back this train up. We shouldn't even be worried about this. If we're just getting started, we're just getting into investing, we just opened our first account and we're excited to get the VOO or the Bitcoin or whatever. We don't care.
Starting point is 00:13:17 Neither should you be worried about options, trading, or any of that stuff, margins, any of that, you want to do the basics. You want to get your basics dialed in, get that first 100K invested, saved, and really making you this passive income. and then you can start to really implement these advanced tactics. So many people get excited about investing, and then they jump over all of these important steps that are so important in the beginning, and that is learn the basics, get yourself dialed in with that first $100,000, and then come back to us, and we can talk about some advanced strategies. So that's my takeaway.
Starting point is 00:13:56 Get it simple, get it dialed, and get it consistent. Even Warren Buffett said recently that he took, told to his wife, he said, when I pass away, I want you to do two things. I want you to put my money in V-O-O and treasury bills because it's simple, it's basic, and it's tried and true. So don't get ahead of yourself. Get the basics dialed first. Then we can talk about the advanced strategies. And you know, Robert, you mentioned the first $100,000. And I think it's really important for people to realize that that is the goal, right? At the end of the day, a lot of us are starting to invest for the very first time here. And 100,000 is really intimidating. But that's the long-term goal. But how can we kind of
Starting point is 00:14:36 break that down into smaller bite-sized chunks of investment account value? So maybe take off some zeros. Get your first thousand, right, into the markets. Maybe your first hundred bucks, right? That's just these little baby steps. Then you have your 1,000, then 10,000, then 20,000, 50,000, 100,000, right? Don't be discouraged when you hear Robert and I say, you want to get that first 100K is like, oh my gosh, I'm never going to have $100,000 to invest, not in my financial situation. That might be okay. Like that might be your reality. But do you have 100?
Starting point is 00:15:07 Do you have a thousand, right? Where can you start and take those baby steps to begin moving toward your wealth-building journey in a meaningful way? Yeah, and I want to actually bring that back up again. And thank you for making me remember that point is one of my earliest videos that did like 10 million views was about that because I got so sick of seeing all these fake gurus saying, if you only have $5,000 or $10,000, don't bother starting investing because it won't do you any good. And it's just the worst advice ever.
Starting point is 00:15:37 Because if you be consistent, even with $100 or like you said, $500 or $1,000 and you're putting that in every month or whatever it is, it could be $100 a month. As long as you're being consistent over time and letting compound interest do its job, you will create wealth. It's just all about understanding that you have to be committed. to being consistent and don't worry about the dollar amount because so many people think, even now after we've been at this for over a year, people think that you need to have $20,000 or $50,000 to get started and it's just not accurate. And it's so important for everyone to understand this. And just to piggyback on that here for a second while you were talking, I pulled up my investment calculator, $100 a month invested into the S&P 500, which over the last 90 years
Starting point is 00:16:26 has returned an average of 11.88% annually, 100 a month for the next 30 years is $622,000. Right? That's just $100 a month. And you think, oh, my gosh, that's nothing. I'm not even going to bother investing because $100,000 is going to get me anywhere. It's going to get you to $622,000. So always start. There's always a reason to start and do not be, you know, taken back by a big number like $10,000, $100,000, a million, right? That's the end goal. But we have to take baby steps to get there. Before we jump into our next question, I just want to remind everyone that public is officially the cheapest way to trade options. That's because they're doing something no other brokerage has done before. They're sharing 50% of their options revenue directly with
Starting point is 00:17:13 you, the customer. Whenever you trade options on public, you get something back minimizing your transaction costs. So go to public.com and activate options trading before March 31st to lock in your lifetime rebate. Public.com, the cheapest way to trade options. And just as a reminder, we're pulling some of these questions from the public app. Robert and I both posts there pretty frequently. You'll see our posts. You can comment below it, whatever your question might be. We also pull these questions from our email address, rich habitspodcast at gmail.com, as well as our Instagram account, Rich Habits Podcast. So if you have a question for the podcast and you want to get it answered, send us a DM, an email, a comment, anything you can do to get in
Starting point is 00:17:55 touch with us. We are all over the place. Now, our next question comes from Monanith. I hope I said that right. Sorry if I didn't. Hi, Austin and Robert. My husband and I do not qualify for a Roth individual retirement account because of our income. I know that there is something called a backdoor Roth IRA, and we're trying to figure out how to do that. Do we just contribute the maximum of $7,000 all in one go, or do we transfer money every month into the account? We're kind of confused on what to do. Okay. So, what you want to do here is contribute as much as you plan to contribute throughout the entire year in one go if that's 7,000, 5,000, you know, up to 7,000, do it in one go. And then after you contribute that money, you need to convert the account, the traditional IRA into a Roth IRA.
Starting point is 00:18:45 I had someone tell me recently that they were making the mistake of putting it into a traditional IRA and then they would move the money to a separate Roth IRA or they didn't convert the account, they just moved the money. They just like, oh, one to the next. Like, no, you have to convert the account from a traditional IRA into a Roth IRA. And once you've done that and it's all converted, I think it's the form 8606, I think that's the name of the form that you have to make sure your accountant files on your behalf there. And then only then will you take that $7,000 and begin investing it into the markets. Yeah, the only thing. I would add is a little pro tip, and that is if you have any other money sitting in other traditional
Starting point is 00:19:25 brokerage accounts, maybe with another vendor or somewhere else, is to make sure that you get that migrated as well, because you don't want to cash that out. You want to migrate it along with the other funds just to be safe and make sure you follow the rules. Yeah, it's called the pro rata rule, I believe, Robert, and it's definitely important. So make sure that this 7,000 is the only money you have in a traditional IRA anywhere out there in the ethos. Our next question comes from Nevada. Nevada says, Austin and Robert, I'm almost 45 years old. I have a fully funded emergency fund.
Starting point is 00:19:59 I max out my retirement accounts. I'm doing everything correctly. But I'm a little confused about the difference between mutual funds and ETFs. At the moment, I have all of my money invested into an S&P 500 mutual fund. However, you guys always talk about the S&P 500 ETFs. what the heck is the difference? Robert, want to walk us through that? You hear us talk about these ETFs all the time, and we don't really talk about mutual funds
Starting point is 00:20:26 that much, and there's several reasons, but the number one reason for me is the management fees. Mutual funds are much more expensive because they're actively managed, so they're not going to perform as well overall as like a VOO, like we talk about these ETFs that are low cost and very efficient. number two in this kind of stratosphere of advantages is tax efficiencies. ETFs are much more tax efficient for you in the long run than a mutual fund is, and we could talk about that for hours, but it's very important to understand that.
Starting point is 00:20:58 And number three is diversification. With these ETFs and that flexibility, you just have much more ability to diversify your funds in your portfolios through these ETFs. That's why we like them so much. You know, and additionally here, Robert, ETFs, they're not just so flexible, but what's cool about them is they don't have the minimum investments, right? When we talk about flexibility, I mean, shout out to that person who commented on our live stream of the night. You know, she said that she started buying VO on cash app with just $3, right? You could not do that with a mutual fund.
Starting point is 00:21:34 Normally they have minimum investments. We have to put in $3,000, right? But you can go buy fractional shares of the S&P 500 index. via V-O-O-O or SPY, anytime you'd like if that's cash app or public. And something else about mutual funds, too, that are really important to know is, you know, they do not have the same flexibility that ETFs do from a purchasing price perspective, right? So I can go on to public right now if I wanted to and buy V-O-O for whatever it's trading at at the moment, whereas with a mutual fund, I would have to allocate my funds to the mutual
Starting point is 00:22:06 fund. And then at the end of the trading day, and only at the end of the trading day, the mutual fund executes the purchase for me, right? So I don't really get the flexibility to choose when my money gets deployed. It's deployed by someone else's time schedule. So at the end of the day here, Nevada, if you want to move money from a mutual fund into an ETF, that's totally up to you. However, for our convenience, flexibility, and autonomy, we choose ETFs specifically V-O-O-S-P-Y, Q-Q-Q-Q-G-T, things of that nature. All right, our next question comes from Nick. Nick says, hi, Austin and Robert. I'm a huge fan of the show.
Starting point is 00:22:45 I actually found you guys a couple months back. I binged all of your episodes. I now listen to each and every one of them as they drop every single week. And I'm up 16.5% on my investments that I've opened because of you guys. Thank you so much. Nick, we are really, really excited for you, man. So here's my question. I want to start a cottage bakery out of my home.
Starting point is 00:23:08 And I live in California, which means I like. need some protection. So I'm trying to do my research as it relates to an LLC or a sole proprietorship. Can you please share the pros and cons of each? Robert, you've opened more businesses than I have fingers and toes on my body. So can you walk through the pros and the cons of the LLC versus the sole proprietorship? Yes, Nick. This is a slam dunk and a very easy one. Great question, and I'm so glad you asked it because so many people don't understand the difference or don't take it's seriously enough to understand the importance of knowing the difference. So let's go with the LLC first. The LLC is going to give you better asset protection, obviously limited liability corporation,
Starting point is 00:23:52 so it gives you that protection against an inside attack, an outside attack, or anything that can go wrong during the life cycle of this business. Also, it's a separate legal entity separate from the owner, unlike a sole proprietor, which flows through directly to the owner, so you don't have that separation. And then number three, I would say would be credibility. When you have that LLC, it's separate, it's established, you're paying your taxes, right, you've set it up well. You have that credibility, which may help you in funding, getting investors, et cetera, et cetera, but then you also have the tax benefits. So then when we talk about the sole proprietor, I've alluded to some of them, but the main thing is, is that you're the only owner of that entity. So it passes.
Starting point is 00:24:40 is through directly to you. So you don't have that separation like the LLC would in a sole proprietorship. And also because you're unincorporated, it really makes it a little bit tougher. So I'm always going to tell anyone to do an LLC to start. Then as you advance and make more money, you might want to look at an S corp. That would give you some tax advantages, especially in California. You'll need them. But with the S corp, we generally want to stick with a basic LLC to we're making
Starting point is 00:25:10 over like 75K a year in profit. But in this instance, I would say open that LLC, make sure you don't use a home address, make sure you have a business phone number, do it right, have an operating agreement in play. And in your instance, really, really important to remember, and this is a tip no one really talks about, check out and make sure you have that correct N-AICS number, because how you get rated with that N-AICS number can make or break your business funding, efforts when you get your building the business and you might want to have business credit or credit line or whatever, having the algorithm know exactly where to put you and rate your business is going to be so important down the road. So LLC for the win, great question and good luck.
Starting point is 00:25:56 What a great question from Nick. Now is a quick follow up, Robert, as I'm like tuning in here. When people create their LLC, can you talk a little bit about what a registered agent is and win people, you know, the type of businesses that might need a registered agent, you know, from the anonymity perspective. Yeah, a registered agent is one of those secret hacks that I talk about all the time with Austin, without Austin, that I've never heard anyone else really talking about except for lawyers and maybe CPAs. And what a registered agent means is, and it's a simple, simple hack that cost you zero dollars, but might be life-saving later on as you're building wealth, is having someone besides you as the registered agent on that LLC. You can use a neighbor,
Starting point is 00:26:42 a cousin, your lawyer, you can use anyone. And all that means is they are the registered person to receive the mail on that LLC. But here's the kicker and the important part. whenever anyone is trying to look you up on a state website, say it's a lawyer because of a lawsuit, a creditor that maybe you owe money to, or even anyone that has nefarious ideas for your business where they want to come after you for something, they're never going to find it looking you up with your name because the LLC will be registered under the name of the registered agent. So no one's going to find you giving you the ultimate anonymity to protect you from future damage. So important.
Starting point is 00:27:24 And just to share what I've done personally, I used a registered agent called buffalo registered agents.com. It was like a hundred bucks. It was super simple. And because of that, my LLC, which is operating in the state of Tennessee, is actually formed in the state of Wyoming, which means if someone tries to do a reverse lookup on anything regarding the LLC, they will never be able to know who the true owner is. one, because it's done through a registered agent, and two, Wyoming has some very strict privacy
Starting point is 00:27:56 laws. So just keep that in mind, Nick, as you create this awesome cottage bakery out of your house. So our next question comes from Braden. Braden says, hey Austin and Robert. First off, I love your podcast, and I want to thank you for all that you all do. I have a question for Austin about your experience restoring car headlights. I'm a college student here in Utah, trying to make some extra cash and I started a small car detailing business with my brother that is steadily growing. I'm loving being an entrepreneur. It gets me very excited and I thought I could make a better use of my time on weekends trying to do these car headlight restoration things that you had mentioned in the past, but I'm not really sure where to start. Can you talk about the side hustle as well
Starting point is 00:28:39 as give me some inspiration as it relates to building my small business? So Robert, I'll talk about the headlights. I'll let you then jump in about the small business, scaling a small business into something meaningful. So for those of you who might not remember, in college, I had a side hustle of restoring car headlights. Like you all know how the car headlights, the old cars, they have like yellow fog. It doesn't look that great. I bought the Slovenia Headlight Restoration Kit on Amazon. It was like $22 and I could restore four headlights, so two cars with one kit. I would go around to mall parking lots. I would go to use car dealerships. I would go to my friends. I would even drive around people's neighborhoods and start knocking on doors and be like, hey, your car headlines aren't that
Starting point is 00:29:22 great, safety hazard. You look like you have children. Maybe you don't. But you probably want to get these headlights restored and I'll do it for $40. And like, oh my gosh, 40 bucks. You're already at my house. Let's do it. Right. I was able to make $3,000 one summer by restoring car headlights as a side hustle in college, which I thought was a lot of fun. So how did I scale that business, quote, unquote. Well, I kind of didn't, right? Again, it was sort of this driving for dollars mentality. It was different neighborhoods. Again, malls, dealerships. I would go to dealerships, though, like it was a used, a very small used car dealership. So nothing that had like, you know, national notoriety or anything. It wasn't like a Toyota or a BMW. It was definitely like just
Starting point is 00:30:02 the Joe Schmo dealerships. I'd say, hey, you've got all these cars for sale here. I will give you a bulk discount. I'll spend a Saturday restoring all the headlights of these nine cars. I'll charge you $25 a car and let's have some fun. And so some people gave me a chance. Other people were just like, we do that already. Get out of here. So it's really up to you and how persuasive you can be as a salesperson. But that was my experience. It got me, you know, a couple extra $1,000 during the summertime. Now, Robert, talk about how Braden here can begin to market, perhaps not just the car restoration side of his business, but also the detailing side of his business, right? How can he get more customers? How should he be thinking about pricing, social media, all that fun stuff?
Starting point is 00:30:42 start with the social media, understand it, study it, figure out a way to get eyeballs and really grow the social media around the business. But then secondarily, one of the least, least expensive ways, if not nearly free, is to make yourself a cool flyer. I would put four of them up on an eight and a half by 11 piece of paper, use your parents or your friends, you know, color printer if you can or at your office or wherever you can get these printed for next to nothing. I would make those flyers, get those cut up and then I would go hit these small businesses up like he said it could be repair shops small you know dealerships whatever it may be to get that started but really get out there and door knock door knocking even now for me is one of my favorite parts of my day when I'm looking at
Starting point is 00:31:29 new properties or new opportunities to buy when I'm doing an acquisition of a business and so you can really use the flyer which costs so little I know it seems archaic and it seems old school but it's so effective. Then after that, I would look at Next Door. So many people when they're promoting a business that is logistically important for their customer base, they don't think about Next Door as a way to advertise. They think about it as a way to communicate, but I'm going to tell you what, Next Door is one of the cheapest and best ways to get a lot of eyeballs on your business, because you can niche down to a specific neighborhood or zip code and really promote your business for maybe $5 a day.
Starting point is 00:32:11 And I just think next door is one of the best. It's way cheaper than Facebook, so much easier. And I've had great success, especially when it's a localized type business. So that would be my strategies. Start with the social media, the flyers, and maybe next door. Because once you get those eyeballs rolling, especially if you're doing mobile auto detailing, you're going to crush it faster than you think by getting those eyeballs that are localized to you so it's convenient for the new.
Starting point is 00:32:39 customers. That's actually really interesting you say that because, you know, from the next door perspective, my girlfriend, Ireland, and I, we live in this awesome little community and we're part of the Facebook group. There's like 700 people in it, right? And these 700 people have children. And those children, if it's Girl Scout cookies, if it's mowing the lawn, like they're always trying to do something to sell to us as a community. So depending on the type of neighborhood you live in, maybe you know someone who does live in a neighborhood like that and they'd be open to making a post on Facebook on your behalf, right? But using Facebook, these small community groups, like lean into your own community, your neighbors, your friends, and look towards those people who've supported you in the past and will hopefully
Starting point is 00:33:17 support you in the future with this awesome endeavor brain. Congratulations on your new business and we're really excited to see where it goes. Everyone, thank you so much for tuning in to this live recorded episode of the Rich Habits Podcast. Coming from St. Petersburg, Florida, we likely won't have another one of these for probably a couple weeks, maybe sooner than we expect. But without that being said, we will be publishing every single Monday and Thursday, of course, to Spotify and YouTube. So be sure to check out the Rich Habits Podcasts on both those platforms. If you do not yet follow the Rich Habits Podcast on Instagram, we are at Rich Habits Podcast. Again, you can ask us questions via email, Rich Habits Podcast at gmail.com. Speaking of email, if you've not yet
Starting point is 00:34:01 opted in to receive our email campaigns, you definitely should do that. We are kicking the month of February off talking about optimizing your spending, right? We're talking about how to spend with the right credit cards to receive the perfect amount of cash back, the rewards, the free vacation, and finding the extra wiggle room in your budget to begin investing in a meaningful way. So I'm excited, Robert. February is going to be a fun month. March is going to be awesome. And maybe we do film another episode live. Yeah, I'm so excited about the credit card matrix that we had built. Oh, yeah, the credit card benefit. I'm sitting here getting goosebumps. I'm like, yes, because I'm not going to lie. I struggle with figuring out how to maximize my credit card spending. And now we have a tool built specifically for all of you where you can go in, ask a few, answer a few questions and just get into this matrix. And it literally is a matrix. And it tells you what's the best credit card for travel. What's the best credit card for points for food? All of these things. So it's going to not only be helpful for me, but any of you that go in and check out.
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