Stop Trying to Get Rich, Start Adding Value

There's another underrated thing that you just kind of nonchalantly, you know, kind of threw out there is that this topic, this notion of serving. And that's interesting to me because oftentimes when we talk business, when we talk making money and trying to improve one's life, you said don't worry about. Really none of that. Worry about the need and filling it. Well, in order to fill a needle, you've got to serve. Yeah. So where did that mindset belief come from? Just this idea of serving people, what people are looking for, and in exchange, you'll get what you want or your time will come eventually. So it may not happen right away, but your time will come. And, yeah, it's proven with what you've been able to build so far.

So that's a real. I've never, like, really put thought into where that belief came from, but if I had to guess. So my mom is a psychologist. She's a marital counselor by trade, and she is a frankly, terrible businesswoman. That is like, just not her strong suit, right?

Her.

Her strong suit is her profession, right? It's. She's got a PhD in psychology. She loves helping people. She loves helping couples. She, like, she's really good at her craft, right? She's an artist, and her art happens to be the academic pursuit of psychology. She is killing it in business today, and it's taken her decades and decades and decades to really refine her practice to the point where she's killing it because she's not a great businesswoman. But what that really showed me growing up is I think if you pay attention to your craft, whatever it is, right? It doesn't have to be psychology. It doesn't have to be engineering. It can be firefighting. It can be nursing. It can't. Whatever it is, right? If you're really good at your craft, there will be a moment where you realize how to monetize it, how to build a business around it. It's actually not that hard to, like, build a good business, like, register an llc, hire a decent accountant, know how to, like, track your books in a way to give it to them to do your taxes. Like, I was so daunted by opening my first LLC, and it ended up being, like, one form and 100 bucks. You know, I'm in Florida, by the way, so it's like, take that with a grain of salt. It depends on your state, right? But, like, you know, my Florida LLC and my Delaware LLC were not hard to open. So today I have four llc, you know, and they work with each other in strange ways. And taxes do whatever my tax accountant tells me to do and stuff like that. The business part comes naturally, right? It comes when you are like, hey, I have a need that not only I have met, but I can meet other people's needs with the same product. I'm. I want to scale, right. I don't just want to do research for my portfolio. In my case, I want to put my answer online in a way that other people can digest. That was it for me. So I started publishing YouTube videos. And so going back to our earlier discussion, right, YouTube. I didn't choose YouTube. YouTube was the result of what I was trying to do. Right. I wasn't like, which platform is going to make me money? I was like, where can I post long form video content to get my point across? And at that time, 30 minutes, like, you think my videos are long? Now I have videos on machine learning going Back to like 2018 that are like 34 minutes long that like nobody watched. You know what I mean?

Yeah, you've really dialed in. You've got it down to a science. I'm still learning. I've got our two hour long videos where.

Dude. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just like, you know, who, who the kind of person that watches that is very different from the kind of person that has like 14 minutes, let's say. Right. So it's just an audience like you, and you learn that as you go. But my point is, I wasn't trying to be a YouTuber. I wasn't trying to make money. I was trying to keep a video diary of my own investment decisions and like figure that out. And so like the pieces started falling into place. Hey, this is the tool you use to edit videos. This is the place to publish long form videos. This is the kind of stuff that works there. So you need to pick up this skill. Titles and thumbnails, Right? Like, so it was like a very natural evolution and not a forced one.

Yeah.

And it's definitely one that I'm still evolving. Right.

Sorry, go ahead. No, my fault. It became more of an efficiency conversation. You just stumbled across this. Yeah, it's going to make my life more efficient and boom, you had the resources to do it. And then that made more money, and then that made more money and you just, you just keep getting more and more efficient and then you surround smarter people around you, I'm assuming to help you continue to do what you do best and delegate the rest. In a sense. I'd like to ask another part on. On the strategy. Staying on topic here. And now that I understand your. Your belief model and the mindset and, you know, how you really adopted some of that thinking from your mom and how that's helped you just progress in life really, really well. And again, I think service, just the idea of serving first, filling that need is super underrated because you can't necessarily measure it in terms of. On a balance sheet. But if we're talking relationship capital, we're talking networking, it's. It's the largest bank account, in my opinion, in anyone's portfolio. Is that. Is that relationship capital you build with the marketplace, which in return looks like no like and trust, no love and trust a person like yourself or myself or anyone that is aspiring to be in the position that myself and Alex are currently in now. So I want to ask, as. As you're building this out, what were some monetization vehicles or products or services, tangible or intangible, that you were like, if I do this this way, this might work? Or was it, I just stumbled on this monetization vehicle and then you went all in. How did it develop?

I'm. I am a serial stumbler. If I could describe my life, it's like, failing forward is basically what I'm known for, right?

Okay.

So the first thing I did when I became, like, YouTube partnered or whatever it is, is like, you know, you get your thousand hours. Sorry, your thousand subscribers and your 4000 hours, right? And, you know, you enable ads and you feel really great, and you get that first $7 paycheck from YouTube, and you're like, I did it. I made my first dollar online. You know, I can just hang up the hat now. I've. I've won at life, right? And then you go back to your budget, and you're like, oh, crap, it cost me more than $7 a month to feed myself. I guess I better figure out how to make more than $7 if I want to keep this as my career, right? So that was it. That was like, I enabled ads. And then I, you know, somebody approached me and was like, hey, we want to sponsor one of your videos. We want to be, you know, we want you to read this ad for us and we'll give you money. And I was like, that's incredible. Yes. Right? And I accepted a whopping $400 to, you know, read an ad in the middle of my video and, you know, figured out from there that that is actually not a lot of money in my space, right? And I got totally ripped off because I'm new and that happens to everyone in every business ever. Right? Your first deal is like, wow, I did my best work for a fraction of a penny, right? So, so I got an agent. I grew up, you know, and I was like, I need somebody who understands that part of the business way better than I can. You know, you sort of admit to your own ego, hey, just because I run the business doesn't mean I'm the best at every aspect of the business.

Correct.

You know, so got an agent. That 400 number added a few zeros to it over time. And you know, that's. Now that's a substantial part of my channel's revenue. I've never really done like a newsletter. I had a Patreon like membership for a while, but that was just like, it was a lot of extra work for not a lot of extra revenue. And like, this is something that I've genuinely learned and like, advice that I'm willing to give and sort of a hill I'm willing to die on. I would much rather take one big check from a big client than the equivalent to like thousand checks from small clients. Because then you can like spend time nurturing one relationship, figuring out the needs of like one person. In my experience, when I opened the door to like take five $10 a month from a lot of people, all of those came with their own sets of demands and wants and, oh, you should do this, you should do that. And then you're like, well, I don't really have time to do all that. They're like, oh, but I'm a paying customer. I give you $5 a month, right? And you're just like, well, wait a minute, like, that's a coffee man. You know what I mean? You're buying me coffee and you're asking me to do like a PhD thesis on this stock, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So given an inch, taking a mile.

Yeah, given an inch. So. So if you're trying to think of a side hustle or a business, realize that it's, it might be better to put yourself in a position to work with 2, 3, 5 people instead of 2, 3, 500 people, right? And just think about the trade offs in doing that, right? Like, what skill set do I need to have to land a bigger fish, but fewer of them, right? So now, so what my business model is now is, you know, I make four or five, six videos a month. They're all sponsored by big corporations that can write big checks. And all the value I provide my audience is absolutely free, right? And I love that. I love not taking money from the people I'm trying to serve and taking money from these giant faceless corporations instead. It's like a win, win, win. Right. I feel great, sort of karmically, spiritually, but also financially, but also like my actual service is doing very well for it because people are just trading their time for my value. There's no money being exchanged.

Yeah, you are one of those few channels where there's no ads. It's just you talking the whole entire time. And whatever sponsorships that are sponsoring your video is also in alignment with what you're talking about anyways, is what I.

It's great.

I've noticed that as well. You're not talking about a pharmaceutical drug that you should get, you know, or some random thing that just throws the whole video off in a sense where that, where that can occur with ads and stuff. So I really do appreciate a channel that can get to that point to do that because I totally understand that in the beginning you're again, you're trying to eat. So there's a lot of folks here that you're gonna do what you think you can do best and then you improve, you tweak, you make improvements over time.

Totally.

But you picked up on it quite early on. The sponsorship monetization from YouTube directly. Sponsorships took over the monetization, I'm assuming. And was there any other income streams that has formed out of this along the way or is it just strictly sponsorship?

Nope. I tell you, I have no membership. I have no course, I have no newsletter.

I've no, nothing, nothing, nothing.

It's. And like I'm, I might like. So I do really want to like tackle the newsletter bit. They're like, you know, know 45 to 55 year old audience. Right. A big percentage of them are readers. They do enjoy reading online content. So I'm, I'm happy. But it's coming out of a place of. I want to meet the needs of my audience where they are. If they want to read stuff and I'm making videos, I should probably put out stuff that they can read. Right. So it goes back to like the whole like service first model of like where what, what do they want from me and how do I best fill that need. So one thing that always keeps coming up is they do want a membership from me so that they can network with other like minded people. I would have never thought of that. Right. It's like when I think of a membership, it's like you pay me, I give you stuff that you're not getting on the channel. It's me to you still.

Right?

And they're like, no, we don't care about you. I want to meet other ticker symbol, you fans. I want to see who else, like, shares my mentality. It's like, oh, that's smart. Like, you know, I can. So I'm working on stuff like that now because, like, there's a real need. There's and has nothing to do with me or my ego. They don't want more of me. They want to meet each other. Right. It's like, oh, because that's smart. I should. Okay. But it comes from, it always comes from. What does my audience need?

I love that. Right.

Not how can I extract more money from them or else I'd have six courses in a, you know, 10 memberships. Right. Like, I know how the game is played.

Yeah, yeah. It's a game that I, I dip my toes in over the years. So I definitely see both sides of it. There's. There's worlds to it. There's good, bad and ugly in total courses and programs, things like that. But in your case, it's rare. It's not spoken about a lot because it's not necessarily duplicate able. It's not incentivized from the guru that's recruiting a bunch of people to sell their coaching to get, to then get certified to create your own programs, to then recreate programs. Yeah, programs. And it creates this nice everlasting flow of income of just repurposing content that you could probably learn for free or in a book for 10 bucks, you know, is the God's honest truth. And so I've dipped my toes in there. And then I took the model of give everything away for free. This is something Alex Hermosi says. I don't know if you're familiar with him.

Yeah, very.

He's like, just give it all away for free. And if you're gonna charge, you can charge for the process of someone actually helping get there. So I'm assuming maybe someone reached out to you online is like, hey, this is wonderful what you're doing, Alex, but can you actually do this for me? Right. And then it's up to you to say yes or no. Right. It's up to you to say yeah at that point. But I've had that experience too, where it's like, I'm. I got to the point where I was just giving it all away for free. And then people are like, I want to pay you to do it for me. Then I don't want to spend 10 hours exactly. Please do it for me. And that's where I was like, okay, so I can serve for free and leverage the audience, but then there's going to be people that can also help me cover my expenses and needs to keep doing what I want to be able to do for folks, helping people for free and been able to build a whole, you know, ministry out of that. Just kind of just serving people for free. But then there's also the paid aspect. So there's both windows that those that are watching that you can go down and then there's this unheard of, not too spoken about motto which is go after a large client. Faceless corporation has a ton of money to blow on marketing and get in front of a marketing model. Social media, where television is dying, where old, you know, legacy media is dying, and all the eyeballs are now gravitating to these platforms. So the corporations are writing big checks to get in front of those big solo content creators because they know they're capturing a large audience and they know their customers are hanging out with Denzel or with Alex. That's a model in and of itself to absolutely consider. Which again, happy for you to break that down for us if you're okay with it.

Yeah, like that's actually a really good thing to double click on. Right. So do the model you just described of like, hey, give it all away from for free and then charge people to do it for them if they just want you to supply? The answer is exactly what I believe the right model is. Right. So as opposed to, let's say building a course, selling a product, getting people into a funnel, you know, doing all these other like intermediate things to sort that you have to repeatedly sell. Right. So I do have like a third business. The third business is literally exactly what you just described. It is where people will ask me to do investing research for them. It's usually like small family offices, you know, a couple rich individuals, whatever. But like, they're like, hey, I love your stuff. I would like you to essentially make me a private video on this, that or the other thing, you know, usually a technology, usually a private company. Right. And I don't want it as a video. You can just like break it down for me over a phone call or whatever. But like I'm essentially paying you to like remove for this block on your content calendar so that you can answer my specific question that, that I'm planning to make a lot more money from.

Right.

So back to your example that's exactly right. You know, you can learn how to do all this for free or I can pay you to literally show up and do it for. Or you can pay me for me to literally show up and do it for you. And that's a great model because now you're just doing the same thing you were doing anyway, but for a private client, right? So I lose a sponsor slot. I don't make a video that week, whatever. So this, these people end up paying me to replace all that work, plus all the work of like, you know, making a research project that I can only use once and then I'm not allowed to make another video out of and all that stuff. So there's a lot of overhead. So that's why it's so expensive, right? Like, it's not because, like, oh, I want a lot of money. It's because, well, I have two or three employees under me. I have sponsors I got to fill. I, you know, I, I'm going to be under crunch for the rest of the month if I take a week off and do this right. So, you know, again, it's never a pricing model that comes from, I want money. It's like, well, wait a minute, now you're paying me to replace all these other costs and expenses, right?

Is what it's worth.

So like. Yeah, exactly. So it's like the, the theme I'm trying to hammer in over and over again is all the answers come pretty naturally. I didn't like, derive or divine any of my business processes. I was like, how do I actually just do this? That's the process, right? Like, you know, and, and next time if I want to do it faster, I need to refine the process. Right? So it's not. I didn't open a business book. I didn't go and like take some master class. I can recommend a few like, personal development classes. Just that helped me, like, cope with the stress of it all. But like, the actual day to day, I didn't take some YouTube boot camp. I probably am terrible at making videos if I only make one or two a week. I know people who make like two or three a day and it's like, okay, clearly they have a different process. Right, Right.

Different model. Yeah, yeah.

Different model.

Yeah. Thank you. Oh, this is, this is really good.