Robert Farrington — How TheCollegeInvestor.com Gets 3.5 Million Visitors Per Month

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Float Shark podcast with your boys, Mount Wolf and Joe Fear. I just want this to go down on record. That Joe Fear just threatened to beat me with a crutch.

The one crutch I have. You hear it? Ah, that was Matt's knee. It's gone.

No, it wasn't.

Collecting my debts from the years of knowing you, and he's bad at paying off debt. No, I'm just kidding. All right, Gimpy. Yeah, I screwed my foot up the other day, so I'm gimping around still a week later with one crutch.

Yep.

My wife says I should have two, though. Hey, but speaking of that, if you.

Hear in the news later this week that Matt Wolf was beat up by a random dude with crutches, you know what happened.

Watch yourself. Watch yourself. You keep that mouth shut, boy.

I don't know why you'd be a random dude. People would probably be like, he was beat up by his business partner.

The cops are just like, yeah, go figure that out yourself. Well, you know what? We're talking to someone that's really freaking awesome.

Local guy, Local dude.

He seems to, you know, kind of be in our neck of the woods.

He's a. He's an old school boy. Buddy of yours.

Old school all the way down to middle school, yeah. Crazy friend of my wife, a little closer back in those days. Went to high school with her as well, my wife Heather. And he just. You know, this is Robert Farrington, by the way, we're talking about, and he runs a site called the College Investor, which is one of the top personal finance blogs. Did not know that at all. Met him, you know, at some restaurant bar thing maybe a month ago and kind of re. Met him over all the years. Caught up with what we're all doing. I'm like, holy moly. You are doing some really interesting stuff in a completely different space that we operate in. But he's doing all these cool stuff with content and traffic, Reddit, Quora, a whole bunch of stuff we nerded out with. And he totally laid it all out. He doesn't hold any punches at all.

I would say. This episode is sort of broken up into three sections, right? So the first section, well, okay, we talk about his story and kind of how he got into the business. And then beyond that, it's sort of broken up into three sections. We deep dive into a content marketing strategy and, like, a way to consistently create content for your business. And content calendars and all that sort of thing. And then we deep dive into traffic strategies and I'm not talking about what we're normally talking about in this one. We touch on SEO a little bit, but we also really dive deep into things like Reddit and Quora, which are traffic generation places. What's the word I'm looking for? I don't know what you're talking about. They're traffic techniques that we've never really dove into on the show before. We've never talked about Quora on the show before. We've never talked about Reddit strategies on the show before. And he kind of gave us a nice little deep dive into how to actually make those worlds work. Organic and paid organic and paid for both of those. And then finally that sort of third section of it is he does run a site all about debt management and investing. So we wanted to touch a little bit with him on some of his advice on debt management and where to put your money and investments and things like that. So it's really sort of broken up into those three parts. We nerd the hell out on this episode because his business model is very similar to ours. It's a very content forward lead with the content, create good, really high value content and then monetize it through affiliate marketing. It's a very similar business model, just in a different niche.

Yeah, no, I was super inspired. I mean, ever since I heard the from my wife Heather, talking about how Robert, he had a corporate gig. He'll get into this in the story. But the fact that he has been growing this blog slowly but surely and quietly outside of his day job and side hustles, he's big on all that stuff on the side hustle thing. But literally didn't quit his day job until just maybe a couple years ago, I think he said. And he's getting over 3 million views on his unique page, views on his website and every month and is absolutely crushing it and like I said, is in the top handful of personal finance sites online, period. And he did this just by as a kind of a side hustle. And he just finally it overtook his corporate, you know, job salary and he was like, sweet. Yeah, I mean it's amazing. He's very methodical, very smart with his money, the way he acts with his time, his schedule, like he breaks it all down. It's really, really cool.

Yeah, definitely. This is going to be one that you're going to want notes on. You can take the notes yourself or if you're like in your car out for a jog or working out or walking the dog or going for a swim or mowing the lawn or doing the dishes.

Diving under deep sea treasures.

If you're doing something that doesn't lend itself well to taking notes, right now, we got you covered.

We're going to take you for flying around in space in the Tesla that's perpetually orbiting the Earth with spaceman.

Yeah, but if you're flying around in space, you probably don't necessarily have your hands on the wheel. So you can take notes. Don't be lazy.

That's a good point.

Don't be lazy, space boy. All right.

Expecting a lot from you.

If. If you aren't in a place where you can take notes. Right now, we're going to take the notes for you. We actually have a team member. Hey, Stephen. He listens to every single episode and he takes notes on those episodes and we share those notes with you. So go to evergreenprofits.com, go to the Show Notes page, find for this episode. Look up Robert Farrington. If you're looking it up close to when this episode is being released, he should be the top episode. Go to his Show Notes page, and there is links on that page to download our Cliff's Notes version of this episode. So definitely go do that.

I'm just gonna say that the notes that Steven makes and this is not just a Pat Stevens back and hey, attaboy, even though it is, those notes are fricking amazing, man. Like, if you want those Cliff Notes and actually have, like, a good takeaway doc, I mean, I can't take notes like him, nor do I want to. So that's why he does it. He's learning amazing things along the way. And you can as well. You should. I mean, it's an amazing reference guide. And yeah, so just go check it out. Find the show notes@evergreenprofits.com you'll like them. There's a lot more, too. We do this for every single episode, so make that a little habit. You'll love it.

Also, if you'd be interested in us actually, like, mailing you the notes every month from our past podcast, shoot us a message in support and let us know, because it's something we're thinking about doing. We're thinking about opening up the option of every podcast episode, mailing out physical copies of the notes so people can actually have them in their hands and highlight them and, you know, keep. Have a collection of them, essentially, if that's something you might be interested in. It's an idea we're tossing around. Let us know what's our email.

Supportvergreenprofits.com will get you there.

There you go. So let us know there.

Yeah, I think that works. Cool. If it doesn't, try info at, I don't know, Joe or Matt. You'll just find us.

All right.

I don't care. Yeah, email Matt. He loves emails.

Let's. Let's not do that.

As he just changes his email address.

All right, let's go talk to my new best friend, Robert Farrington.

Man crush. Hey, Robert. Welcome to the show, buddy.

Hey, guys. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Yeah. So this is something in the making for a while. And my wife Heather, lovely wife Heather, made this connection and didn't realize we went to middle school together. And then you guys went to high school and we met and you're doing some amazing things. Yeah.

And it's just crazy all the different ways that we never actually met until just a couple of weeks ago, but everything we've been doing is so closely related. I know. You know, Nick, you guys have been doing the Turo stuff. I've been bullish on Turo for like a couple years now. Like, it's been awesome to connect and, like, all these little light bulbs have gone off.

It's true.

So you went to Grossmont High School, then?

I did.

You may actually know my wife because my wife went to Grossmont High School also.

Alana.

Alana Bielstein. I don't. She. She ran in different circles than Heather.

But, yeah, yeah, they were different years too, but.

But, yeah, they went to Grossmont. Alana, I think, graduated a year before Heather, so. A year before you guys.

Okay.

So, yeah, small world. And yeah, so many connections. I'm sure there's more listening on the show, too, actually. Optimal Living Daily, guys, they say they narrate some of your blogs. And Justin Malik.

Yes, they do. Those guys are awesome as well. And I met them at fincon, which is a financial influencer conference. So. Yeah, totally.

Yeah, they're good buddies of ours. They listen. I know Justin listens to every single episode. So what's up, Justin? Always give him a shout out. So. Yeah, man. So you. You do a lot. And I honestly don't understand everything you do, which is amazing. So we're kind of going in blind, but we know that you're doing some amazing kind of different types of advertising, traffic stuff, your content, all this cool stuff we're going to dig into. But let's let's go back in time a little bit. And what kickstarted the entrepreneurial path and kind of what led you up to this point?

Yeah, man. Well, I mean, I have always just kind of been a side hustler, man. Maybe you remember this in middle school, but like, I remember some of my earlier moments of like selling Snickers bars out of my backpack. Yeah, I probably bought some school, like I would go to, my mom would take me to Costco, right? And I'd buy like the 24 pack Snickers bars and then I'd sell them for like 50 cents to like, people that wanted to get them. And like, so I've always just done things like that. And you know, when I was in college, I was bored, right? I was also that guy in the back row of my college class. I had my laptop open, I was reading. I was really passionate on investing and I'd be reading like Yahoo. Finance. And I started reading other personal finance blogs as well. And I was like, you know what? I should start mine and I should share my random thoughts on investing because, you know, right. Like, I'm 22 and I know everything there is to know about investing. And people would want to read that sarcasm, right? Like, that's not like, I totally thought that was going to be the thing. And so honestly, that's what I did. I started the College Investor and I was literally sharing like my random thoughts about why you should buy this or not that or whatnot. And I just did it, you know, it didn't get much traction, didn't go anywhere. All that original content has now been deleted because it was really crappy. But on the same time, like I got going and that's kind of what did it.

That's so funny because our very first. So mine and Joe's first sort of endeavor into the entrepreneurial world was a blog about personal finance. It was actually called How I Will Be Rich. We were very influenced by Ramit Sethi at the time. If you can't tell, he had I will teach you to be rich. And we made a blog called How I Will Be Rich. And we did the same thing. We shared like our personal finance and wealth growth ideas at. It was like our learning early mid-20s.

Like, we're about 22. We probably start around the same age.

Yeah, that was 07.

Yeah, there you go.

We built that.

Yeah. So that's. That's really cool. And now I was telling Matt and you could tell the story because Heather's said it and I'd probably butcher it. But you're working at Target for a long time while you're doing all this. Yeah.

So I started working at target at 16. My mom was kind of like, if you want to drive, like that's cool, but you got to go and earn money and pay for everything. So she dropped me off at Grossmont center, which is our local mall. And I literally like went like store to store trying to get a job, like, no joke. And so I went to Starbucks there and I feel like I went to a couple other places and then Target did an interview on the spot. Right. I applied and then they called me back. And so I got a job at 16 at Target. And I kept working there, right? I worked there through high school. I worked in college there. I became an hourly supervisor when I was in college. And then after I graduated college, I was an assistant store manager and eventually became a store manager and was doing that. I worked at target for like 17 years. I think it was before I left. And so, yeah, the college investor and my blog was like my side hustle and something that I enjoyed, Right. Like, I enjoyed sharing my random thoughts. And my full time gig was working at Target.

That's so cool. Yeah. Because you're basically saying, I think it was when we met up. It's like you just had that down. Almost sounded like college to you. It's like, all right, well, I do, you know, you don't do a good job, but at the same time, you know, your interest is really lying somewhere else. It is.

And don't get me wrong, like, I actually really liked working at Target. It was a great company to work for. I like the people, but, you know, like, I don't know, I just don't have the personality of being like, pigeonholed into, like one thing, I guess. I like doing different things. I like earning money. I like side hustling. I think it's a great way to do it. Like, even, I mean, I was doing other things too. I mean, I would sell stuff on ebay and I still, like, I have things listed on ebay right now that I'm trying to flip. So, like, I always like to do other things and like, any kind of venture I can find, like, I'm. I'm into it.

So at what point did you decide, okay, I'm getting out of Target? Like, what. Where was the. Where was that sort of like Tipping Point where you finally decided, okay, I don't really need to work at Target anymore, I can go full time on this.

Yeah, it was really hard so the website and my business had started earning more than I was making at my day job about two and a half years, three years before I left Target. But Target was easy. Like, I'd been doing it for so long. When you're the store manager at Target, there's nobody above you, right? So, like, I would see my district manager maybe like once, once a month, and I talk to her on the phone maybe another two times a month. But like, you know, I didn't really have a boss over my shoulder all the time. And as long as I did my job right and things were running well, like, everyone stay out of my business. So I found it to be really easy and they paid really well. And so like, at the same time I was, I was earning more outside of it. I was earning really well at my job. That was, I liked it, it was easy. But it came to a point where my kids started getting older. So I have a five year old and a two year old and at this point in time there was, it was like a three year old and like, you know, nine month old, right? And I was looking at my year and my time and my kids were starting to demand more time. And I was like, you know, the one drawback about Target is it still requires you to physically be present, right? So even though the job was easy, like, there would be days, like I would literally just have to go in to unlock the door because if you don't show up, the store just literally doesn't open, right? And that was hard when you had kids and time constraints. And then when you look at the holiday season, it's nights, it's weekends, and it's, you know, Thanksgiving through Christmas. And I just was like, why am I doing this? Right. One of the things I talk about a lot on my blog and it was, you know, show me your time and show me your money and I'll show you what you value. And I would say things like, I value my family and I value the time I spend with my family, but I wasn't necessarily like, living that, right? Like, I would go to Target and I would literally just sit there and it wasn't like, hard. I'd fold shirts and stock boxes. It was super easy. But, like, I wasn't where I felt like I needed to be. So I finally made the choice, like at the beginning of the year, this was in 2017, I was like, I'm just not going to go through another holiday season. And so like, you know, I kind of just planned everything out and I left in September of that year, right before the holidays. And, yeah, I haven't looked back since.

I love that it really hasn't been that long since you went full time on this, but obviously this has been in the making, you know, since you're 22, which is completely unique. I'm sure there's a lot of other folks kind of doing this, but it's in a different approach that you took. And I think it's super empowering for people to hear that. Folks that just feel like they can't.

Get out of the job.

I mean, how much time were you spending typically when you were working full time on the blog here?

Yeah, I mean, I was still probably putting in 20 hours a week. So the cool thing I will say, with a retail schedule, right? So nights and weekends are the drawback, but for running a side hustle, it's phenomenal because on, like, my night, like, I would work, like, Wednesday nights, I think. And so that means I'd have the whole day to do things, right? And so, like, and like, my wife would be working or would be out and, you know, so you get those times. And so, like, if you wanted to record a podcast or you wanted to go do something, like, you know, I was able to do that. And same thing with working the weekend. So every other weekend I would have, you know, off, which also gave me a full day off in the week. So I'd have one night, which would give me a day to do things, and then I'd have a second day, a weekday off, because I was working those weekends. But having a weekday off was phenomenal for side hustling. So, you know, I was probably putting in like 20 hours a week or so. I probably put in like one to two hours a day, but then I put in a couple solid days on those days off. Right.

I like that it kind of gives you that structure that you just have to follow or you're choosing to follow, you know, without being distracted with all this free time potentially, once you have, you know, because that's. That's really the issue when people quit their jobs, if they actually get to that point, you know, now they're just like, crap. How do I structure my day? What do I do? I gotta build something from scratch.

And don't let anything. Don't let anyone kid you. Like, you know, you've heard the advice. Like, it takes like six months to a year before you figure it out. And even though I had, like, structure, quote unquote, it still took me like six months to a year to like, figure it out. It's very challenging to make that transition from full time employment to full time entrepreneurship.

Yeah.

Now, just for context for the listeners, how much traffic does your college investor website get?

So, I mean, last month we had, I mean, this is 10 years in the making, but last month we had 3.5 million visitors. Those are unique visitors and about 6 million page views. When I left the site, we were probably about a million. Or when I left my day job, we were probably right, about a million unique visitors a month.

So you've ramped it up a lot since then, but obviously you did a lot of work prior to that point too. Totally.

I kind of view blogging as like, it's compound interest, Right. You write this article and you put this work in and it might not necessarily do anything up front. It's like you're earning your 1 cent of interest. Right. But over time, that 1 cent compounds and compounds and compounds. And that's why after 10 years, you really do have this large nest egg. Right?

Yeah. No, I love that analogy. Obviously, coming from you, the finance guy. Compound interest. So many people have stumbling blocks when it comes to any kind of content or even Facebook ads seeing it through to. Sometimes they kill it too fast. An ad's not working, two days later, it doesn't work. But guess what? It could have taken a week, potentially.

Our. We see every piece of content that we put on the Internet as a new asset that we're putting out there. Every single, like this podcast interview we're doing right now is another asset that's going to be in the mix once it's live and out there. And it's going to generate little bits of revenue for us. But compounded, like you said, after hundreds of episodes and hundreds of blog posts, that adds up to a lot over time.

Totally. And you have to realize that there's also, like, you. You get better as you go. So when you're first starting out, like, let's just take content as a generic thing, right? So you have 10 pieces of content that you put out there when you first start. Maybe one in ten, if you're lucky, like, takes off. But it's probably even worse than that. It's probably like half in 10, right? You probably need to go out to 20 pieces of content. One in 20. But then as you keep practicing and getting better and learning how to share your content and how to promote it and how to structure it, all this kind of stuff, like, even the best of us, and you guys probably see this, like, I think I put myself, about 3 in 10 to 4 in 10 of my pieces of content are quote, unquote, successful. Sounds about fair because it's still. It's still. It's half art, it's half science. You never know. But you don't start there either, right?

No, yeah, you're exactly right. You kind of figure out, all right, what resonates, what are some gaps in the market, maybe use some tools for that. Or you ask your customers, your readers. There's a lot of ways you can find indications of what's going to hit or not. But they don't always hit. Like you said, they don't.

Even when you think it's like I've had, you guys probably had that too. Like, oh, this is going to be the greatest thing ever. I can't believe I took me so long. You, like, put all this work in, it's like a bust. And you're just like, oh, man.

Know that feeling very well. That's why. So, like what Matt was saying with this interview, like, this will get repurposed or reconstructed in, I don't know, one of at least five different ways, different pieces of content in different formats. So it's. If you're allowing yourself to spread the deck or you have the systems to do that, that's how we kind of hedge our bet a little bit, is by spreading that out into different modalities or ways that people can consume this and taking action of whatever we point them to.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, that's kind of one of my big tactics today too, is now that I have this archive is I dig back in my archives a lot and I repurpose content. So I would say I spend about a third of my time, it's not even creating new content, but just diving back in and repurposing, improving and recreating old content.

Ooh, that's actually interesting. So what's your process to do that? Is it just refreshing the content post that's already up, or is it creating brand new content using that as kind of like an idea or starting point?

Could be both. So, like when I look at my content calendar, right, so when you're starting out, like, you don't need to do this, but like, for now, I publish almost every day. And so, you know, let's just take Monday through Friday. So I have five articles, one each day. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. I would say Tuesdays and Thursdays pretty much without fail are bringing back content out of my archives and updating it. And that updating it could be Just, you know, a little bit here and there. Or it could be like, we're gonna scrap the whole thing. I like, maybe the title and, like, one idea inside of it, but we're gonna basically create a whole new piece of content. It also could be adding in part of our audio show podcast to it, it could be transforming it and adding video content to it. But really, it's just diving back through all of our different things and, you know, trying to bring something back to the forefront that I like that resonates. The one thing that happens a lot in personal finance, and I think it happens in most industries and niches, too, is that it's very seasonal. Right. So in the United States at least, like right now is tax season. Right. And then you have the summer, and then you have going back to school, and then you have, like, you know, the holidays and, you know, deals and savings, and then you have New Year's resolutions. Like, we kind of have the same kind of things every single year. So going back into the archives is really easy in this industry because you probably have some similar content around that you don't need to reinvent the wheel if it works. Or maybe it was really close to working and maybe you figured it out for this year and I can republish it right now.

Yeah, that's super smart.

And so with your website right now, how is the website actually making money? How are you paying the bills with your content?

Yeah, so the bulk of it's affiliate marketing, brand partnerships, display advertising, and then we also do a little bit of our own product sales, but that's not as much as the other three buckets there.

Yeah. And I know when we last met, you were talking about getting into software. I don't know if that was a partnership or developing it straight up.

Yeah. So that's coming. Like, I have, like, the alpha site is, like, ready. I'm probably going to run some customers through beta here in the next couple weeks. But, yeah, we have a software as a service that we're launching, because one of the interesting things is I have an interesting situation on my site where I have a lot of people asking for help, and there's no product or service in the market that solves it. So instead of going out there and trying to find it, which I already know there's not, we built it ourselves. And so I'm really excited about that.

I think that's a good problem to have. We've definitely felt that in some facets of our business, too, are like, okay, I guess we're Being pushed, led, let's say, by our customers and readers to produce something that they're asking for. I think that's the best possible.

Exactly. So, yeah, that's coming as well. And that'll be a whole new dynamic to my business.

I love that. Now, was there with. With your blog, was there ever, like, a specific turning point that you noticed where, you know, for a long time maybe the blog wasn't making a lot of money, not getting a lot of traffic, and then something happened, and then all of a sudden you started to see this more upward trajectory. Was there any sort of, like, catalyst. Any sort of catalyst, Any sort of, like, turning point?

Any.

Anything like, like, maybe a specific marketing tactic really started to kick in, or you got a mention on somebody else's podcast? Or was there any sort of big turning point that you noticed? Okay, this is where this website is starting to turn the corner.

Yeah, I mean, I can think of a couple in the history of my site, so to give some context, too, so I started the site in 2009, and then I made my first dollars in 2011. So it took about 18 months actually, before I started making any money. And my first dollars, we're talking like, 25 bucks in the first month that I actually made any money. And I just didn't know what I was doing. But the big turning point was about 2012 a, I went and started networking with other bloggers in my space, and so I found a community of other personal finance bloggers online. We had a forum back then, and so there was a forum, and it was just a network of other people that were talking about how to blog and talking about personal finance topics and helping each other, sharing each other's content, providing feedback, and just helping each other. And so that was the first turning point that I realized, like. Like, there's other people out there. Collaboration is huge. Like, you know, there's definitely. And I'd say in almost every niche, it's not competition, it's collaboration over competition. Because, like, even in the personal finance space, there's probably 2,000 blogs, another 2,000 brands. Every major news organization runs a money page. But at the same time, we're maybe only reaching 1% of the American population because everyone still sucks with their money. And you see the headline, right? So, like, we're clearly not, like, saturating the marketplace here. And so when I figured this out and I started learning, so I got educated. I'm getting some education, I'm getting some networking. I'm building some connections. That was the first major Turning point. The second major turning point was taking that in person and actually going to a conference. So at that time, I went to the Financial Blower conference. It was about two years later. And learning even more and then networking in person just. Just adds a whole level of.

Know, like, and trust factors, right? You learn who people are, you learn what their goals are, you can build even more collaborations. And those were the first two major turning points for my site.

I wouldn't agree with you anymore because that's exactly how we kicked everything off for us as well. You can try to hack it alone for all you can, you know, and try to scour the Internet for answers or help or, you know, figure out the next traffic source. But yeah, the collaboration, we totally agree on that a hundred percent, right?

I mean, it's collaboration, it's education, it's learning what's working. And like, yeah, but then I learned. And then I would say the next major turning point was a few years later. And it's when I took that collaboration and applied it to media. So it was starting to build partnerships with, you know, the mainstream media reporters and getting those major mentions. So being in the Washington Post, New York Times, you know, NBC News, and then nursing those relationships. Relationships. So having these reporters that you can contact and be sources for stories. So that goes a lot of ways. It gets you exposure, it gets you traffic. It, you know, builds your know, like, and trust factor. And it gets you links, which helps your SEO too. So those were kind of like the three major turning points for building traffic in my brand, I'd say, over the last few years.

Got it. Yeah. Any pointers on. On the PR stuff? And you don't have to go deep on this, but to get some. Get the attention of reporters, I don't know if this is an active thing you still do, or if it's just harnessing.

Oh, yeah. It's like one of the major facets of my site strategy, and it's huge. So I would say, if you're not a part of haro, help a reporter out, go sign up. It's a free service, and you gotta put yourself in the reporter's shoes, right? So you got these reporters that, you know, hundreds of their blogs, their major publications, there's magazines, all this kind of stuff out there, right? And there's a reporter has a deadline and they have a story and they need a source, and they might not. They just got assigned this story and they might not know anybody in this space. So this help a reporter out service is these reporters put out a query and people that are on the mailing list for it can respond to it. It's super easy, it's free. And it's a great tool to get your name and your site and your brand mentioned out there. But you have to be helpful. You're not necessarily going to get a link. There's a lot of publications out there and stuff that are very strict on their editorial guidelines and they won't let that. But at the same time, think Google and AI and all these technologies out there can put two and two together. So even if your website or you don't get a link or, but your name's mentioned and you're quoted in a source, like I think Google could start figuring out that you probably are going to be an expert in this area or this, this, you know, this niche. And so like, you can build up that reputation that way.

That's a, that's a good strategy. Yeah. Quora or not Quora. We'll get to Quora in a second. For some reason, that was on my brain. Haro. Yeah, haro. We've had a buddy, Andrew o' Brien, pr, so we won't go super deep on HARO here, but he broke that down very similar to what you were saying is think like the reporter and figure out, ask the right questions and be very value focused.

Build a relationship with the reporter.

Relationship, break through the clutter because they're probably getting hundreds of responses to each one of those queries they put out out there.

Totally. And it really works. Then if you build that relationship, let's just say you become a source on a given topic. Like, hopefully you build that relationship and then the reporter doesn't even need to put a HARO query and they'll just email you and then go from there. Right.

I've actually seen Haro on the other end as well. I actually submitted a query on HARO once, like trying to drum up responses because I was writing an article for one of our blogs and you don't have to be a big media source to go and ask questions on HARO and get people to answer. So I went on there and I actually asked, I don't remember what the question was, but I posed a question because I want to write a giant post with information from a whole bunch of different people. And I would say 98% of what I got was just unusable junk. Like most of the people that responded to the HARO query just kind of gave real cliche, fluffy junk answers that I was just like, I can't use this stuff. And there was maybe like, maybe like 1 to 2% of the stuff that I got was actually thought out, detailed, good information. So seeing it from that perspective, I know that it's easy to think when I get those HARO queries that, oh, there's going to be thousands or hundreds of people responding, so maybe they're not going to pay attention to mine. Well, if yours is high quality, you're already standing out.

Exactly. You're so true. I've been on that same end and it's just mind boggling how much crap just gets sent your way. And it's like, even if you're not the fastest and stuff, if you're still in the top 10, 20 people, but you actually do everything they ask and more and have a solid answer, you're going to be in.

Yeah.

So speed's a big factor. It sounds like. Do you have a subject line or a reply? Kind of like a hey, open me. This one kind of stands out. Other than those.

No. I really just try to answer the question. I have a baseline kind of template that says, hey, I'm Robert Farrington, I'm a student loan expert or something. And then I answer their questions. So literally they could just copy and paste my response, like third person.

Imagine if you were the reporter. Right. I just want to copy and paste your response and cite you and call it a day. And that's what I try to do. I just try to make it super easy and quick so they don't have to think about it.

Love it. Yeah.

And you'd be surprised too, how many people just don't even follow directions on haro. They'll say, hey, give us your name, give us your website address and answer these three questions. And then people will do like one of the three steps that you gave them.

Exactly. It's ridiculous.

And toss them out. So before we want to move to traffic, talk in a second, but do you have a team of your own or are you doing all this stuff yourself? How does the structure look like?

Yeah, so it's all a virtual team. I think we have about eight contractors that work for us, a few writers. I have an editor, I have a social media manager, I have a couple people that help with paid traffic and then. Yeah, and then myself. So, you know, a small group of contractors, they're all scattered around and we just do everything online.

That's rad.

So what does a typical day look like for you when you get up in the morning and you go to your computer, what kind of things Are you doing kind of on a daily basis to keep the machine running.

So I'll tell you. So. One of the first things I do that I think is different than many people is I check my revenue. Number one thing keeps me motivated, like to see how things are performing. And so it also is on these days when there's just things you're not going to want to do, like checking your revenue kind of like gives you that boost to get through the rest of the day. So, number one thing I do and then I jump into Asana as my tool of choice and I look at the content calendar. I look at. We have a whole thing about partnerships. So, you know, we do most of our stuff through affiliates and brand partnerships. So I'm checking in with the team and seeing that things are getting done there. And then I'm usually creating content or responding to content on social. So I respond to all of our own emails, I respond to all the stuff on social. I don't outsource the real interactions. I outsource creating funny pictures and emojis in the text. But if people actually are asking questions, I'm definitely out there answering it myself. Then, yeah, I'm just really focused on the content and any business development stuff for the rest of the day. I usually call it a day about 2 o' clock and go get my son from school. Cool. So, yeah.

Nice, man. Well, we're breaking your rules right now.

You're working overtime for us today.

I am. Luckily, I have a lot of flexibility for picking them up, so it's not a big deal.

Appreciate that, man. We'll get you over to them soon. Cool. So anything that we might have missed on the content side of stuff like the operations or maybe some cool things that people should know about doing this before we move to more of the traffic talk?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I'm a big Asana buff, so I don't know if that's your tool of choice. But, like, I think if you, you are running anything in the content space, like Trello's, you know, everything. Asana is the tool for content creators. Like, I can't basecamp, can't do it for content creation and I think it's great for creating editorial calendar. I think it's great for managing partnerships.

And it's great for managing an online business in terms of being able to set up like, you know, recurring calendars for business tasks that you have to do, like every month on your website and things like that. So I love Asana. Die hard. On Asana.

That's awesome. Yeah, I used to use it a lot in a previous business. We use Notion now but there's a lot of similar elements to Asana. I mean, yeah, they're all really good but I agree with the whole Trello thing. It's like eh, you know, Basecamp, I don't see that working content either.

We tried so much to make Trello work and we just never really got a good flow with Trello that we liked.

Yeah, no, Asana's cool. I like it a lot. Sorry. Let's go to traffic. So a lot is. It sounds like SEO is a massive part based on the pricing. Is that your kind of the number one source of traffic for you? New traffic at least?

Yeah, no, definitely. Organic search is huge. I mean the pr, the stuff's there but I think on the flip side as Google and everything you guys know is links are important, but they're not the end. All the one thing we try to find ourselves on is having the best content and the best user experience for our content. So a clean site, not cluttered, easy to read, mobile friendly, fast. And.

I put my content out there as the best content against all the competition. So if you're googling a term, you're not going to find necessarily a better answer.

Yeah, no, it's true. We might have run a quick little search on your site with one of our SEO tools just to see and yeah, you are ranked for some very competitive key. I'm like, holy crap. He's like, first three spots for a lot of these big terms like you just said. And it has to be the good, the quality of the content. Links help of course, but yeah, exactly what you said they do.

And it didn't start with links and it just started with great content that it's fresh and so I don't know. I'll tell you, everyone's like, do you use tools? Do you do keyword research? No, I don't do any of that stuff. I'll be very frank. What I do is I try to find. I get questions or I have like thoughts on a subject and all I do is put in whatever my thought is into Google and I see what else anyone else out there has written about it and go like all the way through page one, sometimes into page two, but very rarely. And I just try to create something that's better than all that. So maybe it's longer even length is important. You guys probably know all the stats but like it's not always important. But like do they have Charts? Do they have tables? Do they have interactive content? Do they have audio? Do they have video? Are there images? I just try to make it the best, easiest, most user friendly piece of content that there could be for that topic. And it doesn't necessarily require a tool, just kind of going, seeing what else is out there.

Yeah, it's a lot more just using what's. Yeah, it's the social sphere. I mean, it sounds like you probably get a lot of input from your readers and your subscribers, so that's easy. They're just piping you ideas probably every single day, more or less. Yeah, yeah.

Yes and no. Like a lot of it's the same stuff over and over again, which we can direct them to the content. And then, you know, there's a lot of stuff that I just want to create. So that's the one thing I have, like an asana thing, like ideas that I want to write about. Because, like, I'll go like weeks and weeks with like no inspiration and like no ideas. But then like one day, for whatever reason, like, I don't know, you just get inspired and like 15 things will like come to your mind. Right. And so I just drop all that stuff in asana, just try to brain dump it all out while it's all fresh. Right?

Yeah, yeah. Then from there, hopefully something else sparks when you reread that idea from a week back.

Exactly.

So are you growing like a mailing list or.

How do I ask this question? When you release a new piece of content, like a piece of content that went live today, what would you do today with a fresh piece of content to sort of kickstart things?

I shared on all the social channels. And those social channels include Reddit, Quora, Instagram, sometimes Instagram stories. We got Facebook, Facebook groups. Pinterest is huge. So we put it on all the social channels. It depends on what the content is. I have an email subscriber list and I have a push notification list. It might go out to one or the other or both, kind of depending on it. You know, they're all segmented accordingly. So the hard part in personal finance is that people are at different places in life. I should say if you're getting out of debt, you might not necessarily care about investing content. And if you're investing, you might not care about getting out of debt content. So it really kind of depends on the content and what it is, and then kind of based on that, we'll share it into the appropriate places out there.

Got it, got it, got. Yeah.

And then I would Say some of the other underrated things out there too. One of the other things is like linking to it on my own site. So like one of my asana tasks is every new piece of content, I need to go back to the archives and link to it so that you're continuing to build that web of, you know, a coherent site across your whole entire thing. Not just you don't abandon the old stuff, but I think we're pretty good at this point in time of internal links. Like, you create a new piece of content and you're pretty. Most of us probably link to your old content, but what are you doing to link to your new content from your old content? And so, you know, just some of these that we have in place, we.

Were actually doing that to one of our sites yesterday. You create a nice pillar piece of content or some longer piece post and then, yeah, link to all these relevant things that could feed. Exactly that. And maybe link a couple things from the new one as well. Just so it's all cross.

And it's also kind of sort of telling Google, these are the keywords I kind of want to rake for. Right. If you go back to old content, you can kind of strategically decide the wording of the links to help Google know what that article is about, Right?

Exactly. I mean, Google's gonna figure it out. It's super smart. But like, when it sees that, like you're starting to use this new content as references to other stuff, it's like you're kind of filling in that content gap. And I think it's gonna just boost everything all around, right?

Yeah, 100%.

I want to talk about Reddit and Quora because those are two platforms that have sort of eluded us quite a bit. Bit over the years.

Everyone, most people.

Joe's had some success with Quora organically years ago.

Yeah.

And we just now started experimenting with Reddit ads. But my experience with Reddit so far in the past was if you're trying to do like organic Reddit stuff and just sort of sharing the new articles from your website, the people on Reddit tend to be. That's. That's tend to be frowned upon a little bit. Right.

Like you absolutely stop self promoting.

What's the sort of Reddit be doing that stuff?

So what is your Reddit strategy?

So I'm gonna put this out here right now. So Reddit's gonna overtake Facebook, in my opinion, and mark this down within 18 months. I think the stats are like Reddit's already the number six biggest website out there. And I think Facebook's number three. Those are gonna flip.

I think I believe it. I actually. I spend way, way, way more time on Reddit personally than I do any other social media network these days.

You, I love it already.

So you're already a Redditor, so you should know how this works, right? So Reddit is a search engine just like any other social media platform. So what you can do to leverage Reddit is you could create your own subreddit for your brand, which I think every brand should be doing anyways. And you can leverage this in multiple ways. You can leverage it to publish your content. You can leverage it like a Facebook group in terms of sending people there so you can interact with them. So create a subreddit for your brand. Cool thing is with that subreddit, you control it. So you can publish whatever you want there, including your own content. And the interesting thing with Reddit is everyone's a snoop on Reddit. So when you go out and you engage normally like you will on Reddit and maybe in subreddits that are related to your space. So maybe for, you know, this podcast and you guys, it's like, we're gonna go on marketing, we're gonna go on SEO, we're gonna go on business and small business. And, you know, you're gonna. You're gonna engage like a normal human on those things. You're gonna answer the questions, you're gonna provide value, you're gonna be super helpful, but then you become known, and people are gonna click on your profile, and they're gonna see all the other stuff that you post, and they might click on that and come to your site. On the flip side, it's also a search engine, right? So people are gonna search for your content, or they're gonna search for questions, and if your content's there, they're gonna find it, and then they can click to you that way. And then as you just become known on the platform, people will link to your stuff more and more and more, just like you would grow your own following on any social media platform there is out there. You can just. The big thing that everyone gets in trouble for on Reddit is that they dive right in. They have never done anything else, and then they just start posting links to their stuff. Cardinal rule, unlike any. Unlike other platforms where you might get a pass, Reddit just doesn't give you the pass. But it does not mean, like, if you did this right now on Facebook, like, it doesn't mean, like, if you went into any. If you went into a random Facebook group right now and just started posting stuff. You're gonna get blocked over there. It's not any different. It's just, you know, Reddit also has a way of, you know, just being a little meaner about it.

They bring out the axe whenever you.

Start, like, do you want me to use it? No.

I mean, we're both Redditors. You know, we're both on Reddit fairly actively, but this is actually the first time I just learned that we can actually create our own subreddit. So that's how much I know about Reddit, other than the fact that I kind of. That's my social media of choice that I'm kind of mindlessly thumbing through from time to time. But I didn't even know that you could create a subreddit on there.

Right. And so, like, I've seen actually some brands that are doing, like, subreddits really well that I'm really stoked on. So, like, as I'm rolling out my software as a service here in the next couple weeks, like, we have a subreddit for it, and I'm gonna try to push. Instead of doing, like, a Facebook group, I'm gonna try to push a lot of our users to just using the subreddit and engaging in that way, because I just. It's such a prevalent platform, and I think it's just gonna become more and more so as Facebook continues to fade. Not to say that Facebook's dead, right? Like, I just kind of view Facebook as the older woman in the room. You know, she's still got a few good years ahead of her maybe, but she's on the decline. She's not moving as fast as she was, you know?

I get you. Yeah, that's funny. I love it. No, that's.

Shoot.

What was I gonna say? I think it's on the board there.

Crap. I just lost it. Dang it. Said the joke.

I love the strategy. Now, do you do anything with Reddit ads, or are you purely, like, organic in your own sub Reddit?

Right now I'm organic, but I actually really like Reddit ads. But Reddit ads are challenging. The reason is, is that they have a very tough AI filter, and they just don't like that. My site says investor in it, and so I've been working with an ad manager, so right now to get that changed. But I do run it, and I love it. And the reason I love Reddit ads is because you can target by subreddit, so, like, you can find your Audience specifically. And, you know, you can run Reddit ad. You can run ads for them. They look like native content and it's great.

Yeah, no, we're actually running a Reddit ad right now, but I couldn't actually figure out how to target specific subreddits. There was only very broad subreddits. Like, I think we're targeting people who follow the business subreddit, which is a very, very, very broad market that one is.

But then like, you can go down and down and down, down. So like, you could go down to like, like, you know, small business, or you can go to marketing. Might be a good one. I don't know what your ads for, but yeah, you could just continue to like, you know, focus on it right there.

Yeah, no, it's literally to try to get new listeners to the podcast is what it is. So, yeah, it's our first crack at trying to get podcast listeners through Reddit.

Yeah.

And just like everything else, like, they're continuing to build out this ad platform, like for when you think of Reddit as a business. Right. Like, the Reddit business is advertising. And so they're continuing to add more tools. They recently added a pixel, I would say recently, in the last six to nine months, the platform is continuing to evolve and evolve. I see it being very akin to what we had in Facebook ads three or four years ago.

Pretty soon, is the pixel more. Is it like a conversion pixel or is it more of a retargeting type pixel?

I haven't even played with it that much yet, but I think it is a retargeting pixel.

So from what I've seen, this is very, very surface level. I haven't dug deep enough, but what I saw in there was a conversion pixel where you can actually tell how your ads are doing, tracking through the conversion. But it didn't look like retargeting was in there yet.

Let's hope so.

You know, retargeting is going to be coming eventually. It's gotta be.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

In the business model, like you said, there's investors. Because I watched some videos on this just to kind of. Because after you and I met, you were the catalyst to this whole thing. I immediately told Matt. I was like, dude, Reddit and Core, we got to look into this. It seems like something good here. And I think that was when Matt, you shifted to looking at Reddit a little bit more as just as a user. And yeah, I mean, Reddit needs to make money. They've been around for a while. They have investors, they want to get paid. So it just makes sense that they want to grow their ad platform and grow as a whole, like you said.

And I guess they're already the number six website in the United States. Like they already, the traffic, the people are already using it. You know, as you talk to more people, I'm always, I'm like, oh, yeah, I use Reddit, I use Reddit. And you know, people just don't understand all these other ways that you can leverage Reddit.

Yeah, I think that's it. Well, sweet. So before we move to Quora, anything else on Reddit or is that nicely. Is that bow tied?

No, I'm good, man. I think if people haven't tried Reddit yet, get on Reddit, it's where it's at. I think you should use Reddit just as your own tool anyway, your own social media platform. It's great.

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's like, it's basically the best news resource on the planet, but you tailor the news that you get to see. I mean, it's amazing.

That's true.

Exactly.

So Quora, this was one that still I'm fascinated by. And you know, it's like the go old, what was it? Google Asker, Yahoo Answers. Yahoo Answers. That's what it was. Yeah. And they kind of.

I used to use. So where Quora, for me, it came from. I used to, used to use Yahoo groups way back in the day.

I remember those. My wife built a whole software on.

It's a solid source of traffic for me. Like, I'm talking like I used to get like a thousand visitors a day from Yahoo groups. And so I just kind of view like Core as the next iteration of that. Right, yeah.

So I used to use this years ago to send leads to one of my animation companies. And I did a super easy way of just targeting threads that were on there, literally saying, hey, hey, what are some good animation companies and some examples of their work? I'm like, oh, this is easy. I'm just gonna throw my answer in there. And it's a direct link back. They're asking for it. And it turned out to be some of my best forms of qualified leads coming in and spending at a minimum 5,000 bucks with me.

And that's exactly why you use Reddit. Right. So the one thing I found with Reddit, I mean, if you don't know or. Sorry, that's exactly why I use Quora. If you don't know what Quora is. Right. You post a question, people post answers to your question. Right. So the cool thing with Quora is you post a question and your answer is a link to your site. And so, like, if you're answering the people's question, like, you're going to get so much qualified traffic.

It's crazy.

It's crazy.

How does Quora ads, like, how does the cost look? I'm curious. I've never even looked at the Quora ad platform. I'm zero knowledge on it. I'm curious what it costs to even run a Quora ad.

So the cost is a little more expensive. Like I would say, like, my best would be in. Of course, expensive is relative. But like, for me, I call like, 50 cents a click is expensive. And so that's kind of what I'm seeing for Quora ads. And, you know, it's all on what you target. It's the same thing. So cool thing is it's very. It's very quality traffic. So, like, when you're on Facebook and you can get Facebook ads down to like 4 or 5 cents a click to your site, you're looking at Quora ads, you know, like 50 cents. That's crazy. But at the same time, it's the answer to that. You're answering the question with your content. It could not be more targeted. It's so nice.

Sure. The targeting. Do you target specific threads or is it keywords? How does that work?

Yeah, you target keywords. I target topics. So Quora is now very topic driven. You can sign up if you haven't been to Quora lately. They have a home feed. The home feed is curated based on topics that you follow.

I follow stuff in finance and student loan debt. I also have some entrepreneurship and marketing and stuff like that. And so then you can target the topics and then your ads show up natively in the feed based on people's interests and topics and stuff.

Got it.

Yeah. I mean, to me, 50 cents a click sounds sexy because in our industry, we're happy if we get sub dollar one clicks. It's true.

Yeah. I'm blown away that, Robert, you're getting that cheap on Facebook and all the other places. I mean, you're doing it right, man.

I mean, Facebook's gone up in price, so I've actually pulled back a ton on Facebook, but I went for about a month and a half last year at $0.01 a click, and it was just like, it's free money.

Of course.

You don't stop that. So with organic Quora, do you have any good guidelines, some best practices that you guys do?

Yeah, I mean, so I Try to get on there and engage just like you do on any platform. So I try to answer questions that are relevant to my space because, like, you build up your own profile, right? So like, your profile like kind of ranks you based on how many questions you've answered and you can see how many views you add on your stuff. And then like Quora has like a little bit like of an upvote and like reshare kind of thing. So basically it's like you build your profile, you build, build your brand, and you can get a lot of organic traffic that way. Cool thing with Quora though is Quora does let you drop links to your stuff. So if you're answering questions, you can put a link to your content and you don't get shunned like you do on Reddit. So like, you can answer the question and you can link to it. And then, you know, if it's really good stuff, you'll get upvoted. You'll build your brand reputation and stuff.

So yeah, yeah, I guess people are looking to have their questions answered in the best way possible. And if the best way to answer it is to send them to a resource versus answering right on the page, people are going to be happy with that, I would assume.

Exactly. And I try to do both. I usually write a paragraph or so, nothing crazy, and then say if you want to learn more or whatnot. Here, check this out. It's the full in depth, all the nuances.

Is that your Quora account, Joe?

Yeah. I just pulled up Quora because I haven't logged in probably a year. I just pulled up the stats, it actually looks the same. And this is crazy. So I was going hard, probably starting in 2013, and then in 2014, I kind of had my peak. Each thread, what daily was about 200 views or so. Overall, 108,000 views. And still to this day, at least like 10 a day on the threads I answered, I'm like, this is crazy.

It's got some longevity to it.

It's got a lot, and that's just a handful, not even that many posts. Completely organic. And my strategy, I remember was get there as fast as I could for the topics I was following back in the day was animation and be one of the first people to answer the question and then try to get upvotes. So yeah, I might have gained it a little bit and asking, get my circle, my own network. Hey, Hey. I posted something new just to kind of kickstart it.

You were asking all your friends and families to give you Little upvotes on your answer.

I did a little bit of that back in the day.

Is anything wrong with that?

You got to kickstart some, and then it. Well, it doesn't take many. I think I did like 10 upvotes, and then from there it kind of just goes organically likely if you're early. I don't know. The algorithms might have changed by now, but that's how I did it.

Yeah. And that's it. I mean, I think it's like you just keep building your reputation in your space. There's, you know, I think people like the magic bullets and they like the things, but it's like, you know, if you don't have the money to spend on advertising and you just have your time, well, then spend your time out there engaging and building that reputation up and answering those questions and stuff. It really does work well.

Agreed. Yeah.

Yeah. So is there anything else we should touch on on Traffic? Actually, before, while we have you, we actually kind of wanted to talk a little bit about, like, debt management and investing and, you know, some of the types of topics you talk about on your site, if you're open to it for a couple minutes. But before we do, I'm curious if there was any other sort of, like, traffic things that we should cover. We talked about SEO, we talked about Reddit. We talked about Quora. We talked a little bit about, you know, sharing your stuff on a grant on social media and mailing your list. And I think we kind of covered a lot of ground with Traffic. But I'm curious if there's anything we were just kind of blanking on and we missed.

Yeah, I mean, I think it all depends, too. Like, don't get overwhelmed in these strategies. It really depends on where you're at in your business. Right. So, like, I would double down on one. I'd pick one place and just own it. If you're just starting out and then as your business grows and you're freeing up time as you're outsourcing, you have subcontractors and stuff, like, I would continue to play in every sandbox. So the one thing I like to do, and I call it playing in the sandboxes, right? So, like, I still like our bread and butter is Pinterest and Facebook. It's just. It's where it's at still today, but I think Pinterest is just doing its own thing, and Facebook is fading. But I've been playing on Reddit for a year and a half, two years now, and I've been playing on Quora for a year. And so it's like. And we're seeing results there. So, like, I already know how to play on these platforms. And so, like I say, as your business grows and you have the ability and resources to kind of explore and play more. Like, I would play in these other, you know, up and coming sandboxes to, like, learn the platforms, lock down your branded accounts, like, make sure that you have, you know, everything set up. Because, you know, what's to say Mark Zuckerberg doesn't flip the switch tomorrow and say, like, we're all going back to just individual profiles and private. You never know. Right. Like, he could do that. He probably won't. But, like, it's a thing. And so, like, you always want to be ready to go and for your business. Business by kind of knowing what else is out there.

Yeah.

I mean, just like in investment world, you want some diversification, you don't want that any single point of failure in your business is a bad thing.

Right. And not to say that it won't hurt and it won't suck, but at least you're not going to have this lead time, you know, or you'll have a lead time, but you won't have, like this learning curve because you already know exactly what to do. It's just a matter of devoting more time and resources to the other thing.

Yeah, yeah. Awesome, man. No, I think that's cool. A lot of good traffic stuff there. So, Matt, you wanted to dig into what, like, kind of investment debt strategies or elimination strategies for entrepreneurs.

We have a note here that one of our team members. We have our team members, like, come to us with notes before the shows and stuff. And one of the notes we have here was that you basically managed to, like, pay off your debt and get debt free. So I'm curious if you want to talk into that and maybe that. I'm assuming that's still true.

Yeah, no, totally. I mean, so I was always a side hustler, right. And so when I finished school, when I was all said and done with college, I had about 43,000 bucks in student loans, and we paid that off in about two and a half years. And that was through side hustling. It was through growing the blog. It was through earning that money and throwing it right down towards getting those student loans paid off. And that's why I love side hustling as a generic, generic, you know, strategy for achieving your money goals. Whether your money goal is to get debt free, whether your money goal is to invest and put more money away or buy a rental property or whatever. Like, the best thing you can do is earn more money. Because the thing is, is cutting your budget can only go so far, right? So you guys, you guys said you're Ramit Sadie fans, so this is like, straight from Ramit's playbook. Ramit's like, I mean, it's just like, you know, you're still gonna have rent, you're still gonna have food, you're still gonna have transportation costs. So ultra frugally, like, you can't live on zero. There will still be expenses, but the ability to earn more money is limitless, Right? So if you could go out and side hustle, you could earn more money and then you could start achieving your financial goals sooner. And so that's really, like, what my business, when it was a side business and now has enabled us to do. And you know, the cool thing is, is before I left Target, I told you I was earning more on the blog before I left, because my wife was and I, we would have these conversations, like, you know, you got a plan for every scenario, and you're like, making a major life change. Just, like, what if the Internet was to turn off tomorrow? Like, would we be okay? Right? And so, like, we saved all this money for when we had, like, these two massive incomes for a few years before we even made the leap. So if the Internet does turn off tomorrow, like, we would still be okay. And that's all just through earning more and side hustling.

I love it. That's so sweet. And it's so more empowering, too, if you see it that way. Rather than let's just try to cut every single expense that I have possible.

Instead, let's figure out, maybe let's look at an expense. And you can totally correct me if you have a different philosophy, but look at an expense car payment, or maybe you just want to buy a new mountain bike or whatever and put a price on it and figure out the side hustle your way to that point and cover that expense.

Totally. And I'm all about, like, optimizing your spending, and I don't like to waste money. And like, Joe, I think you know this, but, like, I don't. We only have one car in our family. I made the choice about two years ago, and this is when I was still working at Target full time, that we just decided to Uber everywhere. So I take Uber and Lyft everywhere on my own, even when I was commuting five days a week and it was cheaper than owning A car. Because, like, when you actually did the math, like, I was only. I'm only spending, like, 250 bucks a month or so on Uber. And, like, owning a car costs more than that pretty much any way you slice it, when you start adding in gas and maintenance and, you know, registration and just the cost of buying the car. So it's like, it's really about optimizing your spending. Like, I don't necessarily need to cut things out, but I think you just really need to be mindful. Like, if you still are paying for Netflix, are you watching Netflix every night?

Right?

You know, like, if you're gonna go, like, whatever. Like, whatever that thing is, it's just like, are you optimizing? Is it the right thing to waste your money on? Because, like, at the end of the day, like, it's not magic. If you want to, like, retire earlier, become financially independent, like, here's a. Here's a simple trick. If you can save 50% of your income for 10 years, 50% of your income for 10 Years, you can probably retire. It doesn't matter if you're 22 or 32, if you can save half your income and you don't change your quality of life. So it's like, even if you're only earning $40,000 a year, if you can save 20, you can retire in 10 years and still take $40,000 a year to live off of. If you're making a. Are living off a lot more, of course that number's higher. But save 50% of your income for 10 years?

That's awesome.

I actually specifically remember straight from Ramit. I've read his book a couple times and used to read his blog a little more frequently than we do today. But he does have that sort of philosophy of, are you paying monthly for things that you could do a la carte? Are you paying for cable? But you really only watch two shows? Well, just pay to watch those two shows on iTunes or whatever. So I love that philosophy. And you're speaking my language at the car. For about two years, we only owned one car. We actually just now bought a second car, like, two months ago because you.

Kind of had to with your kids.

My kids both got to an age where they're both in sports now, and so my wife and I have to actually divide and conquer and go to two different locations. And as I'm sure you're very familiar with, it's really hard to Uber with car seats and stuff. I don't even know if you can. So we actually were Kind of.

You totally can. So I'll tell you, I'm in my wework right now, and I have a car seat in here, like one of the cheap $30 ones. Because if I need to take my 5 year old, I can just throw that in the car. Like, it's the super lightweight ones that are like 30 bucks at Target. Like, boom. And we're ready to rock and roll.

Oh, there you go. I didn't even know you could.

All right, watch. You go sell the car I just bought then.

No, but seriously, it's really about intentional spending and optimizing your choices. So, like, when people look at their money too, like, you know, your debt is probably a big one. So get out of debt. But then after that, your two biggest expenses in life are housing and transportation.

And so, you know, we all live here in Southern California, and so housing's a lot more. But that's not to say that you can't, like, house hack and get creative and solve some of that. You can get roommates. Now, it might not be Sexy if you're 30 years old and you have a roommate, but when you're 40 years old and you could retire, all your friends are going to think twice about your lame lifestyle choice of having a roommate. Still, like, it's just hard because it's also part psychology. You know, the money is one thing and the math is one thing, and that works out, but we have this innate psychology and these issues that we have to be accepting of. People will judge your choices. People will think weird of you. Or are you comfortable enough to live a little bit different lifestyle to achieve your financial goals?

That's so cool. There's so many little hacks you can do. Like you said in the house hack, it doesn't have to be Airbnb. It doesn't even have to be room. I know Heather. She's in the wedding space, planning space, and she's already in talks with places like Costco, just reached out cold and might do some shoots, some photo shoots in our backyard, and make that kind of a thing where photographers can come and check that out. And it's like, guess what? We just figured out how to maybe pay for the cost of redoing a part of our yard, apply that earning to something we were just going to spend anyway.

Well, we had a guy on our podcast not too long ago, Dana Robinson, who talked about how he was basically living rent free. I mean, he went and bought a 4 plex. He used an FHA loan, put 3% down, bought like a 4 plex apartment building and lived in one of those apartments and then rented out the other three. And the three people that were renting those other units out covered his monthly mortgage. So that was basically how he rent, lived rent free, month to month. So I mean there's a lot of.

Money you have to buy a 4 plex. You know, one of my good friends from college did the same thing. He just bought a three bedroom house and then rented out the other two bedrooms and that covered like 80% of it. And then when he graduated he's like, I'm out of this joint and rented the third bedroom.

Yeah, there you go. Automatic cash flow ideally.

Exactly. And so like, I mean, yeah, all these things like, but it's unconventional. People don't necessarily like to do them, but it's like if you want to, like you can. It's kind of like driving for Uber and Lyft. Like you know, the new. The news portrays it as like such a bad thing. These drivers don't make all this money, yada yada yada, yada yada. But it's like, tell me any scenario in this world where at 3am if you get a hankering to earn some money, you could turn on your smartphone and go, start making money with no boss, no reporting requirement, like no, like, you know, checking in or out. Like you could just go like tell me what world you live in where that's a thing thing. Because that's what these apps enable. Like if you want to go make some money at three in the morning today because you got a little bit of time, you can't sleep, you can go and do that. And so that's what like we live in this amazing world that like you can go make this extra money. It might not be a sexy amount of extra money. You might like drive for like four hours and make, you know, 20 or 30 bucks. But would you have really earned 20 or 30 bucks at 2 in the morning?

Yeah.

Of course.

Now on the investing side of things, what are just some sort of like basic preliminary tips, Somebody maybe who hasn't done any sort of investing, where would you say they go get started?

It depends on what you want to do. Right. So I am a big believer in low cost index funds. Keep it simple. Like Wall street, like you got Goldman Sachs out here, right? They spend billions and billions and billions of dollars a year. They have the latest technology, they pay countless people, they have all of this st and even they cannot beat the stock market over the long run. And over the long run is like 2030 years, right? So like you can get that return without any of the muss and fuss by just investing in low cost index funds. But here's the problem. Once again, it's psychology. It's just not sexy. So you put $5,000 in your Roth IRA this year, and even if you get a 10% return, your Roth IRA is now at 5,500 bucks. And you're just like, that's, that's it. And it's like, yes, that is it. But you do that for the next 20 years and you're a millionaire that no one wants to do it because it doesn't feel good after year one. And we're in this like instant gratification society right now. So you know, low cost index funds take advantage of tax deferred accounts. So you should be doing an ira. You should be doing a health savings account if you qualify for one. If you're a small business owner, like you better be doing your solo 401k. There's like no better savings vehicle out there there for small business owners. Unless you're a high net worth business owner. Then look at like a defined benefit plan. Yes, like an actual pension, because you can create your own and like stash away even more money because all that stuff can go away tax deferred, tax free and you know, let it grow. The investing part isn't sexy. Like it's just put it in like, you know, low cost index funds and let it roll for 20 years and just keep doing it over and over and over again. But it works, works.

Do you recommend that people completely get out of debt before starting to invest or do you think they should be investing and paying down debt at the same time?

I'm a big believer of the balance. You gotta do both. Because the thing is you can't get back these years. Now, never compromise. Don't miss debt payments and stuff because you're trying to invest. You gotta handle the basics. But you can't get back that $5,000 you could put into your IRA this year if you don't do it. And that's the best game there is in you can't get back. Like if you're working, if you're still working for an employer and you get an employer match and they're giving you like a 5% into your 401k, like that's free money. And you can't get, get, get that back if you don't do it. And so like I know there's like Dave Ramsey fans out there and Dave Ramsey's big believer. Like you do 100% debt and you don't do anything else but like you could be leaving free money on the table by not. So I'm a big believer. And you definitely got to make the minimum payments. But then try to find that balance balance to take advantage of these accounts when you're early. Because if you're putting this away when you're 22, man, it makes a huge difference because if you're Starting when you're 32, it's going to take you about twice as much money to get the same result.

Compound interest.

Yeah, we actually just.

Exactly.

Earlier today, we actually had somebody from Dave Ramsey's company on the podcast. It's funny that you brought him up.

We weren't talking about finance.

No, we weren't. We were talking about more mindset type stuff, but with no but it's great.

Like, and that's the thing is that's what Dave gets right and his whole organization gets right is mindset. Like, I disagree with some of their messaging, but his listeners and his readers need that from a mindset perspective because they've struggled so far that they've finally found that and they just need that like structure and that rigidness, even though it might not be 100% right. But I'd rather these people get 80% of the way there and then like start learning some more lessons. Right?

Yeah. This is so cool.

I just remember one of the lessons because I read Dave Ramsey's book, the Money Makeover Book, years and years ago and I remember one of the lessons that sort of always stuck with me was you want to get out of debt before you start investing. Because let's say across all of your debt, it's, let's say your average paying 15% on your debt. And let's say investing, you might make 10% investing. Well, by investing and not paying off your debt, you're actually losing 5% per year because you're not paying down that debt. As a person opposed to, you know what I'm saying?

I totally. And like I said, it's not wrong. But at the same time, like, he also says things like don't do your 401k at your company match. So you're telling people to like not take a 5% raise and get free money into a tax deferred account. So then when you want to talk about your percentages, like you might be making a 10% per year, plus you got that 5% bonus, plus you're not going to pay taxes on that. So you're going to save even more money. You know, like, you start doing the math and you kind of see it does fall apart. But he's not wrong because on the flip side, people just need to get out of debt and they probably struggled to a point to get there. So once again, I'd rather people just get out of debt if that's what it's going to take. I'd rather them take some of Dave than nothing, right?

Oh yeah, for sure.

And so when it comes to paying down debt, is there any sort of philosophy on it that you prescribe to as far as like you've got the pay the highest interest rate, great stuff first. And then you've got the pay your lowest balances first, which is Dave Ramsey's model is get all pay the lowest balances and you feel sort of excited that you paid something off and then whatever you're paying towards that lowest balance, you pay it towards the next lowest balance until it's all gone. Do you have any sort of debt payment philosophy that you kind of tend to recommend to people the most?

So you got it. It's the debt snowball, which is Dave and there's the debt avalanche, which is the other one. It's the highest interest rate first. And for me I'm just kind of like you do you. So if you need the psychological aspect. So Dave's debt snowball is proven psychologically. It's what works on a psychological level. But there's also like math minded people. And if you're like one of these math and analytical minded people, well then go the avalanche approach and do the highest interest rate first. You know, the net result for most people is gonna be a couple hundred bucks over the debt repayment process. So the difference between the two approaches really doesn't add up to a lot of money. It really is pick the approach that's gonn for you and your personality so that you can just do it?

No, that's what I'm kind of getting from this whole thing is keep it simple, keep the momentum going, stay consistent with what you're doing and use some of these tools, these mechanisms. The 401, like the solo 401k actually Matt wrote it on the board because we're like, I don't even know about that.

Yeah, why didn't I know about that? That concept is brand new, so I wrote it because we're going to look it up as soon as we get.

Off this call 100% we will.

You need to. So as a small business owner like you could put away up to $55,000 a year from your business tax free. So like. Yeah, so like if you hate paying taxes and you want to invest and save for yourself, it's not even tax.

Deferred, it's tax free.

Well, you write it off as an expense for your business. So it is tax deferred. But you have to, you know, your business isn't going to pay the tax. Gotcha. And then you will pay the tax when you withdraw the money in retirement. But you could also do things like let's just. Your business has an exit. And then you have two or three years where you're not working, you don't have any income. Well, during those two or three years, you take your Solo 401K and you convert it to a Roth IRA. And so you pay tax then, but you pay it a different percentage and now you're totally tax free.

So that's rad. We gotta have a talking too with our cpa. Why haven't you talked to us about. No, but I just love. And going back to the. I don't think you call them ETFs, but. Oh my God.

Index funds.

Index funds. There you go. Yeah, it was in one of Tony Robbins books, the Unshakeable or one of those two. He was talking about how Warren Buffett, I think he was competing against investors and Warren Buffett's just like, yeah, I'll do the index funds. It's going to crush you guys.

And that's the thing I always like to. Let's just take a step back and think about things logically. In an index, index fund, let's just say the s and P500, you get the top 500 companies in the country that you own. Right. And you don't have to think about it because let's just say I'm going to use a really hypothetical example, but let's just say GEGE is one of the biggest companies in the US but let's say it goes out of business next year. Well, you know what your index fund does? It's not like your index fund suddenly becomes the S&P499. No, they drop GE out and they put the next company in there into the number 500 slot. And so what happens is over the long, you get the benefit of the biggest and best companies in the country or all of them. If you can go to like the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index, vtsax. Right. It's all the companies like, so you're literally just investing in all the companies so as long as all the companies exist, you will be good, right?

Versus trying to pick and choose winners and losers where. Not to say that you won't win, but it's also like going to Vegas and playing blackjack, right? Like, you might go to Vegas this weekend and you might play blackjack and you might come ahead 500 bucks. But if you did that for 20 years, chances are you're not gonna come out ahead, you're gonna be losing because, like, it's just the odds are against you. And that's the hard part, is that when you're picking individual stocks, you might have some winners, but you're not gonna be able to devote the time, effort, resources to do it consistently over the long run of 20 to 30 years that most of us will probably need to do this for. Right? And that's where index fund investing is just super easy. Just invest in all the companies for 20 and boom, like, you come out ahead.

It's a great invention. And why would we even want to personally manage that mini stuff for that?

Because it's fun. So, like, on the flip side, like, if you do enjoy it, keep it to like 5 to 10% of your assets and, you know, realize that it's like fun money, right? Like, you know, some people like to gamble, some people like to buy a boat, some people like to buy an rv. Well, maybe you like to spend your Saturdays researching companies to invest in and you want to try to invest a little bit. That's cool. But like, you shouldn't think of that as your long term investment strategy because, like, you're probably not going to be successful. And like I said, I'm talking over the long run, 20 to 30 years. And once again, there's probably one or two outliers out there that have been uber successful over, you know, you know, 20 or 30 years. But then again, we're talking about a handful of people out of 350 million Americans. So once again, the odds are probably not in your favor.

Just very true.

Yeah, Right now I think Joe and I, we both use Wealthfront. Are you familiar with with Wealthfront?

Yeah, Wealthfront Betterment Solid options. They take the same philosophy, except they do it for you. So literally all you do is direct deposit your money into your Wealthfront account and like, let them handle it. You do pay premium for it, right? You're paying what, 0.25% per year, but like, you know, you get that peace of mind that it's just being handled and it probably is a little less than what you'd Pay a traditional non robotic financial advisor to do the same thing for you. True.

And I know Matt and I have referred and this is one of our hacks, like you said, is refer people to Wealthfront. And I think our management fee was zero for a long time. I haven't checked it.

I don't know.

But yeah, it was to get that number down like you said, to make it work.

Sure. But like, you know, on the flip side, like, if you're gonna pay a professional money manager, you might be paying upwards of 1%, and I don't think most people need that unless you're like $10 million plus in your portfolio and you got some interesting things going on, like maybe you got a large portion of real estate or private placement or other. You know, once again, 99% of Americans don't need to even worry about like a tool like Wealth Runner. Betterment is a solid option if you just, if you don't want to think about investing and want to just like send them a check every single month or direct deposit from your, you know, checking account.

It's.

It's a fall. It's a solid tool.

Exactly. That's how I use it. It's direct deposit once a month and keep it consistent. Yeah, the way I use it is.

I don't have to think of it, it's just to. Just to let it go. Just do it every single month and, you know, enjoy the riches in 20 years. But once again, you guys, it's not, it's not sexy and you probably are like, okay, that 200 bucks a month is gone. Like, right. And then at some point in time, the market's going to go down and then you're going to feel even worse about it. But, like, over the long run, you have to keep thinking over the long run.

Yeah, don't change.

Yeah, I took all my money out and put it in bitcoin instead.

No.

No, he didn't do that.

We have had a few conversations with past guests quite in depth about bitcoin, but we won't get into that now because I'm sure you have your own opinion on that kind of thing, but.

We'Re not opening that.

Right.

It's a whole new rabbit hole that we're not prepared to go down at the moment.

And I think if you. Yeah, I mean, bitcoin is bitcoin, but cryptocurrency and the blockchain is a whole other thing. And you know, once again, I kind of view it like the S&P 500. I don't think you can pick winners? So like bitcoin is one of 2,000 plus currencies or tokens. And who are you to say that they're going to be the one that's going to be the winner in 10, 15, 15 years. Right. And that's the only thing I have to say. I think crypto and blockchain and all those are phenomenal innovations. I think they're going to have a place to stay here or some variation of it, but I can't tell you that they're going to which one of. Is it Ripple? Is it Ethereum? Is it bitcoin? Like who's going to win the game come 10 years from now?

I don't know.

Yeah, that's exactly our thinking. Technology is a major spread the deck.

No, I think the blockchain technology is like world changing. But the coins themselves, who knows still?

Yeah, who knows?

Who knows? And that's the thing is like I don't know. Is GE going to be here in 10 years?

Like I don't know.

That's why I invest in index fund.

All right, well, let's wrap it up here. I know we kept you a little longer than we promised. Appreciate your time, man.

It's all good. This has been fun, man.

Yeah. So really quick before we wrap up, what's up? A book or something that you just tend to kind of reference yourself. Really cool. Just you get aha's every time you read this thing that you'd like to recommend here on the show.

Yeah, like I don't know if I get AHAs from it, but I do like find it like reinforcing is. You know, I'm kind of big on like the stoicism stuff. So I like what is it? The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday. And the reason I like it is it's like what, 365, like little one pager. Sometimes they're like two pagers, you know, so super easy reading, which I'm a huge fan of. Right.

And it's just reinforcing and motivating. I'll tell you the thing I'm reading, slash, listening to right now, which I. I am just in love with is Never split the difference.

Yes.

It's like, it's like Chris Voss and it's all on negotiating and another one that's just like I'm actually on my second go through listening to it because just so much good stuff right there.

I'm actually reading that right now about halfway through I have the physical book. Would you recommend the audio on that? One as well. Yeah.

I mean, I just default to audio because it's easier for me. I haven't even picked up the real book of it, so I couldn't tell you.

Dude, it's awesome. No, I've been using it in so many ways. Highly recommend that book.

So. Yeah. Help me understand how I'm supposed to do that.

I love it. Yeah. Would it be outrageous if we were to x? No, of course not.

I haven't read it yet, but this is the second time today it's come up in a conversation, so I mention.

It to Matt all the time, too. I'm like, dude, you need this. Just take it to every conversation. All right, Robert, where should folks go? Check out everything. You got to go everything out there online right now.

Yeah. So you can check out the website@thecollegeinvestor.com or, you know, your social media or podcast of your choosing. So, you know, at the college Master audio show, we have a YouTube channel, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit. We're there. So come stop by and say hi.

All right, man. We'll link it all in the show. Notes. As always, we appreciate your time, buddy. And I think another one. This is fun.

Thanks, everybody, for listening to this episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast for taking the time to listen. We want to give you something a little bit special. Every single episode that we do, we actually have somebody on our team take notes. We basically have a Cliff's Notes version of every episode where you can go and find all of the tips and tactics that they laid out, all of the resources that they laid out, all the good stuff from this episode. We actually have a nice, simple notes version that you can find on our website. So go to evergreenprofits.com, find this episode that you just listen to, and give us your email address, and we'll send you the notes. Thanks for listening.

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