Using Your Time Effectively—When You Should Outsource

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and I'm really excited for today's guest because she's got multiple streams of income. She's got a little bit of freelancing going on. And, you know, Scott and I don't like freelancing because it doesn't scale. So we're gonna, like, pick on her a little bit and figure this out.

All the time, but I think our.

Guest is gonna be cool about it. But before we talk to our guests, I would be remiss if I did not properly introduce my co host. You know him, you love him. Scott Todd from scotttodd.net landmodo.com and most importantly, if you're not automating your Craigslist postings, posting domination.com TheLand Gig Scott Todd, how are you?

Hey, Mark.

I'm well.

How are you?

Pulse is still normal. Respiration is fine. I've had my bulletproof coffee in the morning. Another cup of coffee. I'm wired. I'm pumped for the podcast.

Well, let's go.

Let's do it. Let's talk to Miranda Marquitt. If you don't know, Miranda Marquitt is. She is the owner of plantingmoneyseeds.com, i should say CEO of Planting Money Seeds. She has a podcast. She has a MA in journalism. She's a freelance writer. She is the primary breadwinner for her family. She's been writing about finances since 2006. That's 10 years, 11 years of talking about finances. She's a blogger. She's been mentioned in USA Today, Huffington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Times, Consumerist, the Atlantic Wire, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and other publications. She's kind of a big deal. Miranda Marquis, welcome.

Thanks for having me on.

Well, thank you. So, you know, Scott and I are saying, like, what percentage of your business is passive and which percentage of your business is active, would you say?

Yeah, so this is, this is where you get to bag on me a lot, because right now I'm still in the process of building up my passive income streams and working on that. So probably about 60% of my business is active, where I do my freelancing, and the other 40% is passive, where I've got income from my blogs and from my. From the podcasting and also from the dividend portfolio.

So let's talk about Planting Money Seeds. Like, why did you start that website? Like, I'd imagine your perspective is probably a little Bit different than the typical, you know, bigger, sort of like, let's say Motley fool type of websites that talk about personal finance. Like, what's your niche within this?

Yeah, so I really kind of started it when I realized that I had. I was looking at money in a way that says, well, how can I use money to actually achieve the lifestyle goals that I have? And then also how can I create. Plant different money seeds to grow into different multiple income streams so that I don't have to rely on one income stream. At the time, it was mostly just the freelancing, and I didn't want to just rely on that because once you have one big client dump you, it's, you know, then you're. Then you're screwed. And so I kind of wanted to talk about just different ways that you can find to generate more income streams, more revenue streams for your life, and then use those to live the life that you want. Right now, I'm not a big fan of waiting until retirement to travel and to do the things I want to do. And so I started the website just to kind of give other people ideas and to sort of share how I move forward with, you know, with creating my lifestyle based on the money that I bring in.

When you first started, what was the biggest challenge? Because I'd imagine the money's not flowing right away.

Yeah. So, I mean, that's, that's the beauty of, you know, having, you know, back in the time of the side hustle and all of that kind of stuff. So, I mean, I had the income from the freelancing and that provided most of that. And so I was able to kind of have that to support my family and just get the site started up. The thing I hate is working on the back end. I hate the back end of the website. I hate building it, I hate managing it. I hate. I even hate monetizing it. And so really the reason I started and was able to start it was I have a business partner and he takes care of the back end, and I just write for the front end. And that's actually helped lot because that's what's really challenging for me is managing the back end of a website. And so finding the right business partner was really very helpful in getting this going and making sure that it was monetized properly and doing all the design stuff and the hosting stuff and all the stuff that I didn't want to do.

Scott, Todd, what do you think?

You know, I think that you're kind of really leveraging the. The good stuff. Right. Like, you're. You're leaning into the stuff that you're good at or that you enjoy, and then you've. You've brought in somebody to help you in that piece of the stuff that you don't enjoy. I mean, why not?

Why.

Why spend your time doing the stuff that you don't enjoy? You know, I think. Do you leverage, like, any, like, virtual assistants at all or, you know, and so how.

Yeah, so I do have a virtual assistant. She is in charge of the social media portion of things because I also don't enjoy that. And so she takes care of the social for me. I do have somebody who kind of helps me weed out some of my email, and that's nice. And then I also use a lot of canned responses when I'm answering email. I know that's kind of a no, no in some cases, but a lot of people ask me the same questions over and over again. And so canned responses when you do something like what I do in terms of blogging or owning a website are very helpful. So mostly just the va. The canned responses, and then having a business partner that can help manage the things that I don't want to do those. Those things really help free up the time so that I can write or I can look for more partnerships or just work on ways to grow the business a little bit better.

Yeah, see, that's the problem with freelancing. This is why we don't like it, is that if you're doing the work, who's working on strategy, who's working on getting more, you know, partnerships and monetizing the site, but you do have the answer to that, which is your partner could be doing that. So if there's two of you doing it, one person's doing the actual creative, if you will. And, you know, let's just break it down. Like, even though you're giving me a lot of value with a blog post, it's really marketing, right? It's really something that goes out not to your audience and go out to everybody in a way, through social media. So I get that piece of it, and then someone's out there hustling to continue to grow, you know, planting money, seeds, or, you know, any other blog or the podcast. Is that how you sort of intentionally think, okay, how are we gonna. How are we gonna grow this thing?

Yeah. So, yeah, so I'm a huge fan of leveraging partnerships with the podcast. With the Money Tree Investing podcast. There are actually four of us that are panelists, and we all kind of have our own specialties in what we do. You know, we're all there. We all interview guests, we all participate in our roundtable discussion. But at the same time, my specialty is more along the lines of managing the relationships with our sound engineer. That's the other thing. We outsource the production of the podcast, so the sound engineer and everything else. And we have one guy that's really great at getting the partnerships and getting the money flowing, so he manages that. And so we just. We all kind of divide it up. And so I'm really, really interested in leveraging partnerships and finding people whose strengths complement my weaknesses and where I can come in and use my strengths to help. And so then we sort of create this relationship where all of us are doing a little bit less work, but we get bigger results and we're all enjoying the fruits of the labor. The podcast is profitable. The websites are profitable. I have my own portfolio. And then. And then part of it, too, is, you know, like you said, the having. Having the VA manage my social media. And we also use tool. I also use tools like Buffer to help so my VA can schedule my social media and keep it going. So it just. It's all just sort of about having different systems and partnerships in place that you can leverage so that I'm spending less time doing all of the mundane things that I don't want to do. And then the nice thing about it is, especially freelancing to the level I'm at right now is I actually, I make twice as much as I made when I started 10 years ago, but work half as much. So just because over time, as your reputation grows or you do more, and this is specific, I guess, to freelancing, then you can start charging more for your work. And so the prices go up, the number of clients I have goes down.

So, Scott, you know, this is the question. We get a lot from our land investors, right? They're building their business, and, you know, the problem is the cheapest person you can hire in the beginning is yourself, right? And then they ask themselves, well, okay, when do I get that first va? And I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned about Miranda's story, right? Because Miranda, you must. When he first started, right, you must have been doing everything yourself, correct?

Yeah. Yeah, I was pretty much doing it all myself.

So when do you get your first va? When do you make that decision?

So for me, it was about when I realized how much time I was spending on the social media. And I was. And I realized that that was sucking up A lot of my day, and I wasn't getting a huge return on that time investment. And I felt like the social media was running me. And once I realized that, I don't know, I just, I said, well, I can pay somebody x dollars an hour to do this and it. And I get paid, you know, and I get paid for an article. I get paid more than enough to pay this person for a week. So I just sort of, I sort of sat down and I said, well, how am I using my time and am I using my time effectively? And when I realized that, like a mundane task or a routine task like scheduling social media, that is something that is tedious and time consuming, but it doesn't return a huge return. It doesn't offer a huge return for your time, for the time you invest in it. And you could be doing something else. You could be closing a deal, like with you guys with your land. You could, you could be closing a deal on real estate, but instead, what are you doing? You're scheduling a bunch of tweets. And so, so when I took a look at that and realized that I felt like the social media was running me, I wasn't getting a lot of return for that time invested. And I think time is more valuable than money. That's when I said, well, I just need to hire somebody to do it. It's worth the cost. It frees up my time and I can do more things with this time.

Yeah. Scott, what do you think? I mean, when you first started, you have that, that issue as far as, like, okay, now I got to spend some money to get. To make more money.

Well, Mark, when I started, you know, like, and I, and I was telling this story at boot camp, the recent bootcamp we had is that I sat there and I didn't want to hire a va. Like, I didn't want to spend the money because I wasn't quite sure what was going to. How this thing was going to pan out. So I remember sitting there for, I don't know, weeks, every night, cutting and pasting from county websites to get offer letters out. You know, my, my, my wife thought I was crazy. And you know, here I am cutting and pasting, you know, like that. That is a. At max, a $3 an hour job. And you know, here I am spending time, valuable time, three hours a day, two to three hours a day doing this. And then after about three weeks, I'm like, this is ridiculous that I'm sitting here doing this. And if I do this again, I'm out and that's kind of like the benchmark that I always use in order to hire VA is if I do this one more time, I'm quitting forever. And then I know, like, I've reached my. My threshold of tolerance for it. I can't do it anymore. It's time to get somebody to do it. And, you know, looking back, it's always. The thing is, like, you should have done it faster. You should have hired faster in that role, because, you know, when you're doing that work that someone else can do at a. You can hire someone for a cheaper rate, then you are not leveraging your time.

Right? Yeah.

I mean, it only took me. It took you three weeks to figure that out. Took. Only took me four years. But now I've learned the lesson. Like. Like Miranda was saying, I feel like I want to be Sinatra when I'm. When I'm freelancing. When I'm freelancing, right? It's boot camps and the podcast. Right. Everything else is sort of automated. And I'm really an entrepreneur, but I'm not gonna kid myself, be like, okay, when I'm podcasting, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm not. I'm doing the actual work. I don't scale. Right. And so all I do then is I think to myself, well, all Sinatra does is sing. All we do, Scott, is we show up and we podcast. But literally, we don't book the guests, right? We don't follow up with the guests. We don't do the marketing. We don't do any of the technical aspects of publishing the podcast and getting any of that out, right? All we do is sing like Sinatra. And I think that was the big lesson that I learned, you know, when I first started was, hey, how can I make this so that I have no job? But so when we're thinking about the things that we're doing when we're freelancing that we have to do, how can we do it? So we're only doing the stuff that makes us actual money, even though we don't monetize podcasts. But if it did, right, we just do that. So, Miranda, what was your big lesson that you learned as a freelancer as well?

Yeah, I think the big lesson that I learned as a freelancer was to value myself more. And you automate your system, so you're stuck with me, but for a guest. But no, I think the big lesson that I learned was to kind of look at myself in terms of how much I value myself. And part of that is learning to ask for more for what I do. You can't really scale in the same way that you can when you're doing some of this other investing stuff. But one of the ways you can scale is by raising your rates and then also by choosing who you work with and working with people who can afford your rates. That was one of it, too, because for a long time I was writing for several small little blogs who couldn't afford to pay me very much. And once I started working with different clients, with corporate clients, that changed and they could afford to pay me, I could work less and charge more. So that helped, too. And then part of it also, not just knowing my worth in terms of how much can I charge, but also knowing my worth in terms of. Going back to our earlier discussion, what is worth my time? What is worth me spending the time on and deciding to hire the VA or deciding to partner with other people and finding people who can work with you so that you're not spending your time on these things that don't offer value for your time?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So with plantingmoneyseeds.com I'm going to ask you the toughest question I can ask, knowing what you know about Scott and I, which isn't that much, but, you know, we, you know, we know something about business and finance. Tell us something we don't know about either personal finance or investing.

Oh, well, you guys probably know way more about all of that stuff than I do. So let's be honest here. No, I think when I talk to people about money, the thing that mostly surprises them is the idea of priorities. And you guys probably have your priorities straight already. But a lot of the time when I talk to people about money, they're really surprised with the idea of me being willing to spend more money on travel or spend more money for convenience or spend more money to make my life easier. Because a lot of people are like, oh, well, it's all about cutting costs, right? You want to get the absolute cheapest thing all the time. And I'm willing to spend more if it enhances my quality of life, because that's my priority. And so, yeah, I will pay convenience fees. I will pay more to take a regular flight during the day rather than a red eye. I will do all those things because to me, the convenience and the comfort is worth it. And so the bottom line for me is, you know, figure out what you can afford and what lifestyle you want and then make your money decisions based on those priorities and values. I don't know if that you guys probably know that, but that's the best I could do.

Well, I, you know, I struggle with it from time to time. I don't. Not as much today as I did back in the early days when I had more scarcity mentality, I had more of an abundance mentality. But when I had more scarcity mentality, I really didn't value my time at all. Today I literally will pay any amount of money if it'll save me time, because I can always make more money, but I can't get more time. But I think if you don't, you know, somehow see that or experience that in your life, and you've just been, you know, told, cut costs, cut cuts, cut costs, cut costs, good costs. It's like the easiest thing to do, right, is to deprive yourself. And, you know, if you never see the other side of that, then you don't know what you're missing. Scott, do you agree?

Yeah, I think, you know, like, you know, Mark, most people, you know, or as they grow up, they're taught, you know, like, turn off the light bulb or cut your expenses. I mean, even a book that I'm very fond of, which is Procrastinate on Purpose, you know, he talked about, you know, well, you know, you have to Decide, is that $5 cup of coffee that you're about to drink, you know, is it really worth it? Because it could be a lot more later on if you just save the $5 now, right? And I look at it and I'm like, I don't think now where I am. Like, I don't think that you can. I've gone through a lot of iterations of this because I've seen firsthand where even in a company environment where you try to cut expenses, well, you can. You should be lean, right? Like, you should be lean. But at the same time, you know, you can't cut your way to success. You know, like, you can, you can save that $5 cup of coffee today and really invest it, but it's literally, it's $5, and then 40 years later, it might be 200, right? Why don't you spend. To me, why don't you spend that time today trying to figure out, okay, it's not the cost, how do I pay for that? I mean, we talked about this, Mark. You and I talked about this. You know, like, you want to buy a car. Well, you know, you can. You can accomplish that goal in many different ways. And I told you, like, my story. I wanted to buy a car. And I'm like, okay, this is the kind of car I want. This is what it's going to cost me per month. So I go out and I buy a piece of land for pennies on the dollar, I sell it for the retail price, and guess what? I now have somebody paying my car payment. That's not an expense issue. That's a revenue generation problem. That I can solve all problems just by more revenue.

Yeah, I mean, once my passive income exceeded my fixed expenses, like, life really got fun. Right?

Well, and kind of along that I love your car example, because I just barely paid, paid off my car, but it had a, it had a 1.9% interest rate. And everybody was telling me, oh, well, you've got the money saved up, you should just buy the car, you know, pay for it all in cash. But I was like, well, it's a 1.9% interest rate. If I stick all of that money and put it in my dividend portfolio and I'm making the dividends and I'm getting some passive income and all of that kind of stuff, and I add that to my portfolio, the money's actually working for itself. And it's doing way more in terms of providing me with positive cash flow than just using all of that chunk of money to pay off this car. That's a depreciating thing. I'm not even calling it an asset. You notice that. It's just appreciate this depreciating thing. So that's part of, you know, how I leverage my lifestyle as well as I look at it. And if I can get cheap money, then I would rather do that than tie up my capital in something like a car or something like that. If I can get it for a 1.9% interest rate, then I'm just going to keep that money in my investment portfolio and enjoy the returns.

And I think that, like, you know, you hear these financial people, the talking heads on tv, say, you know, let me pick on Susie Orman. Maybe we can get her on here, Mark, and I can challenge her.

But I love that Danielle, let's get Susie Orman.

Yeah, let's get a financial, like, pundit on. Let's, let's like duke it out with him because they say, oh, you got to pay off your credit card debt. Well, I think that that's, that could be good advice or it could be terrible advice because guess what? As Miranda just said, if, let's say that you had a credit card with an 18% interest rate. Right. Well, if you can earn 300% an investment, 18% to now say, wait, hold on, I'm gonna pay off my 18% credit card. So that put the money into the investment, right? Like get earn more money. And then the credit cards balance doesn't even really matter because you're making 300%, not 18. Now it's in the bank. In the bank earning, you know, less than 18, you better pay it off.

Right, right. And I think that's, that's, you know where it is. It's like, where do you put that money and where is that money going to do the most good? And I do sometimes get a little bit of flack from the personal finance blogging community because I am like, well, I financed a car and I bought it new because it was what I wanted, I financed it, I did all the bad things. But it was, it was what I wanted. It was important to me. I could afford it and I could do other things with the money that made up for that, that more than made up for that 1.9% interest rate. It's the same thing with my student loans. I refuse to pay them off because I have a 1.9% interest rate. So why would I pay them? That money is better used elsewhere. You know, I've seen a much bigger return just from, just from the lending club stuff that I do alone than my, you know, the lending club. Like instead of paying off my student loans, I just invest there. And so being able to say, well, you know, where is this money doing the most good and where is it going to offer me the best returns? That's pretty much how I look at it.

All right. Well, it's great. Well, Miranda, we're now at that point in the podcast. We're gonna put you on the spot.

Oh dear.

Tip of the week. A website, a resource, a book, something actionable. With the art of passive income. Listeners can go right now, improve their businesses, improve their lives. What have you got?

Actually it's a book. It's called the Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday. I am just barely finishing this book up. I should finish it tomorrow. Well, today or tomorrow. And I really like it because it's all about. Because we all have trials in our businesses and in our lives and we run into things that we think are insurmountable, like how am I going to get over this? And then we freak out. And I love this book because he talks about taking that obstacle, that thing that's blocking your path and turning it into your way forward and transforming it. So that's a really great way to look at things. And it's a really good way to change your mindset so that you can move forward and make the most of your business or your passive income or whatever it is you're looking for.

All right, great tip. Scott Todd from Scott todd.net landmodo.com postingdomination.com landgeek what's your tip of the week?

All right, Mark, this is not really a tip. This is like, it's on my little gadget list of stuff that maybe I want to get. So I figured I'd share it with everybody. Check out, check this out. It's the air selfie camera. You see this thing?

I'm gonna go right here. Hold on. Now I'm opening up.

Don't tell me you're gonna buy this because I'm not even gonna buy it. Right, but. Well, maybe not today. It's gonna go on my list. It's. It's a iPhone 7 case that becomes a drone. So you can do air selfies. It takes your camera, it takes your phone and like sends it somewhere.

This is so much better than a selfie stick.

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, that's the coolest selfie stick of all time. It's only 261 bucks, right? Yeah, but it's really cool.

And if you want a power bank too, it's $83 more. What's $83 at this point, right? You know, okay, this whole thing is a car payment, but big deal, you're earning more money somewhere else, right?

Oh my gosh. We're living in the best time ever, aren't we?

Yeah.

What an amazing time to be alive. God, I hope I don't die today. This is awesome.

Yeah, you gotta wait till like this thing comes out in just a month or two.

Yeah, yeah. Alright, well, my tip of the week is learn more about Miranda Marquitt. Go to plantingmoneyseeds.com and you know, it's a great site. I think there's a lot of interesting ways to just start thinking about, you know, personal finance, investing, home businesses, and really just improving your life in general. So I'm sure the podcast is amazing. I mean, it'll be really, really good if Miranda gets us on the podcast, but I'm sure it's really good Anyways. So Randa, are we good?

I think so.

Scott, are we good?

We're good, Mark.

All right.

I hope that worked out. Even though it's not really what you normally have on.

I think it was great. I think it was great. I want to just remind all the listeners that today's podcast is sponsored by lonegeek IO. If you're not automating getting paid, then you are being like, Miranda, just kidding. Just kidding. No, but you should be automating. Automate. We can always make more money. We can't get more time. This is a set it and forget it system. It is the best solution in the marketplace. LoanEgeek IO, no setup fees. We're the only ones in the industry that don't do setup fees. It is absolutely beautiful. It is absolutely amazing. Loanegeek IO Well, I also want to remind the listeners, subscribe, rate, review the podcast. I've got a download competition going with Kerry Lutz at Financial Survival Network. So if you subscribe, rate and review the podcast, subscribe to all the podcasts, download all the podcasts. Okay? That'll help me with the downloads. And then send us a review at. And then send us a screenshot. Supportalanket.com we're gonna send you for free the passive income launch kit. I want to thank all the listeners. I want to thank Marinda Marquis. I want to thank Scott, Todd, Scott. Let us. Let us lead us out of here. Ready, Mark? I'm ready. Let freedom ring. Miranda's like, oh, gosh. She's like, well, I was gonna have those guys on our podcast, but now I don't know.

Totally. We'll totally have you on, actually.

All right, thank you. See everybody later.