RPF0149-Patreon_Campaign_Launch
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00:00:13.160 | information. Hey Joshua this is Anesh from Minnesota and I wanted to give a
00:00:18.280 | big thank you to you. Tomorrow is my wife's last day of work after she put in
00:00:23.240 | her notice three weeks ago and I owe our new lifestyle mostly to the show and to
00:00:29.640 | some of the early retirement communities. Let me explain. We have two young
00:00:34.440 | children and we we've been both commuting spending about three hours to
00:00:39.720 | get them up, get them dressed, get them to daycare, commuting to work, having two
00:00:43.320 | cars, all the insurance and everything and after you're listening to your show
00:00:46.680 | and really paying more attention to everything from how much taxes we're
00:00:51.680 | paying to just some of the your money or your life things that they advocate for
00:00:58.200 | in terms of looking at your lifestyle and where your time is going. It's just
00:01:02.320 | made me really think about all of these things in a greater detail and I was
00:01:05.600 | able to find about $30,000 in savings both from cutting out one car to
00:01:12.000 | lowering our tax bill to lowering my student loan payments and all of this
00:01:17.200 | was through the inspiration from your show and then my obsessive dedication
00:01:21.560 | to kind of crunching numbers and looking closely. So I just want to say that
00:01:26.560 | starting Monday morning my quality of life is going to be better than it's
00:01:30.240 | ever been where I get to wake up, take an express bus to work while my wife and
00:01:35.480 | kids get to sleep in and have a nice breakfast together and I can come home
00:01:39.640 | to a little bit more of a peaceful house. So thanks again for all you do and I
00:01:45.080 | look forward to all the future shows. Two major pieces of news today. Number one, we
00:01:51.000 | have an app and it's very exciting. I'll tell you why. And number two, we're
00:01:56.280 | launching a crowdfunding campaign and I would ask you to be involved.
00:02:00.280 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets and
00:02:19.920 | today is Monday, February 9, 2015. And today my friends, after weeks and weeks
00:02:26.960 | and weeks of work and delays and Joshua feeling totally flummoxed by techie stuff,
00:02:32.840 | I am thrilled to announce to you some changes in the show and I'm going to ask
00:02:39.320 | for your help.
00:02:48.320 | Let's get straight to it with the launch of our new mobile device app, which I am
00:02:53.320 | very excited to tell you about. And then I will tell you about our new crowdfunding
00:02:56.720 | campaign and I will ask you to be involved. But I want to lead off with the
00:02:59.920 | app. As of today, if you are on an Apple iOS device, so iPhone, iPad, or if you have
00:03:09.040 | an Android-based device of any type, or if you have a Windows phone, or if you
00:03:15.960 | have an Amazon Fire phone, we now have an app. And I would encourage you to check
00:03:22.320 | it out. You can download it from the App Store. And let me explain the
00:03:25.640 | functionality of it and the reason why I've gone to the trouble of creating it.
00:03:29.520 | This may be of interest to some of you, especially if you're running or want to
00:03:32.440 | start your own podcast and I'll tell you what I've learned. For years, I did most
00:03:37.440 | of my podcast listening with an Apple iPhone. And it worked great, especially
00:03:42.840 | after Apple came out with their own dedicated podcasts app, which is built in
00:03:47.600 | now and released on every brand new iOS device and cannot be deleted, which is
00:03:51.640 | great for the business and the science and the industry of...not science, the
00:03:55.680 | industry of podcasting. That's a thrilling announcement. I knew that was
00:03:58.680 | coming. That was one of the reasons why I started the show and I did, to make sure
00:04:02.160 | that I was out there. Because this is leading already to massive growth in the
00:04:06.040 | podcast listener sphere. But so for years, I used that app and it's a great app. It
00:04:10.840 | does a great job. And I never understood why would anybody have an app? I used to,
00:04:15.640 | if you pay any attention to web marketing or work with consumers, you find that
00:04:19.240 | people oftentimes, "I want to have an app." Well, what do you want your app to do
00:04:21.680 | for you? And web developers quickly poo-poo and make fun of somebody who says,
00:04:26.840 | "We just want an app." And they say, "A mobile website is better." And that's
00:04:29.400 | true, except it's not in podcasting. Let me explain. I never understood how tough
00:04:38.280 | it was to listen to a podcast if you weren't already listening to podcasts.
00:04:44.520 | Because for me, it was always easy. But it is not always easy for people who are
00:04:52.760 | not already podcast listeners. Again, the Apple Podcast app worked great and I
00:04:56.920 | never switched to anything else. But as soon as I created a podcast and I started
00:05:00.120 | telling people about my podcast, then I started meeting lots of people who didn't
00:05:05.720 | listen to podcasts. And I found out that I had to explain a lot of steps to them.
00:05:12.760 | I had to say, if you're on an Apple device prior to the release of iOS 8, I had to
00:05:17.960 | say to them, "Okay, go in the App Store and search for an app called Podcasts. It
00:05:21.560 | has a little purple logo. Install that app and then open it. Then go to the search
00:05:25.400 | bar and then search Radical Personal Finance. Scroll down to the bottom and
00:05:28.920 | you'll see at the top are podcast episodes and at the bottom are podcasts. And look
00:05:32.680 | for the little orange logo for Radical Personal Finance. Click that button. Click
00:05:36.680 | subscribe. Now go back to the episodes. Click the feed button or whatever it's
00:05:41.640 | called and look through the archives and then pick a couple that look interesting
00:05:44.680 | to you. Click download those and then you can listen to them." And that's as easy
00:05:49.000 | as it gets. When you go into the Android space, it's worse. And I never knew this
00:05:55.000 | until I switched from an iPhone to an Android device. And all of a sudden, you
00:06:00.680 | go into the Android space. Now, okay, go into the Google Play Store. Search for an
00:06:04.440 | app called Dog Catcher with 2Gs or search for an app called Pocket Casts or what
00:06:09.080 | was usually the easiest was search for an app called Stitcher. Now, once you
00:06:13.240 | download that, go to the little search button. You get the point. It is
00:06:16.600 | horrendously difficult to teach people who aren't tech savvy and who are just
00:06:22.040 | learning to operate their phone how to actually operate a – how to get a
00:06:28.200 | podcast. And I realized, "Wow, I have got to create something better for this
00:06:33.720 | show because I need to make it very easy for people to listen to the show and it's
00:06:37.480 | not currently easy." That was one of the – that was the big aha moment that I
00:06:42.520 | had. I never understood that before actually starting the show and trying to
00:06:45.800 | tell people to listen to my show, how small still the podcast listening audience
00:06:51.000 | is. I said I need a solution. The second thing was 100 episodes when I
00:06:55.640 | accidentally redirected my iTunes feed to a dead feed and deleted thousands of
00:06:59.880 | subscribers. That was a pretty – that was a pretty rough day for a podcaster.
00:07:05.320 | But if I had had a way other than iTunes to reach people, I realized I could have
00:07:10.120 | kept more of my audience base which is leading to other thing – which has – I
00:07:15.800 | learned a lot which led to other things that I'm learning especially regarding a
00:07:19.320 | newsletter – the newsletter that I'm beefing out and putting a lot more
00:07:23.160 | attention on so that I have email addresses for those of you who are
00:07:26.520 | listeners to the show. That's another big major focus on. I'll cover that
00:07:29.640 | another day. So I realized I needed an app and thankfully my podcast host, Libsyn,
00:07:35.080 | came out with a really great service to create an app. And so I've gone through
00:07:39.240 | that process and we've released the – we've released the app. And I welcome
00:07:44.280 | you. Go to the store and check it out. As of today, February 9, 2015, it should be
00:07:49.720 | live. At the time of recording the show, it's not live in the iOS store. I've
00:07:54.200 | just finally gotten the final approval. But it should be live within 24 hours. So
00:07:59.000 | I'm guessing by the time this goes out and by the time you hear it, then it will
00:08:02.600 | be there in the iOS store. But it is presently there in the Amazon Fire store
00:08:07.960 | and it's also presently there in the Google Play store. So what does it do?
00:08:11.880 | Well, basically it just gives you direct access to the episodes of the show. It
00:08:16.280 | also gives you easy connection to all of the show's online social media presence.
00:08:20.360 | You can easily email the show. You can easily call the show right from the app.
00:08:24.600 | And it does have some functionality where I can release some extra bonus content
00:08:28.920 | which I plan to do in the future as I can work on that. So I can release extra
00:08:32.600 | bonus content there right in that app. If you already have a podcast listening
00:08:37.160 | solution that you're happy with, stick with that. There's no reason for you
00:08:41.080 | necessarily to go and change this app unless you just want to check it out and
00:08:44.440 | see. But it doesn't matter to me whether you listen to my show in the Apple
00:08:48.280 | Podcast app, listen to my show in Pocket Cast or whatever app you use already.
00:08:52.360 | Your Stitcher is fine. It doesn't matter. Just go with that. But here's the deal.
00:08:57.960 | If you want to tell somebody about the show, here's what you need to know. All
00:09:02.680 | they need to know now is they need to have a smartphone and you simply need to
00:09:06.680 | tell them, "Go to your app store." It doesn't matter what smartphone with the
00:09:11.400 | exception of Blackberry which is very few. Just tell them, "Go to the app store
00:09:16.760 | and search Radical Personal Finance and download the app." That's all they need
00:09:23.880 | to do. And that's the reason I created an application is I needed it to be
00:09:28.040 | possible for you to tell somebody that. And now going forward, this is going to
00:09:32.280 | dramatically improve my life. And so now when my mother who listens to this show
00:09:37.240 | is wanting to talk to one of her friends who just got a smartphone and is
00:09:40.120 | figuring out how to text, she can just simply say, "Go to the app store and
00:09:44.040 | search Radical Personal Finance and you can listen to Joshua's show." So that is
00:09:48.680 | the reason for the app. Check it out. Give me your feedback. It's not intended
00:09:52.280 | to be any fancy personal finance application. That stuff, maybe I can build
00:09:57.160 | that out in the future. I certainly have my ideas but that's not a current
00:10:00.040 | priority for me. This is just a way for you to spread the show. So please use
00:10:03.880 | this now as an easy point of entry. Tell anybody who has a smartphone who you
00:10:08.120 | want to listen to the show, tell them, "Download Radical Personal Finance from
00:10:13.080 | the app store," and they're in. They're gold and they can listen to the show.
00:10:18.760 | Now let's get to our crowdfunding campaign. And I've been hinting at this for
00:10:22.440 | the last few weeks on the show where I've mentioned that I was updating the
00:10:30.280 | membership program, the Irregulars program. And I'm going to share this with
00:10:33.720 | you as I launch this new crowdfunding campaign that I'm doing using a site
00:10:38.200 | called Patreon. But I want to give you just a quick back story on it so you
00:10:41.800 | understand. So over the first 100 episodes of the show, I was primarily
00:10:45.880 | kind of trying to figure out how do I learn to be a better broadcaster? How do
00:10:50.040 | I learn to put together better content? And then I felt over time that we had
00:10:54.200 | reached kind of a basic level of listenership where either A, I could go
00:11:00.360 | ahead and launch a sponsorship program, advertising revenue, or I could come to
00:11:05.240 | the audience and ask the audience to support. And I am most comfortable with
00:11:10.120 | coming directly to the audience. And the reason is because of the industry in
00:11:14.280 | which I talk and the industry in which I deal. And not only is the professional
00:11:18.680 | financial advice industry rife with conflict of interest, and I'm aware of
00:11:22.840 | that. I talk about that constantly on the show. But even just financial media is
00:11:28.360 | rife with conflict of interest. And as the landscape changes and as the older
00:11:35.080 | traditional media loses much of its luster and loses much of its impact over
00:11:40.360 | the general population, there are a lot of changes going on in the so-called new
00:11:44.280 | media of independently created content, some of which are great, some of which
00:11:50.040 | are not. But one of the ones that's not is there's a lot of unsclosed conflict
00:11:53.800 | of interest. And especially I believe, I take very seriously when you're working
00:11:58.200 | in the financial advice space, that you need to be careful with that. And I just
00:12:04.680 | simply want to be as careful as I can. So when I was working through those, my
00:12:10.120 | ideas, and I'm thinking about what do I do? Do I bring on sponsorships? Do I do
00:12:14.120 | affiliate relationships and set up affiliate links for products and services
00:12:17.960 | that I endorse? I realized that I want my interests to be aligned purely with the
00:12:22.840 | audience. And so I want it as a base, at the very least, of any kind of
00:12:26.920 | compensation from the show. I wanted a base to be directly to serve the
00:12:30.920 | audience. And I came up with the idea of a membership program. And I modeled this
00:12:35.560 | based upon a couple of other podcasts that I listened to, the primary of which
00:12:41.400 | one was Jack Spirico's podcast called The Survival Podcast, of how he had
00:12:46.200 | structured his show that really inspired me. And I loved how he's done it over the
00:12:49.720 | years. And I modeled mine on that. And in many ways, it was a raving success. And
00:12:55.240 | in many ways, it didn't work well. Let me start with first, even just the
00:12:59.480 | launch. The launch of this was a bit flawed on my end. And it was flawed for
00:13:04.680 | multiple reasons. I just didn't do a very good job with it. I wanted to launch
00:13:09.080 | on episode 100 because I thought that would be an exciting episode 100, a nice
00:13:14.280 | milestone in the show's history. But I made some serious mistakes. The first
00:13:18.760 | one I already mentioned when talking about the app, on episode, I think it was
00:13:22.200 | 97, I deleted every iTunes subscriber that I had. And this also affected many of
00:13:30.120 | the Android listeners. And to this day, I'm still fixing, trying to fix some of
00:13:34.200 | the dead links that exist out there in the internet because of my bad link
00:13:38.760 | redirects. And it's still not done. So that was a problem where I'm getting
00:13:43.400 | ready and I was announcing, "Oh, we're going to have a big launch, big launch."
00:13:46.440 | And I received email after email, "Joshua, I was looking for episode 100. Where'd
00:13:50.120 | you go?" I had to kind of tell everybody. So that was pretty rough. And so that
00:13:56.200 | led to kind of a slower launch than I had expected. But even with that mistake,
00:14:00.600 | well, the other kind of problems up front was I didn't know exactly, I wasn't
00:14:04.440 | launching with a great big product base of here's the product that I'm going to
00:14:07.480 | be releasing for the members. It was just I launched with a promise that I would
00:14:11.880 | do things in the future. Even with that, I would say the launch was really, really
00:14:16.600 | great. And it created something called the Irregulars. And to date, I have 82
00:14:24.360 | awesome, awesome people that signed up to support the show at a level of $10 a
00:14:29.080 | month. That blew me away that 82 of you would sign up to do that. And many of the
00:14:37.640 | Irregulars started with the deal that I offered for 99 bucks for the first year,
00:14:43.240 | which was great because it gave me a little bit of capital for the show and just
00:14:47.480 | allowed me to prove the concept that people out there are gaining enough
00:14:51.320 | benefit from this show that they're willing to support it financially. That
00:14:56.760 | is awesome. The challenge that I faced was that I promised on the show page that
00:15:04.200 | there would be lots of extra content, but I didn't have any extra content ready
00:15:09.000 | to go. So the sales page just simply said – and I did not do a good job even with
00:15:14.760 | the launch from a sales perspective. I had a page that said "Membership." I
00:15:18.920 | posted a two-hour podcast episode of Joshua rambling on about all the things I
00:15:23.720 | don't like about most of the compensation models in the industry. And then I
00:15:28.520 | simply said, "I don't have anything there in the membership site for you." And
00:15:33.000 | then when people signed up for the membership site, on the other side it
00:15:36.920 | simply said, "Thank you for your support. I'll get something here for you soon."
00:15:40.440 | And still, there were 82 awesome supporters of the show that set that up for
00:15:45.160 | me. I immediately started hearing from the audience and I immediately wondered
00:15:49.960 | if I had done the right thing. So the first challenge that I faced was I really
00:15:55.880 | didn't want to receive donations. I don't want to put a "Donate" button on the
00:16:02.440 | site because I don't want charity. I want to be paid for my work but I don't
00:16:07.400 | want charity. I appreciate it but I don't need charity. I'm a healthy, equipped,
00:16:17.000 | capable man. I need to work for my living. So I didn't need charity. And I
00:16:25.000 | mentioned that on that show and immediately I got some feedback from the
00:16:29.160 | audience. I got a voicemail from Derek and several emails that said, "Hey,
00:16:36.840 | Joshua, listen. It's not charity for us to send you money. We're just simply
00:16:42.040 | thanking you with our dollars. We're sending you certificates of appreciation
00:16:45.960 | with presidents printed on them, the virtual version thereof, and thanks for
00:16:51.720 | the content you're already creating. So you just put a "Donate" button there.
00:16:54.840 | That's not charity in and of itself." And so I said, "Wow, okay. That's true."
00:17:00.680 | And I see the value of that. So I immediately wondered if I had done the
00:17:04.840 | right thing. The next challenge that I faced was I received lots of emails from
00:17:10.440 | people saying, "I want to support you but $10 a month is just either beyond my
00:17:17.320 | financial capacity right now or it is beyond – it's just more than I'm ready
00:17:23.880 | to commit to." For example, on a show like this, which I respect like crazy,
00:17:28.920 | but on a show like this, hopefully you guys and gals as listeners are being
00:17:34.840 | transformed from maybe you come in as a profligate spender and we're steadily
00:17:40.440 | transforming you into a goal-focused tightwad where you're only spending
00:17:44.920 | money in line with your goals. Well, then for some people, $10 a month
00:17:49.080 | matters. You put that into the thing I preach constantly on the show and you
00:17:52.120 | say, "Well, if I'm going to support Joshua at $10 a month, then I need $3,000
00:17:57.640 | of investment capital to support him in financial independence. And my hope is
00:18:02.840 | that I give you in excess of – far in excess of $100 of value every month."
00:18:09.320 | Frankly, I'd love it. I've received emails that it's been thousands of
00:18:13.240 | dollars of value. But some of you, just $10 was too much. And I had no way to
00:18:20.920 | test the price point actually. I had no way – usually what I would like to do
00:18:25.400 | in launching something like that would be to do some sort of market test and see
00:18:29.320 | does the market respond well at $5 a month or at $50 a month and do an A/B
00:18:35.960 | split test between those and figure out what does the market say. That would be
00:18:39.320 | how a good marketer would approach it. I didn't have any mechanism for where I
00:18:43.240 | could do that. So I just picked $10 a month out of the air and I said, "I know
00:18:47.080 | I can deliver far in excess of that of value and it seems like a number. I've
00:18:51.160 | paid more than $10 a month from any subscription websites and I have several
00:18:55.320 | that I subscribe to that are $10 a month." And it just made sense to me.
00:19:00.840 | So I also wondered, "OK, do I have the right price point?" I didn't have any
00:19:05.560 | way to test the price point. Other problems, frankly, because the technology
00:19:12.120 | was a bit clunky, I was using a membership site to set up, but it just
00:19:16.440 | wasn't working well with my site, which is in the process of being redesigned.
00:19:20.600 | I've got to get a better site loaded up.
00:19:23.160 | Oh, and then other things is I had listeners reach out to me directly. I had
00:19:28.840 | some very valued listeners, you know who you are and I thank you personally,
00:19:34.040 | for who simply said, "We want to send you some money." They wrote to me and
00:19:38.440 | asked for my address and I had promised to publish that, but they wrote to me
00:19:43.080 | and sent me some donations and just said, "Thank you. I've received lots of
00:19:46.440 | value already and I wanted to share that with you."
00:19:49.320 | So I knew that I was kind of doing some things not so well, but the big problem
00:19:55.720 | was the promise that I made. And the promise that I made for the Irregulars
00:20:01.480 | program was a promise of additional bonus content. Because of the way that I
00:20:06.040 | said it in the episode and even in the sales copy, I said, "I'm going to create
00:20:09.320 | some additional members only resources here for you that will benefit you."
00:20:15.320 | But when I launched, I didn't have any resources that were there.
00:20:19.320 | And I wasn't quite able to figure out how do I create these based upon the
00:20:26.520 | size of the membership program. Here's what would happen. I've got ideas in my
00:20:29.720 | head for dozens of courses that I could create. Some topics of which I've talked
00:20:33.800 | about on the show, but that I could tighten them up, bring together multiple
00:20:37.160 | shows and create a life-changing course for somebody. Some topics which I
00:20:41.240 | haven't covered on the show that are quite technical or maybe more suitable
00:20:44.840 | for a visual presentation. But the sheer investment of my time, of the number of
00:20:50.200 | hours that I have available per week, it's tough to know where to allocate
00:20:55.800 | those hours. So I plan on pretty much about a 60-hour work week. I've got 168
00:21:01.400 | hours in my week just like you do. And I think somewhere around 60 hours is a
00:21:05.480 | pretty decent amount of time to be working. The advantages that I have is I
00:21:09.320 | don't have a commute. I can start early in the morning. And so when I look at
00:21:12.360 | how do I divide those 60 hours up, I currently have 24 of them committed to
00:21:17.720 | the contract that I have that pays my bills while I start this show. And that
00:21:23.960 | leaves me with a total of 36 hours that I can devote toward creating content
00:21:28.040 | for the show. The types of shows that I do are fairly – they're very time
00:21:33.160 | consuming to create. And they're time consuming for a couple of reasons.
00:21:37.000 | Number one, my shows are long. That in and of itself is time consuming. And due
00:21:42.360 | to the format, I feel it's an appropriate format for some of the depth of
00:21:46.440 | content that we get into. But my shows are long. Number two, there's a lot of
00:21:50.760 | them. So there's a new show basically Monday through Friday. The last few
00:21:55.240 | weeks, there have been four shows per week. But basically Monday through
00:21:58.520 | Friday is my publishing schedule. The content is very in-depth on most of the
00:22:05.080 | shows that I do. And that takes time. For example, if I was going – the Friday
00:22:09.880 | Q&A shows, if you listen to how I do them, I often will take about 15 to 20
00:22:14.040 | minutes to answer a question. Well, the reason is because I go fairly in-depth
00:22:19.560 | and I try to organize my in-depth comments in a way that makes sense. If I
00:22:23.480 | give a cursory two or three-minute interview like – answer like I would on
00:22:26.840 | the radio show, then I can just do that off the top of my head and I could sit
00:22:30.520 | down with a list of a dozen questions and do that. But to prepare a little bit
00:22:34.600 | of an outline for a 15 or 20-minute answer to a question, it takes some time.
00:22:39.640 | The interview shows are generally not very time-consuming, which is why – by
00:22:46.040 | the way, there's such a proliferation of interview podcasts. Those are –
00:22:49.720 | interview shows are relatively easy to do. And I think they bring a great value
00:22:53.480 | which is why I like doing them to the listener. And I try to do them well. I'm
00:22:58.360 | getting better. Some of them I'm not satisfied with or some of them I am. But
00:23:03.160 | I try to do them well. But even to do them well requires some preparation to
00:23:07.400 | be prepared with what's a line of questioning that I'm going to lead in,
00:23:10.360 | what is some – the body of work, where is somebody knowledgeable that would be
00:23:13.880 | interesting to an audience, scheduling it, doing the preparation before, putting
00:23:18.840 | the show together, doing the intros, doing the outros, editing the audio.
00:23:22.200 | Just it's time-consuming. So even an interview show, probably I would
00:23:26.280 | estimate for me to do an hour interview show takes on average – well, an hour
00:23:33.000 | to – I don't do hour-long interview shows. They're always an hour and a
00:23:35.880 | half and I always talk with the person for another 20 minutes on top of that.
00:23:38.760 | So there's two hours right there for the actual call. 30 to 60 minutes of prep
00:23:43.720 | in advance and then 30 to 60 minutes of audio editing and show notes. So an
00:23:48.120 | interview show is easily four hours. The content shows that I create, to do
00:23:54.120 | them well takes a substantial amount of time to bring together and figure out
00:23:59.080 | how am I going to convey this topic in a way that is comprehensive and yet
00:24:03.320 | understandable. It takes a lot of time to prepare those shows, which is why in
00:24:08.520 | weeks like last week when – just as an example, I released four interviews
00:24:12.120 | last week. I don't want my show to become the interview central show. But I
00:24:17.480 | was working on writing webpages, building out the site for the Patreon site,
00:24:23.000 | working on marketing projects, filming videos. I simply didn't have the day
00:24:28.200 | available that it takes me to prepare a Wednesday show. It's easily six to
00:24:32.280 | eight hours of preparation for my Wednesday technical financial planning
00:24:36.600 | shows. So the conflict with the Irregulars program is that I'm spending a lot
00:24:43.880 | of time focused on building content for the show and I'm feeling guilty about
00:24:49.240 | not creating courses. So I'm constantly feeling guilty about not creating
00:24:54.680 | courses. But I've set the expectation and I've done it intentionally. I'm not
00:24:58.920 | crying or whining about any of this. I've set the expectation that I'm going to
00:25:02.280 | release Radical Personal Finance five days a week and that is what my focus is.
00:25:07.720 | So I simply by the end of the week with the number of hours that I have, I
00:25:11.160 | haven't had a lot of time available with my time budget to commit toward
00:25:18.200 | creating courses and answering comments and redesigning the website and all
00:25:23.000 | this other stuff, which is fine. This is what all entrepreneurs face and again,
00:25:26.040 | this is normal to life. But I realized I'd created a problematic incentive. If
00:25:31.880 | my commitment to my Irregulars program was to create additional content, then I
00:25:36.440 | needed to cut back on the number of shows that I'm creating simply to free up
00:25:39.640 | the hours in the week. Or if my commitment is to the show, I need to
00:25:43.640 | figure out a way to serve that audience and not disappoint expectations there
00:25:49.480 | serving that audience and that cuts into the course time. So months went by and
00:25:55.400 | I haven't even created a single course. So finally in January, I knew I was
00:26:00.600 | having this problem and I would feel guilty every time I thought about the
00:26:04.040 | Irregulars program, which led to me promoting it poorly on the show. So
00:26:07.800 | instead of giving you an excellent committed sales pitch during every show
00:26:14.160 | outlining the benefits of the Irregulars program, well, the benefits was, "Hey,
00:26:19.160 | can you toss me some money?" And that led to me feeling a little bit embarrassed
00:26:23.120 | about my failing commitment to my Irregulars. And so that led to me doing
00:26:27.960 | poor promotion on the show and constantly feeling guilty about it even when I did
00:26:32.040 | promote it because I had made a promise that I wasn't fulfilling. So I surveyed
00:26:38.440 | my Irregulars members with an email and I got a lot of awesome responses. And
00:26:43.200 | thank you to each and every one of you who responded to that. But what I learned
00:26:47.920 | from that survey when I asked my members, I said, "What can I create?" The majority
00:26:53.120 | answer that I received was, "I don't particularly care about your creating
00:26:58.040 | anything more. I like the show and I just wanted to send you some money to
00:27:01.480 | support the show." And I realized I needed to change course and I needed to align
00:27:09.000 | the incentives for the show and create a way for the show to actually pay for
00:27:13.160 | itself in order to fund my actual activity of it rather than building
00:27:20.920 | everything on the... everything on extra products and everything on the Irregulars
00:27:28.760 | program. The other problem with the Irregulars program, number one, not only
00:27:32.720 | was I creating a conflict of interest with the amount of hours that I had, but
00:27:37.320 | because of kind of setting the impression, although I don't think I explicitly
00:27:41.480 | promised it because I didn't intend to if I did, but setting the impression that I
00:27:45.200 | was going to be releasing extra courses as a benefit specifically for the
00:27:49.240 | Irregulars. They're simply with $10 a month and where I was at with... where I am
00:27:54.320 | at right now with about 82 subscribers, I simply... there's not enough financial
00:27:59.280 | incentive there for me to spend the 20 or 30 hours to create a course, whether
00:28:04.320 | that's, you know, even if... let's just assume a four-hour course, well done one,
00:28:08.440 | by the time it's created, you know, it's built, it's written, it's created, it's
00:28:14.040 | recorded or whatever, you know, whatever the course is, I can't imagine doing one
00:28:18.120 | in fewer than 20 hours. And there's not enough financial incentive there for me
00:28:21.600 | to set that up and actually do it for the listeners of the show. Excuse me, for
00:28:28.480 | the Irregulars, based upon the amount of revenue, and I realized I was severely
00:28:32.160 | underpricing my Irregulars program. So all of these things led to this conflict
00:28:37.880 | and I gave it a lot of thought and I realized that I need... I basically have a
00:28:42.920 | couple of options available to me. I either need to at this point in the show,
00:28:47.760 | I need to transition to building out much more paid content and using the
00:28:52.960 | platform that I've built with Radical Personal Finance for other means. So for
00:28:58.860 | example, building courses, building, you know, doing speaking engagements, doing
00:29:03.520 | paid things like that, and using the base that I've built with Radical
00:29:07.560 | Personal Finance and jump into those areas. But if I do that, I need to cut
00:29:12.120 | back on the amount of time that I'm doing on the show. There's no question
00:29:15.720 | about it, I'm doing a thousand episodes of the show. Unless I'm dead, I'm doing a
00:29:18.800 | thousand episodes. But the timeline of those episodes is... I'm not sure. I don't
00:29:25.320 | really want to do that because I love doing the daily show that I do. I really
00:29:28.800 | enjoy focusing on that and so that I want to focus on still continuing to
00:29:33.640 | create this show. Well that brings up the need then to focus on building the show
00:29:38.640 | and making the show itself as a product profitable, which leads to a couple of
00:29:44.960 | options. It leads to most realistically advertisers and sponsorships and that
00:29:52.040 | right now is a very viable option. I've had advertisers approach me, multiple
00:29:55.960 | ones. I've negotiated certain things with some of them and I am willing to bring
00:30:01.440 | on advertisers as long as it's a personal endorsement by me. I'm willing
00:30:05.400 | to bring on advertisers but I've been slow to do that and the reason I've been
00:30:09.040 | slow is A) I think advertisers will dilute the show and I just don't love
00:30:13.760 | listening to advertisers myself. I generally skip them on podcasting when I
00:30:19.960 | listen to them. I usually skip them myself and so I don't... I just don't love
00:30:25.080 | diluting the content of the show. And then number two is I just despise how
00:30:29.920 | people often in many businesses often only talk about a certain aspect of
00:30:35.440 | advertising and I'm not saying it's necessarily unethical. I don't see any
00:30:38.480 | other way around it but I just despise how it's done and I feel cheated when
00:30:44.160 | people do it in the way that many people do it. I'll give you an example. This is
00:30:48.960 | one that really has bothered me. When I set up my site and I set up my show, I
00:30:53.120 | didn't know what I was... I never set up a WordPress site. I never set up a blog
00:30:56.240 | site. I'm not a techie. I'm a financial planner. So and I was doing it myself so
00:31:00.600 | I just say well what do people recommend? So I start just going with what
00:31:04.160 | people recommend. Well if you haven't noticed and if you will... if you haven't
00:31:08.800 | noticed it's only because you don't pay any attention to like the online
00:31:11.320 | business world. But if you pay any attention to the online business world
00:31:14.160 | you immediately find that there's one hosting provider that everybody
00:31:18.120 | recommends and that hosting provider is a company called Bluehost. Now it wasn't
00:31:22.640 | until I actually you know went through somebody's affiliate
00:31:26.080 | link, set up a Bluehost account, set up my site on Bluehost, paid my few dollars a
00:31:31.320 | month for it, until I actually found somebody that was technical enough and
00:31:34.920 | they said "Oh why did you go with Bluehost?" I said "Well everyone said that."
00:31:37.640 | Well what I've since learned is that Bluehost simply pays
00:31:42.200 | the highest commissions in the web hosting space and there's nothing wrong
00:31:45.640 | with their service but it's cheap. And quickly enough if you're on Bluehost and
00:31:54.000 | if your site gains any traction you will have to transition from cheap to good.
00:31:58.680 | And I felt betrayed because I wish somebody had told me that there was
00:32:05.280 | cheap and there was good and laid out simply and said "If you want cheap here's
00:32:09.440 | an affiliate link I've set up with Bluehost and if you want good here's an
00:32:13.920 | affiliate link I've set up with another company and if you want great here's an
00:32:17.280 | affiliate link I've set up with another company and you pick." But it's tough for
00:32:22.120 | people promoting online web stuff to do that. That's so... well Bluehost you know is
00:32:26.960 | this is my recommendation and you only find out after the fact that "Wait a
00:32:31.280 | second Bluehost may pay a great commission but they're not necessarily
00:32:36.240 | great." Now I don't care... so this is... people have this beef with the financial
00:32:40.400 | business and I think they should. I think that you know financial advisors should
00:32:44.800 | be held to account of "Are you selling the product that has the highest
00:32:48.080 | commission or are you selling the product that is the best in this set of
00:32:51.600 | circumstances?" That's what I expect as an ethical point of view from financial
00:32:56.480 | advisors and I also expect the same thing from everybody else. If you're
00:33:00.680 | gonna get mad at financial advisors, if you're gonna get mad at people like me
00:33:04.000 | who have sold lots of commissioned products, lots of commissioned insurance,
00:33:07.880 | I have sold some commissioned investments, not all the investment
00:33:12.080 | products that I sold were fee only which is the thing that everyone thinks you
00:33:15.240 | know fills all the conflicts of interest, it doesn't. But I expect the same from
00:33:20.200 | everyone else and I expect someone to say "If you want cheap here's Bluehost
00:33:25.760 | if you want good here's this company if you want great here's this company and
00:33:31.400 | they're more expensive let me choose." And nobody does that. And which by the way
00:33:37.640 | if you're wondering why most blogs have the little how to set up a blog here's
00:33:40.920 | my little tutorial which is fine that works just tell people that's why you're
00:33:45.120 | doing it. Why can't... I would buy I specifically go out of my way to support
00:33:50.800 | people with their affiliate links when they recommend products because I want
00:33:55.640 | them to get money and many of you do the same for me I don't have any affiliate
00:33:59.080 | links other than the Amazon links that I put in the show but you go out of your
00:34:01.920 | way to send me money again I've had listeners send me checks and I thank you
00:34:05.360 | for that because that's how I believe it should be. I go out of my way to do that
00:34:09.800 | for people that bring value to me just tell me about it and so that's my
00:34:14.720 | trouble with sponsorships is for me to do sponsorships I got to do them in my
00:34:18.120 | way and that's you know hey this is the unique situation in which this this
00:34:23.360 | sponsor can serve you this is the unique selling proposition to this sponsor
00:34:27.160 | they're not the best at this they're not the best at that they're not the best at
00:34:30.040 | the third thing but they are great at this and that's the kind of sponsor that
00:34:36.440 | I can take on but that's tough to negotiate those sponsorship agreements
00:34:40.880 | and it's tough to feel confident tell your sponsors that and it's tough to
00:34:44.280 | also feel confident that that you've got enough you know of an audience in this
00:34:48.520 | niche topic here where hey if you need this niche financial service service
00:34:53.960 | then here is who you can approach so I'm willing to bring on sponsors in fact I
00:34:59.880 | I'm willing to but I don't really want to I want to be more than anything I
00:35:03.920 | want to be the consumer reports of financial media I don't want the
00:35:08.360 | conflicts of interest that's the other thing it is this sounds this is
00:35:11.800 | self-serving but this is the other thing having spent so long dealing with
00:35:18.000 | conflicts of interest because there are plenty in financial business and having
00:35:21.720 | spent so long fighting to do a good job and declare them and expose them and let
00:35:27.560 | the client choose and simply convey things factually explain here are my
00:35:32.840 | conflicts here's where I'm at now you are now armed with the information you
00:35:37.320 | need here's my recommendation here are the potential conflicts of interest and
00:35:40.800 | I I'm a you probably heard me do it on the show a bit of a stickler about it
00:35:44.640 | for example if I'm talking about you know Josh was opinion on life insurance
00:35:48.560 | I lead in which my opinion on life insurance is I think the majority of
00:35:53.200 | people should probably have a lot of it now I'm biased I used to say this every
00:35:57.280 | time I'm biased I sell life insurance I have a conflict of interest so you have
00:36:01.120 | to factor that in to the advice that I'm giving is Joshua saying everybody should
00:36:05.320 | have lots of term life insurance because he sells term life insurance or because
00:36:09.600 | he believes everyone should tell certain life insurance and I do that with
00:36:12.680 | everything try to explain my bias and explain the potential bias so that you
00:36:17.000 | can understand and make a decision and that's what I expect from other people
00:36:20.680 | so I've got a lead by example and illustrate those ethics for other people
00:36:25.920 | as well so let me stay on task so if I if I bring on sponsors then I will
00:36:31.740 | clearly say where this specific sponsor is a fit and also clearly say where
00:36:36.600 | they're not well that does make it challenging to bring out sponsors but
00:36:40.080 | the biggest thing excuse me I got off track with my line of thought what I'm
00:36:43.760 | saying is after so many years of working in a heavily conflict-laden perspective
00:36:48.160 | to have a microphone where you can say anything you want and you're responsible
00:36:53.440 | for the blowback that you create no matter what that is that is an awesome
00:36:58.320 | feeling it is a very freeing feeling and it's been years since I since I enjoyed
00:37:05.320 | that and I enjoy it now it's nice because then the only person that I have
00:37:09.880 | to pay attention to is I have to look and say do I believe what I'm about to
00:37:13.160 | say and am I willing to say and take the potential blowback do I believe this
00:37:17.480 | intensely enough if I do I can say it no matter how radical it is no matter how
00:37:29.040 | mainstream it is no matter what it is no matter what the topic is and I have to
00:37:34.440 | deal with the results and you as an audience member always are always free
00:37:40.960 | to simply hit fast forward or delete or unsubscribe I love that model I love
00:37:47.000 | that model because it leaves you fully with the choice and me with the choice
00:37:50.400 | then I can express myself and I can fight to support my opinions and explain
00:37:54.920 | to you the logic of my argument and then leave you free to make the decision
00:37:58.640 | that's right for you so I would love to be able to say stay as the consumer
00:38:03.840 | reports of financial media that's that's what I would love to do because then I
00:38:08.040 | can deliver to you a complete unfiltered view and if I end unfilter is not always
00:38:15.200 | great if somebody just has some stupid offensive opinion that's not backed up
00:38:19.120 | by anything I don't I don't appreciate listening to that I want someone if they
00:38:23.440 | have if somebody has an extreme or even potentially offensive opinion on
00:38:27.840 | something at least explain it and let me understand your logic let me understand
00:38:32.440 | your argument so so what all of that blows comes down to is I decided the
00:38:43.720 | best thing for the show at this point is to launch a patreon campaign
00:38:47.160 | campaign let me explain what patreon is and why I love this model and why what
00:38:52.560 | I'm doing with it and how I'm hoping you will be involved patreon is
00:38:57.320 | essentially a crowdfunding site similar in some ways to Kickstarter or what's
00:39:05.720 | that other one Indiegogo but instead of being focused on a large project it's
00:39:12.640 | focused on ongoing creations essentially it's a way for the audience of somebody's
00:39:20.400 | audience to support the creator the content creator directly for the
00:39:26.760 | creation it was started by a guy named to the best of my research it was the
00:39:31.560 | primary person behind it was a man named Jack Conte who was a musician and he
00:39:35.640 | produces various music videos which are fascinating the stuff he does with his
00:39:40.400 | music videos on YouTube and he just realized like there should be a better
00:39:44.200 | way so he created patreon and it's a way for individuals where each time he
00:39:48.360 | publishes a music video individuals can pledge a certain amount that they're
00:39:52.360 | going to pay for that music video and it can be you know a dollar or it can be
00:39:56.720 | you know it could be frankly any amount but they pledge that and then when he
00:40:01.840 | delivers the creation then they get charged and this allows a content
00:40:05.400 | creator to build what is the most important thing which is essentially an
00:40:09.640 | ongoing salary an ongoing financial support base in when you're running your
00:40:15.720 | own personal household or when you're running a business the toughest thing to
00:40:19.240 | handle is your cash flow and having a consistent cash flow gives you an
00:40:24.000 | incredible freedom to be able to invest and to move into certain things but if
00:40:28.840 | you don't know what your consistent cash flow is you're doing everything based
00:40:31.520 | upon savings you're doing it and you don't know how you can invest in a
00:40:35.520 | certain area take your content in a way that that that you're looking to go so a
00:40:40.080 | patreon allows this allows you the listener to choose a monthly amount that
00:40:44.800 | you decide this show is worth well you could be a dollar a month that can be
00:40:48.400 | hundreds of dollars a month anywhere in between and then it allows you to pledge
00:40:52.520 | it and then as I deliver you get billed for it and your fun your money goes
00:40:59.840 | directly from you directly to me with a small service fee and transaction fees
00:41:06.680 | pulled out by patreon and their fees are very reasonable all companies have fees
00:41:11.040 | so for example PayPal what is a pay three percent I think with the PayPal
00:41:15.280 | fees all of the the credit card processors everyone has their fees but
00:41:19.320 | it's very very very very useful and I love this idea and I feel like it's
00:41:25.600 | serve it's gonna serve you the audience in the best way and so that's why I'm
00:41:30.400 | focusing on it it's gonna serve you in the best way because it allows you to
00:41:34.960 | choose a monthly amount that's right for you again I've received many emails and
00:41:39.360 | contact information from you guys saying I can't do $10 a month but I really want
00:41:43.360 | to send you something I want to send a dollar a month or five dollars a month
00:41:47.000 | with this platform every single person can spend a dollar a month or you know
00:41:51.960 | if that's what you want to do or two dollars a month or five dollars a month
00:41:54.400 | whatever amount you decide this show is worth and I'm grateful for any amount
00:41:58.720 | and it also allows me to set up and to set up some incentives for you at
00:42:06.560 | different levels where you are specifically aligned and able to
00:42:11.640 | specifically able to support things and have the incentives aligned with the
00:42:15.080 | show so if you look at the patreon page and the best way to find it is go to
00:42:19.520 | radical personal finance dot com slash patron and that's so that you can become
00:42:24.760 | a patron of the show if you look at the patreon pages I've set it up I've set up
00:42:29.120 | a number of incentives so for example if you pledge a dollar a month that comes
00:42:33.200 | out to essentially five cents a show and now you get access to an exclusive
00:42:38.240 | activity feed which is similar to Facebook where I post all the
00:42:41.840 | behind-the-scenes information on all things radical personal finance so I'm
00:42:45.520 | focusing on producing a lot of I'm gonna try to produce more and more access of
00:42:50.440 | behind-the-scenes stuff directly to support to those who are supporting the
00:42:55.240 | show you also get first dibs and I'll set up a discount system for the courses
00:43:00.440 | as I develop them in the future I do still hope to develop courses I've just
00:43:03.880 | got a it's just a matter of an alignment of my of my time and figuring out what's
00:43:08.680 | the best thing if you do you know three dollars a month I've got additional
00:43:11.600 | incentives there you get the top next day's topic in advance so I'll be
00:43:15.320 | releasing the topic for whatever tomorrow's show is in advance you can
00:43:18.720 | comment on it you can ask questions and I'll try to weave that in and directly
00:43:22.040 | maybe address your concerns in that show five dollars a month your question will
00:43:26.720 | get priority in my Friday Q&A shows at this point I have too many questions for
00:43:30.840 | to answer to answer with on my Friday shows and so I have to pick and choose
00:43:36.640 | and I can filter I usually filter them based upon content of specifically what's
00:43:43.120 | applicable to the audience what I think the audience will most be interested in
00:43:47.000 | and will benefit from but this will allow me to give a priority to those who
00:43:53.080 | are patrons of the show ten dollars a month there then I'm going to set up a
00:43:57.440 | free monthly live Google Hangout where I'll take questions and I'll answer
00:44:01.080 | everything interactively with the audience $25 a month that's the new
00:44:05.760 | irregulars program and so I've increased the cost for the irregulars program from
00:44:11.400 | $10 to $25 and here this is the level at which I'm viewing essentially still the
00:44:17.800 | irregulars program which I think of as my board of directors and all of the
00:44:22.160 | that's who I'm primarily responsible to in my mind and to be clear those of you
00:44:26.760 | who are already supporting the show with the irregulars program your costs will
00:44:31.240 | never go up for this program that's what I'm planning is I'm gonna keep it still
00:44:35.440 | a little bit wonky to integrate the technology but what I'm working to do is
00:44:38.920 | to just thank you for the initial support that you gave for the show
00:44:42.280 | because that means the world to me the big benefit you get all those other
00:44:45.920 | benefits for the irregulars program that you get all the benefits of the the
00:44:51.920 | irregulars program but in addition to the you know the other stuff you get
00:44:57.040 | access to our private irregulars Facebook group and what I wanted to do
00:45:01.520 | was to create a forum but I wasn't able to get that to work well so we've
00:45:04.800 | created a private Facebook group and every irregular has access to that to
00:45:08.200 | closed group you can't find it if you go search on Facebook you can't act you
00:45:11.520 | can't join it unless you receive an invitation but I am spending the
00:45:15.480 | majority of my time in there trying to make sure that I'm very very available
00:45:20.520 | to listeners and I'm I'm spending less time on email I'm spending less time on
00:45:24.560 | show content and I'm really dedicated to spending as much of my time in that
00:45:28.560 | Facebook group as I can answering questions and the coolest thing is it's
00:45:32.160 | not just me there's a bunch of irregulars there's some very smart
00:45:34.840 | people very connected very experienced in very in many areas online business
00:45:39.920 | investing business you know traditional business and it's it's even and so far
00:45:45.880 | it's growing to be a pretty cool community and I think it's just gonna
00:45:48.600 | get better and better as time goes on so that's that's a big one and then I've
00:45:52.040 | got another man level there at $200 a month if you want to support the show at
00:45:55.800 | that level then I'll do an entire show on the topic of your choice you tell me
00:46:00.360 | the topic so if you want to get Joshua to just research a topic for you and you
00:46:04.520 | want to make sure it gets done support the show at $200 a month and then I will
00:46:08.120 | I'm gonna host a once a month essentially a mastermind call that's
00:46:12.040 | limited to four people but we'll host a once a month mastermind call with those
00:46:15.720 | four people and I will give you as much attention and focus as I can and so I'm
00:46:20.960 | gonna be reporting to you most importantly so that's in different
00:46:24.320 | levels that you can join at and every level matters again even a dollar a
00:46:27.880 | month it would be Matt what matters I've if at this point in time let me let me
00:46:32.960 | go through the campaigns let me tell you kind of how it works out as far as
00:46:35.920 | listenership of the show and the numbers I've also running a number of campaigns
00:46:39.960 | and these campaigns are goals under which I'll be reporting to you of
00:46:43.760 | certain amounts so for example the first goal is $2,000 a month if we can build
00:46:48.040 | the patron the patron campaign up to $2,000 per month at that point in time
00:46:53.280 | I'm going to commission a new intro for the show so those of you who hate the
00:46:58.400 | music then I'm gonna commission new intro for the show and those of you who
00:47:03.220 | love the music it'll still be around every now and then but it's maybe it'll
00:47:06.120 | be the outro music but it is a little it's a little much to do it both both
00:47:09.520 | sides of the show so that's the first thing is to get to that at $4,000 a
00:47:14.680 | month and you can see right on the patron patreon page let's go to radical
00:47:18.080 | personal finance comm slash patron and you can see it you can see it right
00:47:22.840 | there by the way both patron or patreon will work so radical personal finance
00:47:27.280 | comm slash patreon is the site patron is you you are the individual patron who's
00:47:32.720 | patronizing the show you're a patron of the arts so if you go to that you can
00:47:37.360 | see the number of at per month once I get it at $4,000 per month I will create
00:47:41.520 | a video course on the topic of your the audience choice and I will release that
00:47:46.040 | free instead of separate setting that up as a separate content for other people
00:47:50.720 | then I will release that directly to all of the patrons and that will be of as
00:47:55.640 | much value as I can possibly build and then the big one is ad free so the level
00:48:01.480 | of financial income that I need is for the show for this aspect of the show to
00:48:06.280 | keep the show ad free is about $6,000 per month and if we can get to $6,000
00:48:11.980 | per month I will commit to keeping the ad the show ad free that's the first
00:48:15.520 | that's the big push that I'm gonna be asking for you to push toward and
00:48:20.160 | support the show at is a $6,000 a month I can keep the show ad free and the I've
00:48:27.040 | got other ones as well so for example I really want to bring a producer onto the
00:48:29.720 | show someone to help me edit especially some of the interviews some of the
00:48:33.240 | interviews get very long and they could use some editing but again with that the
00:48:37.160 | reason that they are long is I'm doing this with the number of hours that I
00:48:42.160 | have in a week and I just I don't have the time that I'm able to budget toward
00:48:47.680 | sitting down and going through the interview editing it carefully and you
00:48:53.000 | know making it more concise and I could certainly I could do fewer shows
00:48:57.880 | and release more and commit that time but I've received so much feedback from
00:49:02.720 | so many of you that you really are benefiting from the broad diverse show
00:49:06.760 | topics and so I want I feel like that's a better priority but after we get to
00:49:10.640 | the $6,000 per month I'll do a producer campaign I'll do other campaigns and the
00:49:14.920 | key with all of this is that everything you'll notice every one of the
00:49:18.360 | incentives is focused on the show and so what I've done is I've aligned my
00:49:22.960 | personal incentives to create a really great show for you and to serve you
00:49:27.400 | directly for listening to the show not for Joshua over here writing a book or
00:49:30.680 | not for Joshua over here creating a course it's all about the show and yes
00:49:34.320 | I'm I will still do those other things but now instead of having that internal
00:49:38.800 | conflict of should I do the show or should I focus on the serving you the
00:49:44.040 | patrons my direct incentive here is to serve you the patrons and so today I am
00:49:50.400 | launching this as a three-month campaign and a little over three months but the
00:49:55.380 | first initial phase of this campaign is until June 1st and I'm committing to
00:50:00.040 | keep the show ad free until June 1st and if we can get the if you if West if we
00:50:06.640 | together can build the show content excuse me skip build the patron
00:50:12.160 | contributions to $6,000 per month before June 1st I will continue to keep the
00:50:17.560 | show ad free this is the bad form to talk about your personal like things
00:50:24.160 | that's better form in sales to always talk about the needs of your audience
00:50:27.480 | but let me tell you why I'm choosing that so far I have funded I'm just I've
00:50:33.840 | invested in the business with my time and with my money out of my own savings
00:50:37.200 | and then done other work to support my family and again this is not a request
00:50:41.920 | for charity I'm coming up to the I was prepared to do that for one year from
00:50:47.560 | when I launched the show and I launched the show on July 1 and so I was prepared
00:50:52.840 | to do that for one year now at that point in time until one year but the
00:50:58.840 | other thing is my wife and I were expecting a baby girl this summer and so
00:51:02.380 | that's gonna be even more cut down on the amount of time that I have available
00:51:06.360 | and so I need the show to be financially viable for me to continue doing it at
00:51:10.360 | the rate that I'm doing it by that one year time point time horizon and so if I
00:51:16.240 | I know that I can make the $6,000 a month with the level of listenership and
00:51:20.600 | the ad and ads if I were to do that so but I really again for the reasons I've
00:51:26.520 | sketched out for your benefit I'm hoping to do this with this crowdfunding
00:51:30.680 | campaign instead of with ads so if we can do this about Jan June 1st to get to
00:51:35.280 | $6,000 a month I will keep the show ad free forever if we can't do it by June
00:51:40.800 | 1st then I'll bring ads onto the show and then probably once we get it under
00:51:46.240 | $6,000 a month my plan would then be to scrap the ads so I'm hoping that you
00:51:50.920 | guys can can do it so at this point I just simply ask you to consider
00:51:56.080 | supporting the show and here's the key if every listener to the show pledged
00:52:00.320 | just two bucks a month that would be we're at $6,000 and I can keep the show
00:52:06.200 | ad free for you forever and then many of you hopefully will pledge at a much
00:52:10.960 | higher amount than that and then I can get some really cool stuff done I can
00:52:15.440 | get better interviews I can do things I mean I've there's so many things as you
00:52:20.520 | bootstrap a business and I hope you'll find this out as you bootstrap your own
00:52:24.280 | business or build your own business you've got to make sure that you're
00:52:27.480 | focusing on what the on what serves the odd on what serves your customers there
00:52:34.080 | are as an example there are a bunch of big-name people that I would love to
00:52:38.360 | interview I'd love to interview you know Markowitz and sharp and and and John
00:52:45.600 | Bogle Jack Bogle and and you know I'm here on the island I've got there
00:52:50.680 | hundreds of billionaires within a 15-minute drive for me and I'd love to
00:52:54.400 | interview each one of them the challenge is where to allocate your time and so
00:53:00.800 | once I get I can build a financial model underneath the show that's supporting
00:53:06.480 | that then I can really increase the the the level of content to a much higher
00:53:11.560 | level and I'm still regardless of whether regardless of it I'm committed
00:53:16.040 | to doing this thing at a world-class level so I still am doing those but for
00:53:19.480 | me to get on a plane and fly to Philadelphia and sit down with Jack
00:53:21.720 | Bogle for an hour or two I'd love to do that but it's got to be I've got to be
00:53:27.680 | able to support it and justify it to my bookkeeper which is me to my business
00:53:32.600 | coach which is me so if every listener to the show pledged two bucks a month
00:53:36.600 | we're at six thousand dollars I can keep the show ad free forever and then we can
00:53:39.640 | build into some really great some really great content so I would just simply ask
00:53:43.680 | you to consider to consider supporting the show and consider being my customer
00:53:49.320 | directly and I commit to you if you pledge to the show I commit to you to
00:53:57.360 | continue working as hard as I possibly can and I promise to keep bringing to
00:54:02.840 | you in-depth financial information that will help you to to reach your financial
00:54:10.080 | goals and I'll do it in a straightforward way I'll tell you what I
00:54:13.400 | think every single time I will explain why I think so what I do so that you can
00:54:18.200 | figure out if I'm right or if I'm wrong and I will and I'll bring you thousands
00:54:25.080 | of dollars of tips and advice and information that will help you I will
00:54:31.440 | bring you thousands of dollars worth of that in the in future shows and as your
00:54:38.880 | financial advisor I would tell you you know if you can invest ten bucks a month
00:54:43.240 | or 25 bucks a month or one dollar a month and get thousands of dollars per
00:54:48.000 | month of value that's a pretty good investment and I can't think of another
00:54:53.080 | investment that's gonna help you as much as that one I really can't that's my
00:54:58.400 | commitment is to produce that level of value it's a little bit slow going
00:55:03.200 | sometimes I've had a bit of a learning curve and learning it but that's my
00:55:06.360 | level of commitment to you as the promo that I played there at the beginning
00:55:12.280 | actually as the promo I'm about to play for you said sorry I was gonna edit it
00:55:20.680 | in later I was gonna put it in here instead of at the beginning this
00:55:23.320 | listener as you're here in the testimonial this listener saved thirty
00:55:28.160 | thousand found thirty thousand dollars a year of savings from the content that
00:55:34.320 | I'm creating thirty thousand dollars in a year saved thirty thousand dollars
00:55:41.000 | from his wife choosing to stay at home actually it's gonna be in the beginning
00:55:44.440 | of the show you've already heard it that is that is that is awesome that is
00:55:51.680 | really really awesome and I will continue I've gotten more than just that
00:55:56.160 | let that voicemail that I played for you at the beginning I've gotten so many
00:56:00.360 | emails from listeners and and and I know the value is there and I'll continue to
00:56:05.040 | tighten things up on my end so consider please go support the show check your
00:56:08.640 | show notes you can click right there go to radical personal finance dot com
00:56:11.840 | slash patron and become a patron of the show super easy to sign up you could
00:56:18.400 | just simply click pledge all it'll ask you for you're gonna set up a user a put
00:56:22.080 | your name in email address password credit card number that's it and you can
00:56:26.280 | choose the amount that you can support the show so in fact I am going to skip
00:56:29.920 | the outro so now you have two minutes to do it two and a half minutes that
00:56:33.640 | normally you'd be listening to the outro and I ask you to go do it radical
00:56:37.200 | personal finance dot com slash patron watch the video read the levels pick an
00:56:41.160 | amount that's right for you and I'll be back with you tomorrow the holidays
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