composer-cln5qycen_editor-clip_clip_sam-dogen-financial-samurai-eric-rosenb_2023-jul-25-0434pm_financial_samurai_p
00:00:00.000 | - Hello everybody, it's Sam from the Financial Samurai podcast
00:00:03.840 | and in this episode I have a special guest with me,
00:00:06.160 | Eric Rosenberg, freelance extraordinaire.
00:00:09.840 | Say hello.
00:00:11.040 | - Hello, so excited to be here.
00:00:12.720 | Thanks for having me on the show.
00:00:14.400 | - No problem.
00:00:15.220 | So we go way back, maybe 12, 13 years,
00:00:19.600 | since I started Financial Samurai in 2009.
00:00:21.760 | What were you doing back in 2009?
00:00:23.720 | - I was actually had just started
00:00:25.320 | my own personal finance blog as well.
00:00:27.680 | I started it October 2008,
00:00:29.560 | so I think that makes us dinosaur bloggers.
00:00:31.680 | - Oh wow, yeah.
00:00:32.960 | - It was a fun little journey.
00:00:34.420 | I didn't know anything about online marketing
00:00:36.920 | really at that point,
00:00:37.840 | so I made the really good decision
00:00:40.400 | of starting at narrowbridgeadventures.blogspot.com.
00:00:45.400 | - Okay.
00:00:46.280 | - Definitely learned a bit along the way,
00:00:47.600 | so now my main personal finance site
00:00:49.880 | is called Personal Profitability,
00:00:51.840 | but that actually leveraged me into doing freelancing,
00:00:56.560 | which is how I was able to quit my old day job
00:00:59.040 | and become self-employed and control my schedule.
00:01:02.120 | Now I don't have to ask for time off from anybody
00:01:04.140 | when I wanna be away.
00:01:05.480 | So my lifestyle has changed a lot
00:01:07.960 | because of that little blog I started way back when.
00:01:11.560 | - Yeah, it's pretty incredible.
00:01:13.720 | You got your MBA,
00:01:16.200 | and what did you do after business school first,
00:01:18.580 | and then how did you start doing
00:01:21.000 | the freelancing stuff, I guess?
00:01:22.560 | - Yeah, well, so I guess I'll back up a little bit.
00:01:25.020 | I started my first blog in,
00:01:27.720 | I think it was the summer of 2006.
00:01:29.880 | I was working at a Boy Scout camp,
00:01:32.400 | and it was my seventh summer working there,
00:01:35.320 | and I was the office manager.
00:01:37.000 | So I was dealing with a lot of the paperwork,
00:01:40.200 | the finances of troops checking in and out,
00:01:42.660 | that kind of stuff,
00:01:43.560 | but when I wasn't dealing with Scoutmasters,
00:01:46.840 | and scouts didn't come into the office all that much,
00:01:49.120 | that gave me a little bit of downtime.
00:01:51.080 | We had this brand new thing
00:01:52.260 | called satellite internet in the office,
00:01:54.280 | and I had my big old heavy laptop from school.
00:01:57.080 | So in my little bit of downtime here and there,
00:01:59.680 | I started a personal blog,
00:02:01.640 | and that gave me a little intro to the world of blogging.
00:02:05.280 | And then 2007, I finished my undergrad
00:02:08.800 | with a finance degree,
00:02:10.360 | and I started working as a bank manager,
00:02:12.860 | and I was reading all these personal finance blogs,
00:02:15.360 | mostly by people who were in debt,
00:02:17.660 | and they had a lot of credit card debt,
00:02:19.600 | and they were telling their stories
00:02:20.680 | about how they were getting out of debt
00:02:22.040 | and fixing their credit,
00:02:23.120 | what they were learning,
00:02:24.520 | and when I quit working in the bank
00:02:26.160 | 'cause I didn't like my banker's hours,
00:02:27.880 | which were about seven to seven,
00:02:29.560 | I started thinking,
00:02:30.880 | well, geez, I have a finance degree,
00:02:33.080 | I've never been in debt,
00:02:34.600 | I graduated from undergrad debt-free,
00:02:36.600 | had a great credit score,
00:02:37.900 | maybe I should start blogging about personal finance.
00:02:40.320 | So that's when I started
00:02:42.600 | what was then Narrowbridge Finance,
00:02:44.280 | Narrowbridge Adventures,
00:02:45.720 | and I had that little bit of finance under my belt,
00:02:49.000 | and then I switched into cubicle land.
00:02:50.920 | I did corporate finance and accounting for about a decade,
00:02:54.160 | and I got the MBA full-time while working full-time.
00:02:58.280 | So I was super busy,
00:02:59.440 | and I kept the blog going.
00:03:01.440 | The quality wasn't quite what I would have probably wanted,
00:03:04.400 | but busy with work and school.
00:03:06.360 | But I kept the blog going,
00:03:07.720 | and I was learning a lot,
00:03:08.800 | and that MBA helped me get better jobs,
00:03:12.680 | you know, as one would hope.
00:03:13.880 | I invested a lot of money to get an MBA.
00:03:16.440 | I'm proud to say it has paid off multiple times.
00:03:19.440 | And along the way,
00:03:21.060 | I still kept that blog thing going as a side hustle.
00:03:24.320 | And it grew and grew,
00:03:25.880 | and actually through the Yawkeesi,
00:03:28.000 | that group that Sam founded,
00:03:29.600 | I started doing a few articles here and there
00:03:32.520 | on some other personal finance blogs.
00:03:34.880 | Not getting paid a whole lot,
00:03:36.120 | but I was like, hey, you know,
00:03:37.400 | making some beer money here in my 20s.
00:03:40.040 | I went to nightclubs a lot.
00:03:41.520 | I like the EDM world, you know,
00:03:43.260 | boom, boom, boom kind of music.
00:03:45.320 | So it was nice to have a few extra bucks coming in,
00:03:47.760 | and it paid off my MBA loans,
00:03:49.960 | paid off my car loan early.
00:03:51.360 | My MBA loans, I paid off two years
00:03:53.820 | and six days after graduation,
00:03:56.060 | which I'm always a little mad payday wasn't a week earlier,
00:03:58.780 | 'cause then I could say under two years.
00:04:00.440 | That six days always bothers me.
00:04:02.700 | So, but along the way,
00:04:04.620 | I kept that blog going,
00:04:05.900 | and I started going to this conference called FinCon,
00:04:08.600 | where Sam and I have hung out in person a few times.
00:04:11.140 | And through FinCon,
00:04:12.540 | I connected with some bigger companies
00:04:15.080 | that were looking for freelance writing.
00:04:16.900 | And I was, they said, oh, you know,
00:04:18.260 | we like your blog.
00:04:19.160 | We like what you're doing there.
00:04:20.540 | Will you write your story for us
00:04:21.940 | and help write financial advice on our site?
00:04:24.780 | And my first bigger client
00:04:26.820 | that you might've heard of was Betterment.
00:04:28.900 | So thank you to them for bringing me on.
00:04:30.980 | And that really changed the trajectory of my online work.
00:04:34.460 | 'Cause up until that point,
00:04:36.300 | I'd thought maybe I'd have a site,
00:04:38.300 | you know, more like yours,
00:04:39.140 | a big site with a lot of people coming every month.
00:04:41.420 | I looked up to Pat Flynn a lot from Smart Passive Income.
00:04:44.780 | I thought, yeah, I could be like a little mini celebrity
00:04:47.720 | in my own world online.
00:04:49.140 | And make a bunch of money from my website.
00:04:51.500 | But Google seemed to have other plans for my website.
00:04:54.340 | I didn't ever get a ton, a ton of traffic.
00:04:57.340 | But I got enough recognition from my credentials
00:05:01.100 | and the quality of what I was writing
00:05:02.700 | that I just kept getting more freelance opportunities.
00:05:05.660 | So I started to do something
00:05:07.600 | that I always advise people to do.
00:05:09.900 | Look at what you're working on and see what's working.
00:05:13.460 | And even if that's not what you expect to be working,
00:05:17.100 | if it's working, that's where you should double down.
00:05:19.660 | So on the blog, I had certain topics that did really well
00:05:23.860 | and I wrote similar posts and they kept doing well,
00:05:26.640 | not surprisingly.
00:05:28.220 | But 'cause I was making more money
00:05:29.700 | with the freelancing thing,
00:05:30.980 | that's where I really started to focus my efforts.
00:05:33.580 | And I kept going back to FinCon every year
00:05:35.900 | and I met these great companies
00:05:37.480 | and built a larger and larger writing portfolio.
00:05:41.340 | And in 2000, let's see, 16,
00:05:45.000 | or actually 2015, I'd made $40,000 on the side,
00:05:50.000 | mostly from freelance writing,
00:05:51.940 | also freelance website designs.
00:05:53.900 | Those were my kind of two main things
00:05:55.740 | I was focusing on outside of the day job.
00:05:58.300 | And I realized, wow, 40,000 on the side,
00:06:02.460 | living in Portland at the time,
00:06:03.780 | that was what the average person in Portland made in a year.
00:06:06.740 | I thought if I could do that in 10 to 20 hours a week,
00:06:10.260 | imagine what I could do if I went full time
00:06:13.060 | and started doing this 40 or who knows
00:06:15.540 | how many hours a week it would turn into.
00:06:17.960 | And what really led me to make the big change
00:06:21.520 | and leave the day job, 'cause I was doing pretty well.
00:06:24.160 | I had the MBA, I was working as a senior financial analyst
00:06:28.080 | at a big financial and payments company
00:06:30.840 | on the card services division.
00:06:32.920 | I had great health insurance, great benefits,
00:06:35.480 | a team that I really enjoyed working with.
00:06:38.240 | But one day I had to go,
00:06:39.960 | if anyone out there's worked in accounting,
00:06:41.840 | you know close is a busy time of the month.
00:06:44.500 | That's usually the first few days of the month
00:06:46.300 | if you're not from the accounting world.
00:06:48.360 | And I had a couple days that I was gonna have to go in
00:06:51.880 | really early and leave really late.
00:06:53.540 | And one day I had to go to work before my daughter,
00:06:56.340 | who was then about four months old, was awake for the day.
00:06:59.880 | And I got home when she was already asleep for the night.
00:07:02.240 | And it looked like I was gonna have to do
00:07:03.600 | the same thing the next day.
00:07:05.320 | And I was like, this isn't why I go to work.
00:07:07.460 | And I'd always kind of thought about
00:07:10.100 | going full time for myself.
00:07:11.860 | One of the biggest reasons I hadn't
00:07:13.680 | was 'cause of the cost of health insurance,
00:07:15.720 | which is still, it's actually more than my mortgage.
00:07:18.100 | And I live in Southern California,
00:07:19.600 | so it says what health insurance costs.
00:07:22.000 | But there was just that point I thought,
00:07:23.760 | this isn't what my life is about.
00:07:25.840 | I'm not living to work, I wanna live for my family
00:07:28.600 | and work to support that.
00:07:30.360 | And if work is taking so much away from my family,
00:07:34.080 | that's not what I wanna be doing.
00:07:36.320 | So like any good, responsible dad
00:07:39.380 | with a four-month-old baby and a stay-at-home mom/wife,
00:07:42.140 | I quit my job and sold my house
00:07:44.420 | and moved to one of the most expensive parts of America.
00:07:47.180 | And here I am, it's like seven years later,
00:07:49.680 | and things are going great.
00:07:50.640 | So that's the basic journey of how I got to where I am.
00:07:55.180 | - That's a good journey.
00:07:56.140 | A lot of risk-taking here.
00:07:58.000 | Freelancing is something that I feel most people should do.
00:08:03.860 | Why don't more people try to make more money on the side?
00:08:07.520 | If you only work 40 hours a week,
00:08:09.080 | that's a single-digit workday.
00:08:10.840 | And let's be honest,
00:08:12.800 | we're not working all eight hours a day, right?
00:08:15.720 | There's probably downtime, go to the bathroom,
00:08:18.600 | water cooler, whatever it is.
00:08:20.600 | Why don't more people do freelance work
00:08:22.460 | since there are so many opportunities online right now
00:08:25.080 | with so many platforms to provide those opportunities?
00:08:27.880 | - Yeah, I think that's a great question.
00:08:29.240 | I think a lot of people just don't realize
00:08:32.180 | what the opportunities are.
00:08:34.400 | If you have a degree in something,
00:08:37.440 | there's probably someone who will pay you
00:08:39.480 | to use that outside of your job.
00:08:42.040 | And if you think about it from the employer perspective,
00:08:45.000 | hiring a full-time person's a lot of money.
00:08:48.160 | It's a big commitment.
00:08:49.120 | You have that, let's say I actually just had,
00:08:52.480 | for about a year, had a full-time employee working for me.
00:08:55.920 | No matter what happened, I had a certain amount
00:08:58.040 | I had to pay him every week or every other week for payday.
00:09:01.300 | I was doing weekly.
00:09:02.800 | I had extra insurance, extra taxes.
00:09:05.480 | There's a lot of things that you have to do
00:09:08.400 | and have to pay when you have an employee.
00:09:10.780 | But when you have a freelancer,
00:09:12.680 | you're really just paying for performance
00:09:14.720 | and there's a lot less risk.
00:09:16.320 | All of my contracts with my clients basically say,
00:09:20.240 | if they're unhappy with my work,
00:09:22.060 | they can just stop giving me assignments.
00:09:24.040 | So if, or if I've had some, not too long ago,
00:09:28.120 | there was a huge wave of layoffs in the tech world.
00:09:31.240 | So some clients just didn't have the budget anymore
00:09:33.380 | and they said, sorry, we have to cut back
00:09:35.140 | or cut completely what we're doing with you.
00:09:38.340 | So that's a risk on the freelancer side.
00:09:41.300 | But if you think about it from the boss's side,
00:09:44.100 | there's a lot more potential benefit
00:09:47.820 | from working with freelancers with lower risk
00:09:50.880 | than there is to hiring employees.
00:09:52.620 | So when you have that mindset
00:09:54.300 | and know what value you can offer,
00:09:57.220 | that's where you can really start
00:09:58.460 | to find great opportunities.
00:10:00.420 | And also, it was a lot easier for me
00:10:02.800 | when I was in my twenties to do freelancing
00:10:06.360 | and side hustle kind of jobs.
00:10:07.720 | Now I have three kids and a wife.
00:10:09.680 | So there's a little bit less time,
00:10:12.560 | but because I invested the time to learn other skills,
00:10:17.440 | to learn how to work online,
00:10:19.300 | all of these other things I started doing in my twenties,
00:10:21.760 | I was able to leverage that
00:10:23.160 | into real career opportunities in my thirties.
00:10:26.400 | But that doesn't mean it's too late.
00:10:28.360 | If you're 45 and have kids,
00:10:30.920 | you probably still have down hours.
00:10:32.900 | Like Sam was saying, you might have a lunch break.
00:10:35.660 | If you have a personal laptop,
00:10:37.260 | there's no reason you can't go to the pizza place
00:10:40.540 | down the block that has wifi
00:10:42.500 | and have a slice of pizza and write a blog post.
00:10:45.540 | Or if you have, I'll throw out accounting again,
00:10:49.680 | maybe you could do weekend bookkeeping for your business.
00:10:53.500 | You spend a couple hours on a Sunday.
00:10:55.660 | There's things people need and they will pay you to do it
00:10:58.220 | if you do a good job.
00:11:00.060 | - So I guess the question would be for many listeners
00:11:02.820 | who want to freelance but have never freelanced before,
00:11:06.460 | how does one get started?
00:11:08.680 | What are the main areas to get started
00:11:11.040 | with finding these freelance gigs?
00:11:13.300 | - Yeah, so the first thing is to think about
00:11:16.780 | what you can offer and what someone's willing to pay.
00:11:20.260 | And there's actually a great book
00:11:21.380 | called "The $100 Startup" by Chris Guillebeau.
00:11:24.180 | He has a bunch of good books.
00:11:26.620 | One of the things he says in that book is
00:11:28.780 | to have a business, you really only need three things.
00:11:31.940 | Something that you sell,
00:11:33.180 | whether that's a product or service,
00:11:35.260 | someone to buy that, and a way to deliver it.
00:11:38.180 | So that's really all you need to freelance.
00:11:40.620 | So first you have to pick what service somebody wants.
00:11:43.820 | Remember, just because you want to do it
00:11:45.660 | doesn't mean someone is willing to pay for it.
00:11:48.020 | So you have to think of what you're able to do
00:11:50.640 | that someone's willing to pay for.
00:11:52.740 | Then you just have to find the person willing to pay.
00:11:55.060 | So think about, for me, while I have a finance degree,
00:11:58.860 | I always seem to have a knack for writing.
00:12:01.260 | I did well with English and writing classes
00:12:03.700 | and later on in high school and college.
00:12:06.300 | I always hated language arts and English classes
00:12:08.620 | until halfway through high school.
00:12:10.220 | And then I had a couple of really good English teachers
00:12:12.780 | that changed my perspective on writing.
00:12:15.780 | So ever since then, I was always,
00:12:18.740 | I looked at writing as something I enjoyed.
00:12:21.020 | And as I mentioned, I started just as a little fun side
00:12:23.860 | thing when I had a few hours off at camp.
00:12:26.660 | So that, for me, was something I could do.
00:12:29.980 | And I was able to find ways to get paid to do it.
00:12:33.140 | But think about other things people
00:12:35.180 | are willing to pay to do, particularly things
00:12:37.740 | you can do online remotely, which
00:12:40.420 | is a lot of things these days.
00:12:42.260 | Graphic design, if you know how to do Photoshop really well,
00:12:46.900 | there's probably somebody who would pay you to do that.
00:12:49.780 | It could even be photo editing for people
00:12:51.580 | who take their own wedding photos or something
00:12:53.540 | and they want those touched up.
00:12:55.380 | Maybe it's bookkeeping, I mentioned.
00:12:56.860 | That's something that, if you're really good at math,
00:12:59.220 | you don't even need an accounting degree.
00:13:00.940 | You just need to understand how QuickBooks and similar software
00:13:03.980 | works.
00:13:04.860 | And there are probably some small business owners
00:13:07.140 | who don't want to understand how it works
00:13:09.340 | and are happy to pay you to do that for them.
00:13:12.060 | There's just so many things you can do online these days.
00:13:14.960 | If you have coding skills, it's a little bit more competitive
00:13:18.340 | right now because of all the tech people who got laid off
00:13:21.060 | who also have coding skills.
00:13:22.860 | But you don't even need to have a degree in computer science
00:13:25.940 | to build websites.
00:13:27.340 | As Sam mentioned, I've worked with him on his website
00:13:31.740 | to do upgrades.
00:13:32.660 | And I don't have a degree in computer science.
00:13:34.620 | I self-taught HTML and PHP and CSS.
00:13:39.420 | Recently, I've learned Python, so I've
00:13:41.100 | been able to build some of my own apps.
00:13:43.180 | So if you're able to learn something that helps somebody,
00:13:46.260 | you can make money helping them.
00:13:47.980 | So just keep thinking through what skills you have
00:13:51.740 | and who would want those skills and find those people.
00:13:54.900 | And there's marketplaces you can use to start out.
00:13:57.820 | There are sites like Fiverr and Upwork.
00:14:01.260 | Those are good.
00:14:03.540 | I'd say they're usually better for newer freelancers,
00:14:06.820 | not once you're farther in, because they're
00:14:09.220 | ultra-competitive and you're competing
00:14:11.220 | against people in India and Philippines
00:14:14.060 | who are willing to work for a lot less than you probably.
00:14:17.340 | But you can get some of those first gigs there,
00:14:20.020 | start building your portfolio.
00:14:22.460 | I always think everybody, regardless
00:14:24.860 | of if you're freelancing or not, should have your own website.
00:14:28.220 | I'm a big fan of getting yourname.com,
00:14:30.860 | or as close as you can to that.
00:14:33.540 | And start building a portfolio to show off what you can do.
00:14:36.660 | So for me, it was writing for some people.
00:14:39.540 | It could be graphics for some people.
00:14:41.500 | Like I say, who knows what it could be?
00:14:43.100 | It could be an editor.
00:14:43.980 | You could be a, I don't know, freelance engineer.
00:14:47.420 | Whatever you do, start building that portfolio.
00:14:49.980 | And even if they pay less, it's good to find
00:14:54.180 | those first few clients.
00:14:55.860 | I'd never say to work for free, but I
00:14:57.900 | would work for less early on.
00:15:00.300 | And then you have that base to build on,
00:15:02.380 | and you can start networking.
00:15:04.540 | I find a lot of clients at conferences.
00:15:07.300 | I actually had to do a couple of conferences
00:15:09.140 | in the next couple of months where
00:15:10.660 | I plan to find new clients.
00:15:12.580 | Those in-person connections have been
00:15:15.100 | instrumental for my business.
00:15:16.940 | But everyone I've worked with, I've not
00:15:19.420 | met in person necessarily.
00:15:20.980 | So once you start building your portfolio,
00:15:23.860 | you can start building a reputation in that industry.
00:15:27.100 | And hopefully, your freelance business will blossom.
00:15:31.340 | How easy is it to start a site nowadays?
00:15:35.380 | And how much does it cost on average?
00:15:37.660 | And we're talking about, let's say, a good site.
00:15:39.660 | And do you recommend going with those pre-built sites,
00:15:42.980 | like Wix or whatever, or a WordPress site,
00:15:45.140 | like the one Financial Samurai is on?
00:15:47.100 | How quick and easy is it to do?
00:15:48.860 | Yeah.
00:15:49.380 | So quick and easy depends on your internet and computer
00:15:54.100 | skills.
00:15:55.100 | OK.
00:15:55.620 | But for most people, you can run a website.
00:15:59.980 | If your name.com is available or something similar,
00:16:04.340 | the domain cost is about $10 a year.
00:16:07.820 | I now do all of my domains on CloudFlare.
00:16:10.460 | So they're like $8 and something cents a year.
00:16:12.940 | It's about the cheapest you can find.
00:16:15.540 | So that's where I do my domains.
00:16:17.340 | But you could get them from GoDaddy.
00:16:19.020 | There's lots of sites there.
00:16:20.180 | They're like $12 a year.
00:16:22.300 | Something I like to remind people--
00:16:24.260 | like, I've seen people who work really, really hard
00:16:26.700 | on their blogs.
00:16:27.860 | And they keep them at .blogspot.com or .wordpress.com.
00:16:32.860 | And I think, why, if you're willing to do all this work
00:16:36.060 | on something, would you not spend $1 a month
00:16:39.260 | to get your own piece of real estate?
00:16:41.420 | I have something like 42 domain names right now,
00:16:45.140 | which is more than most people need.
00:16:47.500 | But I have every permutation of my name you can get,
00:16:50.820 | or I could get.
00:16:52.220 | But you don't need that many.
00:16:53.740 | You just get-- like, Sam has financialsamurai.com.
00:16:58.420 | But let's say your name is--
00:17:00.620 | I don't know-- John Smith.
00:17:01.620 | Johnsmith.com is probably already taken.
00:17:03.540 | But get something as close to that as you can.
00:17:05.900 | It'll be about $10 a year.
00:17:07.700 | Then for the hosting, I recommend WordPress
00:17:11.060 | over things like Squarespace and Wix.
00:17:14.260 | There are all these little site builders that--
00:17:16.580 | they're OK.
00:17:17.820 | You can drag and drop and get something that looks all right
00:17:21.140 | pretty quickly.
00:17:23.220 | But at the end of the day, you don't really own it.
00:17:26.340 | It's sitting on someone else's server.
00:17:28.660 | And you are tied to that service as long
00:17:31.620 | as you have that website.
00:17:33.300 | Where WordPress, which is what my sites are all built on
00:17:36.740 | and what Sam's site is built on, it's
00:17:39.180 | on whatever server you choose.
00:17:41.980 | And there's a lot of hosting companies out there.
00:17:44.420 | So if you're not happy with your host, you can move it.
00:17:47.660 | And if you find--
00:17:49.220 | there are some good discount hosts out there that are $5,
00:17:52.340 | $10 a month.
00:17:53.700 | So for a year, let's say $60, $70.
00:17:58.220 | All in, on average, with a domain name and hosting,
00:18:01.100 | let's say maybe $60 to $100 a year is what you would spend,
00:18:06.100 | which I think is pretty reasonable to have
00:18:07.780 | your own chunk of the internet.
00:18:09.060 | And hopefully have that come up first
00:18:11.500 | if someone Googles your name.
00:18:13.140 | You can create the resume you want the world to see
00:18:17.260 | and have that come up first.
00:18:19.020 | And with WordPress, a lot of people don't realize--
00:18:21.860 | so when I started way back when to install WordPress,
00:18:25.340 | you had to really know a bunch of codey things.
00:18:27.940 | You had to be able to move files to servers
00:18:31.300 | and set up databases and whatnot.
00:18:33.860 | But these days, you can click one button
00:18:36.780 | on most hosting companies.
00:18:39.180 | There's a handful of big hosting companies that all have this.
00:18:42.660 | A lot of them use something called cPanel on the back end.
00:18:45.500 | It's short for control panel.
00:18:47.700 | So you go into cPanel.
00:18:49.460 | And at the bottom, there's something that'll say, soft,
00:18:51.780 | delicious site installer, something like that.
00:18:55.260 | You click on it.
00:18:56.460 | And then there's a list of different things
00:18:58.580 | you can put on your server.
00:18:59.900 | And one of them is WordPress.
00:19:01.740 | You click on that.
00:19:03.060 | You type in your email and choose a password
00:19:05.500 | and click Install.
00:19:06.940 | And your site is up and running.
00:19:08.300 | It takes less than five minutes.
00:19:11.100 | Even a grandma can do that in less than five minutes.
00:19:14.380 | If you can send an email and do basic web browsing,
00:19:19.420 | you could do this in about five minutes.
00:19:21.660 | Well, how about-- we're just at the bottom in terms
00:19:25.340 | of understanding the internet.
00:19:26.620 | So how much could I pay you to help launch a decent site
00:19:32.380 | from scratch?
00:19:33.420 | So me, these days, my rate would be $5,000 for a full website.
00:19:38.220 | Oh, nice.
00:19:38.740 | And I'm definitely not the cheapest out there.
00:19:40.700 | I'm definitely not the most expensive out there.
00:19:44.220 | When I work with a brand and they want a brand new site
00:19:47.020 | and a brand new design, and I can help them with logos
00:19:50.140 | and get their basic text written out for a handful of pages,
00:19:54.460 | make sure they have a nice home page, an about page,
00:19:57.380 | a contact form that works, those are the things
00:20:00.540 | that I would package it all together.
00:20:02.740 | OK, cool.
00:20:03.300 | There are cheaper people out there.
00:20:05.620 | If you want to do it for a couple hundred bucks,
00:20:08.420 | you can find somebody on those sites
00:20:10.620 | that I mentioned that you could go find gigs on, Fiverr
00:20:13.740 | or Upwork, places like that, even Craigslist,
00:20:17.380 | if you trust it, Facebook Marketplace.
00:20:20.140 | You could find designers who will do it
00:20:21.780 | for a couple hundred bucks.
00:20:23.300 | The quality might not be the same
00:20:25.620 | as when you pay somebody who works with bigger companies,
00:20:28.500 | usually, like me.
00:20:29.500 | I often work with large brands these days.
00:20:33.340 | But you can get something out there put together.
00:20:36.700 | If you don't want to do anything yourself,
00:20:38.700 | you can just send them a message,
00:20:40.740 | like I want a site that's basically these colors,
00:20:44.340 | here's the things that I want included.
00:20:46.820 | You could probably find someone for a few hundred dollars
00:20:50.140 | that will get the basics done for you.
00:20:52.540 | And then once you get started, I feel like, for me,
00:20:55.180 | I came up with the idea of Financial Samurai in 2006.
00:20:58.220 | And I didn't start until 2009 because I was busy,
00:21:01.500 | business school, and then I was like, well, OK,
00:21:04.100 | the global financial crisis is here,
00:21:06.700 | time to have a backup plan.
00:21:08.820 | But I just couldn't get started.
00:21:11.260 | And that start from zero to one, I feel,
00:21:13.780 | is the biggest hurdle for most people.
00:21:16.420 | Because once you start, you can adapt and pivot and adjust
00:21:21.140 | and make your site better and so forth.
00:21:22.860 | Absolutely.
00:21:23.460 | Yeah.
00:21:23.940 | I have a friend who comes to mind when you say that.
00:21:26.140 | I'm not going to call him out by name.
00:21:27.860 | He's a nice guy.
00:21:28.580 | He's been a friend for a long time.
00:21:30.660 | And we kept talking about all these entrepreneurial ideas.
00:21:33.900 | He's like, I want to start a blog.
00:21:35.420 | And now I can't figure out the name.
00:21:37.420 | And now I can't figure out the logo.
00:21:39.260 | And now I can't figure out this.
00:21:40.820 | And now I can't figure out that.
00:21:42.620 | And years go by.
00:21:44.180 | And something that I always used in my day jobs
00:21:47.060 | that's a philosophy I still hold to and what I do
00:21:50.740 | is don't let perfection get in the way of progress.
00:21:53.860 | You don't have to have a perfect website to get started.
00:21:57.420 | As Sam just said, you can always improve it.
00:21:59.460 | If you don't like your logo, change it.
00:22:01.220 | If you don't like your design, pick a new one.
00:22:03.940 | If you don't like the words on your home page, rewrite it.
00:22:07.340 | It's not rocket science here.
00:22:09.700 | It's something you can do sitting
00:22:11.660 | at home on your laptop with a movie on in the background
00:22:15.460 | while you have a bowl of popcorn next to you
00:22:17.700 | and you're hacking away on the computer.
00:22:20.980 | It's not that difficult. But if you don't start,
00:22:24.180 | it's impossible.
00:22:25.380 | So just start.
00:22:27.060 | Just start, folks.
00:22:28.300 | You never know where it will take you.
00:22:30.820 | I never thought-- I remember when I started
00:22:33.260 | Financial Samurai in 2009, I thought, OK,
00:22:35.900 | I would like to retire by 40.
00:22:37.380 | At that time, I was like 32.
00:22:40.540 | And I was thinking, if I could make $1,000 a month
00:22:43.700 | while in Hawaii, that'd be some great supplemental income
00:22:46.900 | in an early retirement Hawaii lifestyle.
00:22:49.220 | And so it grew larger than I expected.
00:22:51.820 | And that's the thing, folks.
00:22:52.980 | If you start, you tinker with it,
00:22:55.020 | and you work on something you enjoy,
00:22:56.580 | you might be surprised where it could take you.
00:22:58.580 | It might not grow to be a very big site,
00:23:00.620 | but at least you'll brand yourself online.
00:23:02.620 | You'll have your own customized resume.
00:23:04.380 | And you'll attract, due to the law of attraction,
00:23:07.140 | people who are looking for the things that you can offer.
00:23:10.820 | Totally.
00:23:11.420 | Yeah.
00:23:12.060 | Like you say, you never know where it'll take you.
00:23:14.100 | When I started, I was really excited when
00:23:16.580 | I got a $5 ad on my website.
00:23:19.300 | That's like enough to buy a beer.
00:23:20.940 | That's not today's inflation rates.
00:23:23.100 | Beers used to be $5.
00:23:25.700 | That ages me, right?
00:23:26.940 | So I was like, yeah, $5.
00:23:28.820 | Wow, I could do something with that.
00:23:31.220 | And then it got to a point I was making a couple hundred bucks
00:23:34.020 | a month.
00:23:34.500 | And I was like, wow, this is enough to make a car payment
00:23:37.820 | or enough for all of my beers for a month.
00:23:41.140 | Then it grew to a point that I was making $1,000 some months.
00:23:44.380 | And I was like, wow, this is covering my rent.
00:23:46.740 | This could cover a mortgage someday.
00:23:48.940 | And now, I don't remember the last month
00:23:52.900 | that I did less than $10,000 in a month.
00:23:55.460 | And it started somewhere.
00:23:57.620 | It started with that $5 ad on my blog.
00:24:00.900 | And now, it pays for my whole family to live.
00:24:03.740 | So you got to--
00:24:05.300 | you say, you got to go from zero to one.
00:24:07.020 | You got to start somewhere.
00:24:08.500 | And you can always grow and build and pivot and improve.
00:24:12.260 | But if you don't have something, you're not--
00:24:17.300 | you can't do anything with nothing, right?
00:24:19.100 | So you've got to start something.
00:24:20.580 | So starting is the biggest hurdle.
00:24:23.820 | You heard from Eric, we could start with a couple hundred
00:24:26.180 | bucks, maybe $500.
00:24:27.740 | You can start a website and just go.
00:24:29.980 | So the other hurdle is quitting or keeping consistency.
00:24:35.140 | Why do people quit?
00:24:36.660 | Why do people give up when you can just keep on going?
00:24:38.940 | Because you'll never lose if you don't quit.
00:24:41.140 | Yeah, that's true.
00:24:43.340 | If you look at a lot of businesses,
00:24:45.240 | if you look at small business administration statistics,
00:24:48.100 | something like half of businesses
00:24:49.540 | don't make it 10 years.
00:24:50.900 | I think that's the number.
00:24:53.660 | You can look it up.
00:24:54.540 | Don't quote me on it.
00:24:55.820 | Something like that.
00:24:57.420 | But with blogging and things like that, online projects,
00:25:01.780 | I'd say the attrition rate is much higher.
00:25:04.420 | There's probably millions of blogs
00:25:06.260 | that were really exciting to the person who started them
00:25:09.060 | for the first month.
00:25:10.300 | And then they weren't on the cover of USA Today
00:25:13.660 | or invited on a national talk show.
00:25:16.740 | So they were like, oh, well, I'm a failure.
00:25:18.540 | But that's not true.
00:25:21.180 | I was just reading a story last week
00:25:22.980 | about somebody who gets 200 to 300 visitors per month
00:25:26.180 | to their website.
00:25:27.420 | But they're so highly targeted.
00:25:29.700 | And the service that they sell is so valuable
00:25:33.740 | that they're able to make a living on a service
00:25:36.260 | they provide with just that level of traffic.
00:25:38.700 | So you don't have to be a superstar
00:25:40.900 | to make money doing what you do.
00:25:43.420 | But if you give up, you're not going to do anything.
00:25:46.340 | You've got to stick with it.
00:25:47.540 | And pivoting, we've mentioned a couple times.
00:25:52.100 | For me, that changed what I do in multiple ways.
00:25:55.900 | I said I wanted to be like Pat Flynn or like Financial Samurai.
00:26:00.060 | But I ended up doing the freelance route.
00:26:02.420 | And when I quit my job, there was a point about,
00:26:05.700 | I'd say, six months later where I was working a lot more hours.
00:26:09.780 | And my income did grow from when I had the day job.
00:26:13.260 | But it didn't grow proportionally for the hours
00:26:17.140 | that I grew.
00:26:18.860 | And I was like, why am I working so hard and feeling more stress
00:26:23.380 | but my income isn't going up the way I expected?
00:26:26.900 | And me, with a finance background,
00:26:28.620 | I opened up my accounting records.
00:26:30.180 | And I was looking at them.
00:26:31.580 | And I noticed that about 76% of my income
00:26:35.500 | was coming from writing.
00:26:37.220 | And that was taking about 20% of my time.
00:26:40.300 | And about 17% of my income was coming from website projects.
00:26:45.460 | And that was taking about 80% of my time
00:26:47.660 | and causing about 90% of my stress.
00:26:50.340 | I was like, huh, that's like the 80/20 rule smacking me
00:26:54.900 | in the face saying, Eric, you need
00:26:56.820 | to focus on writing over website projects.
00:27:00.020 | So actually, that is what I did.
00:27:02.100 | The next month, I had some recurring website support
00:27:05.700 | clients that I'd fix their websites when they broke,
00:27:08.340 | things like that.
00:27:09.460 | And I told them I was ending that business
00:27:11.700 | and pointed them to a friend in the industry who I thought
00:27:14.620 | would do a good job for them.
00:27:16.660 | And I doubled down, tripled down on my writing.
00:27:20.700 | And the next month, my income did go down a little.
00:27:24.460 | But the month after and the month after,
00:27:27.180 | over about three months, my income roughly tripled.
00:27:30.380 | And that's when it went over $10,000
00:27:32.060 | in a month for the first time.
00:27:33.460 | And it's almost never gone back down since.
00:27:36.220 | So again, it was one of those places--
00:27:38.620 | it wasn't exactly what I expected.
00:27:40.940 | But I noticed what was working in my business,
00:27:44.460 | refocused my efforts on that.
00:27:46.860 | And if you keep focusing on what's working well for you,
00:27:49.980 | it should keep working well for you.
00:27:51.860 | I like that.
00:27:54.340 | Again, in banking, when we were approving loans and reviewing
00:27:58.060 | credit reports, we'd say past performance
00:28:01.060 | is the best predictor of future performance.
00:28:03.980 | So if somebody was late paying all their loans,
00:28:07.020 | they'll probably keep being late paying all their loans.
00:28:09.860 | But when you're looking at freelancing,
00:28:12.300 | the place you're making the most money
00:28:13.820 | is probably the place you will keep making the most money.
00:28:16.620 | If there's a place you're making more money with less effort,
00:28:19.740 | do that.
00:28:20.740 | Don't work yourself to the bone trying
00:28:24.940 | to do something that's not working when something else is
00:28:27.780 | working for you.
00:28:28.740 | So focus on what's working, and keep focusing on what's working,
00:28:32.780 | and reevaluate periodically.
00:28:35.460 | Big companies have teams of financial planning and analysis
00:28:39.580 | people, FP&A.
00:28:40.620 | That's what I used to do.
00:28:42.180 | And their whole job is to sit there and look
00:28:45.580 | at financial results and find trends, what's working well,
00:28:49.260 | what's not working well, basically.
00:28:51.380 | And if you do that for your own business, which I say,
00:28:54.700 | everyone should keep really good records of income and expenses,
00:28:58.940 | not just because the IRS says so,
00:29:01.180 | but because you're the manager of your business,
00:29:03.900 | and you need that data to know what's working well
00:29:06.700 | and what's not working well.
00:29:08.420 | And when you look at it and you notice trends, act on it.
00:29:11.780 | Don't just sit idly by.
00:29:14.620 | Like we said, you can improve that website.
00:29:16.580 | You can improve your business.
00:29:17.900 | You can refocus what you're doing.
00:29:20.140 | It doesn't always have to be as knee jerk
00:29:22.540 | as I did, where I dropped a big part of my business
00:29:25.460 | and focused on another.
00:29:26.860 | It can be more gradual.
00:29:28.420 | But if you ignore those trends and ignore what's working,
00:29:33.660 | you'll probably just keep doing what you're doing now.
00:29:36.380 | It'll probably maintain the status quo,
00:29:39.140 | unless you take some kind of action to keep that improvement.
00:29:43.860 | Yeah.
00:29:44.780 | No, I like how you're very process driven,
00:29:47.100 | and you look at the numbers.
00:29:49.140 | For me, I don't really look at the numbers,
00:29:50.980 | because they kind of bum me out a little bit.
00:29:52.900 | Because I really just try to write
00:29:55.260 | whatever is interesting that's on my mind,
00:29:57.460 | or I need some help or inspiration from the community.
00:30:00.380 | And I feel that that has worked with me since 2009.
00:30:03.900 | But then if I start looking at the numbers,
00:30:05.700 | then the problem is I start questioning,
00:30:08.540 | am I writing because I want to make money,
00:30:10.380 | or because I want to connect and have a dialogue?
00:30:12.780 | And I'm trying my best to write interesting things based
00:30:16.100 | on firsthand experience that is relevant to today's economy
00:30:21.100 | or society, whatever the topics may be.
00:30:23.220 | There's endless amount of stuff.
00:30:25.100 | But I do agree with you that I need to focus on the numbers.
00:30:28.740 | I kind of outsource the numbers, ironically, to my wife,
00:30:32.540 | even though I'm the finance guy.
00:30:34.180 | Because I don't want to look at that stuff.
00:30:37.500 | Because I've seen before where people--
00:30:41.340 | let's say they get into blogging or something,
00:30:43.860 | and they're so focused on trying to make money
00:30:46.020 | from that endeavor that they inevitably end up quitting,
00:30:49.060 | because they don't make enough money in the beginning
00:30:52.340 | to make it worthwhile.
00:30:54.420 | It's definitely-- blogging is a long haul.
00:30:57.060 | It's not a get-rich-quick thing.
00:31:00.340 | It takes-- outside of extremely few people,
00:31:04.980 | most experiences with a blog, it's going to take time.
00:31:09.740 | YouTube channels is a great example of things
00:31:12.580 | that it takes a lot of time to do well.
00:31:14.380 | And I've known people who post a video a week, almost
00:31:19.500 | religiously, for a long period of time
00:31:22.380 | and have a little bit of traffic.
00:31:24.460 | They get bumps and ups and downs.
00:31:27.140 | But all of a sudden, two years later,
00:31:29.460 | Google's algorithm notices them.
00:31:31.900 | And they shoot up and do great and continue to do great.
00:31:36.700 | Does that mean that those first two years were a failure?
00:31:39.420 | Absolutely not.
00:31:40.340 | That's part of--
00:31:41.060 | That was foundation.
00:31:41.500 | --their assets.
00:31:42.180 | Right.
00:31:42.460 | That's their foundation.
00:31:43.540 | But if they hadn't put those two years in,
00:31:46.500 | that big spike wouldn't have happened.
00:31:49.700 | When I was able to quit my job and become self-employed--
00:31:53.220 | and I used to do income reports.
00:31:54.820 | So my income jumped those months and went over $10,000.
00:31:58.580 | All of a sudden, people noticed me.
00:32:00.040 | So it was like, wow, eight years of hard work,
00:32:02.220 | and I'm an overnight success.
00:32:04.020 | But nobody wants to do the eight years first.
00:32:06.940 | It was a lot of work to get me to the point
00:32:08.860 | where I was an overnight success.
00:32:11.100 | So once in a blue moon, somebody will start a blog.
00:32:14.540 | And it'll get picked up by a major media outlet.
00:32:18.740 | Or something will just work with their search engine stuff.
00:32:22.460 | Or it'll have a post go viral on some social network.
00:32:26.020 | And they'll take off early on.
00:32:28.100 | But most people probably won't have that.
00:32:30.920 | Most people, it's a slower process.
00:32:33.520 | It's building a community.
00:32:34.800 | It's building a following.
00:32:36.800 | There's a lot of interactions, a lot of emails.
00:32:39.200 | You know you're doing something right when you start getting
00:32:41.660 | the hater emails.
00:32:43.440 | You're getting to-- getting--
00:32:45.640 | rubbing somebody either the wrong way,
00:32:48.320 | it's probably because they're jealous of what you're saying,
00:32:51.240 | or your success.
00:32:52.960 | Or disagree.
00:32:54.400 | And it's OK if they disagree.
00:32:56.700 | That means you're engaging people.
00:32:58.820 | So stick with it.
00:33:00.980 | I have one of those personalities
00:33:03.300 | where I'll work on something.
00:33:04.780 | And when I start seeing success in it, I get bored.
00:33:07.180 | I'm like, all right, I did that.
00:33:08.620 | On to the next thing.
00:33:10.580 | I've never been diagnosed, but I think I have ADHD.
00:33:12.980 | I think that's what probably causes that in me.
00:33:15.740 | But because the freelancing thing,
00:33:20.380 | it became so successful, I just couldn't ignore it.
00:33:25.660 | It wasn't-- it became something that I was like, wow,
00:33:27.820 | this can go beyond a side hustle.
00:33:30.160 | But even when you have a full time job--
00:33:33.400 | I'm a big fan of side hustles.
00:33:34.860 | Having multiple income streams, I think, is really important.
00:33:37.760 | Because as we saw recently, people
00:33:40.720 | can get laid off any day, even if they're doing a great job.
00:33:45.120 | Maybe you worked at Twitter, and you were an engineer,
00:33:48.640 | and you kept the whole site together.
00:33:50.920 | You'd think that would be job security.
00:33:53.160 | But a new boss comes in, and you're gone the next day.
00:33:57.280 | If you have multiple income streams,
00:33:59.920 | you at least have something else to fall back
00:34:01.880 | on if you lose a job.
00:34:03.600 | And if you are a freelancer, I like to say,
00:34:07.480 | I traded having one boss for having about a dozen bosses
00:34:10.880 | any given time.
00:34:12.200 | But if I don't like any of my bosses, I can fire them.
00:34:15.200 | And I still have 11 more who are happy to pay me.
00:34:17.960 | And it ebbs and flows every month.
00:34:19.800 | I'd say I work with 10 to 15 companies.
00:34:22.200 | And some come and go.
00:34:23.480 | Some come back.
00:34:24.840 | It's just the nature of freelancing.
00:34:26.680 | You have to have a thicker skin than a lot of things.
00:34:30.000 | But I have noticed a lot of people, when they lose a job,
00:34:34.240 | that's it.
00:34:35.040 | They're like, wow, I need to find the next job.
00:34:38.000 | Where for me, if I lose a gig, oh, well, I'll find another.
00:34:41.680 | I'll find a lot more.
00:34:43.120 | So to me, that's almost more job security.
00:34:46.840 | There's expenses.
00:34:47.600 | Yeah, I think so.
00:34:48.320 | But it's a very different way of looking at income
00:34:52.120 | than when I had the day job.
00:34:54.000 | No, I absolutely agree.
00:34:56.440 | Yeah, start and stick with it.
00:34:58.600 | For listeners, just as an example,
00:35:00.920 | I started the Financial Samurai podcast maybe five years ago,
00:35:03.760 | six years ago.
00:35:04.840 | Not consistent three, four years ago.
00:35:07.080 | But I've been consistent.
00:35:08.240 | And I haven't tried to find any sponsors or anything.
00:35:11.840 | I do mention some of the things that I've
00:35:14.080 | written and produced in the past or some affiliates on occasion.
00:35:17.640 | But I've basically made no money from this podcast
00:35:20.000 | for five years.
00:35:21.080 | But that's OK because I'm enjoying it.
00:35:23.680 | I like talking to people like you.
00:35:25.520 | And I have this 10-year-plus vision from now.
00:35:28.200 | So another 10 years when my kids are older,
00:35:31.160 | hopefully maybe they can come on and they
00:35:34.440 | can listen to archive episodes.
00:35:36.000 | And it's just fun.
00:35:37.120 | And I do believe if you don't quit and you keep on going,
00:35:40.560 | there's no way that this podcast will be smaller 10 years
00:35:43.600 | from now than it is today.
00:35:46.080 | So really, that grit and perseverance mentality
00:35:49.440 | is so important.
00:35:51.200 | And speaking of podcasts, you mentioned
00:35:52.880 | that you have another freelance gig as a podcast host.
00:35:56.960 | How does that come about?
00:35:58.040 | I mean, that seems so--
00:35:59.640 | it just keeps on going.
00:36:00.760 | Yeah, yes.
00:36:01.800 | I'm one of those people that if something comes along,
00:36:04.880 | I like to say yes if I could make money from it.
00:36:07.200 | I always give it a try.
00:36:09.320 | Of course, I have limits.
00:36:10.400 | There have been big media companies
00:36:13.680 | that have asked me to work with them
00:36:15.180 | that I have moral disagreements with that I've
00:36:17.920 | been able to say no.
00:36:19.880 | I'm glad I was in that position.
00:36:21.400 | I could say no.
00:36:22.480 | But with the podcasting thing, I'd had my own podcast.
00:36:27.040 | I don't really add to it anymore,
00:36:28.760 | but anyone can go download it.
00:36:30.080 | There's 120 episodes.
00:36:31.680 | It's called the Personal Profitability Podcast.
00:36:33.880 | You can find it anywhere you listen to podcasts.
00:36:36.400 | And I was going to a podcast conference
00:36:38.640 | called Podcast Movement.
00:36:40.000 | I've been to, I think, five or six of them,
00:36:42.200 | got to know a lot of people.
00:36:43.960 | So I got to learn a lot about podcasting just by doing it.
00:36:47.760 | My first episode was not nearly as good as my 50th, which was
00:36:52.080 | not nearly as good as my 100th.
00:36:54.080 | If you go back five years of Financial Samurai,
00:36:56.960 | you'll probably notice the same thing.
00:36:58.500 | The podcast gets better.
00:36:59.600 | We get better microphones, better editing.
00:37:02.800 | We get more consistent.
00:37:04.680 | We get better at interviewing people.
00:37:06.240 | Anything you practice, you're going to get better at.
00:37:08.560 | So podcasting, because I practiced 120-something times,
00:37:12.840 | became a skill.
00:37:14.200 | And one of my writing clients--
00:37:15.800 | it's a company I really love working with.
00:37:17.640 | It's called PayActive.
00:37:18.640 | They do a financial wellness--
00:37:21.640 | it's a financial wellness platform
00:37:23.240 | for targeting lower-income hourly workers.
00:37:27.000 | Anyone could really benefit from it
00:37:28.560 | if you ever feel like you're living paycheck to paycheck.
00:37:32.040 | And I met the CEO at a conference in LA.
00:37:35.040 | They invited me as a media guest.
00:37:37.440 | And we were chatting.
00:37:38.320 | And he said, you seem to really get
00:37:40.000 | the idea of what we're about.
00:37:42.280 | Will you write for our blog?
00:37:43.560 | And I've actually been one of their longest-affiliated
00:37:46.920 | people.
00:37:47.400 | I've seen multiple chief marketing officers
00:37:49.960 | come and go over the years.
00:37:52.040 | But the last one said, I like the blogging world.
00:37:57.520 | We really need to expand, though.
00:37:59.800 | We need to do video and audio, because that's a big trend.
00:38:03.840 | People listen to podcasts on--
00:38:06.280 | you live in New York on the subway to work.
00:38:08.360 | If you live wherever, you might listen to one on your commute.
00:38:11.880 | Commutes are a really big place to listen to podcasts,
00:38:14.520 | or if you do any kind of driving.
00:38:17.280 | I actually got a little podcasting speaker in my shower,
00:38:20.200 | because I was just not getting enough podcast hours.
00:38:23.760 | So I'm listening to podcasts whenever I can.
00:38:26.360 | Yesterday, I had a podcast on in my ears
00:38:28.240 | while I was doing yard work.
00:38:29.640 | So for me, podcasts are just something
00:38:31.680 | I've always loved and enjoyed.
00:38:33.800 | And when they said, oh, we want to add a podcast
00:38:38.200 | and add an audio component to what we're doing,
00:38:41.120 | I put my hand up.
00:38:42.000 | I said, hey, I've done my own podcast.
00:38:44.280 | You can check out episodes.
00:38:45.920 | I'd love to be the host and be part of the face of the brand
00:38:49.320 | even a little more.
00:38:50.640 | And they said, sure, we'd love it.
00:38:52.080 | And we've been doing the podcast over a year now.
00:38:54.400 | And we've been able to interview some really interesting people
00:38:58.680 | and give really great advice, financial tips to people.
00:39:03.320 | I think they're good advice for anybody,
00:39:05.400 | but we target them at that audience that we have in mind.
00:39:08.800 | And I think we're able to change people's lives by the show.
00:39:12.680 | So I feel good about it, and it helps me make a living.
00:39:16.600 | And do you edit the podcast, too, or do you just host it?
00:39:20.040 | So I'm the host, and I found the editors, actually,
00:39:23.160 | the old editor from my podcast from way back when I sent her
00:39:26.840 | an email and said, hey, I'm doing a podcast for a client.
00:39:30.360 | They want an editor.
00:39:31.360 | Will you be the editor?
00:39:32.600 | And she said, sure, here's my current rate.
00:39:34.680 | And I said, that works great if it works for them.
00:39:36.880 | And I sent an email to the CMO, said,
00:39:38.960 | does this rate work for editing?
00:39:40.320 | He said, sure, and here we are.
00:39:42.880 | And let's talk about-- you don't have to talk specific numbers,
00:39:46.000 | but let's talk about, OK, how much can a podcast editor make,
00:39:50.640 | and how do they charge, and how much can a podcast host make,
00:39:55.200 | and how long does that work?
00:39:57.040 | How do all these contracts work?
00:39:58.760 | Yeah, so for editors, if you want
00:40:01.400 | to learn about podcast editing, I've
00:40:03.160 | got to throw out a name of a friend.
00:40:04.700 | His name's Steve Stewart.
00:40:06.280 | He is the leader of an online podcast editor group.
00:40:13.480 | He's a cheerleader to help people become
00:40:16.680 | full-time podcast editors.
00:40:18.420 | And most of them are freelancers.
00:40:20.920 | Though what they get paid, there's a big range,
00:40:23.760 | depending on what they offer.
00:40:25.480 | So on the low end, you might find someone
00:40:28.080 | for around $50 an episode, depending
00:40:31.040 | on how long your episodes are.
00:40:33.080 | So let's say for a half-hour episode to a 45-minute episode,
00:40:37.920 | you might find someone around that range.
00:40:40.080 | And for that, you'll get someone who will maybe cut out
00:40:43.920 | your ums and uhs and run it through a software tool
00:40:48.480 | to equalize the sound so it comes out nice
00:40:51.840 | and it doesn't go way high and way low.
00:40:54.760 | It sounds nice.
00:40:56.400 | On the high end, you can pay hundreds of dollars an episode,
00:40:59.960 | and that includes way more in-depth editing
00:41:03.280 | and equalization.
00:41:04.480 | They might-- they have all sorts of audio editing tricks
00:41:08.280 | that they use.
00:41:08.860 | We don't have to give a whole lesson on that.
00:41:10.960 | And then they'll do the show notes.
00:41:13.240 | They'll help maybe get a transcription together.
00:41:19.320 | They'll make sure that the links are
00:41:21.280 | in right to the right places.
00:41:23.000 | They do--
00:41:23.500 | That's a lot of work, folks.
00:41:24.720 | Listeners, you've got to appreciate these episodes.
00:41:26.880 | There's a lot of work goes into production.
00:41:28.920 | I'm a one-man band here, folks.
00:41:30.520 | So your reviews are what the rewards are.
00:41:34.600 | So thank you.
00:41:36.000 | So it's adding-- getting the fading right for a theme song
00:41:41.680 | to go into the beginning and the end.
00:41:44.240 | There's so many things that you can do,
00:41:46.480 | clip pieces together.
00:41:48.000 | You just got to pay money and find that right editor.
00:41:50.160 | OK.
00:41:50.660 | So if you find a great editor, there's
00:41:53.840 | a reason they're able to charge hundreds of dollars an episode.
00:41:56.720 | Because they're creating a service that is worth that.
00:41:59.920 | And if you want the $50 one, you'll get a $50 value back.
00:42:04.240 | And maybe that's all you want or need as you're growing.
00:42:07.320 | But maybe you work for a big company.
00:42:09.640 | I've talked to a few big companies,
00:42:11.520 | like large investment companies who you've heard of.
00:42:14.440 | And they have much higher budgets,
00:42:16.400 | but they also have much higher requirements.
00:42:19.000 | So they're happier to pay a lot more money,
00:42:23.320 | because they want something that is good enough
00:42:26.400 | that they could sit down with the CEO of a Fortune 500
00:42:29.880 | company who's their boss and say, are you happy with this?
00:42:34.600 | Their requirements are going to be a lot different.
00:42:37.200 | Yeah.
00:42:37.720 | So they want it to be like NPR quality.
00:42:40.520 | Yeah.
00:42:41.880 | Yeah, that's interesting.
00:42:42.920 | So when I'm listening to podcasts,
00:42:44.300 | I mean, I definitely understand production quality, intros,
00:42:47.680 | the music, and all that stuff.
00:42:49.620 | But for me, at the end of the day,
00:42:51.080 | I just want to listen to the content.
00:42:52.620 | That's like 90%, 95% of it.
00:42:55.360 | And I know I have nothing fancy here on this podcast.
00:42:57.720 | Maybe I will get more fancy as the podcast grows.
00:43:00.600 | But it's that content quality that's the most important,
00:43:03.760 | to me at least.
00:43:05.240 | So in terms of, OK, podcast editing, $50 to several $100
00:43:09.400 | per episode.
00:43:10.640 | How about being a podcast host?
00:43:12.280 | Because I think that's something that more of us could be like,
00:43:14.880 | oh, we could be a podcast host.
00:43:16.160 | I can speak more eloquently.
00:43:17.800 | I can learn how to not say uhs and ums, and research,
00:43:21.700 | and ask good questions.
00:43:23.400 | What does that kind of range look like?
00:43:25.520 | So that one is going to also be a wide range.
00:43:28.800 | I don't want to give away my exact contract.
00:43:30.960 | No, don't do that.
00:43:31.800 | I don't think I'm allowed to.
00:43:33.000 | No, the range would be good.
00:43:34.160 | Imagine on the low end, someone might
00:43:37.480 | be able to do maybe $300 to $400 an episode,
00:43:41.200 | depending on the length and the time commitment.
00:43:43.480 | Wow, $300 to $400.
00:43:45.040 | Oh, I got myself a side gig, maybe.
00:43:47.600 | On the high end, it can be thousands an episode.
00:43:50.520 | But remember, with that, you are becoming a face of the company,
00:43:56.720 | a voice of the company.
00:43:57.920 | So you're going beyond just putting a few words on a page.
00:44:01.760 | Here, it's your personality.
00:44:03.240 | It's you are a face of the brand.
00:44:07.160 | It's becoming almost a brand ambassador.
00:44:09.840 | I like it.
00:44:10.440 | The podcast I do for my client, we record the podcast.
00:44:13.800 | I find the guests.
00:44:14.800 | I do the questions.
00:44:16.280 | I found the editor.
00:44:18.160 | I drive most of the process.
00:44:20.600 | And I also-- we actually use the platform we're using right now,
00:44:23.800 | and called Riverside.
00:44:25.200 | And I download the videos for the show.
00:44:28.880 | And they get that to make little clips
00:44:31.840 | to put use on their social media.
00:44:34.280 | So yes, I'm the podcast host.
00:44:36.440 | But then we're also in Instagram reels, and TikToks,
00:44:42.240 | and wherever they want to put their stuff.
00:44:45.400 | Basically, once we record the episode,
00:44:47.800 | the audio and the video is the company's.
00:44:50.360 | So I make sure they get a good quality podcast.
00:44:53.400 | But then they can use clips of it.
00:44:55.520 | They can take parts of the transcription
00:44:57.400 | and put it into their app that the clients use, customers use.
00:45:01.560 | So they can do a whole lot with it.
00:45:03.040 | But then I'm also really tying myself to that brand.
00:45:06.960 | So they're tying themselves to me.
00:45:08.680 | I'm tying myself to them.
00:45:10.000 | So it's a bigger relationship when
00:45:12.760 | you're a podcast host or a video host for a company.
00:45:17.520 | No, that's fascinating.
00:45:18.760 | Personal brand, branding is very important.
00:45:22.040 | If you want these gigs, you better
00:45:23.960 | have a good personal brand.
00:45:25.600 | You better not offend people too much,
00:45:28.160 | unless that's kind of the trend of the client.
00:45:30.960 | I don't know.
00:45:33.080 | If you think about the brands of just different creators
00:45:36.120 | who you might know online, there are people who are--
00:45:40.440 | think about the people you follow on whatever
00:45:42.440 | your social network of choice is.
00:45:44.880 | There's so many of them now.
00:45:46.440 | There's people that I follow that are always complaining
00:45:50.200 | or always being kind of cynical.
00:45:53.720 | And over time, I kind of like, oh, maybe I
00:45:56.160 | don't want to follow this person.
00:45:58.320 | But there are people who might really like that and find
00:46:02.560 | affinity to that.
00:46:03.440 | But for me, I like positivity.
00:46:05.320 | I like growth over being down on people.
00:46:08.480 | I don't want to--
00:46:09.520 | I don't like complaining.
00:46:10.600 | I like growing.
00:46:11.600 | So I like to follow positive people.
00:46:14.240 | So think about what brand you want to build for yourself,
00:46:18.840 | and then what brands would want to work with that.
00:46:21.480 | I mean, if you're just complaining all day on Facebook,
00:46:23.800 | no one's going to want to work with you.
00:46:25.720 | No one's going to want to be friends with you on Facebook
00:46:27.640 | if all you're doing is complaining all day.
00:46:29.640 | But if you're out there putting out
00:46:31.800 | helpful, positive information on whatever topic,
00:46:37.520 | you can become a thought leader in that area.
00:46:41.360 | Then brands might start coming to you,
00:46:43.240 | or you might be able to approach brands
00:46:44.840 | and start building those relationships.
00:46:46.800 | But you have to be professional and think about--
00:46:51.160 | we see celebrities--
00:46:54.000 | Michael Phelps, I don't know why he came to mind.
00:46:56.680 | He won a bunch of gold medals.
00:46:59.440 | Everyone loved him.
00:47:00.280 | And then one time, he got caught smoking pot,
00:47:02.720 | and he got fired from all of these brand relationships.
00:47:06.080 | It cost him millions of dollars.
00:47:08.640 | Tiger Woods, everyone loved him for a long time.
00:47:11.080 | And then he cheated on his wife, and he got fired
00:47:13.120 | from all these different brands he was working with.
00:47:15.760 | So it can happen to even the big, big celebrities.
00:47:18.840 | The tolerance for bad behavior is
00:47:20.800 | going to be a lot lower for someone who's
00:47:23.120 | not a super celebrity like me.
00:47:25.560 | So I definitely have to be thoughtful about what
00:47:27.840 | I put out there.
00:47:28.680 | I don't want to look like a drinking frat boy
00:47:32.680 | when I'm putting pictures online.
00:47:35.080 | I want to look like a professional.
00:47:37.160 | So speaking of pictures online, how important
00:47:41.200 | is what you look like, your image,
00:47:44.120 | online if you're doing a podcast,
00:47:45.800 | if you're a podcast host?
00:47:47.520 | And vice versa, I guess.
00:47:49.280 | There's a saying, you have a great face for podcasting.
00:47:52.400 | You don't have to be a supermodel to be on the radio
00:47:55.520 | or to be a podcaster.
00:47:57.200 | But you do have to--
00:47:59.560 | I'd say in this day and age, you do kind of
00:48:01.480 | have to put your face out there.
00:48:02.840 | That doesn't mean you have to be a beautiful person.
00:48:05.520 | It means you should be--
00:48:06.640 | Everybody's a beautiful person.
00:48:07.640 | Yeah, I agree.
00:48:08.400 | Everyone's a-- we all have beauty in us.
00:48:11.360 | But you should be thoughtful about what
00:48:14.560 | do you want to put out there?
00:48:15.720 | What do you want to say out there?
00:48:17.280 | If you put a little video out on your Instagram,
00:48:22.120 | are you showing yourself in Las Vegas partying?
00:48:26.680 | Or are you showing yourself at the pool
00:48:30.920 | reading a business magazine?
00:48:32.920 | I'm in finance, so that comes to mind.
00:48:35.760 | I don't know.
00:48:36.560 | There's so many examples.
00:48:38.000 | If you're an athlete, are you going
00:48:39.440 | to show yourself at the gym working out in a good way?
00:48:43.880 | If you want to be a fashion person,
00:48:46.960 | you don't want to be in a frumpy outfit
00:48:50.680 | with your hair messed up.
00:48:52.160 | Once in a while, those are kind of fun for authenticity.
00:48:54.920 | But think about the trend that you're creating,
00:48:57.680 | that brand, that package you're creating.
00:48:59.760 | A lot of work.
00:49:00.520 | A lot of work upkeeping your image.
00:49:02.160 | But what about voice?
00:49:03.920 | Because I listen to some podcasts,
00:49:06.560 | and I listen to the host voice.
00:49:07.920 | And I'm thinking to myself, man, that's
00:49:09.600 | a little difficult voice to listen to.
00:49:12.280 | But it's a successful podcast because
00:49:14.600 | of the quality of the content, and the guests,
00:49:17.560 | and how much value the podcast can add.
00:49:20.600 | And then I know a couple journalists,
00:49:22.960 | or broadcast journalists, and they change their voice.
00:49:25.720 | They change their voice to speak on TV
00:49:27.600 | and speak in a more professional way.
00:49:29.480 | How much does that type of deliverance
00:49:31.640 | matter in terms of building a podcast?
00:49:35.720 | I'd say it matters less than you'd think, but it does matter.
00:49:41.720 | You said there are podcasts whose voices rub you
00:49:44.240 | a little bit the wrong way, but the show's good enough,
00:49:46.520 | you listen anyway.
00:49:47.840 | So if you have a voice that you believe
00:49:51.760 | most people find annoying, you could--
00:49:54.840 | if you really want, you could go to a voice coach.
00:49:56.960 | You could work on having--
00:49:59.040 | sounding nice.
00:50:00.000 | Something that I advise most people
00:50:02.240 | to do when they're creating video and audio content
00:50:06.040 | is to slow down a little bit.
00:50:08.480 | People often speed up when they're on a stage,
00:50:10.920 | and the same thing happens when you turn
00:50:12.560 | the camera or the microphone on.
00:50:14.480 | And when you start talking fast, you're harder to understand,
00:50:18.280 | and you throw out a lot more ums and uhs.
00:50:20.760 | For me, I've voice trained myself
00:50:23.020 | to do that less by slowing down and being
00:50:25.240 | a little more thoughtful in my speaking
00:50:27.280 | and how I approach it.
00:50:28.760 | But in the long term, I'd say just practice.
00:50:31.260 | Like we said for blogging, it's not going
00:50:33.180 | to get better unless you try.
00:50:35.320 | So try your own show.
00:50:36.720 | Try your own podcast.
00:50:38.800 | Listen back to it.
00:50:39.840 | We always hate how we sound, because we
00:50:41.640 | sound different in our heads than we do in our earbuds.
00:50:44.800 | But if you practice, you'll get used to hearing yourself.
00:50:49.260 | And it's good to critique yourself.
00:50:51.800 | We're often our biggest critics, so don't
00:50:54.440 | be too hard on yourself.
00:50:55.960 | But it's OK to critique yourself and listen
00:50:58.740 | to the things you like about how you sound
00:51:00.680 | and you don't like about how you sound.
00:51:02.840 | When you turn that microphone on,
00:51:05.080 | try to sound like your best self.
00:51:07.120 | That doesn't mean be like Elizabeth Holmes from Theranos
00:51:11.120 | and make up a new voice.
00:51:12.720 | It means--
00:51:13.920 | OK.
00:51:14.420 | I can pick on her now.
00:51:15.120 | Is that her fake voice?
00:51:16.120 | I don't know.
00:51:16.600 | I haven't heard her different voice.
00:51:19.160 | She has-- if you go look at some more recent videos
00:51:22.440 | after it was pretty sure she was going to prison,
00:51:25.280 | her voice changed.
00:51:26.760 | I was like, huh, that's interesting.
00:51:28.800 | So she has apparently gone to a voice coach
00:51:31.160 | to learn how to talk like this all the time,
00:51:33.080 | so she sounded more like a man.
00:51:35.280 | But most people don't need to change their voice completely.
00:51:40.200 | But if you try to speak as well as you can,
00:51:44.040 | you probably sound better than if you don't.
00:51:47.200 | So think about that.
00:51:48.800 | All the little things count.
00:51:50.720 | The little things count.
00:51:51.840 | At the same time, folks, I don't think--
00:51:55.440 | don't focus so much on perfection
00:51:57.920 | and being the perfect delivery.
00:52:00.360 | I don't know.
00:52:01.280 | For me, my personality has always been, well,
00:52:03.760 | if it's good enough, it's good enough.
00:52:05.400 | You get it out there.
00:52:06.440 | You can work on it.
00:52:08.280 | Just don't wait.
00:52:10.880 | So in conclusion, Eric, it's interesting to see your journey
00:52:14.560 | because you've gone the freelance journey,
00:52:17.240 | and you're doing all these different things.
00:52:19.920 | And you said it yourself, you haven't been diagnosed,
00:52:22.120 | but maybe you have ADHD, where you
00:52:23.760 | like to focus on many, many different things.
00:52:25.360 | And it's part of your personality, which is great.
00:52:26.960 | And you're doing things based on your personality.
00:52:29.400 | And on the flip side, I've done exactly the opposite.
00:52:32.800 | I've just stuck with one side.
00:52:34.440 | I've just written three times a week since 2009
00:52:37.760 | and just gone that way because I wanted
00:52:39.840 | to just focus on my own platform.
00:52:43.440 | What are your thoughts on those two different paths?
00:52:47.320 | And what is the thought process in terms of doing both maybe?
00:52:52.200 | Yeah, well, actually, I learned something.
00:52:54.200 | I think it was FinCon in 2013 in St. Louis.
00:52:58.080 | I had this blow my mind realization.
00:53:01.360 | I went to a session by a guy named Stacy Johnson.
00:53:04.800 | He runs a site called Money Talks News.
00:53:07.640 | And he said the only way to be successful online
00:53:10.800 | is to create a ton of content.
00:53:12.680 | He was like, I make five posts a day every weekday,
00:53:16.240 | and we have our newsletter, and we're just
00:53:18.200 | adding more and growing more.
00:53:19.840 | And that's the only way you can succeed online.
00:53:22.520 | And then I went to a session like an hour later
00:53:25.200 | by a guy named Derek Halpern.
00:53:26.760 | And he said, I post one post a month.
00:53:29.440 | It's really, really long.
00:53:30.760 | It's really, really good.
00:53:32.360 | And I spend way more time on promotion
00:53:34.760 | than I do on creation.
00:53:36.560 | And that's the only way I could succeed online.
00:53:38.720 | That's the only way to do it in the current day.
00:53:41.600 | And I realized they were saying totally opposite things.
00:53:44.680 | And they were both right and wrong.
00:53:46.480 | They were both right in those are ways to be successful,
00:53:49.000 | but they were wrong in saying there's only one way
00:53:51.040 | to be successful.
00:53:52.360 | If there are-- you could be successful in both.
00:53:55.280 | So some people, it's a volume thing.
00:53:57.560 | Some people, it's a quality and consistency thing.
00:54:02.000 | What's important is that you find
00:54:03.880 | what works for you and the audience you're trying to reach.
00:54:07.680 | I create multiple articles every single day for different sites.
00:54:12.400 | And for me, that works really great.
00:54:14.080 | But I've spoken to other freelancers
00:54:16.280 | who the idea of creating more than two articles in a day
00:54:20.200 | is like their version of hell.
00:54:22.760 | They're like, I couldn't do that.
00:54:24.240 | That's terrible.
00:54:25.720 | I've spoken to others who create more than I do.
00:54:29.360 | So it's finding what works for you
00:54:31.880 | and finding the right balance.
00:54:33.360 | And we've said a few times, don't let perfection
00:54:36.560 | get in the way of progress.
00:54:37.680 | Don't have to have a perfect podcast.
00:54:39.880 | You don't have to have a perfect blog.
00:54:42.240 | In my freelancing, I do try to turn in perfect articles
00:54:45.240 | to my clients.
00:54:45.960 | I use a bunch of tools to do that.
00:54:47.880 | But at the end of the day, we're all human.
00:54:50.320 | We're not perfect.
00:54:51.480 | AIs are even less perfect.
00:54:53.680 | I'm hoping they'll not take all of our jobs at some point.
00:54:56.320 | But for now, we need people to do things.
00:54:59.640 | And I've found a way to make it work for me.
00:55:03.360 | And with the getting distracted and getting bored of things,
00:55:06.800 | something I like about freelancing
00:55:08.960 | is that I get to focus on different topics all the time.
00:55:13.000 | Maybe in the morning-- yesterday, I
00:55:14.400 | wrote an article about starting an LLC in one state.
00:55:18.400 | When we hang up from this, I'm going
00:55:19.920 | to be working on an article on the tax benefits of donating
00:55:24.360 | cryptocurrency assets.
00:55:25.640 | So to me, some people might think
00:55:28.600 | those are horribly boring to write about.
00:55:30.320 | To me, I think any business topic and finance topic
00:55:32.800 | is fun to write about.
00:55:34.080 | And those are different enough that it's exciting to me.
00:55:36.640 | I get to learn about different things.
00:55:38.240 | I get to try different things.
00:55:40.280 | I get to read and learn a lot as I'm
00:55:42.040 | writing and creating a lot.
00:55:43.840 | So I found a way to enjoy what I do
00:55:46.200 | and make a great living doing it.
00:55:48.240 | So I'd say that's what anybody should be trying
00:55:51.480 | to do at the end of the day.
00:55:52.600 | Try to find a way to enjoy what you do and make
00:55:55.160 | a good living doing it.
00:55:56.360 | And by focusing on what works and what you enjoy,
00:56:00.160 | hopefully those returns will come back to you.
00:56:02.080 | Yeah.
00:56:02.960 | Amen to that.
00:56:04.320 | Well, it's been great chatting with you for the past hour,
00:56:06.880 | Eric.
00:56:07.560 | It's awesome to see that you're doing all this freelancing,
00:56:11.160 | to be able to take care of a family, three children,
00:56:14.320 | a wife in Southern California, not too cheap place
00:56:17.960 | to live there.
00:56:18.720 | Totally.
00:56:19.220 | So for folks thinking about freelancing,
00:56:22.680 | I would just start with your first gig.
00:56:25.000 | What are you good at?
00:56:25.880 | What do you like?
00:56:26.960 | Brand yourself online.
00:56:28.200 | Start your own website.
00:56:29.240 | It doesn't have to be generating a lot of content.
00:56:31.720 | But plant that flag online and just go start.
00:56:35.240 | There's so many Reeses out there online to make money,
00:56:39.360 | to connect, and then build your brand and network.
00:56:43.360 | So thanks so much again, Eric.
00:56:45.120 | And if people want to follow up with you,
00:56:46.840 | where can they find you?
00:56:48.040 | Yeah, the easiest thing to do is pull up your web browser
00:56:51.000 | and type eric.money.
00:56:52.880 | That was one of my branding things
00:56:54.280 | that I'm really glad I bought.
00:56:55.680 | So type eric.money, and that has links to all the things I do,
00:56:58.600 | all my social networks.
00:57:00.080 | So head there, and I'd love to connect with you.
00:57:02.160 | You can find ways to send me an email
00:57:04.080 | or follow me on the socials.
00:57:05.400 | And I'd love to connect and answer any questions.
00:57:07.880 | Yeah, and thanks again for updating financialsamurai.com.
00:57:11.680 | It was very helpful.
00:57:12.600 | I know you worked hard on all these little nitpicks
00:57:15.480 | here and there that we've solved.
00:57:19.120 | So I really appreciate that.
00:57:20.760 | And for folks who want to keep in touch,
00:57:22.520 | don't forget to subscribe to the Financial Samurai
00:57:24.560 | newsletter at financialsamurai.com/news.
00:57:28.360 | And please share, rate, and review the podcast.
00:57:31.080 | Thanks so much.
00:57:33.160 | Take care.
00:57:34.920 | [ Silence ]