Hey parents, join the LA Kings on Saturday, November 25th for an unforgettable kids day presented by Pear Deck. Family fun, giveaways, and exciting Kings hockey awaits. Get your tickets now at lakings.com/promotions and create lasting memories with your little ones. It's Monday and today Monday means live career-related or income-related Q&A.

Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. Special live Q&A today which is open to the entire audience.

We are specifically today speaking about careers and incomes. So how to make more money doing work you love. That is the topic of all of our questions on today's show. I did not record a podcast live Q&A on Friday so we're doing it here on Monday and once again all of the questions today are related to career and income planning.

This is part of our launch celebration for the new course that I am teaching called the Radical Personal Finance Guide to Career and Income Planning. How to earn a lot of money doing work you love. I don't know if that's a cliche or not but it is indeed true.

And on today's show I have a bunch of callers lined up where we will be talking in detail about career problems and career issues. What you'll be hearing here is just me live advice. So if any of this seems useful, if any of this seems good, number one, if you don't want to buy anything from me, take it and apply it to your own life.

That is my ideal outcome. A good teacher always wants their students to learn and to apply. And the best emails that I get are the emails that where a student or a listener says, "Joshua, I did something with what you said." And so that will be exciting. But if any of this is useful to you, you will probably hear me refer to some module of the course or some particular concept.

I'm not holding anything back. I'll be talking through it all today. But if this is useful, please be aware that we are currently having a four-week launch for the Radical Personal Finance Guide to Career and Income Planning. Launch window closes on Wednesday, June 6th, but your next price increase will come on Wednesday, May 16th.

Sorry, the end of day, May 15th. So as this releases on Monday, you have until Tuesday night if you would like to get the course at the lowest possible cost. So I'd love for you, if you have any interest, to come by and sign up. Go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/increaseincome. We begin with Tanya in Maryland.

Tanya, tell me about your career and what you're struggling with and how I can serve you today, please. Thank you, Joshua, for taking my call. What I wanted to figure out is I know that you like to teach concepts, and I think they're extremely useful. And what I wanted to know is what are your plans to help people on the course specifically to take those ideas and concepts and apply them for their specific industries and for their specific businesses or jobs that they do?

Sure, it's a fair question. And in the course, I actually have a module called kind of the tension between philosophy and action. And here is the challenge as I see it. Philosophy doesn't change your life. Only action does. Only specific actions actually change anything. You can read all you want about being a great cook.

You can watch all the TV shows about how to be a great cook. But until you actually go in the kitchen and start messing things up, you're not going to be a great cook. And so action is important. And I always want to have a bias towards action. The problem is if you only have action, you may quickly outgrow your action.

Now, if you had to choose between philosophy and action, I guess you would usually choose action because action is what's needed for change. But if you change philosophy, you'll have an automatic change of action. A simple reality would be this. Let's use an example related to work and to income.

If you go into your company with the philosophy that when they pay me more, then I'll work harder, you'll have a very different experience than if you go in with the philosophy of I'm going to work harder so they'll pay me more. If I only changed, let's say I were working with a young person who had a philosophy that they need to pay me more money so I'll work harder.

If you just change that one thought and you expose that philosophy as a fallacy to say that, well, when I work harder, then they'll pay me more, and rather you said no, when... Well, I messed it up. You get the point. When you say no, that's actually, why don't you work harder so they'll pay you more?

That'll naturally have an effect. So I think both are important. And I think that if you had to choose, you want to take action. But if you understand the philosophy, you'll be able to take action. Now, what I see missing in the modern world of career planning is philosophy that's applicable no matter where you are.

Because in many ways, careers in business and work is very simple. It's as simple as this. If you have a job, your job is to make your boss happy and make sure that you make more money for your company than you cost them. That's it. That's really it. When I was a kid, my dad said, "Find out who your boss is and make them happy." He didn't go into all the details and make your money more than you cost them.

But if you'll just go into your company and you find out who your boss is and make them happy, you'll have a blissfully productive career. So that philosophy is simple. The problem is that people give too much tactic and they talk about how to be more responsive to email.

Why should you be responsive to email? And so there's so much that's all around tactics that's not around principles. And so what I do try to focus on is philosophy and is principle. But to specifically answer your question, I do also try to help you apply it. So I want to give you ideas, but then help you apply them to your life and give you examples in your own specific industry and in your own specific niche.

So Tanya, tell me a little bit about your career and a specific problem that you are struggling with. And let's see if we can give you one or two specific ideas that will help you make more money and enjoy your work life more. Sure. So first of all, I am lucky that I do make enough money for myself and for my family.

But I also see that there is a huge potential to make more. And what I do, I work in the pharmaceutical industry and I actually have my own consulting business. I can be just like another consultant on down the road. But I actually think that I have certain ideas how to carve out a niche that and grow that niche.

I do not, though, have a plan written out and very well thought through, which I do need to have. And so having ideas to bounce off someone or some kind of plan that would help me be accountable would be helpful. So as a consultant, are you paid exclusively based upon the number of consulting contracts and the size of those contracts by your customers?

Yes, absolutely. And they vary either paid hourly or paid by project. But yes, all I bring a client and we have a project either on an ongoing basis or one off, and that's the money I get. Okay. And is your goal currently to increase the revenue and profit of your consulting company?

Yes, that's my goal. Okay. So let me give you something practical and let's talk about philosophy and tactics. And I'm just going to give you philosophy. This is one module from the course, but the tactics are going to be very difficult for you to apply, but the philosophy will give you the roadmap to grow on.

So in a business, and you have a business, as a consultant, you have a business. In a business, your goal is to generate profit. Profit is defined as revenue minus expenses. For most consulting companies that are what I'm imagining yours to be, you don't generally deal with a lot of expenses.

If you had a manufacturing company, if you had a lot of employees, generally there's a lot, then that's when you need to move into expenses more. But as a consultant, usually, from what I'm perceiving you to say, you're probably just a single shopper. You have a few staff members, but it's relatively small.

So your main opportunity is in revenue. And in a business, the only way to increase your profit is to either increase your revenue or decrease your expenses. And most likely your big opportunity is to increase revenue. If your expenses are out of hand, you should decrease them and that will increase profit.

But your biggest opportunity is to increase revenue. So in any business, there are only four things that you can change that will change the revenue of your business. There are only four. You should write these down, go back, listen to them later, because I'm going to go through them quickly.

The number one thing you can do to increase revenue is to increase the number of customers that you serve. All else being equal, if you have 10 consulting clients and you increase that to 15 consulting clients, you will increase the revenue and you will automatically then increase your profit as long as your expenses aren't as long as you have a profitable company.

So you can, number one, increase the number of customers that you serve. Number two, you can increase the average size of each transaction by selling more. That's number two, increase the average size of each transaction by selling more. So if your current consulting contract is an average size of $10,000, but you can sell more to that particular client because of additional value, additional services, whatever, to $15,000, you'll increase revenue.

That's good. Number three, the only number three option you have is to increase the frequency of transactions per customer. So you could have a customer that usually buys one contract from you at $10,000 each year, but now that particular customer can now engage in two contracts with you each year for a total of $20,000.

Or option number four is you can raise your prices. The next consulting client that you bring on, you just simply charge them more money. Those are the four ways that you increase revenue in a business. You, one, increase the number of customers you serve. Two, increase the average size of each transaction by selling more.

Three, increase the frequency of transactions per customer. Or four, raise your prices. That's it. I don't know of any other change that you can make that will ever affect the revenue of your business. So business is very simple. Any business, any consulting business, any storefront, any business whatsoever can sit down and look at these four things.

Now, the key is you have to then analyze which of these is your biggest opportunity. You have to look at it and say which of these is going to give me the best chance for growth. So for some customers, let's say in a consulting company, you currently have three clients, but you know you have a lot more capacity and you know there are more clients that are out there for you.

Most likely, the simplest and easiest way for you to grow is to bring on more clients. If you have the capacity, you just say, "I'm going to bring on three more clients." Now, if you're in a situation where your time is full, you have no more time, you're working 40 hours a week, you have six clients, and you just can't handle any more, now you look at it and say, "Well, is there another opportunity for me to grow?" You could increase the average size of each transaction by selling more.

And this is where you would look at your consulting business and you would say, "Well, in my particular business, can I sell more without particularly adding more time for me? Is my consulting input versus output linear or is it multiplicative? If I sell them more, am I going to have to increase the number of hours by the same amount that I've sold them or do I just need to increase my input and my output just my input a little bit and my output will increase substantially?" So you would look at that and analyze, "Is that the best move or should I increase the frequency of transactions per customer?

Is my customer base the type that they would buy more things from me if they just simply had more opportunity and so let me have them come into my storefront, whether they're virtual or real, more frequently or do I just raise my prices?" Most of the time in consulting, your best opportunity is going to be increase the number of customers you serve and raise your prices.

But it all comes down to how much time do you have, et cetera. So that's a good example of how philosophy, if you understand the philosophy, then you'll have to do the hard work of analyzing your business. And I couldn't hope to have the actual details of your business to actually know for sure, yes, this is the specific thing that you should do.

But my hope is that by talking through the concepts and just the very cursory way that I've done there, you can take that and look at your business and try to say, "Okay, with my business now, how do I actually put this into practice? Where's my low-hanging fruit?" And in any business, this should be for most people relatively straightforward.

I know for mine, if I just look at these four things, it's obvious to me where to focus. And in most businesses, it's obvious where to focus. There are times where it's a little bit less obvious and you'll have to take that. So hopefully those ideas would be a good example of philosophy and you can take them and study your business.

And if that's helpful, I'd love to have you join me. Again, RadicalPersonalFinance.com/increaseincome. And here's the thing. Your biggest opportunity is to spend... On today's show, I'm going to be moving very quickly because I got a bunch of callers on the line and I'm trying to target an hour-long show.

But in the course, I'll answer as everything that I possibly can. Just like any good class, I'm convinced more than half the value of the course is just working with me and other students in specifics for your situation. So I hope that helps you, Tania. We go to Mario in Norway.

Mario, how can I serve you today as it relates to career and income planning? Yes. Hi, Joshua. Thank you very much for taking my call. Well, the question I have is I'm developing a basic course program like a part-time job. I also work as an engineer in the oil business here in Norway for today.

But this basic coaching program is about a young professional. So my question is, what do you think should be the strategy to reach more young professionals to help them elevate their financial education, you know, to do good or bad regarding management their money from early stage in life? Where I should focus my energy to try to reach people?

That is not an easy question. When you talk about creating educational products, how do you imagine, in a perfect world, how do you imagine delivering this information and education? Well, what I'm doing is trying to contact people who I can work with them for a period of time. Let's say it has to be a minimum of three to four months in a one-to-one basis.

Of course, I want to focus basically in what I think about is try to help them first visualize where they are regarding the financial situation. And of course, what came to my mind is when people start making money as a professional, I mean, they just finish the university, graduate, and then of course, they get all the advertising and everything and try to get a lifestyle according to what they are starting to earn.

So I have been there. So that's what I'm thinking. It would be very nice just to try to teach people to do better. But I have been dumb. I mean, I have 20 years career as an engineer. So I have always been working as an engineer earning quite good money, but also I was quite spending a lot.

But I'm in a good position anyway. And are you trying to actually build a business from this endeavor that would support you? Or is this just a labor of love? Both, I would say. Because actually, what I would like in a point is to jump from my engineering career to just a coaching career, I would call it financial coach.

But it's just to help young people to organize this. Because I really, really enjoy that very much, to be honest. So I actually working on that. So I would like to do that. And I started trying this kind of launching a better coaching program to do that. So this question is one of the hardest that I can possibly imagine.

And frankly, I don't have a good answer for you because I don't really believe it's possible. But I'll explain that so that you can understand. Now, obviously, I would be quick to affirm that nothing is impossible. You just got to find the right way. But I don't know how this can be done.

I don't know how to do it. I don't know how it can be done in the way that you're describing it. Let me tell you why. When it comes to money and trying to teach people about money, you have a couple of unique challenges. First, you're dealing with a subject that some people are interested in and that many people are simply not.

Most people don't care about their money. Now, if you tell them that to their face, they'll quickly say, "Well, I actually do." But the reality is that most people simply don't care about their money. If they cared about their money, they would pay attention to it and they would actually do something about it.

But they obviously don't because they don't pay attention and they don't do anything about it. So most people just don't really care about their money. They only care about their money insofar as they can use it and spend it as they want to and earn it. And they think it'd be nice to have a little bit more, but they don't actually demonstrate that it's nice to have a little bit more by actually doing something.

Don't mean to be overly harsh, but that's truth as I see it. So most people don't care. The people that do care about their money actually are probably already likely to do something about it. There's so much information. I can't, I mean, is there a subject that's talked more about than money?

I don't know what it is. I mean, if you expand money to its full scope in every area of our life that's discussed about, I don't know of a subject that's discussed more. It's certainly, it's a constant. Is there a subject that's been written about more than money? I don't, there's so much from ancient texts till today.

I mean, you can go through the Bible. Jesus talks more about money in the Bible than faith or heaven or anything that people usually associate with being a religious topic. Most people, there's more written about money than almost anything else. So is there anything that could be actually created that was new?

I don't think, not much. There's just different variations of it. So you have a problem of people aren't really interested. Well, what about the people who are interested? And the people who are interested for kind of quick and dirty analysis probably fall into two buckets, those that have money and those that don't have money.

And here's the basic problem. Those that have money don't need to know how to make more of it. And those who don't have money don't have any money to pay you to help them get some. So you wind up looking at the people that you want to help, those who don't have money, and saying, "Well, I want to help you, but I don't know how to help you because you don't have any money to pay me." So the only thing I know to do this is to possibly these two ideas.

Number one, the best value for you to build a business is found in serving the wealthy because they have money and they can buy things from you. Because teaching people about money or coaching them about money is not an actual necessity, because of that, you can't sell it in the same way that you can sell rice to poor people and make a living.

If I tried to sell financial advice to poor people, I wouldn't make a living unless I could sell it for very inexpensive, which is media. I'll come to in just a moment. So the best way for you to build a business is for you to actually go and serve the people that have money.

But if you're going to serve the people that have money, you have to bring some particular value that's of value to them. And this is where the world of financial planning comes up. The world of professional financial advice is very good at helping people who have money get more of it or helping people who have money to hold on to what they have.

So if you become somebody like a tax expert and you can help engineers living in Norway keep more of their money from the Norwegian tax system, you can sell that advice because you can put a specific monetary value on it. You can say, "Look, I'll charge you $1,000, but I'll save you $5,000." Well, any person with money will take that deal all day long.

Or you can sell investment advice or you can sell services of some kind, whether those services are as normal as bookkeeping or if they're as esoteric as, "I'll help you hide your money in the Caribbean islands so that you get it out of the European system." I don't know what issues are appropriate to the Norwegian scenario.

But you can make a lot of money selling good care of money to rich people. But it's hard to make a lot of money selling good care of money to poor people. About the only way to do it is if you can have a giant number of customers with a very low cost of servicing those customers with a small transaction size.

That's what I'm doing. That's what radical personal finance is. Because my cost of reaching many people is extremely low, I can afford to do what I'm doing right now. I can create education that can reach a mass audience. And it doesn't matter to me in terms of costs, whether 10,000 people are listening to me or 100,000 people are listening to me.

It costs me the same amount every month. So I can create a large free option to serve people who may not have a lot of money. And then I can use that as a marketing process to attract the people who do have money to my other opportunities to pay me for stuff, whether that's coaching or a product or advice or something like that.

But I couldn't sell $400 courses on how to build an incredible career and increase your income to people who are broke. They don't have the money to do it. Now, if they were wise, they should. I have no problem whatsoever encouraging somebody who's broke to invest in their income.

But on the whole, it's been my experience that people don't generally do that. They should. I did. I used to have done it. I've seen people who do it. But those people, they're out there and I hope I can serve them. But I'm just speaking generally as far as a business is hard to do.

So the only way that I can see that you can actually do a business helping people who don't have money is if you can serve them in a large number. That would come down to speaking, speaking fees. That would come down to creating products that can be distributed widely.

So if you want to work with high school students and you create a high school curriculum or you want to become a lecturer or you want to create a particular product, et cetera, but I don't know how you can work with individuals. And that's the nutty problem about money.

I really don't see any big solution to solve it. But what I would encourage you to do is to say, "Do I really want to do this and help poor people or do I want to do this and help rich people?" If you want to help rich people, go into the professions and find an opportunity where with your profession, you can actually help them, save money on taxes, help them invest better, et cetera.

Rich people will pay constantly for good financial advice. Or if you want to help people who aren't rich yet, then look at it in service and try to figure out how can I build an audience for my service and then try to figure out what that particular audience needs in terms of service.

But I wouldn't, unless it's a labor of love for you, I wouldn't jump out of an engineering career first off to try to go and help poor people. The best people who have the opportunity to help poor people are those who are in their life naturally. So I think back to a high school teacher that I had.

He was an economics teacher. In the school that I graduated from high school, all of the people in that school were required to take instruction in economics. And this teacher worked very diligently to labor and to lay for his students a good foundation in personal finance. He took it very seriously.

It was very simple, but he was really good. But he had hundreds of students per year coming in through his classes. And a small percentage of those students were able to actually put those things in place. So if you can figure out some way to put yourself in the position where somebody is going to be forced to work with you, then possibly you can help them.

But it's a hard question. I know a lot of people in the personal finance punditry world and doing what I do who don't know how to solve it. I don't know it either. What you hear is my very best attempt to do what you're saying. So check back in a few years and I'll report on the results.

Andrew in Maine, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today, sir? Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking the phone call. So like I said, when we first spoke, I'm a carpenter, fairly rural Maine. I have not lived in the area for too long. And it seems the only thing I can do to increase my income is either raise my price or hire people and just get more jobs.

I'm kind of wary of being a huge company, a big crew. I like to offer solo craftsmanship. I'm really one-on-one with a customer. Everybody seems really happy. But it seems like there's a ceiling as far as trades go. So I didn't know what you might have for input on that.

Where do your customers currently come from? Mostly word of mouth. Just to give you an idea, we have a website my wife made. I got to actually compliment on it the other day. I'm one of like four people. What's your website? LibertyTimbers.com. Okay. So we're going to try to increase your business.

If anyone wants to see what Andrew in rural Maine can create for custom woodwork, you can go to LibertyTimbers.com. Go ahead, Andrew. Keep going. Yeah. Thanks. I'm one of like three people in this area that even has a website. So I get phone calls off my website. I leave cards around town.

I talk to just about everyone I know. And word of mouth seems to be the best way to build a lasting trade business. Just from everybody I've talked to and things like that. Mass marketing doesn't really work around here. But I live on the coast. There's really, really high-end coastal homes.

And I like really fine woodworking. So it kind of works that way. Like I said, it seems like there's a price ceiling and slowly working up, but it can only go so fast. And it's a challenge working 40 hours a week with a family, also meeting people for future work.

And just, you know, things are going well. I'm not employed as a carpenter. That doesn't seem to go very well for anybody. But self-employed seems like a pretty good niche for me. I'm fairly young and it's a dying breed. So that's kind of where I'm at with my whole business.

- So from looking at your website, it looks like you do a lot of, you're primarily, you're doing carpentry, fine carpentry, but it's very much residential as far as working on houses. You work on houses, you do home restoration and remodeling, you're doing some timber framing. So you're not creating furniture.

What you're doing is you're creating structures. Is that accurate? - Yeah. And I have a background in making, I mean, I can make furniture and my wife and I always joke about the tables that you see for $15,000. I mean, I know how to make those. I don't know how to sell those, but yeah, I do restoration.

I do remodeling, mostly things like that. And I work right now, it's just me. I like that because I'm reliable and I show up and I don't steal my own tools. So I'll keep things, you know, I keep things fluid as far as my family life and my business life.

- Right. - And yeah. - So here's what, how I would, here's the direction that I would turn you on. In the course, I give a case study of, so I look at a lot of businesses and I enjoy seeing particular businesses and I enjoy analyzing those businesses from people who are in weird niches that I come across.

So let me tell you about one that I profile in the course. The website is powerstrokehelp.com. Now I stumbled across this particular website when I was building or when I was researching Ford diesel engines. I needed to buy a diesel pickup truck and I was researching Ford diesel engines.

And particularly the problem that I was researching was an engine called the Ford six liter diesel engine. This engine, when Ford created it, was known, it was supposed to be a great engine, but it had all kinds of problems. And so I was trying to decide, there is a glut of them on the marketplace where you can get a newer pickup for pretty cheap because these engines are so considered to be major problems.

And I didn't know, should I go with a six liter or should I go with one of the other engines? Because it seems like there's a big supply, price is cheap, but I don't want to have problems and diesel engines are particularly problematic. So I stumbled across this guy who has this website called powerstrokehelp.com.

Now what he does, he exclusively works on Ford diesel engines. But the model of his website that I'm going to describe to you is a model that you can take and apply to your industry and anybody else who's in some industry, even if it's something like you, where you have localized custom work.

Now, I think, although I haven't researched this, I think the guy who wrote it, his name is Bill Hewitt. I think he probably started just like any other mechanic, just working on cars. Now in that approach to learning to work on cars, at some point in time, he became interested in diesel engines.

And so he specialized in diesel engines. And this is one of the things that's super important is when you find a specialty that's in demand to specialize down. In a modern market economy, the more specialized you are, the more money you can make because the supply of people who, the supply of workers who are able to do that work will be much smaller.

So you can see this in many industries. You should see it in the construction industry. Somebody who is perhaps a specialized Finnish carpenter for boats, who only does Finnish carpentry on boats, should in your area, if you have boats on the coast of Maine and if this is in demand, should command a higher hourly wage or a higher rate than somebody who does Finnish carpentry on houses.

And both of those Finnish carpenters should command a higher hourly rate than somebody who just does general carpentry. Now, this is subject to there actually being a demand for the work. A Finnish carpenter who does Finnish carpentry on boats but lives in the Sahara Desert is going hungry. They're not earning a higher wage.

They're going hungry. So there has to be a demand. But if there's a demand for work, then you'll make more money as a specialist. A physician who is a specialist can command a higher hourly rate or a higher wage than is a physician who is a generalist. And this basically applies to any industry, any company.

The work of somebody who's at the top is more specialized than the work of somebody who's at the bottom. And this is one of the reasons why they get paid more money. So the first career, not having spoken to him, just analyzing his website, the first career move that I would bet Bill Hewitt made was he went from being a general mechanic to being a diesel mechanic.

The next move that he made was to become not just a diesel mechanic but to become interested in Ford diesels, exclusively power stroke diesels. He doesn't work on Chevys. He doesn't work on Dodges. He only works on Ford power stroke diesels. And because of his expertise with Ford power stroke diesels, he developed an inside specialized knowledge, which makes him much more valuable as a mechanic than some other people.

Years ago, I owned a Honda Accord. And one of the major benefits that I had with this Honda Accord is I lived a few blocks away from my mechanic who only worked on Hondas, and if he was feeling generous, a Toyota every now and then. But for over 30 years, he had worked exclusively on Hondas.

And so what this gave him was a vast background of information. And it always kept me with the cheapest bills possible because he could diagnose my car so fast. So because of his breadth of experience with Hondas, he always knew, "Oh, this particular year of Honda, they had this one problem and he would just swap out the part and it would cost me 60 bucks.

Whereas if I took that car to the general mechanic, it would cost $200, an extra $140 for the time of diagnosis." He knew those things right off the bat. I have no idea how much he ever charged me for anything. I just knew that he charged, he was so fast at fixing things and doing things because he'd done it so many times that my price was cheaper, but I'll bet his hourly rate was higher because he could do things faster.

So as I'm telling you this story, Andrew, be thinking about the parallels to the construction industry and your competence as a master craftsman in a particular niche. So back to Bill Hewitt of Ford Power Strokes. So I would guess that he built a specialized business, but along the way, about 10 years ago, he pulled out his video camera and he started taking videos and putting those videos on YouTube.

And he started telling other people about Power Stroke engines and started talking about the benefits and the problems of those engines. Well, on his YouTube channel today, 10 years later, he has, I don't know if it's thousands, I don't have it right in front of me, but he has something, he has probably thousands, hundreds, if not thousands of videos on his YouTube channel.

And he has 112,000 subscribers to his Power Stroke Help YouTube channel. Now, what has he done with that? Well, he's expanded. First of all, he does still offer mechanical services. He probably spins a wrench every now and then himself, but more importantly, he's outside of Atlanta in Georgia. He has a shop with multiple mechanics and the only vehicles they work on are Ford Power Stroke engines.

But that shop, because of their specialization, is in such high demand that they not only pull customers from their local area in Atlanta, they pull customers from across the country. He tells stories on his YouTube channel of how he has customers who will buy a truck, a pickup truck in California, and they'll specifically buy a six-liter Ford with low miles, but that's older, but has low miles.

They'll buy it in California. They'll put it on the trailer and ship it from California to Atlanta, Georgia in order for him to pay him about $15,000 for what's called in the industry bulletproofing. They do all these things to fix the studs on a six-liter engine, fix out all the problem parts, and basically take the six-liter engine from a problematic engine to a really great engine because it's been out for so long, they know how to fix the problems.

So these guys will buy a pickup truck in California, used pickup truck with 30,000 miles, ship it to Atlanta, Georgia, pay him $15,000, and then ship it back out to California for them. And they'll do that all the time. And so he's got this shop where not only is he drawing on a customer base locally, but he's drawing on a regional and even national customer base for the actual work.

So he has a big shop with a bunch of mechanics working for him. That's one revenue line. Notice how the revenue lines have increased from generalists to diesel specifics, then to diesel specifics on Fords. And this man today is the nationally known person on diesel engines. If there's anybody who looks at diesel engines, researches them, works on them, it's hard for me to imagine that they don't at least every now and then stumble across his work because it's so specialized.

So he dominates this market for work. But what he's also done is he's now taken that expertise and he's translated it into other lines of revenue. On his website, he sells educational products. He has some of them that are free, which are for owners, but he has educational products for power stroke owners and mechanics.

And he has them for each of the Ford diesel engines. And he'll sell subscriptions to these courses, which are basically him with a video camera telling people how to diagnose and how to fix all of the problems with their diesel engines. So he sells these courses. In addition, he also has other lines of revenue from his website, such as the sale of products.

He sells some oil products. He sells some different things that will help your engine run better. He doesn't sell a lot of it, but he sells some. And I assume he makes some commission revenue from that as well. Also, he has other lines of revenue, such as fixing up and selling trucks.

So what they'll do is they'll have people who are looking for a particular truck, and these are people who need the truck to do a serious job. And they'll call them and say, "I'm looking for a truck with these attributes. Can you find it?" And they want his expertise to find it.

They don't care where he gets it, but they care that he goes over it and he fixes it up. And he sells them at high prices to people who demand these vehicles. They'll also take other vehicles that are broken down and they'll bring them in and he'll fix them up.

And then he sells them on his YouTube channel. So just about every week on his YouTube channel, he'll post a video, a 20-minute video of him and one of his guys walking around their lot, showing all the Power Stroke trucks that are for sale. And today, if I were looking for a Power Stroke truck of the vintage that he likes to deal in, I would very likely go and buy it from him.

I would add to the cost of probably a few extra thousand dollars over something that I could find locally and at the cost of going to Georgia. Because he's eliminating, he's solving a major problem for buyers of used vehicles, which is confidence in the quality of the vehicle. That's why used vehicles don't sell well, partly because some of their expected lifespan is used up, but partly because of the risk that you take in buying a used vehicle, which has nobody standing behind it.

So he's built this particular business where he stands behind it. His guys have gone over that truck from tip to tail and fixed everything on it. So you have a high confidence and you're willing to go in and he's selling a 2004 Excursion here for $36,000. And I'm sure he'll sell it.

He sells a lot of trucks. So I use that as an example. That's a case study that I go over in the course. I use that as an example to talk about how you actually can take a business that most people would look at and say, "Well, it's just a matter of, I just work on trucks.

How can I expand this?" And you can say, "How can I apply business thinking to my lines of revenue and try to figure out how do I grow my lines of revenue?" So in a business like yours, specifically Andrew, you could probably do a similar thing. Now you may not be able to do the same thing because the specific attributes of your business are different.

If you live in rural Maine and most of your work is done on physical structures, remodeling, local timber frame construction, et cetera, then you're going to be limited based upon your pool of customers. If Bill Hewitt were on a Caribbean island and there were 200 total Powerstroke trucks on the island, he could probably develop a reputation as an expert in Powerstrokes, but he couldn't do what he's doing where he lives in Atlanta, where in Georgia, in rural Georgia, everybody and their mother drives a diesel pickup truck and majority of them are Fords.

So you've got to actually have a market. But you can still look at your business and you can analyze outside of it. And you can look to say, "What is the core product that we're selling?" And then you look to say, "What are other products that we could sell?" Some businesses, there are lines of continuity where you can sell warranty services, you can sell additional consulting services.

Sometimes you can develop products. Sometimes in timber framing, if you have an expertise in timber framing, I'm sure you are aware of so many people are interested in learning timber framing. So perhaps you can take your expertise and you can develop that into teaching timber framing to others. And that may result in you traveling during the winter months and possibly doing timber framing workshops, possibly selling timber framing tools, possibly developing timber framing educational products to help people who want to do their own timber framing.

You're really good at building a pergola in the backyard using all hand tools with traditional 200-year-old timber framing methodology, but now you sell and teach other people about that. So whether it's products that you sell on your website, tools that you build and develop, instruction manuals, et cetera, you can look at a business like yours and try to figure out, "Well, where are my opportunities for growth?" There's not a guarantee that you can do everything, but if you start looking at it and you start analyzing and saying, "Well, what can I do?

What could I offer?" You may be able to find additional lines of revenue that you could add into your business. Go and look at something like PowerStroke Help and look at how somebody in a totally disconnected business is doing it. And then take your business and start looking around online, start talking to people and see what other people are doing on the subject of timber framing and see if you have some ideas that would interest you enough to pursue.

And if you'll start adding them and pursuing them, maybe it's you build some products that are shippable, maybe you do some furniture. In today's world where any individual can reach an international marketplace with a very low cost through the connectivity provided by the internet, we have a lot of opportunities.

And there's probably some ways that you can apply those to your particular industry. Daniel in Texas, welcome. How can I serve you today, sir? Daniel T. Johnson, CEO, PowerStroke Health, Inc. Thank you, Joshua, for taking all of our calls today. And good job. I haven't had the chance, as I said earlier, as a beta subscriber to the career and income course, I haven't had the chance to look at the new stuff yet, but it's definitely helpful to begin with.

Well, thank you for being a beta member. I appreciate it. Yeah, you're very welcome. Yeah, so I am currently a restaurant manager and especially for the restaurant business, I make good money. I have a pretty good schedule. I've gained seniority within the company, but I am pretty well tapped out for, I could move up in the company, but it would be require us to move, which we're not super excited about.

And which we realize is a, I mean, that's a limiting factor. And we are as well, at best, I would make the same amount of money. I probably would even make less than I do now for the pleasure of running my own store. So that's not ideal. And I don't know how much you know about the restaurant business, but it is not, I mean, hours are typically very long.

Money is not great. Depending on what exactly you're doing, especially at a lower level, once you get to be a store GM, you can make pretty good money. And I know people who make, as you were talking about the other day, they get into that. I think it was the 5% percentile you're talking about making above $120,000.

So that is certainly possible. So I'm trying to figure out about whether I seek to pursue something else in the restaurant business, or I've kind of started playing around with learning to program. So something I've always kind of had an interest in, and certainly I think there's a big future in that just as we become more and more technological.

I've also got multiple side things I've kind of done, and as well, trying to get into real estate investing. I actually have a couple investors lined up and I'm trying to do apartment multifamily investing, but it's just the market. I'm basically in Houston and the market everywhere is extremely challenging right now.

So any thoughts, so the options are kind of, do I pursue something in the restaurant business and seek to, I've do my best to make the best job choice possible, but no, I might take some hits there on the hours and such, but increase my income, or do I take the time to basically learn an entirely different skill such as programming, jump industries.

And even my plan with that, which I'm trying to figure out now is actually kind of create a website. Because there's not a whole lot of resources from, hey, here's someone who's actually gone from totally not in the industry to doing this, kind of create a blog or something to help other people walk that path.

But, or just kind of stay with, I have a pretty good job, I make pretty good money, it's better to develop this other side stuff. How much are you earning currently? I make about 70,000. And how much are your monthly living expenses? I mean, it depends on how you define it.

I would say our hardcore living expenses are hard because I basically practice a $0 budget. So it's like, well, what does that mean? I would say probably about 2800, give or take to 3000. And then the rest goes, I mean, that's including putting money away for car repairs and et cetera, et cetera.

Tavish Leff: So if you had $3,000 a month of revenue, could your lights stay on, your rent get paid, and your family continue to eat? Michael O'Hanlon Yeah. Tavish Leff: Okay. So that's important because it means you have tons of options. That's very different than if your monthly living expenses were 8,000 a month, and you're constantly behind.

So you've done a good job of planning and giving yourself options. So now let's go to the careers. Do you have any reason why you want to stay in the restaurant business other than the fact that you know it, you're making money at it, and you can do it?

Michael O'Hanlon Not really anymore. As everyone is, I'm tired of the late nights, and I would like to spend more time with my family. Tavish Leff: Right. So you asked what I know about the restaurant business. I don't know a lot. I just wonder why anybody works in it, at least without owning a bunch of restaurants or without a passion for cooking.

But it just seems to me like a meat grinder that's very difficult. I don't know how people make it. But I've always just assumed maybe there's something I don't know about. And I have learned, I think there are some people who like the schedule, but it is a hard one to handle.

Michael O'Hanlon Yeah. I will just tell you, I think it is one of the industries, and I think more industries are more this way, but it's definitely one of the industries you can start as a dishwasher and end up being a GM. And I think that's where a lot of people, it's, "Well, I'm kind of trying to figure out what I want to do, but they offered me a job as an hourly manager." And you kind of work your way up, and it happens to be that you're 45, and you're working 75 hours a week and going home at 2 a.m.

That's just kind of what it is. Tavish Leff Right, right. That is a good point. And I remember I had a client one time who was an executive at McDonald's, and he had started as an entry-level McDonald's worker, and he had progressed through every stage, and he was a high-paid executive, and he was so grateful.

He said, "I wouldn't have had a chance without McDonald's," but because of the McDonald's University and every stage along the way, he was able to start with basically no skills and become a highly paid executive. So good point. But for you, that's not the case because you have opportunities.

So let's talk about the opportunities to move on. Just going between those two, as far as programming and real estate investing, does one of them excite you more? Are you more drawn to one or the other? Michael O'Hanlon Oh, I don't know. I've partially gotten to real estate investing because listening to you and other people, I realized that you have two ways to build wealth, and it's either make a lot of money and put the excess money into some form of stocks or bonds, ETFs, whatever, and let that money build and grow for you, or you do that through real estate.

And that kind of seemed to be the two paths that people went. And so I was like, "Well, at this point, I'm not expecting to have a super high-paying job. I mean, I'm putting money into my 401(k), so that will grow over time." But it's like, "Okay, I'm never...

And especially, I mean, I'm 28 now, so when I "retire," who knows what even $1.5 million in my retirement account will do for me." So I chose real estate because it's like, "This is the reasonable path." It kind of excites me. I like it. The numbers of it excite me.

I'm also... I am very frustrated at this point now. I have chosen to give myself a fairly small pool of properties that I'm looking for, also kind of confirm those criteria with others, and they believe that is a good thing what I'm doing, that I'm looking at solid properties, and I want the numbers to be right, and I don't want to be driving three hours to go get them, etc., etc.

So that just makes it so partially, it's like, at this point, it's frustrating for them like, "Okay, I'm kind of stuck. I'm sitting where I am. Maybe there's something else I can do that I can build my career and my income elsewhere while still pursuing real estate and building that, but kind of just also recognizing that the market's at a very high point.

I don't know if I think it will or won't crash. Who knows? We'll see, but kind of waiting for things to do the right thing to pop up or things to cool down. Right, right. Well, if you think about the difference between real estate and programming, I think they're two very different paths, and it wouldn't be right or wrong, but I think some very careful analysis on your part would be important as far as the vision that you have for your life.

Do you have any experience in either of these industries yet? Not necessarily. I'm sufficient with computers. I mean, I have fairly good computer knowledge when it actually comes to programming. As I've told people, I know enough HTML just to break everything, so not really. I would say I almost have more experience in real estate because I've been learning about it longer, and we just bought our own house a couple years ago, so I've become more intimately acquainted with all of that, dealing with that ridiculousness.

Right. Well, the reason I say I think they would go in two different directions, so the problem you face with having a restaurant job, depending on your hours, etc., is it's a job that demands you to be in a certain place at a certain time, and one of the benefits of real estate, but one of the challenges of real estate, is you don't necessarily have to be in a certain place at a certain time.

So in a way, if you're going to be putting together deals, you're going to be looking for deals, etc., in a way, you need the ability to go when you need to go and be where you need to be when you need to be there, so you need a flexible lifestyle.

Now, can programming deliver a flexible lifestyle? I guess it could if you were an independent programmer. There are many people, programming is such a wide range. There are mainstream programmers, and there are non-mainstream programmers. There are tons of people that work full-time on standard business hours for a company, and there are people who have a very diverse work schedule that it could integrate, but I would see those as kind of two different paths.

With programming, you need to really invest in your skills, and those skills are going to be harder to invest into your particular industry. So with programming, your model is going to probably be more to earn a high income and then invest that money, and invest not based upon finding deals, but based upon the high income and the low expenses and enjoying the lifestyle of programming, if you enjoy the mathematical challenge.

Most programmers pursue things, seem to pursue things, especially if they're really focused on wealth. They want to pursue something like being involved with an early-stage startup and building their equity, et cetera, and that's a possible world, but it's not an easy world. So it's kind of its own thing, but I would guess that if you were pursuing that, it's hard for me to see how you would be served by trying to build a real estate investment business and a programming business at the same time.

Now, with real estate, real estate has, if it's of interest to you, there are lots of well-proven ways to do it, and it sounds like you're already aggressively pursuing it. Now, question, do you have a lot of money that you can use now to pay for your own properties?

I do not necessarily have any of my own. Like I said, I've got both through my father-in-law and then already just through basically talking to people, I've got at least one other investor lined up, so I have some money. Now, does your job currently give you the flexibility that you feel you need in order to pursue real estate and put some deals together?

Yeah. So that's one of the advantages to my job is that I work, I mean, I do, I work about 50 hours a week, and I typically, we do breakfast. So most times I come in at five and I'm out by about two, and I've got, partially because I have seniority, I've got the flexibility in there to, so I'm like, "Hey, can I have this day off?" or "Can I bug out a little early?" you know, whatever.

So I do have that flexibility, and with being off by two, you know, yeah. Okay. Well, it's hard, so there are a couple ways in real estate. So if you have the benefit of having a stable income, that can be a really valuable resource for you, because you have enough money to provide for your needs, to provide for your family, and you have a stable source of income.

So that can help you to be stable while you're trying to build your business. On the schedule that you described, it's also possible that you can build the business with that. Being done at two gives you, what, six hours that if you needed it, six hours to pursue putting things together.

You have hours during business hours and you have hours in the evening. So that's a good way to advance, and you can integrate your family with some of your skills and possibly buy yourself a little bit more time to work because of the flexibility there. So I wouldn't run away from it, but I would seriously consider, if you're not too excited about the restaurant business, I would seriously consider a transition plan.

And I would look at real estate-related careers that you can work in while you are trying to build your real estate investment portfolio. And I would think that if you could be closer to the business, that could be a better move for you than being in the restaurant business.

If I were pursuing real estate and I was starting with nothing and I were flat broke, I would try to get kind of a couple of jobs that are related to real estate as kind of my starting position. And I would try to see if I could get a job in managing real estate.

So can I get a job as a building, what do they call it, the people who live in the building? - Property manager. - Yeah, can I get a job, but like as a property manager where in exchange for some of my work, I actually get a discounted rent.

That would be the one thing I would pursue. So that would lower my expenses and help me to learn what it's like to work as a property manager. I would pursue some business in it. So I would work for a company that does rental management. And you should be able to make easy.

If you go work for a job for a company that manages real estate as a property manager, you should very easily be able to get a job making $50,000 a year that would provide enough to cover your income. And that would start to get you contacts and relationships with the particular business that you're pursuing.

Always the obvious example is real estate, as a real estate agent, buying, selling properties, et cetera, or some specialist of that as well. Because now you have flexibility, you have the potential for high income, which can be helpful for you to build your own revenue and you have flexible schedule.

Frankly, that would be what I would pursue because there's no reason why you can't make six figures as a real estate agent. As you build the business, if you've got the financial ability to get started during the difficult years, you can make six figures as an agent. You can have a flexible work schedule.

You can, along the way, build up a little management business if you want to as well. And you can develop cashflow, which you can use and you're in the business. So you'll see the deals. That's a time proven example. Or working with someone else that services the real estate industry.

I guess I would see that if you have interest in it, I would see that as something seriously worth considering because it gets you closer to the business. You're more likely to find out about real estate deals in Houston, Texas. If you're working in the real estate industry in Houston, Texas, then if you're managing a breakfast cafe in Honolulu, Hawaii, I obviously changed your location just to prove the point, that the closer you are, the more likely you are to meet investors, the more likely you are to meet sources of capital, the more likely you are to come across deals.

And if you want to be as an investor, you need deal flow and you need money flow. And those are probably going to be served by you being closer to the business than in the restaurant business. So I wouldn't jump out, but I would seriously consider transitioning. And if you were convinced that that were the direction you wanted to go in, I think there's a lot of, it's a sensible path.

- Okay. Yeah. And I had kind of asked some people who, one of the communities I'm part of that do real estate, like, well, should I try and pursue a job in the industry to help, you know, give me contacts or whatever. And they're like, eh, maybe, maybe not.

It just depends. I think that was actually great of an idea. So, and frankly, being a real estate agent sounds absolutely terrible to me. So I probably would not go that route. But so you kind of see those as almost two, it'd be better to try and find a actual job in the industry that would pay me decently.

And then I can, whatever, then trying to get an entirely different career path altogether, like going and doing programming. I mean, programming sounds interesting to me. So that's kind of why I was pursuing it. And I was like, well, maybe I can then develop a real estate on the side.

- I'm not trying to talk you into one or the other. So if you're interested in programming, go and pursue programming. And, but if you're programming, you're going to just buy a house every now and then as you accumulate money. How are you, unless you're the kind of person, say, I love both of these and I want to give half time to both of them.

You could set up your life any way you want. If you can find a way to program four hours a day and do real estate four hours a day, hey, go for it. But I look at it and I say, what's the point of splitting your energy? Why not put 100% of your energy behind the most, the biggest opportunity?

So many people kind of split their energy all over the place. Why wouldn't you, if you could work in the area where you want to invest, why wouldn't you take all of those benefits? When you look at rich people, they don't usually come from a diverse background. What happens is you have to have those specialized skills and you have to develop a marketplace.

So if you're going to build in programming, then if you're going to do programming, then go ahead and pursue it. But then also make sure that your investment approaches are areas where your unique knowledge can be applied. So maybe you have a specialized knowledge in programming. And so now, is there a way that you can apply it to your investment plan, whether you're particularly interested in cryptocurrency or you're particularly interested in certain kinds of technology startups, or you really have your finger on the pulse of this certain thing that's happening.

The obvious example is it's hard for you if you're living in Houston, Texas, it's hard to have your finger on the pulse of how real estate is doing in Bangor, Maine. It's possible to have your finger on the pulse of what's happening in Houston, Texas. So why not to build wealth?

Why not structure those things as much as possible? So live in Houston, Texas, invest in Houston, Texas, work in Houston, Texas. And if you get your living, your investing, and your working all in the same area, now you start to have multiple benefits in all of them. You're known as a good investor.

You're also known as a good businessman in Houston, Texas. That builds your network. Your network in the area gives you access to more money. Your access to more money gives you access to more deals. It all starts to feed off of each other. But if half the time you're in Houston and half the time you're in metaphorical Bangor, Maine, now all of a sudden you have to work twice as hard in both places.

So conceptually, that's my point. Pick what you think is your best option, and then try to grow, and then only add lines of business and investment as they relate to your particular approach. I love having a chicken in the background on my show. That's my kind of personal finance show.

Yeah. Or we also have five acres. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Any other final question, Daniel, before I go? So I guess just a quick question with that. With certainly a peaking real estate market, whatever that exactly means, do you think certainly not knowing what's going to happen, who knows?

It could go on another 20 years crazy. It could crash tomorrow. I mean, do you then potentially see as, okay, let's I go get a job as a real estate agent at a title company or whatever, and I'm trying to invest in real estate properties as am I putting too many eggs in one basket?

Or is it kind of like, well, you ultimately never know what's going to happen. So you just go with, you make the best choices possible at the time with the information you have and do what you can. Yeah, it's possible. And it is a risk. The most obvious risk that I often give advice on is if you work at a company and you invest all of your money in that company stock, what happens when the company goes bankrupt is you lose your whole life.

So if you work at a company, don't necessarily invest in that company stock. So I don't think that you should get, I think it's risky for you to have everything in one area. It's risky for you to depend entirely on real estate if everything is dependent on a positive real estate market.

So how do you manage the risk? Well, I don't have a perfect answer because most of us, we have a huge risk. For most people, if they lose their job, they're sunk. Now, with your good financial planning in that you don't need a, you're a good budgeter, you don't need a huge amount of money to live on, you're more insulated.

But still today, if you lose your income in the restaurant business, you could be sunk. And there's a connection between restaurants and real estate. If people aren't able to pay their mortgage, they're probably less likely to be spending money on restaurants. And so we always have these risks. So I look at it and say, I want to have my eyes wide open to the risks and try to protect myself.

So I would try to say, first, let me make sure that I've got good financial planning in place for myself. I've got cash in hand that I'm going to be insulated. If I lose my income for a few months, I need to make sure that I'm not going to be devastated by that.

I would also look at my business and try to say, what are my backup plans? If the market turns, what are my backup plans? So if you think the real estate market is going to turn, then while you're building, working with buyers as an agent, by way of example, while you're working with buyers, start studying short sales so that you can become a short sale expert.

I knew some real estate agents here locally in the last collapse of real estate in Florida where they made a huge amount of money. They never did better because they became short sale specialists. Same thing with investors. There are certain investment strategies that work in rising markets, and there are certain strategies that work in falling markets.

So a falling market may be a time where if you-- let's say you had work as an agent and an investor. As an agent, perhaps the falling market isn't serving you because people aren't buying houses so much and you're not interested in working in short sales. But if you have access to the capital, can you become a dealmaker?

And now you start bird-dogging deals and flipping-- you're bringing properties under contract and you're assigning them over to wealthy people. And now you're taking advantage of the people who have more money and know deals, and you can do very well in a falling market because now you're able to do deals.

So real estate is unique. It's cool in the sense that you can do well no matter the market. You just need a different strategy to do well in the market that you're dealt. -Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you. -Beyond that, I would just say look at the actual business, look at the industry, look and try to decide what best fits my lifestyle.

I'm more familiar with real estate than I am with programming, which is, I guess, why I started to talk more in that direction than about programming. But programming can be great. Just do your research and study it carefully. But most of all, try to build a life first, focus on the interest, and then you'll, over time, be able to build the income that you need.

That's it for today's show. I hope that you've enjoyed this discussion of questions and answers. Obviously, I'm trying to do a couple things here. I'm trying to create an interesting show that'll help you. If you don't have the money or it's not the right time for you to buy a course, then please just take the ideas that we're discussing in something like this and apply them to your own life.

There was some gold here in this show that you can take and apply to your own life. I gave you a bunch of resources. Take them and run with them. That's why I do Radical Personal Finance. If you'd like more where this came from, come on by radicalpersonalfinance.com/increaseincome. My goal is to increase my income while I'm increasing your income or to increase my income by increasing your income.

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