Unlocking Your Financial Freedom with Jake Ruth

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Science of Scaling. Today, we'll be breaking down how to unlock your financial freedom. To drop these value bombs, I brought Jake Ruth into EO Fire Studios. Jake leverages software engineering and entrepreneurial expertise as Stock Unlock's co-founder and CEO, providing financial literacy and stock market analysis tooling to thousands of paid users across 91 different countries. And today, Fire Nation will talk about his mission to democratize investing education and tools.

0:39We'll talk about financial freedom is understanding finance. We'll talk about retail investors' mistakes they make over and over again, how to become an informed investor, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Jake and our sponsors. Marketing Made Simple, hosted by my friend, Dr. JJ Peterson, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Marketing Made Simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy and more importantly, make it work. A recent episode on whether vulnerability is a superpower in business is a must listen.

1:13Listen to Marketing Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts. Jake, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What is up, Fire Nation? And thanks for having me on, JLD. It is a pleasure to be here. I've been listening to the show for a few years now. So I've been thinking about the answer to this question because in truth, there's hundreds of answers I could have given here. But after looking at all of them, there's one common factor which underpins all those, which is self-awareness. I think that true success is very personalized and it requires knowing yourself very deeply.

1:49So when you take the time to go through self-reflection to understand your strengths, your weaknesses, and your measurements for success, self-awareness is going to unlock the path ahead for you. And since you aren't going to be able to go 110 % in on any idea if it doesn't motivate you. You're just not going to last. Success then becomes the perpetual journey of setting milestones, reaching them through disciplined effort, celebrating that growth, and then setting new goals based on what fulfills you, which is basically a continuous loop fueled by self-awareness. So with that mindset, you cannot help but be successful.

2:22Fire Nation, that's why we're talking about unlocking your financial freedom today because Jake has found the key. And Jake, you have set out on a mission to democratize investing education and tools. Why? Why have you done this? Pure and unrelenting frustration, John. The stock market itself is confusing. Financial literacy in general just leaves a lot of people clueless, and it's not really our fault. I'm sure like a lot of your viewers, I myself have went through the financial, sorry, the education system in the United States, which did not really teach us any of this. So I was left like many others, making mistakes in the market, finding YouTubers online, going through a lot of random resources, and going through just a lot of frustration and money losses until I found out how to actually crack the code of financial literacy, investment education.

3:16And we have been pouring all of our engineering effort, all of our product effort, everything that I've been working on in my decade-long career as an engineer into products that really help people break through that barrier so they can take control of their own financial future. It just befuddled me that I went through four years of high school and I left having zero clue about finances from the public institution. Of course, I'm very grateful to my father for really sitting me down and educating me. And then four years of college and the same thing. I left no wiser financially thanks to that institution.

3:51I left with a lot of potential debt, zero actual debt because I had an army scholarship, but all of my friends and they literally were just clueless, like I was about finances in that area and that time in life. And then when I was in the army as an officer, like all of my soldiers, they were just clueless around finances. So they were just making the same mistakes over and over again and just digging themselves into a hole that they were going to spend the rest of their lives getting out of all because of a few basic things they just didn't know or weren't aware of. So I want to talk about retail investors who seem to make the same mistake over and over again and have the same biases.

4:31What are these mistakes? What are these biases? And what do we need to know about them? Yeah, definitely. So we are all driven by human behavior. So, of course, the idea of getting rich quick sounds amazing, right? And one thing I love about your show is all the guests you have on, you talk about the correct mindset you need to have to be successful. A lot of that is around patience. And unfortunately for financials, there's just a lot of low-hanging fruit, or you could think of like a carrot in front of the donkey's head, where you by default want to go chase that. You want that money, right?

5:00Like you want to hit the slot machine on bread, double your money instantly. But the truth of the matter is, that's just not how it works. And adding to what you were saying about people just not being informed here, we aren't being given any more help, in my opinion, with the advent of apps like Robinhood and other trading tools where, don't get me wrong, it is great to have easy access to financial markets. It is an amazing thing that we all have easier access to participate in the stock market, which is how generational wealth is created. But what's terrible is when you're given access to those tools and you're not being given access to software or learnings, whether that be through the education system or going to the Internet to actually be set up for success.

5:42So what we focus on is really not even guiding people towards what to do or putting someone in a situation to say you have to buy a security at X state. it's more about just gaining a more fundamental understanding of finances, learning about the investing mindset, which we could talk about this next. The investing mindset is something you could apply outside of just buying a stock and really having more data in front of you to avoid making bad mistakes, more so than even finding the right decision to make. Because we'll do a ton of research on a toaster, John. It's crazy. You'll go on Amazon, you'll spend four or five hours looking into the right nail polish to buy or what place to go to coffee.

6:20But for some reason, someone tells you about a stock across a bar like AMC or GameStop, and the next thing you know, your entire bonus check is in there. So we're trying to rewrite that story. And those are the things that grind my gears and some of the issues I see and common threads that people run through every day of making the same mistake. Well, I would like to dive deeper, like you mentioned, into that, because you do believe that the key to financial freedom is understanding finance, really spending the time to get to know this topic. So tell us more. Yeah. So I try to teach everyone about the investing mindset and to get rid of a common misconception here.

6:54I'm not talking about buying a stock. I'm not talking about real estate. We're taking the 30 ,000 foot view right now, because this is the mindset that I think people are missing from the education system. And investment is a very long term thing. At the top level, you're really talking about allocating your personal resources, which end up usually being time and sometimes money, and putting an investment into yourself that's going to yield returns later on in the future. And I'm not talking about returns the next day. I'm not talking about the next week. I'm talking about generational compounding returns.

7:26So when people learn about the investing mindset and they start viewing decisions such like, should I watch another series of Friends on Netflix or should I buy a self-improvement book? I would argue that that is actually an investment. And the people that I personally see becoming successful in my own life and the role models I look up to and a lot of people you have on your show, whether they know it or not, many of those people are adopting the investing mindset. Fire Nation, the investing mindset. Are you going to adopt this? If you don't, it may be at your own peril. And we have a lot to talk about around this topic when we get back from thanking our sponsors.

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8:41I know what you're thinking. Sales Hub must cost a fortune. Nope. It's free to get started and will grow with your business as it scales. And with more than 1 ,300 integrations and a ton of valuable add-ons, you can customize it to your exact needs. With Sales Hub, closing deals is no big deal. Head to HubSpot.com slash sales to try it for free. Jake, we're back and you are spending a lot of time educating and equipping the next generation of investors. Talk about that and then let's get detailed with some examples of how you are doing this. Awesome. So the way that we are equipping the next generation of investors for success is through very accessible and easy to use software tools.

9:26So before we built Stock Unlock, which is the company we are running today, where many people got their financial information from was YouTubers, different sites on the Internet. Many of them were very overpriced, hard to use, not beginner accessible. And we are solving all of that. Something that's great about the year 2023 that you couldn't say for the year 2015, 2010 and go as far back as you want is the accessibility of financial data has never been greater. The people who used to have strangleholds on financial data like Bloomberg, S &P, Refinitiv, their moats are being chopped away at lower cost but just as high priority providers for all this.

10:04However, the issue for myself back in the day and most of your viewers here is no one really has the time to go through all those different resources, pay for three or four different software subscriptions and try to clobber it all together and filter out the noise. And that's really where we come in. The way that we equipped regular people for success is by putting them in a self-directed platform where we have a learn mode. Think about training wheels and a bicycle. Whenever you go to a Yahoo Finance or any stock website, most people are just confused and they don't even know where to start.

10:37We have a very light touch where question mark widgets all over stockunlock.com pop up everywhere. So everything you are looking at, and this is free to use, folks, is right there in front of you. So no more looking at operating margin, price to earnings, the price, the stock, the volume, and wondering what it all means. That, combined with a very, very low cost monthly subscription after a free trial, is equipping thousands of customers around the world that we have already to access markets with more confidence. And the best part is we're not taking your money to have you trade stocks. We're not popping confetti to have you take out margin.

11:13This is really the tools and education that's missing from brokerages and that are being charged way too much money for from the people shilling courses and stuff. We have baked that all into our software solution. And if you'd like, John, I could walk you through a couple other features we have that are going to make this incredibly easy and approachable. Let's talk about it. Yeah. So our bread and butter really is our insight scoring system. So a number one through five on any stock is going to give you a light intro into how that company is doing. So for beginners, this shows you where to start.

11:44Our one through five scoring system has explainers all the way through. And when we subdivide that score up, we're going to teach you about the company's profitability, their growth. How is the company valued relative to its peers? These are all things regular investors look at across scattered information sources that we put in one easy to use area. And if you are an experienced investor already, our insight scores are going to help you save time on analysis and help you more easily create your watch lists, as well as using our stock screener, which is kind of like a Google search to find these stocks.

12:15That combined with our learn mode really gives anyone, including beginners, because over 50 % of people on stock and lock, John, are new investors. It just makes you feel comfortable and shows you where to start. And it's cheaper than a subscription to Netflix. You know, we really are pricing this incredibly low because we're not here to take away from users free cash flow, which you can learn about on our tool. Now, one thing I do love talking about are specific case studies. So talk about maybe one or two of your clients. We don't get specifics or use names, but just an actual use case where they've used your tools, used your education and had some success.

12:54We'll take two anonymized people here. We'll call them Tom and Sally. So Tom is a new investor and this is a real story. I'm just faking the names. They have tried a ton of different tools. They went online to Wall Street Bets. They have lost thousands and thousands of dollars of their hard-earned money in the stock market. However, they're not willing to give up. They know that the answers are out there, but they're frustrated because they've spent so much money on courses. They've balanced different software tools. Tom found Stock and Lock and was able to lower all of their subscription costs, cancel subscriptions to everything, and just use our tool in their own words, that I'll power phrase.

13:31is Stock and Lock was almost opening a curtain of fresh sunlight into a very dusty room that they were about to leave. But due to our software and how we help beginners come and really feel comfortable in a place where normally they would feel really out of depth, out of their place, that, in my opinion, is why 50 % of users on Stock and Lock, including people like Tom, are finding us. Now let's just take Sally. Sally is an existing investor. They're already owning a a few ETFs, a few stocks, and they have a couple other tools that they're balancing, maybe say paying$30,$40 a month for that are helping them analyze their portfolio, find new stocks, give them insights on their investments.

14:09We get messages all the time from people just like Sally that usually say the exact same thing. Oh my God, why haven't I found you guys sooner? I am now saving so much money on these other subscriptions that I've canceled because your tool has everything that I've ever wanted and more in a one-stop shop place. And to take a step back from Tom and Sally here, just a note for myself, one of the founders of this business, we are really arbitraging this entire software landscape for fintech tools in the investing space. Before Stock and Lock came about, there were no tools of this level of quality for as low of a price that we are offering.

14:45So it's really something new that most people don't even know exists. And I'll be honest, We're not great at sales or distribution. We're way better at engineering and product. So that is something I need to watch some more fire episodes on to get a little bit better at sales. But yeah, that's what we're here offering. And that's what our users have been saying about this. Now, I think at one stage in our life, we want to be considered informed investors. What do we do to become that? There is no point where you are, quote, an informed investor. Being an investor is a never-ending learning journey.

15:19So I'm going to slightly rephrase the question. It's how do you know that you know enough to maybe buy a stock or two and not be afraid that you're going to lose all your money? So first off, talk to a financial professional. I am not a financial advisor. This is not financial advice. However, what I see work for a lot of people there is one, go into learning mode and paper trade. Don't actually put any real money in the stock market. Even using sites like Stock Unlock, you can create mock portfolios and try to visualize how investments would do. So instead of actually buying a stock, you can fake buy a stock and just track it for a while.

15:51That really takes any real being scared feelings out of the investing process. And then as you learn more and as you start learn to read financial statements, understand how companies are priced, I recommend playing with very small amounts of money that you aren't afraid to lose. Think of this kind of as baby steps going up a never ending staircase. case. You will gain an intuition. And when you're at a point where you feel that you could explain the business to a five-year-old, which is how I like to word it. So for example, if you were to explain Airbnb, which is a public company to someone, you could say Airbnb is a marketplace that serves as a travel company.

16:30It helps connect buyers and sellers to make an exchange where someone rents a home from someone who owns that home. I think a five-year-old can understand that. And that is the business model of Airbnb. Once you tie that into their financial performance and looking at their competitors, you are on your way towards being an informed investor and just know that the learning journey never truly stops. Fire Nation, the journey never stops. That's why I wanna ask Jake this following question. What's the one takeaway that you really want Fire Nation to get from our conversation today? And then how can we continue our conversation and our learning from you?

17:06The one takeaway is do not be that person who goes out and makes frivolous decisions in the stock market when you have no idea what you're doing. I have made that mistake. Many of your friends have likely made that mistake. JLD, maybe you have made that mistake, but I do not know. There are now tools out there to help you with this that are non-predatory. And you don't even need to have the goal of actually transacting with a stock, right? Maybe you end up trying to learn it and you say, hey, I hate this stuff. I'm never going to do that. Pause. That's actually great. You knew something you didn't know before, and you're going to be less likely to go and make a mistake buying something that you don't truly understand because stocks are complicated and we are tired of seeing people make bad decisions.

17:50So do not be that person. Please learn from our mistakes because I promise you losing money feels terrible. Fire Nation, that's what we want to avoid is you losing money. So get the education, become an informed investor to the best of your ability. Again, it's a lifelong journey. And Jake, one more time, what is your call to action for our listeners today? So being a part of Fire Nation myself, I wanted to come here with a great, great promo for you guys. With code FIRE at checkout on Stock Unlock, you will save 30%. Please keep in mind, we already have a free trial. A lot of our site is already free, right?

18:27My last purpose going on here is to make a million sales. If people find them, they like it, cool. But please have a takeaway from this episode to at least be aware that these products exist and that buying stocks and ETFs is serious business. You do not want to listen to your friend at the bar and go squeeze the shorts because I promise you it will not work. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with JR and JLD today, so keep up that heat. And for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com, type Jake in the search bar, and the show notes page will pop right up.

19:02And one last time, Jake, where's Fire Nation finding you? My name is Jake Ruth. You can find me on TikTok, Jake Ruth Official, got 47 ,000 people over there. Less people on Twitter now named X, Jake M. Ruth. And Stock Unlock is our company across all socials. I highly recommend checking out our YouTube or the co-founder, Daniel Pronk, because he is Canada's number one investing YouTuber in Canada based on subscriber count. Jake, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you, brother, and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks so much. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Jake for sponsoring today's episode.

19:40And Fire Nation, what can 3 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs teach you? How about how to achieve financial freedom and fulfillment? My first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, is a revolutionary 17-step roadmap that will lead you to the lifestyle you've been dreaming about. This book took me 10 years of accumulating the genius of the world's top entrepreneurs, and you can get it all in one place when you visit UncommonSuccessBook.com. I'll catch you there or on the flip side. Marketing Made Simple, hosted by my friend, Dr. JJ Peterson, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

20:18Marketing Made Simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy, and more importantly, make it work. A recent episode on whether vulnerability is a superpower and business is a must listen. Listen to Marketing Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts.