24-Year-Old Is Throwing Away His Entire Future

0:00My name is Ryan O'Malley. I am 24 years old. I live in Austin, Texas and this is Financial audit. What do you do for a living in Austin, Texas? So I own and operate a video production and marketing company called Q6 Media. Oh, okay. So you own it. How long have you been doing that? Probably about three years now. Me and my buddy started in college at the University of Alabama and then moved out here about a year and a half ago. What did you guys choose here? Why? We do a lot of, or at least we used to do a ton of live video and concerts. concerts. And so live music was a big reason we moved out here and then ended up getting a lot more into the corporate stuff out here instead of the music, which was ironic.

0:40So how's the business doing? How, how many people are in this ownership package? So me and my buddy have owned it together and we actually have a full-time editor who's been with us since March of last year. And we just offered him some equity in the company over Christmas because he's been so good for us. And so now it's the three of us. Okay. And how, how's the division of ownership? Jake has 20 or 80%. I have 20 % and our editor Ingram has 5 % now. So why is your percentage so low compared to Jake? So when we, so when they started the company, I wasn't actually an original founder. It was Jake and one of our other buddies, Travis, and they started off just having fun, playing around with it in college, shooting people that were coming and performing for fraternities.

1:27and so I ended up meeting up with them when I was also looking at like an internship with another company that was doing something similar in Tuscaloosa and I just became good friends with them and they were kind enough when they were forming the LLC to even offer me uh five percent equity in the company just because I had kind of uh become good friends with them and it was clear that I was going to stick around and so Jake had was pretty much the leader of it he was doing all the heavy lifting, put all of his money into the equipment and everything. And so me and Travis, we're both going to take 5%, which he didn't have a problem with either.

2:02Cause he was doing other stuff. It was more so about just having fun, what we were doing. And then I actually got a, I had a camera, a Sony a seven three that I was able to invest along with some other equipment. And so that's kind of how we did it. It was based on how much equipment we had put into it. And so that's how I got up to 20. And if you want to invest in this company, I don't have an option to do that, but you can subscribe and every subscriber helps grow this channel. So thank you to everyone who has so far. What is your position in this company other than just owner? Do you have a title?

2:29Yeah. Uh, we've slowly fallen more into roles. It used to be a little bit of everything, but now I'm calling myself the chief operating officer, uh, cause I'm taking care of most of it. Yeah. So I'm the chief operating officer and really I've just been handling more of the day to day operations, especially since Jake started this other company, the podcast studio pouch six studios and you don't have any stake in that no no i just help them out here and there with that so what all exactly what are what are some of the things that your company does we do we specialize in video production and so that can be uh live events where we've done multi-cam live setups we do recap videos we do music videos and then the other side is a lot more corporate where we do converting advertisements, brand videos, testimonials, that kind of stuff.

3:18How much business y 'all got a month on average? As far as like total revenue or as far as clients? No, just like different gigs. We probably work with on average between three to six clients per month. Okay. Now what's the revenue? Revenue for us, it varies, but probably averaging around, it can be anywhere from like 15 to 25K a month. Okay. for the company? Yeah. Okay. It's a little lower than I was hoping for. We, yeah, I mean, okay. So are you paid or are you getting distributions on your ownership? We just pay out whatever we think we, it's kind of varies. We just kind of talk about it. Um, we're pretty relaxed with that stuff.

4:06Um, most of the money that we make, we put back into the business, whether it's reinvesting in SEO or equipment. So what are you bringing in a year? Probably average. I probably pay myself around 2 ,500 a month. Okay. And Austin, that's okay. Yeah. Surviving, but doing, doing fine. Do you have another job or is this a, I'd make some other money doing content creation. I have uh tiktok and i make some off of instagram as well and then well you can't make much off of tiktok tiktok pays crap no i know nothing crazy it's just usually uh that's kind of whenever i have like a viral video pop off i'll get like a good thousand here from here and there from that yeah and i've done a couple like brand deals which yeah that's where it is that's where the okay the lucrative nature is so it's not like a strict distributions of like here's the profits for this month after everything you get 20 no we're we're really good friends and we are both very committed to you know making the company the best thing it can be and i'm also just not very neither of us are very uh materialistic and so we've never really had a problem with what we pay out what are your guys's expenses on a monthly basis if you average it out probably it does that would you include uh what we're paying ourselves or no before before ownership pays themselves um so you can include you know paying your editor yeah um i want to say probably like 6k okay five to 10k depending on the month somewhere around there okay so you guys are really only having a profit of anywhere from five to fifteen thousand dollars a month depending um somewhere in there yeah we've had better months where we've gotten big gigs oh for sure But averaging out because you probably have Yeah probably around there So Is the money you just told me also including your rent?

6:08As far as The$2 ,500 that I'm paying out Oh yeah that includes the expenses What's the rent of this space? I want to say it's like$1 ,800 What's the square footage? I don't even know that Compared to my condo I'd say it's about two of this room Oh, two of this room. Okay. So it's probably like. And it's. 600. It's in a co-working space and we just have a private office upstairs. Oh. But we have our own private office. We love that. Yeah. I mean, free snacks. We love the people there. It's like a WeWork. It's similar. It's called the Cathedral ATX. It's over in East 16th and it's really like there's a few private offices upstairs.

6:53There's a few cubicles downstairs and there's a big open space. where people can come and go. But it's not like a film studio, like a soundstage? No, no. Okay, that's making more sense. I've been looking at spaces, and I could not find anything even close to that rent. Oh, well, so for, wait, what do you mean film studio, as in like somewhere you can film? Oh, so that's the other thing. They have that over the podcast and photo video studio. That's Pouchstick Studios. That's the one that my partner is. Yeah, but you're not a part of that. No, I'm not a part of that one. Okay, I wonder what their rent is on a monthly basis.

7:26This is a real good story about Bronx and his dad, Ryan, real United Airlines customers. We were returning home, and one of the flight attendants asked Bronx if he wanted to see the flight deck and meet Captain Andrew. I got to sit in the driver's seat. I grew up in an aviation family, and seeing Bronx kind of reminded me of myself when I was that age. That's Andrew, a real United pilot. These small interactions can shape a kid's future. It felt like I was the captain. Allowing my son to see the flight deck will stick with us forever. That's how good leads the way. More Yeah Yeah downtown Austin Oh okay well That's an expensive way to do it So$2 ,500 a month So you bring out on average Now It's not that much What are you setting aside for taxes Because this is all just distributions from the company Yeah I try to Try to Yes I've had some tight months here and there But whenever I have What is your rent?

8:22My rent is I'm paying$1 ,000 plus utilities, which usually comes around to$1 ,150, something like that. Okay.

8:37Okay, so 46 % of your pre-tax. Pre-tax, not even your post-tax, you have to set money aside. So more than half of the actual money that you have access to goes just paying for a roof over your head. Yes, sir. It's not even a crazy expensive rent for this area Roommates or is it one bed? Yeah I got a roommate

9:01We love each other though What do you think about your financial situation? Because you're laughing So I'm curious What do you think about your overall financial situation? I am in no place where I feel I need to panic Why? Because I'm an entrepreneur And I don't have a problem with not seeing immediate financial success in something. I know this business is going to grow and I know I'm going to take on other ventures as time grows and as we expand and I have a little bit more time on my hands for other ventures. So it's one of those things where I, like I said, I'm not a very materialistic person.

9:35As long as I have enough money to go out and have some fun with friends on the weekend, I'm not too worried about it. That's more important than your financial future? I wouldn't necessarily say it's more important, but I'm not necessarily putting one over the other. I don't believe that I truly have to save money at this time in my life in order to have a successfully financial future. Go ahead and try to justify that before I destroy that concept. I would say more possibilities are open to me in my future. Okay, but how does that negate saving money now? Well, I'm just saying I don't think you have to save money at this moment in order to make more money in the future.

10:15I understand I'm not making a ton of money right now, and I'm okay with that, but I believe I have great possibilities in my future that just haven't reached me yet. I just started getting into acting a little bit. Maybe I'll land a big role and make some money that way. Maybe I'll hit a new brand deal when my social media content creation side takes off a little bit more. I know there's good stuff in my future. There's lots of maybes that come with hustle. Yeah, you can say that. Do you have any planned objectives and steps that are being taken along the way in order to hit these larger goals that we have that you can document on a time basis of when you think you'll be able to hit things?

10:52Yeah, so that's definitely one thing that I'm trying to make a little bit of a better point to do is have those stepping stones and those goals along the way. As of now, I'd say I'm trying to get some podcast content going while my friends have made this studio. And I believe that will help me on my content content creation side of things. And then as far as acting goes, I'm just trying to, you know, get into more things here and there so that I can meet more people in the industry and find better opportunities. And then as far as the business side of things goes, every month we have, you know, met new people and found a little bit better side of success on the business side.

11:33and so those are just small steps and steps but we definitely could be doing more and I could personally be doing more. So if you had a dollar right now but you could turn that dollar into$17. Okay. It's a pretty good deal. It's not a bad deal. Yeah. How would you feel about instead of that just actively choosing not to? I think that sounds pretty silly, Caleb. That's pretty silly but you're choosing not to. So in what scenario? In what scenario? With the age you are now versus retirement age,$1 right there put into the S &P 500 average 10 % a year into retirement 30 years, taking advantage of compound growth as in it continues to grow on all the growth that has taken place in the years previous.

12:21Does that make sense so far? Sorry. No. Okay. You slow it down for me a little bit. I'm not too financially literate. $1, 10 % S &P 500. Okay. And S &P 500? The index fund, S &P 500. Okay. You haven't heard of it? I've heard of it. I just, I really, I'm not too educated on all that stuff. No, that's okay. We can go into that, but I don't want to stray too far from the example. Okay. $1 put into it averages 10 % a year. So after a year,$1.10. And instead of it just growing at 10 % from the dollar, it's now growing at 10 % from the dollar and 10 cents. Yeah. So it continues to compound forever. So that$1 from where you are now to retirement, that$1 turns into$17.45.

13:05Pretty good. And that's a guarantee? Does that change? Does that fluctuate? Well, nothing's officially a guarantee, but that's using the average of what the S &P 500 has done since its creation on a yearly basis. Okay. When was that created? Oh, when was that created? 80s, 90s? Okay. Good 30, 40 years. Hmm. We confirm. So I guess what, if I'm going to retire in like 40 years, how many people have started? How many years? I don't know. Four? I said 40, sorry. I was doing 30. I was doing 30. Okay. I guess I'm just curious, and I'm just genuinely curious, how many people have invested in the S &P when they were in their 20s and gotten to their retirement then, I guess?

13:48Well, Americans suck at investing. That's why most Americans can't afford an actual retirement. or what's the statistic? I don't have the statistic off the top of my head. That's the B500 credit in the 1957. I was pretty well off. But what is it? Like a quarter of America or a third of Americans can't afford a$400 emergency right now. So I wouldn't want to compare myself to who's doing the absolute worst. I would want to be in a position where I'm doing better. But this stuff that you're giving up by just like, okay, well, there's other things. If you put$10 ,000 in right now, it'd be worth$174 ,000.

14:20If I put, say it again, $10 ,000 S &P 500 right now, 30 years. Seems like a good deal to me. Pretty good deal, but you're literally giving that up. Well, I guess, I mean, I didn't even know that was a thing. Yeah, well, let me make this other example. The$10 ,000, if you wait 10 years to just F around, you know, and hopefully these business ventures work out, and that's cool. Entrepreneurial spirit, it's good. Doesn't mean we should all of a sudden just negate these other avenues for taking care of our financial future. Don't think I'm anti-entrepreneurial. I'm all about it. I'm doing it here.

14:45Yeah. Okay. I'm also taking care of myself on the side. For retirement. So, what? $174 ,000? Great. If you put$10 ,000 in right now, that you'd save. Shopping is hard, right? But I found a better way. Stitch Fix Online Personal Styling makes it easy. I just give my stylist my size, style, and budget preferences. I order boxes when I want and how I want. No subscription required. And he sends just for me pieces, plus outfit recommendations and styling tips. I keep what works and send back the rest. It's so easy. Make style easy. Get started today at stitchfix.com slash Spotify. That's stitchfix.com slash Spotify.

15:48blessing okay so that makes sense yeah yeah okay what are your thoughts on this now i i mean i love it i i guess um i would ask you with what i'm making right now how would i go about you know well how many hours a week are you working um on everything total uh yeah oh okay no no on the distributions of the average of 2500 hours a month on that how many i guess let's see usually start at just on average, like around 50 ish hours, maybe a little bit more. Okay. Well, return on investment of your time is pretty not great. Yeah. I'm happy to, you know, it's more so like. What's the goal for this company?

16:33Because now your business partner who owns the majority share in this is opening this other business. So what are we doing? I guess what? Like a five-year goal for us? have you guys chosen that or are you just saying it we need to get a little bit better about goal setting and stuff like that we've talked about our ideas what's the most concrete thing we have as of now I guess most of our goals aren't necessarily revolving around financial goals it's a business businesses have to make money and you have to survive I feel like our goals are more so around things that we'd like to shoot we're both videographers and that's why we got into this and we do it because we love it.

17:13What's the goal for the business? For the business, I guess, um, ideally in the next three years we'd want to do over a million in revenue. Okay.

17:26How are we going from$180 ,000 to a million? Um, well I think last year we did, I think last year we did like 215. So I might be a little bit off with our numbers. Well, I went on your low range. If you went to your high range, that would be well. Yeah, well, so one of our other buddies, one of the guys that actually convinced us to move down here, he has another video production company that he's been running for a couple years longer than us. And I want to say, as far as growth has gone for us in the last three years, we're on top of his numbers, and he hit a million in revenue, I think, in his fourth year.

18:03Oh, good for him, Bill. What are you guys going to do? Well, so I think we're on top of his numbers. And so he's been helping us. We're on top of his numbers where he was at when he was three years in. Oh, I see what you're saying. What did he do? What happened? He just got a lot better at the business side as far as treating his business, treating the video content that he was making more so as video assets as opposed to just videos. And so he got a lot better at doing, valuing the work that he was given. So if he was giving it to a client that was going to make a million dollars off of something, instead of just charging$10 ,000 for this video, he charges a percentage.

18:41And so now suddenly he's making$200 ,000 off of a project. So he got a lot better at the business side, and he's been helping us with that. So the business side, yeah, that's where a lot of creatives fail. I mean, I studied music in college, and on the music composition side, which is where I was in, there was a lot of good composers. A lot of people absolutely suck at the business side. In fact, I don't know if anyone I went to school with at least spoke well on the business side. Yeah. One of my teachers did, but I mean, maybe they just didn't, you know, maybe they were good, but they just didn't speak well on it.

19:12But either way, a lot of the creative professionals not good at the business side of things. And that's what it really sounds like from you guys, Jake, editor, and you. I guess as far as optimizing our revenue, I'd agree with you on that. but as far as business relationships and everything on that side i'd say we're that's good stellar at that yeah we that's what separates us from most creatives we're always answering our phones we're never late we're not we're not you know like i'm not feeling creative today i can't okay so you guys are doing the basics we're very yeah we're very very good at that stuff okay well now it's time to go from basics to like uh medium yeah i guess so we've we've done we've taken some steps we last year we hired another uh on top of our buddy who's been helping us we hired a video production company business coach you guys are hiring a lot of people for two hundred thousand dollars well he's a business coach revenue worth the investment in our eyes and he helped us take that step up from um you know just charging minimal to he got us a really big step up truly um and so that helped us with what like pitch decks and just really the whole pitch process as far as getting our confidence up to be able to ask for higher numbers because That's truly what our content was worth.

20:25Okay. Well, good. I'm glad you guys are starting there. Let's look at your money, though. I need to know your financial situation. This isn't an audit on your company, though. It would be very interesting to do that. It's an audit on you. I don't know what's in your checking account. I don't know how much came in. I don't know. We got screenshots. What's in your checking account right now? Checking account right now. You can look. You can look. I want to say it's like$200 right now. That's scary when things have minimum payments. This is true. Okay. Why? I'm waiting on a couple things. I guess I have that coming in tomorrow.

21:09I have another payment of$1 ,500 coming in either tomorrow or Saturday, which is nice. Okay. So I have that. And then... So for someone,$200 in there. Uber tripping is a stupid expensive way to get around. Amazon, Amazon, Venmoing out,$46. Sending your dad$1 ,000. Why is your dad getting$1 ,000? He owns the property that me and my brother live in. They just invested in it. Okay. Well, that's a good connection to have. Now, paying off your Chase card. Probably a good thing to do. And Uber and Uber. Do you have a car? Uh, I do. It's, uh, been, uh, I haven't been able to use it for a minute just because I need to take it in the shop.

21:56But when I was Ubering, that was when I was up home in Chicago and I was visiting. Zell and out 556 bucks.

22:08Paying off a chase card. Lift ride. Lift ride. You're dude, you're going crazy. Wendy's Hoover's cooking. Home slice. Love home slice. I'm very hungry right now. MMO's East Bar, Venmoing Out Money, Austin Airport, Apple Subscription, Amazon, Apple Subscription, Chicago Parking, Uber Tripping. You're spending so much on just getting from A to B in a car. Amazon, Fairgrounds, Shopify, Google Storage, Lyft Ride Again, Amazon, Uber Trip, Lime Ride, Venmo, Popeyes, Signature, IH, oh, IHOP. i-hop i'm like i've been i-hop in a minute is that not signature i-h i can't imagine it is no that wouldn't make sense i feel like i saw it like that once but i could be wrong and so yeah i mean you're just spending so much on getting around yeah um i'd say most of those ubers and lives were probably when i was visiting in chicago and then the ones that weren't i'd say it's when i'm out drinking and i don't have another public transportation uh i guess to get to...

23:17That's not just to and from airport. That was a lot of Oh, no. No, for sure. I'm in the suburbs of Chicago. Sorry. I should have clarified that. Not on credit card. What's the balance on this credit card? Balance on the credit card... As far as what's on it right now? What's owed? Probably like a thousand. Can you pull up your credit card? Oh, man. Here we go. More. $1 ,400. Dude. Yeah. Why? Oh, here we go. You don't have$200 in your checking. You have$59. Well, I've got money in my PayPal and my Venmo, so I guess that's kind of throwing it together. $1 ,400 on your card. Minimum payments,$47.

24:11So what's Dude This is insane For just that balance Which isn't even crazy in the grand scheme of American credit card balances $33.16 of interest You're losing$33 on a monthly basis Sorry, say that again? Interest Charged Because of the balance you're holding$33.16 for the past month Oh, I don't even think I was aware of that Did you not even know you were getting interest charged? Oh, sorry. I brain fart. No, I gotcha. I misunderstood. I only made a$40 payment there in the last month. Dude, this is terrible. And$30 of interest there. Really? Everything? And then Pueblo Viejo. Pretty good tacos.

24:58Pretty good tacos. But what are you doing when you already have a balance? Nothing upsets me more than someone spending on a card that they should be paying off and they're losing so much in interest. You know this Playbill of Viejo, you're losing on a monthly basis. That much in interest. So what would you recommend as far as that's the first thing I should focus on is paying that up? I don't know yet. Okay. Who knows how far this rabbit hole goes? I don't know. I need to see what this interest rate is. You have$50 of rewards. You should put that on the statement balance. Help that get this down.

25:34That's a good idea. 28 % interest dude Did you know that? Yeah I guess So what are you doing? Why? What's the purpose? Why are you in credit card debt? I suppose Oh boy where are we going now? I was searching to see if you had credit karma yet I'm going to have you download it in a second But why are you in credit card debt? I guess I just didn't Because I'm paying more on that I guess in my mind it wasn't any different than when I would spend on my credit card as opposed to spending out of my checking because I figured I was getting rewards back. Yeah, but you're losing 30%. So, yeah, I guess that really doesn't make too much sense.

26:13No, it doesn't make sense at all. Yeah, I got no answer. Why are you holding a balance? Why has this not been something you've considered paying off? To be honest, man, it's been a little bit just paycheck to paycheck. I've been taking what I can here and there. If we're paycheck to paycheck, we're not able to pay off a credit card, are we in the right line of work? Are you doing what's responsible for you? Yeah. What do you mean? You're losing 30 % interest on a card you can't pay off and more than 50 % of your take home is going to rent. I think the way I look at my scenario is I love what I do every day and I'm able to pay rent and I'm able to pay for food.

26:52You're not able to pay for food. That's incorrect. That's incorrect. You're putting it all on debt. You cannot afford food. I'm able to get food. You're able to get food by using debt. You're not paying for it. You're using someone else's money. I mean, I haven't used that credit card in like, I think just once in the last like month. But if you can't pay off that credit card because you don't have enough money left in your checking account, then no, you cannot afford those things. Yeah. You're only putting$40 towards it a month. Yeah. So I guess I could throw like a thousand dollars at it next paycheck or.

27:22Can you? Well, I guess. Can you then afford to do things? With the other money that I'm getting. I could probably start eating at that away. What's the other money from? Just like the other things I said. What is acting gigs here and there and some content creation money? Nothing crazy, but. What do those bring in on average? Low months, high months. It so fluctuates. It's really very tough to say. I guess in an ideal world, I could say maybe$500. Okay. So do you have a savings account? I do not. So you're not setting money aside for taxes. You said, I'm trying to, but there's no money. I guess what I've done in the past when I have extra money is I will send it to one of my parents and just be like, hey, hold on to this for me.