MI Rewind: Escaping Wall Street w/ Jose Hernandez and Alan Angeloni

24:44On public, you can put together a multi-asset portfolio for the long haul. Stocks, bonds, options, crypto, it's all there. Plus, industry-leading yields on your cash with no fees or minimums. Switch to the platform built for those who take investing seriously. Go to public.com slash CIVP and earn an uncapped 1 % bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com slash T-I-V-P. Paid for by public investing, full disclosures, and podcast description. Just like everybody else, there was a time when I was a beginner investor, and I have to say, investing is particularly filled with jargon that can just make it so difficult for new investors to understand what is going on.

25:25But it's never too late to get smarter about stock investing from the ground up. At The Investors Podcast Network, we've made a habit of studying the world's best investors, and now I'm distilling those learnings into a simple course for you or for anyone in your life who you might want to share the gift of knowledge with. With my How to Get Started with Stocks course, you can master the principles of excellent lifelong investing with valuable insights for both beginners and pros. The course covers 10 different sections, beginning with the basics of what a stock actually is and how the stock markets work, to strategies to optimize your retirement savings, how to pick great companies for the long term, what to look for in ETFs, and how to monitor your investments, plus so much more.

26:03To begin getting smarter about investing, just visit theinvestorspodcast.com slash get started with stocks. That's theinvestorspodcast.com slash get started with stocks. And for a limited time, you can use code stocks15 for a 15 % discount at checkout. All right, back to the show. It's literally the exact same thing for me. My family supports me 100%, but they don't understand podcasting. They see me throwing away a six-figure career and they just say, well, you've done well so far, so they assume I know what I'm doing, but they don't know. They're like, you make money from podcasts? How does that even work?

26:42I 110 % understand where you're coming from. A common topic I get asked about, whether it be real estate or starting a side hustle or a business, is partnerships. Do you need one? Who you should partner with? How to find them? There are always a lot of questions around the idea of a partnership. Tell us a bit about how you two met and how you became partners. For the general question, do you need a partner? No, you don't need a partner. But I think it's really coming to the realization that if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together. You look at these Fortune 500 companies, they have 50 ,000 employees, 100 ,000 employees.

27:21They're not one-man shows. And once you come to the realization that you can't really build a gigantic ecosystem or organization without the help of other people. So it's really going about finding like-minded people. I guess before I go into partnering with Jose, how I went about finding my co-founder at Financial Professional, Nick, I wasn't searching for a co-founder or somebody to partner with. I was actively building the website. He was coming over, building out a side course and wanted to make money online. And he was coming over three times a week working at my house until two o 'clock in the morning.

27:58And one day I just turned around at the website and I was like, what are your thoughts on this? Like, I need your help. And he immediately like jumped at it and has been able to provide an insane amount of information. And like one of the reasons why I knew I had to partner with him immediately was because he showed that he cared about the goal that we were trying to achieve just as much as I did. He has no problem turn around and say, you literally sound ridiculous. Like, why would you want to build that? And it's just that brutal honesty is great. In terms of how we went about partnering with Jose, he was posting by far the best and most informative content on Instagram.

28:36So as somebody who had a larger audience than Jose, it's my goal to give the most insightful content to the audience. That way they're learning and everything. So it was just a no-brainer to partner with Jose because it's just a steady stream of amazingly informational content that is explained in under 30 seconds. And then I also feel like there's a lot of synergy with Jose Zen because he gets the traffic. One way we started working together was I had reached out asking if he was interested in doing shout outs for blog articles and everything. And the blog articles, in my mind, was a good way for him to also develop being known as a thought leader, putting his thoughts and opinions on the online web and everything and gets to leverage the pre-existing audience and everything.

29:25And in the meantime, building his own brand. I think partnerships are huge. Like Alan mentioned, there are ventures where you can do it alone. And I think the personal brand space does allow you that. But when it comes to a platform like Instagram, I would consider Instagram the primetime real estate right now because it's where all the attention is. Everyone's on Instagram. People just don't realize how difficult it is to grow on Instagram, especially just posting content. I mean, I spent so much time putting out content, and this is a part of it. You have to put out content one way or another, but I just went about it, continuing to post out and grinding it out.

30:01And I was getting some traction, but I just realized that if I'm going to grow this thing to the point where I want to grow it and serve as many people and create the brand that I want to, I can't do this alone. And it's just kind of funny how me and Alan met and lined up and we had conversations about our mutual goals and our backgrounds and the firms we're with and all that. And I just think when it comes to a relationship and a partnership, whether it's business or not, it's so important to be able to exchange value. And that's exactly what we did. We trusted each other and we were determined to provide each other with value.

30:33He was going to provide me with value by exposing my content and my brand and my story to his massive existing audience. And I would put in hard work to provide him with assets to Financial Professional, which is his website in the form of a blog content. And over the past year, we would continue to exchange me writing articles for his website, providing him with assets, him sharing my posts with his community and his audience. And that's definitely paid off for me in terms of building my audience and my brand. And I just think that, again, you don't have to do it alone. But if you can find someone that has similar values, similar work ethic, that's the main thing about Alan.

31:12I just noticed how much of a savage work ethic this man had. And I respected that immediately. And we've trusted each other with money and effort and contracts and all these things. And we've just been able to work together. And the crazy thing about it, we'll meet up soon, but the crazy thing about it is we say this all the time, like, Alan, I talk to you more than the people I know in real life. We talk for hours on the phone sometimes, and I don't talk to people in my life like that that much. And the funny thing about social media is you are going to get the most support, funny enough, from the people that you don't even know in real life.

31:46And that's the crazy thing about social media is you can use it as a platform to network and build opportunities. And like I said, I'm going to meet Alan in person eventually, but we still, to this day, have not met in person. But that's just how much trust we have in each other and how committed we are to building what we're building. Robert Leonard It's funny because the podcast company, The Investor's Podcast, was founded by two guys, Preston and Stig. They had never met. They just met online through a forum and they decided to launch TIP together. And still to this day, it's been six, seven years, massive podcast company.

32:20Robert Leonard And I think they've only met a couple of times, just a handful, maybe two, three times, if that, even in person. But they talk a lot via video or phone calls. And it's the same way for me and Stig. We chat all the time. Before this call, I had a two-hour meeting with him this morning, and he and I have actually never met in person, but we talk all the time. And I talk with him more than I talk to, like you said, a lot of people in real life. How did you guys know that trust piece? How did you know you could trust each other? It sounds like you both had something that the other person wanted.

32:45You were a good team in that way that somebody could provide something that the other person didn't have. But how did you know that you could actually trust each other before you started working together? We were going back and forth for a little bit, reposting content in a couple of group chats with a bunch of people. The first couple months where it was just like, Jose would do an article. I would then shout him out. When we were able to do that back and forth, we were able to build out the relationship more and create financial university, trust each other with money, trust each other with different business goals and objectives that we have to do.

33:20Yeah. So I think that just having some skin in the game and it started off with small things. For example, he would own the rights to the blog articles that I would spend some time creating on my own. And I would honor that and say, hey, this belongs to financial professional. I just wrote it. And he was nice enough to put my name on it. But things like that and just contractually, we have things together with our respective businesses. And we're filing taxes right now. So of course, we're going to be transparent about that because his LLC has and interests in financial university. So just upholding our ends of the bargain.

33:55And I think that's a good way that you can see if you can trust someone. Of course, you never know 100%, but I know the type of person Alan is. But just having conversations, seeing if people are holding their end of the bargain, seeing if they have the kind of character and goals and work ethic that you do, that's typically a good indicator in my book. Robert Leonard Obviously, it's been going well since you two are still working together and you're here on the show together. But no relationship is perfect, whether it's business or not. Tell us a bit about some of the challenges that you guys have faced as partners, whether it's because of who you are individually, or just sometimes the difficulty of having a partner.

34:32Nothing's perfect. I would say we haven't had any really big issues. I would definitely say with us both working full-time and building our own businesses on our own spare time out of that, scheduling meetings and everything, establishing times to to get them to do stuff and everything was a hassle at first. He was like, you need to be lenient of the other person's time as well. Our marketing plan at first was like, this is what we're going to do. We have these audiences now. We're just going to push it out there. That's not how things really work. But other than that, I have no complaints on this.

35:04And I'm very excited to see everything continues to blossom. Yeah, I agree. I think we're just getting started working together, even if it's been almost two years now. And you have to understand when you have two people that expect a lot about themselves and have a lot on the plate, it can be difficult. But one thing that I appreciate about Alan is he's always telling me, please take a break. He texts me on Christmas. He's like, dude, please take some time today. You've earned that sort of thing. So I appreciate him for that. But I do want to talk a little bit more about what he mentioned with the marketing plan for Financial University, which is our educational platform.

35:39Me and Alan, we are lucky enough to know something about finance because of our background and what we've done. But marketing is just another animal. And we, as people that believe in ourselves and work really hard, we're just like, yeah, it's easy. We just put out a couple of posts about it and tell people about it. And then all of a sudden it's a successful business and it's not. And we had to kind of learn that the hard way and spend some time and energy and probably would have been better if we just went with the plan that we went with eventually. But yeah, I mean, that's part of learning, part of working with someone else, part of building something of your own.

36:13There's going to be a learning curve. There's going to be things that don't go perfectly, but I trust Alan very much. If I didn't, he wouldn't be a good friend and business partner of mine. So I'm sure there are going to be things that come up in the future, like in any relationship, whether it's a marriage or a friendship or business partnership. It's just part of relationships and you have to be able to understand where the other party's coming from. You have to be able to communicate where you're coming from and be able to just have some emotional intelligence about it. I feel like the one thing that makes a partnership key is definitely like passion for the same topic and everything like Jose works like a dog.

36:46I don't know anybody that works harder than Jose. I mean, I'd like to say that I work hard. I'm notorious for the 3 a.m. email to Jose. Jose is the type of guy that will text me at like 11 o 'clock and just like, hey, man, like, I'm sorry I didn't email you back. I'm like, Jose, like, I didn't expect you to respond to three o 'clock in the morning. That's something you need to be building with. they have a strong desire to get to the same destination as you. And at the end of the day, they're going to be relentless in that journey to get there. Before I had the podcast, I didn't really have any social media.

37:17I only had a small personal Facebook page for some friends and family. But other than that, I pretty much avoided social media. Now that I have the podcast, I've been trying to get more involved with it. But I have to admit that I really haven't done a great job. The podcasts are much, much bigger than my following is on social. You two are on the other end of the spectrum. You've both been very successful on social media and even built your businesses on the back of social media. What made you both want to focus on social media as your main marketing channel? What have you done that has been most successful in growing your social following?

37:52So the one thing that really made me want to go focus on social media heavy is that's where all the attention is. When I say that I started this with the intentions of eventually starting my investment firm, my idea was whose money am I going to be managing, right? 74 % of my audience between the ages of 20 and 35, right? So they don't consume media on other outlets. I don't know a ton of people that are like reading articles every single day that sit there and watch the news all day long and everything. In order to grow a financial services business in the future, the best way to go about it is being on the platforms where there's attention, such as Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, you need to be out there.

38:32And personally, that's one big thing that I think these financial firms have been leaving on the table. They don't do a lot of social media. And I understand the compliance issue with that. But at the end of the day, you need to get with the times. This is the way that you go about marketing and everything. The creator is not going away. And I can tell you that there's only going to be more and more financial influencers on this platform. So for me, when I was looking at social media, when I was two years ago, I just noticed that there was a lot of opportunity. The thing about the other niches in social media, beauty, fitness, motivation, all these other niches, they're great, but they're saturated.

39:11And it's really, really hard to get into that and be different. It's not impossible, but it's hard. The thing about the financial space is because of things like compliance and because of things like securities laws, there was a barrier to entry and there still is now. And I saw that as a way that I could really start carving my own lane. And we talk in stocks, total addressable market, there's a lot of opportunity there because of the massive barrier to entry. And one of the people that I really enjoy following on social media, other than Gary Vee that's helped me with the content stuff, but one of the things that's really helped me is mindset.

39:50And Jack Butcher, who runs the brand Visualize Values, incredible. I really appreciate what he does for people that want to leverage the internet to serve others. It's just the idea of scale. Because when you are a traditional financial advisor or consultant or educator, whatever you want to call it, you are basically limited to the people that can contact normally. When I put out a post, and I still have a long way to go, but today on my Instagram, I have around 113 ,000 followers, which is awesome. I really appreciate it. I have more reach than some financial institutions. And that's not to brag, it's just reality.

40:28There are full-service financial institutions that don't have that kind of reach on social media, and that's the power of leverage. Now, of course, not all 113 ,000 followers are going to see it, but I have the ability to amplify my message to thousands of people with one post. And that's the beauty of leverage, especially with what I'm trying to do, which is promote financial literacy, promote financial education, promote people living their best financial lives. That to me was the most attractive thing about social media. To that point, I always tell people, yes, all this stuff is awesome. It's really cool to read the books and see how people are successful on social media.

41:03But please understand if you're starting from the very beginning, it is a grind. And I hope you're ready for what it takes to build a real legitimate brand, just to even have a chance to have the opportunity to have that kind of scale and voice and everything. And you have to really lead with value and you have to really lead with trying to serve the audience. And even if there are business intentions behind it, people still want to follow people that they feel are worth following. And that's not easy. So when you go about growing your audience and everything, one of the things that you really want to be doing is willing to test new content and you need to be consistent.

41:39The more content you can put out, the better, because that's another chance for somebody else to stumble across your content and learn about your business and follow you or learn about you and follow you. The more the merrier. You definitely need to be willing to try new things all the time. One thing in particular, like I know that a lot of business pages, they stick to a uniform theme. I have myself, but I'm also always throwing out different styles of content. One day you'll see a post that has 15 ,000 likes and the next post that I'll put up, it'll have 900. I'm testing different types of content to see what the audience wants.

42:12You really need to be focused on the data that you're collecting. What are the impressions that you're getting compared to the other posts? What's the reach? How many saves? You don't need to overdo the whole like fall in the whole Instagram analytical hole. It more so comes down to how are you engaging with your audience? What is the message that you're putting out at the end of the day? Being willing to try new things. And by far, the best thing you can do to grow your audience on social media is be willing to network. I would send out like 25 messages a day to people that I've never talked to before, just because I want to learn more about them.

42:45That's how you build new things. You need to build relationships with people. And if you're not being social on social media, you're doing it the wrong way. I just wanted to talk more about content strategy too, because content is the engine that builds your brand, that gets you in front of other people, that gets people to share the content, which is how you grow and so on. When I first started, I had no clue how social media actually worked. It's so funny. I think there's such a veil behind the people that use every day, just go on Instagram and like posts and stuff. And the people that are actually creating, people don't understand what's on the other side.

43:20So I was on the first side of that. I was just like, okay, I think there's some kind of strategy here, but I'm just going to figure it out as I go. And I have. There are different types of content. There are the types of content that get shared the most, that is the ones that are very, very simple, that are easy to digest and are shareable. That's what we can call scalable content, high velocity content, whatever. And one of the biggest things that Instagram has done is, of course, Mark Zuckerberg is always trying to one-up any new technology and TikTok is something that's been very successful.

43:50They've come out with Reels, which is basically TikTok for Instagram. and anytime a social media platform comes out with a new feature, especially Instagram, they're going to prioritize that type of content and put it out and push it out to more users that don't follow you and gives you more exposure. And one thing that I've doubled down on is just putting together really short bite-sized reels, explaining things that may or may not consider to be a little bit more obscure, but breaking it down to where, man, that made sense. And I'm going to share this with a friend and I'm going to send this to someone else.

44:23But sometimes I post some content that's not designed to be viral. It's supposed to be me explaining something. I might share a Zoom clip from me in the Financial University community Zoom calls that we have some time explaining something. Just so people can see, there's actually someone behind this. They actually know what they're talking about. It's not just a viral meme page. Because when I first got on social media right after leaving the corporate world, I just saw so much content on there that was what was considered good and viral. And I was like, man, people needed to want better content.

44:55And it's taken some time for that paradigm shift to occur. But I think people are now starting to demand better and more useful content from financial pages or whatever. So content strategy is huge. And like Alan said, you have to be willing to try different things. And you can't take it personally if one piece of content didn't do well or another. Instagram, especially, I call it a hamster wheel. And it's kind of like baseball too, where you had a good post, you had a good day, but guess what? You show up the next day and put out and produce and add value and that sort of thing. So yeah, the content strategy is huge.

45:28What have been some of the biggest mistakes that you guys have made when trying to grow social? So me personally, I'm not putting my face out there soon enough. This podcast will actually be the first time I put my face out of the account. Like you're talking about putting my face out there now at$900 ,000. I personally wish that I was able to have done it a lot sooner and build that relationship. But luckily, like you do have the Instagram questions feature and everything. So you're still able to engage with the audience and get an idea of who's behind it. One thing that I'm definitely like concerned about is how are they going to perceive me on this platform?

46:04How are they going to react when they know like, oh, this is the person that's behind it. I don't really think it's going to be like detrimental to the brand or anything. But like at the same time, it is something to think about because I neglected to put my face on the account thus far. But then it's like you're comparing personal brand to a fintech company. It's not necessarily comparably. Jose is the millennial money mentor. I'm not financial professional, but I am financial professional, if you get that. Financial professional is a brand. And regardless of if it's a personal brand or a regular brand, people want to know who's behind the organization.

46:39I think there are several things that I can think about. I'll be honest, There's a lot of things that I hate about social media. That's just me being straight up honest with you. It's not the best place to be all the time for your mental health. There's a lot of things, again, that I do not like about it. There's a lot of great things about social media, especially if you use it for the right things, you connect with people, you follow great people, that sort of thing. But there are definitely some things that are not great about it. And the number one issue that I have with social media is it romanticizes everything.

47:07And it's not just the financial space. It's the fitness space. It's the dating space. It's all these different niches. It's just human nature to where we want to have this not real reality, but we want it to be looked at as like it's our reality and it's perfect. And the financial space is so bad about that because there's such a massive lack of context on these social media platforms. And I think that it's great that people, especially younger people, go to social media to start learning about investing and financial planning and money management, that is. But you just don't know what's real.

47:40You don't know what's noise because anyone can post anything they want, especially if they're not an actual financial professional. There's really no entity stopping them from doing that. So for me, it's really just managing people's expectations. And sometimes I feel like I'm pressured to try to tell people what they want to hear because I'm so focused on trying to build this brand and visibility and everything. But then I have to remember, man, I need to actually share what actually works in real life and what's actually helpful because social media and real life are not the same thing. And it's funny that I have to say that, but it's true because when you spend so much time on these platforms, you kind of like think like, man, the social media, it's real life.

48:18And I'm a super competitive person. I hate to lose and I love to win. And I see other people in the space, whether or not they've had actual professional experience. And I'm looking at the successes they're having and some of the things they're doing, like, man, that's great. But one thing that I need to continue to work on is just focusing on being a creator and focusing on the quality of what I can control because people ask me, how does financial university compare to such and such as program, such and such as course, whatever? I don't know what to tell them other than I'm sure what they have going on is fantastic.

48:49I'm sure it's helped a lot of people. I can't speak to it. I just speak to what I've actually done in real life and what I've learned in real life and have actually applied in real life. And I can speak to the quality and thought process that goes into anything that I personally create. That being said, I see other people that are having success in this space and have to think, man, well, maybe they've been doing this for longer than I have. Maybe they're 10 years older than I have, or maybe they've had other connections. So it's so easy to get caught up in. It's funny because on social media, they call nine to five the rat race.

49:17Well, social media can be a rat race too. And you get so caught up in it. I mean, man, I see this person winning and I don't hate that they're winning, but I know that I can be better than them. And I know I'm better than them. And that competitive drive in me just kind of keeps me up at night sometimes. So trying to find some balance and just not caring about what other people say, especially as a personal brand. And I'm sure Alan gets a lot of not great stuff too. And I don't get a lot of hate on my social media because I think the majority of people get it. They understand what I'm trying to do.

49:45I don't put out very controversial content. That's not who I am. That's not my brand. That's not how I am as a person. But the thing about social media is if you're going to put yourself out there publicly, and this is required if you're going to put out content, you're putting yourself out there in front of other people that don't know you in real life. Every once in a while, you'll get someone that says something that you prefer, they actually not say to you. I am a very confident person because of the things that I've gone through in my life. And I know who I am and I know what I am deep down inside.

50:12But I can't lie, sometimes those things kind of get to me like, man, why would someone say something like that? How is that even warranted? But that's part of this game. And that's why I have to continue to just know who I am, what I am as a person, know what my vision and my mission is and not let that detract me. So yeah, I mean, a lot of those things. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. Hey, it's Sean O'Malley, just popping in with a quick message. If you like this podcast, well, I've got great news for you. We've got a handful of other shows for you to explore, from learning about Bitcoin to embracing a richer, wiser, happier lifestyle.

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51:23Seriously, go ahead. I promise you'll like what you find. Bonus points if you show your support for our work by clicking follow. If something piques your interest, just start listening. No hard feelings. I'll be waiting for you back here. Just like everybody else, there was a time when I was a beginner investor, and I have to say, investing is particularly filled with jargon that can just make it so difficult for new investors to understand what is going on. But it's never too late to get smarter about stock investing from the ground up. At The Investor's Podcast Network, we've made a habit of studying the world's best investors.

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53:49That's theinvestorspodcast.com slash tip-finance. All right, back to the show. The negative feedback piece is so difficult, and it's something you really can't prepare for until you actually become a content creator. When I started the podcast, I had no idea. I figured I'd probably get some negative feedback or some hate here and there, but how do you prepare for that? You can't. And when you have a podcast that reaches millions and millions of people, there's obviously going to be some people that don't necessarily agree with what you have to say. And that feedback is hard. It's crazy because you'll hear hundreds and hundreds of people that reach out to you and say amazing things about how you're changing their lives.

54:29And then you get one person that has negative feedback and that erases everything else. And so that piece of being a content creator, And whether that's podcasting, Instagram, whatever it is, however you're putting content out there, even just a side hustler, a business owner, whatever you're putting out into the world, negative feedback is hard. And it's probably one of the hardest pieces for me, at least. Yeah. And it's all part of it. And I think there are some times where the feedback, it actually can be beneficial. Maybe someone's trying to tell you something and they're not good about wording it.

54:58I kind of compare it sometimes to when you have some coaches in your athletic career that they weren't great with words and they weren't great at expressing what they were trying to say, but what they were actually trying to say, if you took it the right way, actually could have maybe helped you become a better athlete or could help me in the terms of social media, be a better content creator, educator, consultant, whatever you want to label me as. So there's that part of it. But I also think that if someone takes time out of their day to post some kind of content or comment rather on my content that is in no way helpful, is only attacking me or someone that's commenting, that sort of thing.

55:34That tells me everything that I need to know about you as an individual. That tells me everything that I need to know about you as a man, because you can't be a savage and a keyboard warrior at the same time. That's really the mentality I have about it because no one that's really secure enough in who they are as an individual is going to take time and energy out of their day to just be negative towards somebody else. So that's just part of this game. And again, I have to continue to work on it, find some peace in it. But I do think this is really important to talk about for people to know if they are going to get into the social media game or any kind of public display of who they are and what they're trying to do, because you need to be ready for it.

56:10Off a bit of what Jose said, when becoming a content creator, I think, and like dealing with like the hate, the negative feedback that everybody gives and everything, I just think, pay no attention, pay no mind. As long as you're focused on putting the message out there that you want to put out and getting to the destination that you want to get to, you're already halfway there, basically. It's all mindset. Once you're there in your mind, you can start taking the necessary actions and everything to get to where you want to be. Negative feedback is a part of social media's game. Say, for example, friends from home or something with anybody.

56:46You start a business or people give you hate for it because you came from the same background as them, and they didn't do anything with it. And at the end of the day, pay it no mind. Robert Leonard Jose, you mentioned that Gary Vee is a big impact on you, and you listen to a lot of his content. And I could tell by your response to negative feedback that you're influenced by Gary Vee because that's exactly how he thinks about it. And what people say on your content is a reflection on them than it is of the person receiving the negative feedback. So if somebody's leaving a negative comment on your post.

57:18It's more about them than it is about you. And I know Gary Vee talks about that a lot. So I could definitely see how I've been impacted by what Gary has said. One of the things I want to ask you both about is you've both talked quite a bit about compliance and how it's impacted how you approach social and just putting out content in general. A lot of people listening to the show are working professionals, not necessarily in finance. Maybe they're engineers, maybe they're teachers. There's millions of careers that they It could be. It could be anything, but they all have a passion for finance. And a lot of them actually want to put content out.

57:49But I hear from a lot of people is they're not sure if they can get in trouble for what they're putting out there. Not necessarily with their corporate job. That aside, they're worried about, am I giving financial advice? And if somebody takes this, am I going to be liable for the repercussions of what this decision is? Or am I giving information that I'm not legally supposed to get? Is a big question a lot of people have that want to put out content. It's a little bit different than the compliance you guys are talking about, but I'm sure you've given this consideration given how big your audiences are.

58:16How do you think about this piece of it? Legal structure and very, very clear disclaimers. So the one way that I like to look at it a lot is these stock group chat people, basically giving you free advice. They're telling you, this is what stock you should be buying right now. This is what stock you should be doing. And they're getting away with it, right? They don't have licenses, but they have very clear disclaimers that say, this is what this is. This is what that is, you need to basically say, this is my opinion. This isn't a perfect plan. Everybody has a different angle in terms of what they want their financial picture to look like.

58:54So when you speak about investing topics and everything, you more so want to speak in a light of your own personal situation, because that's not how you're going to get in trouble. But you want to phrase it in a way that people can also take action from listening to what you have to say? It's informative, they're digesting the information. It's a really, really good question. And it's something I have to think about every single day because I'm trying to position myself as a thought leader and an educator and put out content on investing and wealth creation and wealth management. So it's natural for people to reach out and say, man, should I buy this stock or should I buy this cryptocurrency.

59:39And the people that have been following me long enough know that I just either respectfully say, I can't get investment advice on here. Some people take that the wrong way, but they clearly have never been a part of the industry. And I try to have some empathy for that, or sometimes I just don't respond in the comments that have their own types of opinions on what's the best dividend paying stock or what's the best growth stock right now. So I try to be as clear as possible in anything I do on social media. And even within Financial University, I'm always telling our members. I'm always happy to talk on a high level what you should be considering in an investment and putting together your portfolio and putting together your financial plan.

1:00:14But just understand, as someone that has their securities licenses, I don't plan on having them forever. But someone that understands the rules behind this game, I'm not going to give you a direct recommendation to buy or sell security because that's against the law. And I think there's people on social media right now that haven't been a part of the industry that are giving actual securities recommendations and they may be putting themselves in jeopardy because of it. And the people that I network with and try to help out, I let them know, hey, you got to have some disclaimers and understand that anything you put out, whether it's a comment or a post, that could potentially be used against you if the stock turns around 20%, 30 % because they missed out on earnings.

1:00:53So you got to be very, very careful as someone that puts yourself in this space because you can do great work, but there are some serious laws around this type of stuff. and people may get upset with you because they're like, well, why am I going to follow you if you're not going to tell me what to pick? Well, because there's rules around this and I've actually done this for life and I understand that. I've had some guests on the show who I have a relationship with off of the show that I've built from being guests on the show and they had their social media accounts, specifically Instagram, which is what you both focus on, deleted without any warning or reason.

1:01:25They were ultimately able to get it back, but it took them a while. And if that was their main source of traffic, that could be detrimental to a business. I also had the same thing happen to a friend's YouTube account. How concerned are you both with having a major traffic source of yours tied to one third-party platform? Definitely a concern. And the only way to really counteract that is to build on other platforms. Instagram could be deleted. Even if you look at traditional media, newspapers and everything are disappearing. So just as the times go, you should be building on what's most current in terms of how to hedge the risk of getting your account deleted.

1:02:04Obviously, don't violate Instagram's terms and conditions. They're very clear. You can Google that. Even stuff in there, it's like, don't send so many messages a day. Don't comment so many times. Don't like so many pictures. Don't spam. Don't use bots. They're clear now in terms of people getting their account deleted. Like there have been tonifications with imposters, people who are spam reporting accounts. It's just you need to take into account that you can't be building on one platform. And this also goes into content creation. With your content, you should be making it so that it can be distributed on other platforms.

1:02:39If you're making a video, you can also post it on TikTok, post it on Instagram, you can post it on Facebook, even YouTube if it's long enough. but it's just being aware that these platforms are not always going to be here and anything can happen. It's very true. And it is a concern of mine, especially with how much time and effort I've put into Instagram and Alan hit on it. I think it's good to diversify a little bit, just like you want to diversify your portfolio a bit from the risk of the primary stock that you own dropping in value. It's the same thing with your traffic channels. And I think another important thing to take out of that, and this is something that we're going to implement aggressively, this year is having ownership in your traffic.

1:03:20So of course, with our educational platform, Financial University, we have ownership over that. People can see what we post because it's much less congested, much less saturated, where on Instagram, maybe 5 % of my audience sees a post. I have people all the time telling me, hey, I haven't seen your posts in days. And I post basically every single day, sometimes multiple times a day. So I think there is power in having ownership in your own traffic. I know email lists are the biggest thing that marketers talk about. We're working on that this year a lot. And then also having your own platform where you can't get kicked out of it because you own it.

1:03:53I am starting to build a little bit on TikTok, just really repurposing my reels to TikTok. I have a little bit on Twitter and potentially with more time, make it on YouTube. But I do think it is smart to have one primary source, just like it's smart to have one primary strong source of income and then diversify that. It's the same thing with a traffic source because you got to pick one, you got to crush it on there and then use that to lead people to other places where they can find you as well. You've both set out to change financial education. What's wrong with the current financial education solutions and systems that's out there?

1:04:28I feel like the biggest thing stems from what's being taught in schools. People aren't taught finance early enough. One of the best resources I had was the fact that money was always talked about. I had a seat at the table. One of the things that I'd like to look at is for our platforms that we're building and everything is giving people a seat at the table. Every day, we're talking on providing free content on social media, like explaining different financial concepts. Then we have the blogs that are way more in depth. We have financial university where you get basically hands-on education as if you were to be enrolled in college, essentially, without the 25 grand a semester you're paying.

1:05:07We've developed tools that match people with investment firms based off of their risk preferences and everything. It's not taught soon enough, essentially. I know way too many 25-year-olds, 30-year-olds that don't even know how to do their taxes. I know people that haven't even opened up an investment account and they're in their 40s. And it's really just having these conversations early on will make all of the difference in somebody's life. I think it is a tricky subject. I think the easiest thing is to blame school. And I think that in a lot of ways, school doesn't prepare you for life. And I don't even think that's why it's designed.

1:05:40And I do appreciate the hard work that teachers do. I know a lot of great teachers, but I just don't know if it's something that we can put on teachers as a responsibility. I think that teachers are great teachers for what they teach, but unless they have actually been a financial professional, unless they've actually worked in the industry and have done it, and I know there are professors that are in college, but talking about the public education system, I mean, it's really hard to put that kind of responsibility on teachers, I think. And especially if they themselves don't really understand wealth creation and money management and investing and that sort of thing.

1:06:13So they can do their best, but I just almost kind of think it may not even be something that we can rely fully on the public system unless they come up with solutions of their own or they rely on educational institutions that specialize in financial education to provide that coursework and lessons to younger people. But definitely with what Alan said, it's a shame that it's not taught earlier. I think there's a lot that goes into that. And like I said, in my household growing up, money was only talked about in the sense that there just wasn't enough of it and that there's always something wrong.

1:06:42But it was never, how do we start accumulating assets and building wealth for retirement or entrepreneurship or whatever. So I think it's such a tricky, tricky problem. And that's why it is a problem because there's no clear solution. But with what we're doing with our social media brands and financial university, we hope to be some sort of a solution in that. But I know that there's a long way that we could all go with our public education system in a lot of different areas, but especially our finances. What are some of the most common mistakes that you guys are seeing new investors make? It could be from your friends that are your age, your family members, or from both of your communities.

1:07:17You both have massive communities. What are some of the mistakes you see newer investors in your community making? Definitely following the hype. Not necessarily, I don't want to take any digs. people that have purchased GameStop and AMC as their first investments. Just the fact that you got invested is gold in and of itself. Kudos to you. I'm glad that you put your money to work. I'm glad that you even had enough money saved to even get invested. But I definitely feel like in terms of following the hype, you have people that start day trading. My big thing, I was chasing penny stocks when I first got started investing.

1:07:50It blew up my account faster than I even put the money in. So just like you're watching people do that. You're watching people fall for these forex scams and everything. Personally, my personal opinion, unless you are a manager corporate treasury or you're a trader at an investment bank, there's no purpose to have leveraged currencies in your portfolio for a retail investor. And you have all these people just following these trading group chats. They're trading on leverage and they have absolutely no idea what they're doing. That's what I think is the biggest issue in terms of new investors. There's no issue in getting invested.

1:08:25It's just you shouldn't be day trading full time unless you've been trading for five years. And I've seen people make money in 2020 and quit their jobs to be a full time day trader. And it's like, I know 14 year olds that be hedge fund managers. is. My issue is very, very similar to that. Again, I was kind of ranting earlier about a lot of the things I don't like about social media. And again, I think it's great that people go to social media to learn these things because we can't go to school for it, right? Like we just talked about. But again, it goes back to the lack of context. I think that I like the expression game porn, where someone make this one trade and they became a millionaire.

1:09:03That's fantastic. I'm never going hate on anyone for doing that. That's awesome. People don't understand is that is not common, and the odds are stacked against you for that to happen. And what also I think is an issue is people that do start off with the really, really risky trading strategies or whatever, they make some money, which is again, great, but they don't understand that there's a lot of risk involved with that and they can just lose that as quickly as possible. So it kind of just becomes almost a hamster wheel, just trying to find the next hot stock, trying to find the next hot trend when in reality, what I prefer people to see investing as it's a way to leverage the capital markets to acquire assets in the form of shares that can appreciate in value, pay you in dividends, and that will compound over time so you can accumulate that wealth to meet future financial goals.

1:09:51That is, in my book, the true definition of investing. And when we have things like TikTok, where they push the viral content and Instagram pushes the viral content, what do you think is going to go viral. The person that took out a loan from their mortgage and they bought some crazy cryptocurrency and made a lot of money overnight, or the person telling people to understand asset allocation, dollar cost averaging, financial planning, and all these other things that go into a true financial plan, the first one. And that's exactly how these social media algorithms work. They push the sexy, the attractive, the get rich quick, the six-minute, six pack, all these different types of things, because that's how we are as people, as human beings.

1:10:35We want that exciting, quick thing. And when your only exposure to investing and learning about investing has been just social media, that's an issue. And frankly, it's seeing things like that get rewarded on things like YouTube, where it's always like, this is going to be the next hot stock and you'll be a millionaire if you invest in it. If you watch this video, things like that kind of make me not even want to go on YouTube if that's the expectation. So I don't think that should stop me. But again, it's just a lack of context. It's a lack of true understanding of what goes into wealth creation and financial planning.

1:11:07And just the whole get rich quick instead of acquire assets over time mentality that I think a lot of people get burned by. I've actually had quite a few guests on the show that have said that one of the worst things that can happen to a new investor is for them to actually make money. That's one of the worst things because then they think they're a special investor. They think they're Warren Buffett. They think they can replicate it, especially if it was a risky trade. If you're making money in an index fund because your dollar cost averaging in for the long term, that's different. But if you're making a trading GameStop or something else, and it actually hits for you, and you actually do make some money, a lot of very successful investors that I've had on the show have said that that's probably one of the worst things that can actually happen to you as a new investor.

1:11:47Because if you lost money, you probably didn't have a lot to start with. So that's probably a relatively cheap education, whereas you make money, that's a reinforcement that is not really reinforcing the right idea. I couldn't agree more with that. The best amount of money that I have spent was losing all of that money when I first started investing. That's what makes you want to research and learn more about investing. That's how you establish your foundation and everything. The way that I look at it was like, yeah, sure, it was a couple grand and everything, but in the grand scheme of things, I'm going to make so much more now because I took that loss.

1:12:19I wouldn't be where I am today, essentially, if I didn't lose that money. The worst thing that could have happened was it played off, and then I just kept rolling it. And then what if I did have a substantial amount of money and then blew it? You lose 50 grand, 100 grand in the stock market, early on, you're not coming back. You're going to be very deterred from wanting to put your money to work. That's exactly right. So if you start, you make that mistake with a small amount of money, you hopefully learn from it so that going forward, when you have a lot of money, you don't lose it like you could if you didn't learn that mistake early on.

1:12:49And the way I like to think about it, Alan, earlier you mentioned the cost of college. And I mean, hey, you lose a couple thousand bucks in the market. It sucks at the time, but that's a really, really cheap education in terms of college and how it relates. And Jose, you mentioned how different types of content go viral. And of course, I've noticed that as well. I think it's pretty obvious. And it's tough as content creators. All three of us are content creators. We're slightly different. You guys are mostly on social. I'm predominantly on podcasts. I'm trying to get into social more, but even in the podcast world, it's the same way.

1:13:18People who talk about the flashy type things tend to get more downloads. And so I fall, I don't want to say jealous of growth, but you fall victim of wanting to get that growth. You're trying to be pulled towards creating the content that people appear to want because of how the algorithms work. But for me, there's a quote from Warren Buffett, and I don't remember it exactly word for word, but he basically says, your reputation is the most important thing you have. And for me, that is always the thing that I go back to when I'm thinking about the type of content that I'm going to create. I'm thinking, am I creating a piece of content that's pure hype just to get the downloads, the views, whatever it may be, whatever that vanity metric is?

1:13:53Or is this truly something that I want my name tied to, that I want my reputation tied to? And for me, that pulls me back into reality and the type of content that I actually want to create. I love that you touched on that. One of the things that having the audience, we get asked all the time, will you advertise this? Will you advertise this? Will you advertise this? And it's just like, no, no, no, no, no. Don't get me wrong. The money would be great. But at the same time, it's like, at what cost? At what cost is killing our relationship with our audience? Money is great and all, but I would much rather have a way better relationship with the audience than to spew some product onto them that's not going to provide them any value.

1:14:37Robert Leonard I'm a big proponent of actually taking action on the information that you learn, not just learning loads of information. The reason I believe in this so strongly is because I actually did this for way, way too long. I was reading as many books as I could, pretty much as fast as I could, without actually applying anything that I was learning. And I realized that thankfully, and I started to slow down, take my time and actually apply what I learned. It made a big, big difference since I started to do that. So when someone is done listening to this episode, I want them to turn off their podcast app, turn off their phone, put their phone away and actually go take action.

1:15:15What is that one action that they should go take when they're done with the show? If you want to build a brand on social media, the first thing you should do after this is to figure out what do you want to talk about. Don't go thinking into brand names or anything. At the end of the day, you can always change your company name. Think about what do you have a passion for? What are you willing to talk about? And what's going to make you jump out of bed every single day? Talk about that. Don't care about the opinions of others and what they're going to say. Everybody's going to have their own opinion.

1:15:42At the end of the day, it really comes down to where do you want to be? The former financial advisor and planner in me, I just want people to be very, very clear on what their financial goals are. I should have added that in the prior commentary about what people make the mistake of early on is that's one of the biggest ones, not having clearly defined financial goals, not understanding what you're actually investing for. Because when you have clearly defined financial goals or even semi-clearly defined financial goals, you at least have a target that you're aiming at. And when you have a target that you can aim at, what that gives you is it gives you context and it gives you a framework to make decisions with your hard-earned money.

1:16:19It lets you know, do I have the ability to be aggressive in this account? Or should I not be aggressive because I don't have as much time? And once you really understand what you're trying to accomplish financially, like I said, you have framework to make decisions. And one of the things about social media is you almost feel like you're losing if you're not a millionaire by 30 or whatever. And it is what it is. But what I want people to understand is I have no problem with people getting wealthy quicker than waiting until you're 60. If you're the type of person that's like, what, 50? That's way too late for me.

1:16:53I can't do that. Well, I challenge you to figure out what it is that you can deliver to other people in terms of value. And value is subjective. You can be a very funny person. Comedians, the ones that are good, make a lot of money. It could be education. It could be consulting. It could be a number of different things. But I'm a true believer in the fact that your income, your compensation is directly tied to your ability to render service to others, and how many people you can serve with it. If you are a niche and you can serve corporations and you only need to have five clients and they pay you a ton of money, that's great.

1:17:26But going back to the power of social media, you can use your social media as leverage to create a great business that serves literally thousands of people, which can change their lives. It can also change your life as well. So I think you need to have clearly defined goals from an investing perspective. But if you are extremely serious about changing the quality of your life financially in a shorter period of time, I challenge you to understand what it is you can provide to other people. And if you're not at a place where you can, then I challenge you to learn something that you can provide to other people, either teach them, deliver a certain good or service to them, because that is how life is going to compensate you.

1:18:03And understand, again, back to a lot of things I dislike about social media, it is hard. And I hope you're ready to fight. And I hope you're ready to grind to get to the point to even have an opportunity to be successful. Because people see these posts on social media about Jeff Bezos or Warren Buffett or whatever. Again, back to the lack of context. They don't talk about the type of fight that person had to have throughout their career and the things they had to go through and the things they had to sacrifice and the losses they had. So please understand when you're looking at someone's social media profile and you see them being so successful at their age and you're like, man, I wish I was them.

1:18:35Ask yourself, assuming that that person didn't have handouts in their life, am I willing to go through what that person had to go through? Am I willing to put the skin in the game that that person had put in the game in order to even have a chance to be at where they are today? That's what I want people to be thinking about because again, I have no problem with you getting rich quick. That's great. I want you to do it responsibly, but understand the odds are much greater that it will happen if you go about it by trying to build great enterprise that serves other people versus trying to find the next Amazon.

1:19:04The hard work goes to so many different things, whether it's social media, any type of content creation, building a business, a side hustle. For me, when I started podcasting, I didn't realize how hard it was going to be. I've mentioned in the show, I don't have a great social media presence yet. It's something I'm working on. It is very hard work, like you've mentioned. But for me, what I have experienced is the podcast side. Putting out a high quality hour piece of audio content every single week for almost two years now is extremely, extremely difficult. And there's times where I'm ready to go to bed.

1:19:33It's 1130 at night. I just have to get it done. I have an episode that has to go out tomorrow morning and it's not done yet. And I have to stay awake to get that done. And I haven't missed a single episode in nearly two years. And that's not to give myself a pat on the back. It's just to give people some perspective on how hard it truly is to consistently put out good content, whether it's podcasts, social media, building a side hustle, a business, whatever it is, it's going to be a lot harder than you expect it to be. Jose, Alan, thank you both so much for joining me today. You both are prime examples of people our age, millennials, who didn't start with a massive advantage, who are just normal, everyday people doing big things and building and creating their own success.

1:20:14I think you were both great examples for everyone listening to the show, and you guys are proof that it's possible. For those listening today that want to connect with you after the show, where's the best place for them to go? You can reach us at financialprofessional.com. If you have any questions regarding business or finance, feel free to just shoot us a message on the live chat, or you can contact us on at financial professional on Instagram. So I'm most active on Instagram. My handle on there is the Millennial Money Mentor. I am on Twitter as well a little bit. The handle there is Jose underscore TMMM.

1:20:51It's the same for TikTok as well. I'm posting a little bit on there. And if you want to learn more about Financial University, which is our online educational platform. The URL for that is myfinancialu.com. And again, I'm most active on the social media. I get a lot of DMs and whatnot, but I always do my best to try to get back to everybody. So if you have questions on anything, feel free to let me know and always happy to help however I can. I will put a link to Alan's resources that he mentioned in the show notes below, as well as all of Jose's below as well. I'll put some links to other related content that we talked about throughout the show.

1:21:26So you guys can dive a little deeper into that if you're interested. Guys, thanks so much for joining me. Thank you for having us. I really appreciate it. It's been a pleasure, man. Thank you. All right, guys. That's all I had for this week's episode of Millennial Investing. I'll see you again next week.

1:21:55financial markets. To access our show notes, transcripts, or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by The Investor's Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.