607: 10 Rules to Get Rich and Build Wealth

22:56But when you are starting out, you have a choice. It's a competition for dollars is how I like to view this, right? Your dollars can get deployed in certain ways and you don't have much left because you're starting out, right? You might have$10 ,000 and that's what you have. In that situation, going into low-cost index fund and letting that grow is probably the best answer. And sometimes you might not even have a choice, Nick. Maybe your biggest asset when you're 28 years old is your 401k because you got to put 5 % in and your employer matched you 5%. Your growth in that is your asset. And so low-cost index funds is the way to go.

23:33And I talk to a lot of financial planners, and I've seen it myself. And if you get back to Main Street and you get outside the talking heads, a lot of people really did build their wealth through saving, investing in this low-cost index fund. Some people might have had a pension or something, and they rolled it over into an IRA, things like that. And that's where a lot of people's wealth are. And they have a lot of wealth in their primary residence, which may or may not be a good thing. But it's there. It's kind of a forced savings account for a lot of people. Yeah. I don't disagree. It works.

24:05It's just, it works over a really long time horizon. And it's hard to get excited about even a 10 % annualized return when you have$10 ,000. You're like, you know, I have another thousand dollars, but it's like, okay, over the course of 20 years, now that's grown to a million because you keep adding more into it. And it's like, okay, now my 10 % was$100 ,000. And all of a sudden it's like, okay, I start to see the value of compound interest and letting this stuff stack up. You nailed it. And that's the hardest thing I have. when I talk to a lot of young adults, it's like they'll have$500 in their Robinhood account and they're like, I only went up to$550.

24:39And I was like, that's a 10 % return, that's solid. But when they see the dollar value, it's really demoralizing. And they're like, why should I put another$500 in? Well, because then you'd have$100 the next year if it didn't. But it's really hard for them to see that growth when the dollar values are so small. And then if you're looking at our article, you've heard the analogy of the penny that doubles every day. It's one of my favorite ones. So if you had a penny that doubles every day, I'll fast forward the whole story. But after 30 days, you'd have$5.3 million. But do you know that you don't even cross$100 until day 15?

25:13Yeah, it's like so slow at the beginning. It's so slow at the beginning. And then by the end of it, it's just you're running on all four cylinders. And that's how our investments work when you compound. It's really slow at first. And you just got to keep adding it in. But like 15 years down the road, you really start seeing it magnify. and it gets a lot more exciting. But that's really a hard sell when you're 22. Was there an income milestone or a net worth milestone where you considered yourself to be rich? I really had the goal of being a millionaire by 30 and I hit it at 31. So it was still a solid milestone.

25:50How that all played out was the business help, the side hustle help, but I was working my day job and I had a bunch in my 401k and things like that. So it's like all those different things compiled in. And so that was a way to accelerate my wealth. And I felt pretty good. And then when I left my day job. But did anything change? Like the moment you saw that account, like crossover the seven figure threshold, you're like, all right, it's official. Now I'm rich. You know, you get this, like it's official. And then you realize none of it actually matters. Like, it's like, I can't do it. It's all in my 401k.

26:21Like, okay. And I'm like, what does that mean for groceries tomorrow? I still got to figure out the cashflow side of things. Right. You realize it's cool, but it doesn't actually change your day-to-day life. And I do think there are various inflection points. And I want to say our friend J.D. Roth has it, and he's got a chart of the levels of fire. But I think it applies to anything. It's like you have subsistence level of wealth, and then you have like, I'm doing okay, and I'm totally botching it. But you get to this level where it's like you're financially independent, but you're not retired early.

26:54So because you maybe don't have to work, but then you get to like the fat fire level where you could like fly on a private jet. But like that range to get to like a real change in your lifestyle, you got to go from like being a millionaire to being like a 30 millionaire. And that's extremely rare and hard to do. And I think most people in this range, they don't really have much of a different lifestyle than most Americans in the upper middle class. one concept that was interesting and inspiring to me was the concept of coast fire so we're not barista fire lean fire you know we're not fat fire but like this coast fi idea was really interesting and i at first i thought it was like we have to live on the coast how does this work but it's like oh it's like you kind of front load your investments you were trying to make accounts and then you say well okay given whatever even seven percent market returns are going to double every 10 years, like, okay, at the time of retirement, it ought to be worth X.

27:49Like we can take the foot off the gas and don't need to contribute as heavily to those accounts. We can enjoy more life today because we still plan on earning income in the near term, like no immediate plans to stop working. So it's like, well, let's enjoy a little bit more while we have it, while the kids are young and embrace the Coast Fi lifestyle inspired by our mutual friend, Andy Hill, Marriage, Kids and Money, and Marco from Whiteboard Finance. They both had some good videos on this stuff. Yeah. And that's the whole premise, right? So they put all this money into their investment accounts and it just works for them and it grows and it compounds over the years so they can coast into financial independence, retire early.

28:26But if that money wasn't working for them, they only left it in a high yield savings account. They would not achieve their coast by goals. They got to get that investments going, right? All right. So that is rule number four. You got to put your money to work for you. Rule number five, this might be a controversial one is you need to marry smart. Talk to me about this one. Yeah. So we've talked four rules of how to build wealth, but the number one destroyer of wealth in America is divorce. A recent study found that divorce destroys 75 % of the family wealth nest egg. But as a destroyer, it just splits it in half.

28:58No, but then you have lawyer fees, legal fees, extra housing expenses. Like you all of a sudden start draining all this stuff out. Transportation costs, moving costs, like none of is cost effective. And yes, you hear wonderful stories of people that have amicably moved and they live together. Who knows? There's weird ways to get around it. But in general, you're spending money, draining it out on lawyers, you're draining it out on extra. Now you went from one set of housing expenses to two sets of housing expenses, two sets of grocery bills, potentially different forms of transportation, more transportation, moving expenses.

29:34It really can destroy it. So marry smart. Or I would say one that's become less controversial now with the Gen Yers is don't marry. Be long-term boyfriend and girlfriend forever and ever. Combine your expenses. You still might have some expenses, of course, if you split up, but there's ways to get around this. You can get into it smarter and whatnot. But statistically, divorce destroys a lot of wealth. Did you have a prenup? No, we did not, but we also didn't have any wealth before we were married. That's my answer to that question too. It's like, we were pretty young. Yeah. We were very young and we didn't have any wealth.

30:10If we were to split up, it would be her right to have half of it all. Like granted, it would still cost us a lot and just, it would destroy wealth, but like, you know, that's why you try not to do it if you don't have to. Yeah. I'm with you. And I know this will be super romantic to say, but finding a partner in life is a great life hack. And one thing that was really helpful for us was kind of this switch that flipped. And it was around the time of discovering Mr. Money Mustache and the concept of early retirement. I was like, this is a team sport. Like prior to that, we had like one joint checking account where we pay like our community bills and stuff from and buy groceries from, but everything else was separate.

30:49And we kind of looked at it as your bucket and my bucket and realizing that this is a team sport and having her with one steady job and me doing my entrepreneurial stuff, some of which worked and some of which didn't work, like it was really helpful to live off one income to minimize risk, but then also swing for some bigger upside. And I don't know, did you have a similar setup in your house? Absolutely. But I also want to kind of add to, so we talked about the negative, right? Divorce destroys wealth, but like you hit the other nail on the head is it's a team sport. And let's just say you're both young.

31:22One of you is making$50 ,000. What if the other one's also making$50 ,000 and you're both saving a little bit each month. Well, now you've doubled your savings amount and then the interest and the compound growth and all of that is now going to be more because you're on more money. It's easier to live off of two incomes and one income. Like it all just magnifies. So we definitely found that we were both working together. My wife helped me pay off my car loan and my student loans, even though I had income too, We were both working, but it's like we put it in one pot and we paid off the debt. She didn't have that kind of debt.

31:56We built wealth together, too. Like we were both throwing it into our IRAs. We were both throwing it into our 401ks. Like it compounded together on more money, right? Were you guys always on the same page when it came to saving? Like we're both relatively frugal people or you'd have to have some hard conversations. Well, what's really the end game here? What's the goal of all this? I think we both share a lot of the same money values. My wife's probably a little more frugal than I am, but I honestly think it's like we're frugal in different ways. So she has things that she would spend money on that I think are weird, and I have things that I would spend money on that she would think are weird.

32:29But we're just different people. I think we both came into our lives with, I was very big into investing. Heck, I started the college investor. I was all about talking about these money topics and side hustles and different things. My wife loves to save, loves to invest, but she's on the more deal hacker, travel hacking points. She likes to maximize the deal and find the best way to do it, which her mind works in a little different way than mine does. If I want to buy something, I historically would have just bought it. I wouldn't have thought twice. And she's like, did you check Rakuten and see if you can get 3 % cash back before you did it?

33:04And I was like, no. But she will every single time. And I think that's hugely valuable. Yeah, we definitely do that for big purchases. Is it worthwhile to sign up for a new credit card if you know you have some big expenses coming up? just to get that bonus and get that cash back. But I like that idea of the shared money value. It's got to get on the same page here. It's really, really tough if one person is a spender and one person is a saver. Like, you're just gonna be butting heads. Like, why, what do we try to accomplish here? Our kids are similar age. Mine are eight and six. And I think you're a couple of years ahead of me.

33:37But like, what are the key financial lessons you hope that they're picking up on? Well, we've always shared that like, if our kids are good people and they're good with money, like they will be successful in life. Really, we want to teach him the same kind of mindsets of how to save. My son is now at the age, he's 10. He's like, how do we start investing? Like what is investing and things like that. And so we're showing him that kind of thing. And then a lot of it's like money conversations like for my younger daughter, it's like, she's like, can I have$5 in Robux or something? And I was like, well, the other day we had this conversation like, do you really want to like$5 in Robux and like making her spend her own money?

34:15I'm like, you could have this Or next time your mom goes to Target, you could buy a shirt with that. And she was like, what? Oh, yeah, shirts are the same price as this. And really helping them understand the value. And it's like, you could have a shirt that you would wear for a long, long time. Or you have this thing in Robux that you're going to stop caring about in 20 minutes. And then she really paused and was like, okay, I'm not going to buy the Robux. I'm going to keep my money. And it's like, okay. But helping them understand that there is a finite amount of resources, even when you're wealthy.

34:44and like how you devote that really can, you can't just spend it all on everything. What does Paula Pant say? I feel like you can afford anything. You can't afford everything. And I really want to make sure that they understand that as well. Because like, it is easy for us to just give our kids everything. It is like a lot of their wants and needs aren't a lot, but like, I think it's important for us to like kind of like reign in that lesson a little bit and say like, hey, let's think about this a little bit. Yeah, it's a big fear of mine to raise entitled brats. And like, so every day, like these like little micro teaching moments.

35:15And yesterday my son had to go to the dentist and was like, okay, that's kind of a, nobody likes doing that. You had to get a painful filling procedure done. So we'll go to Jamba Juice afterwards. And it was kind of a proud moment because he's like, dang, it was like a$10 smoothie or something. He's like, that's pretty expensive. You're like, yeah, thank you for appreciating that. That's pretty expensive for a smoothie. These little micro moments, really grateful to have been raised similarly. Like just because you can't afford something doesn't mean you're going to get it. And you're going to have to work for that stuff.

35:44I agree. And it's like now my son's getting a little older too. It's like trying to instill a little bit of work ethic. I plan on making sure that they go get jobs at 15 at like a real place, like a Walmart, Target, Chick-fil-A, fast food. Like I think all those things are very important. My biggest fear as a parent is raising failure to launch children is like literally like my biggest fear. Like I felt bad. My wife's like, you know, it really sucks because like if we do it right as parents, they leave and that kind of sucks. Right. But like, if we do it wrong as parents, they're sucky and they never leave.

36:18Pick your poison. Yeah. Pick your poison. It sucks. It's like you're working so hard and it's like, they're going to leave. But like, that also is the goal. Like I do want them to be like empowered, know what to do, have some motivation to go out and do things. Yeah. The motivation is super important. There's a line, I'll probably butcher the backstory, but one of Shaq's daughters was coming up, but daddy, we're rich. He's like, time out. I'm rich. We're not rich. I'm rich. It was like, yeah, you're going to have to go out into the world and figure out how to earn this. There was another, this was Christopher from refined by fire.

36:52And he was describing giving his kids allowances. And he's like, you just, you have to be okay with just lighting the$20 on fire every month or whatever it is, because you're hoping that they learn these$20 mistakes so they don't make the$20 ,000 mistakes. And it's like, it's sometimes painful to watch what they want to spend it on, but they use it set up some guidelines around what that is going to be in different spending buckets and saving buckets. But just you got to be prepared for that. Give them some practice with money in low consequential amounts so they don't make bigger mistakes later on.

37:25All right, that was rule number five. You need to marry smart. And then we got derailed talking about kids and stuff. Number six is you need to minimize your taxes. This is our single biggest annual expense. I imagine it is for you too, probably even worse being in California, but any strategies, advice on this front? Yeah. So again, it all depends on your level and where you're at, but even starting off, it's like, let's look at things that can save us taxes, put money in your 401k, 403b, put money in an IRA, put money in a health spending account. These are accounts that will grow your wealth going back to our earlier rules, but they also save you on taxes and the money grows tax deferred.

38:02If you have a business or you're starting to earn a little bit more money, it can make sense to pay a tax preparer, not necessarily for the tax preparation, but in the summertime or in the fall, get some actual advice. Understand how our tax system works because the IRS literally has like 30 ,000 pages of making it hard for you to understand how it works because they're trying to maximize their revenue. But you have to know the rules of the game. Educate yourself, understand how it works, potentially pay for professional advice. Again, a lot of people mix tax preparation with tax advice, and they're two different things.

38:38And a tax preparer is super busy in January to April, and they're not going to take the time to be like, hey, let's have an hour sit down and talk about this. And at that point, it might be too late to do anything for the previous year anyways. Exactly. But that's what you do with a tax preparer or a tax professional in the summer or fall, and then you get some advice and then maybe you can set yourself up for next year. The good news is as a side hustler, as a small business owner, the world of deductions really opens up to you. And so it's kind of a matter of being diligent about tracking those expenses, tracking your mileage, tracking your computer, and all sorts of business related expenses, just being organized about that can really help you save there.

39:19And then the other thing that was kind of a little bit of a hack for me getting started was doing the LLC incorporation, which on its own, not going to save you any money because it's a pass through entity, but choosing the S corp election where you pay yourself a salary and then the rest of the business earnings flow through to you anyways, but you don't have to pay self-employment taxes on. So I'm like, talk to your accountant. There's gonna be some differing levers to pull on what makes sense there, but huge, huge annual expense on the tax front. So make sure you're doing everything you can to minimize those.

39:50Definitely. And then there's more obscure levers too, but you said business ownership is huge. Real estate ownership has the potential for it as well. But even if you have a W-2 job, don't dismiss these tax-deferred accounts and ways that you can save for yourself as well. Don't dismiss the value of that IRA when you're younger and you put your money in that. It doesn't seem like a lot, that five, six thousand bucks that you can put it every year, but it saves you a little bit in taxes, but that money can grow for you over all the years so that you get to take it out in the future, potentially with less tax consequences.

40:23And that's the hope. All right, that's rule number six, minimize your taxes. We've got more rules to get rich and build a wealth with Robert right after this. Did you know there's a disease running rampant alongside hustlers and new entrepreneurs? It's called superhero syndrome. Symptoms include a feeling like you got to do everything yourself, thinking you're the only one who can do it right, and struggling to let go of certain tasks. Does that sound familiar to anyone? But the good news is there is a cure. Our sponsor Indeed can help you find the best candidates for the roles you need to fill and find them fast.

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41:32Just go to indeed.com slash sidehustleshow right now and support the show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash sidehustleshow. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring. Indeed is all you need. Rule number seven is insure yourself and protect your family. Go ahead on this one. It's not a sexy rule. This isn't a fun one, but you do need to protect your family, especially as you start having kids and a spouse. You need to have all that insurance locked in. Health insurance, of course, but life insurance, potentially likely short-term disability insurance. And look at these products to insure yourself because you might have people to depend on you.

42:14And I want to put an asterisk here that I am not talking about using insurance products as an investment. These are literally as insurance products to insure it if something were to happen to you. And the reason this came about is I've had a couple people I've known, and oh my gosh, I'm 39. And in the last year, I've gone to two funerals for people under 45. These people have families and kids, and weird things happen. One person had colon cancer, and one person got in an accident, fell off a ladder. like weird things can happen to you. And you don't believe you. Yeah, life is short. That's really scary.

42:50It's really scary, right? And you never want to think about it, but like you can go buy a term life insurance policy these days for like 20 bucks a month, like super cheap for like a million dollars. If you're healthy, go get the insurance because there's nothing worse than like leaving family with potentially young kids. Like not only have they lost you, but like what's going to happen to them financially? Yeah, I remember this old like Jeff Foxworthy bit. He's like, yeah, you want to make sure you're going to get enough life insurance to make sure your family's covered, but not so much that you have a bounty on your head.

43:21And I was like, it makes me chuckle when I think about life insurance. We may even have a ladder as a sponsor on this episode. I've got a recent insurance experience. So first I'm really dealing with car insurance as an adult driver. So we're coming back from skiing. This is a couple of months ago. It's dusk. There's this semi truck in front of us and out from underneath the semi is an object in the center of the lane. and you're like oh is that a chunk of snow is that a plastic bag by the time you realize it was a pretty good size rock boulder like the car is already going over it like oh man oh and everybody like okay everybody okay the car is still operable like we continue our drive home but as we pull into the driveway you can definitely hear like part of the undercarriage just like scraping on the bottom and we're like oh this is not gonna be good this is not gonna be good.

44:09And it just goes back and forth with, oh, we can fix it. And they end up totaling the car over this. And now we're going back because they're like, well, we owe you the cash value of the vehicle. And of course that's lower than what you'd like it to be. You're like 40 years old. This is my first experience like ever buying a new car. And this is what happens like a year into owning it. We're like, really? This was just a slap in the face. Like go back to your frugal habits and just buy used because it's just like, we're taking such a huge bath on that. But. But you take more of a bath without the insurance too.

44:39Could have been worse. Could have been worse. You know, could have had to pay for it completely out of pocket. So the insurance wasn't an amazing experience, but was glad to have it. They paid for a rental car for a little while. It's still a challenge. What do you do on the health insurance side as a self-employed professional or business owner? So it's funny because that was one of the scariest questions before making the leap to first like being self-employed. It's like, what are we going to do for health insurance? And it's like a common one. And honestly, we just went to the Covered California ACA Exchange and bought a health insurance policy.

45:09My wife and I joke that it is not health insurance, it's bankruptcy insurance, because we have the privilege of paying$1 ,500 a month for our family of four. And that is for a high deductible plan. So every time we go to the doctor, we pay out of pocket until like, I think$12 ,000 too. Yeah. So you pay your premium every month. So$18 ,000 a year. and you're going to pay another$12 ,000 before you see any benefit from this plan. Yeah, and granted, the benefit is that my cash pay price is a negotiated cash pay price. That's so nice of them. It's so nice of them. But on the flip side, it does protect you if you are in a catastrophic, where you're really getting the benefit of this insurance is, theoretically, if you had a really bad medical problem, right?

45:51And then millions of dollars in bills. But it really sucks on the day-to-day. We're a healthy family. knock on wood and like we pay a lot for not much. Yeah, that's unfortunately the reality of the situation there. That's rule number seven, protect yourself with insurance. And this is whether it's insurance or whether it's starting a business, it's like it's protecting the downside, right? As entrepreneurs, we're going to swing for the upside, but we're going to protect our downside. And that's really all insurance is like in case things go bad. I just want to be protected and make sure I'm not going to be in a financial hardship as a result of that.

46:27It makes sense to pay a little bit every month, like in my case, to prevent having to essentially eat the loss of an entire car. But that's rule number seven. Rule number eight, you need to take care of yourself first. What's going on with this one? Yeah. So I always think of this one is like when you're on the airplane and they have to like put your oxygen mask on yourself first before you help your kids. Because if you pass out, you're useless to everybody. You're not going to be able to help your kids. So again, when it comes to building wealth, dealing with your family, you got to make sure that you're on solid ground first.

46:58So this could be financially, emotionally, physically, take care of yourself first, because if you get yourself in a financial problem, you're just going to burden your family. If you get yourself because you didn't take care of yourself physically and you're ill, you're not going to be able to work. You're not gonna be able to earn that money. You're not gonna be able to take care of your family. So you got to take care of yourself first, even when it's hard to do, like, just remember that, like, gotta take care of yourself. And if you let yourself fall off, it spirals. Yeah. What's the James Clear thing?

47:27Like, don't miss two days in a row. Get back on that horse. It's okay to miss one, but if you screw up that habit a second day, like, like you said, slippery slope. Slippery slope. I think you're onto something here that self-care isn't selfish, right? You've got to show up as your best self. You're like eating well, exercising for me, like prioritizing that workout first thing in the morning is kind of like the lead domino for a positive day. I was in Colorado for a mastermind event and we got wrecked by the altitude. Like we were up at like 11 ,000 feet in Breckenridge and was worthless. It was like the worst hangover of your life, except without the fun part before.

48:03It was like, made me really, really aware. Like if you don't feel well, you're not going to perform well. And just it's something, and maybe hopefully your experience isn't that extreme, but take care of yourself first as a rule. And number eight, rule number nine, surround yourself with people better than you. Talk to me about this one. There's this cliche out there, like what you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. And like, when I was like 18 years old, like I was like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. But like now looking back on it from 39. It's like, holy crap, you really are a kind of a sum of the people around you.

48:39And what this means is like, whether or not you believe it, the people around you have an influence on you. They're either going to like motivate you, they're going to give you ideas, or they could be holding you back. And this includes family. This includes close friends. This includes co-workers. This includes people in organizations that you spend time with, whether that's church or volunteering or whatever, who you spend a lot of time with, like they are all rubbing off on you. You're going to pick up words they say and ideas they say. You're going to see their habits. You might mimic them.

49:11You might take some of them. And that could be good or bad. Yeah, it goes both ways. Yeah. It goes both ways. As you mature, I really, really, really strongly think you need to surround yourself with people that are better than you as much as you can. And what I mean by this is at work, aspirationally. Try to find the people above you, people that are better with their money, people that are doing things that you want to do, people that are motivating and inspiring to you. They're not holding you back or criticizing you, asking those sarcastic questions like, why are you doing that or whatnot?

49:43All those things cut at you and you might not feel it in the moment, but they all build. It can either hold you back or it could be this massive spring board that pushes you forward. Was there a time where you found yourself with the wrong circle of friends? I did have some wrong friends, especially in high school. But like, I actually am kind of glad I did at the same time because I had enough good stuff. Like I was working and I was doing things, but it's like, I kind of learned what not to do as well. And I was like, I don't really want to do that. I want to go do other things. But it really took me a long time.

50:14Like I would tell you throughout my college experience, I did not find great people to surround myself with. I saw people at my work because I was working the management. I was like, Oh, I kind of like that. But my college cohort, not so much. And it wasn't until later in life when at work, I found some mentors and some people that were really great at leadership. And so I learned a lot from watching, observing. I had a great boss for a long time that taught me a lot of things. And then from side hustling and connecting with people like you and other people in this community that I can learn a lot, I watch, it taught me.

50:46And then now you just continue to perpetuate and push forward as well. So it took a long time. It's not like one day I got rid of all my other friends and found a bunch of new people to hang out with, like you kind of just learn as you go. I'm with you. It's like an overused quote, but it's overused for a reason, right? You know, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. There's something to that and trying to elevate your peer group and hopefully not drag down the peer group of the people that you're hanging out with. It's like, well, shoot, they said rule number nine was to hang out with people better than you.

51:13And here's this bottom feeder coming in and trying to join our little circle here in the online space or like the entrepreneurial space. Like I didn't have a great network locally. And so I had to go online for that. And the podcast was instrumental in building that network, but it's showing up at events, it's organizing masterminds, it's going to meetups, it's maybe even investing in like a coaching or community, but like, it's super, super powerful to be in the room with other people who have similar goals and aspirations are kind of going through the same struggles. Cause it's, and I remember there was a couple of years, like FinCon was in Florida or something like, dude, I really don't want to go to Florida.

51:54Like so far, I like to travel, to get there and everything. Within 10 minutes of walking in the lobby, I'm like, I'm so glad I'm here. Like, these are my people. It was just this great feeling of being surrounded and supported by people who kind of get what you're working on or working through. I'm with you on this. Any tactics that you found effective in finding mentors either at work or in business? Yeah. I mean, honestly, don't dismiss the work mentors. Like I said, some of the best leadership skills I learned was observation of really great leaders. I also had some really crappy bosses and really crappy people I worked with.

52:30But seeing how good people handled that, too, was fascinating to me. Because let's be honest, you're going to encounter people that you do not jive with, that are not doing things you agree with. But then watch how really great leaders and great people interact with them. Mind-blowing. I would also say, I think when I was younger, I always viewed mentorship as some formal thing. Like, Nick, will you be my mentor? Yeah, totally. You bow down as a thing. But what I've learned over time is mentorship can also just be visual from afar. You like how someone operates, and you watch, and you observe, and you study how they do it.

53:08They don't even have to know you. They're a mentor to you, potentially. You can learn a lot from observation and how they handle situations. So don't dismiss work. You nailed it with online. I think we live in this cool day and age where the internet is like, there's so much out there. My first online mentorships were in forums, like old school forums about blogging and content creation. That's how long Robert has been doing this, by the way. Forums were still a thing. They're back. I feel like forums are full on back today. The world just comes full circle. But forums were huge. And then going to in-person events was really the next crux.

53:43Going to a FinCon. walking in and at the registration table meeting. I met, my first FinCon I ever met was Jim Dahl from the White Coat Investor. And I didn't know who he was. I didn't know what he looked like. He saw my badge. I saw his badge. And we're like, oh my gosh, I followed your stuff online. And he's like, I followed your stuff online. And then you start chatting about it. And it's really a huge kind of thing to go do this. It takes a big leap. I remember, I didn't go to two FinCons because I couldn't get over myself. I was like, why would anyone go to an in-person blogger conference?

54:17This is like the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. And then I was on social media and I was like, man, I should have gone. That looks so cool. And then I did it to myself again the second year. And I was like, I just can't do it. And then I was like, I'm just finally got a fire lit under me. It's like, you just got to go and do it. I'm so glad I did. Yeah. Now my wife, she just knows it's always on the calendar. She's like, go have fun with your internet friends. It'll be fine. but surrounding yourself with people better than you. That's rule number nine. Bring it home for us with rule number 10.

54:47Number 10 is it's okay to go slow. And we touched on this at the beginning, but like, you're like, do you want to like achieve all these things by 30? But like, you're going to live to 80. It's okay to maybe coastify. It's okay to like build wealth slowly. And I think especially for younger listeners and viewers and people, they want the job after this job or they want the thing after this thing. It's like live, experience what you have and just keep putting away a little bit and it'll compound, it'll grow. But like it's very rare to have wealth come overnight. It's very rare to achieve all your life goals overnight.

55:23And then, you know, it's interesting. People that do achieve it early on, a lot of them get like super depressed too because like I did everything I was set out to achieve to. And then it's like, now what? And it's like, yeah, because you have a whole life. You got a whole life to live. We all have seasons of life. Enjoy the season of life you're in. realize that it's okay to take some time, go slow, just keep working away. Use the rules as a guide, use what we're talking about as a guide, chip away at it. But slow is so frustrating. Come on. It's like, I get that this is okay. It's going to be there tomorrow.

55:55Breathe through it. It takes longer than you want it to. It does. There's the perpetual internet meme of how people think building a business is, and it's this perfect chart. And then it's how it actually is, and it's this jagged, rough, ups and downs and curves. It's true. That's how it is. You've got to get this into perspective. You've got to put the perspective on everything because you can get super frustrated when it's a down year in the stock market and you've built this IRA and it's down. You're like, why am I even doing this? You might be frustrated at your job too. You've got to have some perspective though.

56:31It doesn't really happen by accident. It's going to take longer than you want it to as a general rule. and that was something I learned like my very first website development project the guys are like all right it'll be done in three months and this is what it's going to be it's like probably eight months later like we finally had a working version that could go out to the public longer than you wanted to but still faster than most faster than the people who are sitting on the sidelines faster than the people who aren't doing it with intention and something I think about all the time it's like the idea of one percent better and compound gains and like sticking with the thing in trying to improve myself and improve the business, making these little tweaks.

57:08And it seems slow in the moment, but he zoom out and he say, well, look how far I've come. And I think you'll, if you've been in the game for five, 10, 20 years, you can really look in that rear view. They look how far I've come and recognize that. What's the gap in the game book? Most people live in the gap. Like, oh, this is where I want to be. I'm not there yet. It's like, no, no, no. Recognize the game. Look at where you were. I have some gratitude in that. Well, and I think too, we can kind of close on this, but the average millionaire in the United States is 62 years old. So take what you will of that stat, but that's the 50 % mark, right?

57:4162. Yeah. Side hustle show listeners, they're going to beat that average. Heck yeah. Go for it, right? But that's the average. So beat the average, of course, or aspire to beat the average and you'll still end up much better off than most Americans. that's right whatever aim for the moon and you'll still land on the stars or something yeah those are our 10 rules inspired by the college investor.com we'll link up the full article over there that was rule number one you have to earn it number two you have to save until it hurts number three optimize your spending rule number four put your money to work for you how do i get paid over and over again from work i do once rule number five marry smart number six minimize your taxes.

58:24Number seven, insure yourself, protect your family, protect against those downside risks. Number eight, take care of yourself. Remember self-care isn't selfish. Number nine, surround yourself with people better than you. Level up on that front. And number 10, it's okay to go slow. I have a little patience in there. It's something I struggle with constantly. What's the latest with the college investor? You guys doing okay? Helpful content updates. I know the Google world is throwing a lot of people for a loop these days. It is, you know, we're not down. We're not up. We are surviving. So I know I've seen a lot of horror stories of people getting wiped out in Googleville, but no, you know, we're still doing good and we're seeing some uptick.

59:02You know, where we're really seeing a lot of the growth and engagement these days is on the socials, right? So Facebook groups are really crushing it lately. I'm seeing a lot of the Reddit stuff, of course, and the video stuff still doing really well. The TikToks, the YouTube, the short format on YouTube as well. So, you know, if Google's not going to give people what they want, people are still going to go find the content out there that they want, and they're just going to find another platform. So my goal is to figure out where they're at and let's meet them where they are and hopefully educate, engage, and teach them what they need to know.

59:33Okay. Yeah. So Google is saying, well, we're going to prioritize Reddit. So you're saying, well, I'm going to go onto Reddit. Like what kind of stuff are you posting over there? What's the strategy? I've been a Redditor for years. Reddit is my own personal, probably number one platform. And so this isn't new or foreign to me. But just like everything else, go be helpful, go engage, go answer questions. Don't spam. It's really funny because Reddit is also a terrible place. And I also think it's a terrible, they just went public as we recorded this. And I think they're going to do terribly as a publicly traded company.

1:00:05I know people are all excited about them. The reason is, is like, for example, I'm a personal finance person. I've been talking about this thing for 15 years now. I know more about student loans and paying for college than most people ever should. And I've been banned from the personal finance subreddit because my Reddit profile says I'm the founder of The College Investor. I have never posted a link. I have never promoted myself. I just go in there and I was answering people's questions and a moderator said, because you run The College Investor, you cannot post in our subreddit. That's the problem with Reddit.

1:00:40I'm bringing a little experience to the game here, yeah. And I never self-promoted. I never dropped a link. I never did anything. I literally would just answer people's questions and be helpful. But that's the problem is you get moderators like that. And because it's a self-directed community, it doesn't work. But then there's plenty of other ones. I'm on the student loan forums. I'm a moderator on different ones. I have my own. You answer it. You're helpful. People figure it out. Because that's what Reddit's about. Now, it's really hard, though, if you are a content creator and you want people to get off of Reddit to get to something else, like that's a stretch.

1:01:15You're not going to be able to do that very well. So you're looking at it more as like a brand building, like reputation building. So hopefully when it comes time to pick that high yield savings account or student loan refi thing, like they're going to seek you out and go through your site or go through your link. Yeah, hopefully. Or I'm also looking at what other people are saying about me on there, too. So if you have a brand, go to the search bar on Reddit, drop your URL and see if people have already shared your content. Engage, upvote it, promote your own stuff that other people have shared.

1:01:43But this is also why Facebook groups have come full circle for me. They were dead for a lot of years. And I would say in the last six months, Facebook groups are rolling on all four cylinders again, surprisingly. Seeing a lot of community discussions, a lot of engagement. And Facebook's much easier to put links and different things to get people to your tools and resources. This is inside your own group or this is inside other student loan type of groups? My groups and other groups, yeah. Okay, cool. So just kind of keeping an eye on what conversations or what questions are being asked? Exactly.

1:02:17And then engaging with those. Because again, I think we all know that Google search results are kind of crappy lately. I think Americans are relying less on it. They're not asking the questions there because people are not getting the results they want and the answers they want. And so they're going to the Reddits, to the Facebook groups, to the other places to ask the same questions that historically would have been a search query. And now they know that they're not necessarily getting the answer to the search query that they want. So you've got to go figure out what it is. Because people are not going to stop asking questions.

1:02:48And people are not going to stop consuming content. And people are not going to stop doing this stuff. But how they do it is the big changing. And it'll be interesting to see what happens. And I think video is doing well, too. So the TikToks and the video is great for that. That's right. You got to meet the people where they are. May not be Google forever. Thecollegeinvestor.com. Robert, thanks so much for joining me again. We'll link up the full article that inspired this conversation. If you're wondering what to listen to next and you're interested in online business, you want more Robert in your life.

1:03:19We've got a whole series. Starts at episode 10, 2013, episode 10, at which point he was making$3 ,000 a month as a side hustle from his job at Target. it. By the time we hit 166, episode 166, he's up to 10 grand a month, still a side hustle. And then in the most recent update, we took a lot of years off in the middle there. By that time, solid seven figure online media business in episode 482. Really, really cool blogging online business journey. Like you said, 15 years in the making. You can find all those episodes in your archives of your podcast app of choice. Hopefully the feed goes back that far.

1:03:55You're get down to episode 10 and 166. But if not, you can stream or you can listen to those directly on the website. I'll link those up in the show notes for you as well. And maybe online business isn't your thing. That's okay. There are other side hustles that might excite you more. And I'll tell you what, you can build a personalized playlist of the side hustle show episodes that are going to be most relevant to you. We've literally got hundreds of examples and case studies to choose from. So how this works is you go to hustle.show, you answer a few short multiple choice questions, and then it'll build you a custom list of the episodes based on your answers.

1:04:29You can add those to your device. You can learn from all our awesome guests and go make some more money. That's at hustle.show. Big thanks to Robert for sharing his insight once again. Number four, for Peter on the show. Thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. You can hit up sidehustlenation.com slash deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. And thanks for supporting the advertisers that support the show. That's it for me. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you're finding value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend.

1:05:00So do me a solid, do Robert a solid, fire off a text message or two, say, hey, check this out. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen. And I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.