There are many ways to start your freelance career. Upwork and Fiverr are two popular platforms that allows you to connect with clients and showcase your skills.

Six figure freelancers have used these platforms to find high-paying clients and grow their businesses. If you’re ready to start freelancing on Upwork and grow your business to six figures, follow these simple tips and you’ll be on your way to success.

Starting Your Career As A Freelancer at Upwork / Fiverr

3 ways you can get paid as a freelancer

1. The most common arrangement is hourly-based freelancing, where the freelancer is paid an hourly rate for the work they complete. This arrangement is typically used for small projects or tasks that can be accomplished at an hourly rate per day.
2. Another typical arrangement is project-based freelancing, where the freelancer is paid a lump sum to complete a specific project. It’s common to utilize this kind of arrangement for larger projects that require more time and effort to complete.
3. Finally, there is also part-time freelancing, where the freelancer works for a client for shorter hours in the day. This type of arrangement is often used when a client only needs the freelancer’s services on an occasional or as-needed basis.

Freelancers can negotiate other arrangements with their clients, depending on their specific needs and preferences.

Things You Should Consider Before Deciding To Become A Freelancer

• Patience & Grit 

One of the most challenging things can be finding your first client. This can be especially true if you’re starting and don’t have much experience.

However, you can do a few things to increase your chances of landing that first client. First, you can look at job boards matching your pay rate. This will help you to find clients who are already interested in working with someone at your price point.

Second, you can look at profiles of potential clients and see if they’ve recently invited anyone for an interview. If they have, it’s possible they may be interested in working with you as well.

But keep in mind that it can take some time to land your first client. If you are patient and put in the effort, eventually, you’ll be successful.

• Saying No is a Virtue. But when you start up, Say Yes, then figure it out. In the end, it will eventually pay off

Freelancing can be a great way to get started in your career. It can be a flexible and fun way to work, and it can also be a great way to build your portfolio and get some experience under your belt.

However, freelancing can also be a bit overwhelming, especially if you’re not used to working independently.

One of the most important things you can do when you’re starting is to say yes to projects, even if you are unsure how to do them. It may seem like a scary prospect, but it’s the best way to learn and grow as a freelancer.

You will never know what you are capable of until you try, and you might be surprised at what you can accomplish.

So, when someone asks you to take on a project, say yes, figure it out, and in the end, it will all pay off.

• Why consider Google and YouTube to sharpen your skills

It’s more crucial than ever in the modern world to be proficient in many skills. Gone are the days when someone could get by only knowing how to do one thing.

Nowadays, you need to know how to do at least a few things to get ahead. And if you want to really excel, you need to be able to do a lot of things.

That’s why it’s so important to learn as much as you can. The more you know, the better equipped you’ll be to handle whatever comes your way.

Employers are looking for individuals who have a diverse skill set that they can bring to the table. And among the most effective methods for honing your skills is using Google and YouTube.

No longer are these platforms just for leisurely activities; they can also be powerful tools for learning. For example, if you’re struggling to learn a new skill on your own, chances are there’s a tutorial on YouTube that can help you out.

And if you need to brush up on something, a quick Google search can point you in the right direction. So don’t be reluctant to utilize these tools to your advantage.

After all, the better you are equipped with various skills, the better your chances of freelancing success.

• As a freelancer, don’t do it for free. Know your value but don’t be afraid to start at a lower rate

Knowing your worth is crucial for freelancers. And not undervalue your skills. However, this doesn’t mean that you should always charge top dollar.

When starting, it’s often best to lower your rates to attract clients and build your portfolio. Then, once you’ve established yourself, you can gradually increase your prices.

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Additionally, keep in mind that not all clients are equal. Some may be more demanding or have higher expectations, so it’s important to factor this into your pricing. Knowing your place and being willing to start lower can avoid undervaluing your skills and position yourself as a successful freelancer.

• Problems will come your way

As a freelancer, you will have a fair share of problems. You will deal with late payments, uncooperative clients, and unexpected changes in scope. And each time, you have to find a way to solve the problem.

Occasionally, this entails having a challenging talk with a client. Other times, it means accepting that you won’t be able to meet your original deadline. But no matter the problem, always try to find a solution. Because if you don’t, you will risk losing customers and potential income.

If you find yourself facing a problem, don’t automatically reach for the “give up” sign. Take a look around and see if there might be a way to solve it instead. Look at the situation from a different perspective.

With a fresh perspective, you may just find the solution you’ve been looking for.

• Direct Clients Will Be Good For Your Business
  

Working directly with clients is one of the best ways to increase your income. This can be done by asking for referrals from your current clients or building a network with potential clients.

When working with clients directly, you can negotiate your rates and terms, which can significantly increase earnings.

In addition, working directly with clients can help you build long-term relationships that provide stability and security in your freelance career.

So, if you want to make more money as a freelancer, the next step is to go out from the platform and work directly with clients.

Setting Sail On Uncharted Waters: Why Venturing Into New Territory Can Be Good For Business

After you get your first client, the hustle does not stop. It’s always a balancing act when you are a freelancer. On the one hand, you’re constantly searching for new clients to keep the work flowing.

But, on the other hand, you need to keep your current clients happy, so they’ll continue working with you. It can be a lot of pressure, but it’s the beauty of a freelance job and it will all be worth it when you have a steady stream of clients.

7 Ways to Help Your Freelance Business Grow

It can be easy for freelancers to get bogged down in the day-to-day tasks. Trying to keep up with work, manage expenses, and find new clients can be overwhelming. Sometimes it feels like there’s just not enough time in the day.

Alternatively, if you want your freelance business to grow, it’s important to take a step back and focus on the big picture. Here are seven ways to help your freelance business grow:

1. Invest in marketing. Make sure you are spending time and money on marketing your business. Among them are things like developing a website, starting a blog, or investing in online advertising.
2. Build a strong network. Get connected with other freelancers and industry professionals. Attend events and join online communities related to your field.
3. Stay up to date. Keep your skills sharp by taking courses and reading industry news. It will benefit you in addition to potential clients, but it will also help you keep up with the changes in your industry.
   

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4. Offer value-added services. Freelancers who offer additional services beyond their core offerings are more likely to succeed. Think about what else you can offer your clients that will add value to their project.
5. Be responsive. When a potential client reaches out, be sure to respond promptly. This shows that you are professional and organized, and it can make the difference between winning and losing a project bid.
6. Podcasts to build your network and expand your freelancing business. Guesting on other people’s podcasts is a great way to expand your network. You can do cross guesting and promote each other’s podcasts, which will blend two social worlds. It’s a mutual way to have your name out there. You can get your name out there by guesting on other people’s podcasts and expanding your Freelancer business. This is a great way to build your Freelancer business and get more direct clients.
7. Focus on quality over quantity. When bidding on projects, always put quality first! It’s better to land fewer projects that you can execute flawlessly than to try to take on too much work and end up disappointing clients with subpar results.

Hitting A Ceiling As A Freelancer: How To Know When It’s Time To Expand

One of the most common challenges faced by freelancers is what’s known as the “ceiling effect.” This refers to the point at which a freelancer finds themselves unable to increase their rates further without losing business.

When this happens, it’s often necessary to expand to continue growing. This may involve hiring other freelancers to help with some workloads or even forming a more traditional business structure. However, it’s essential to ensure that any expansion is done carefully and deliberately to avoid becoming bogged down by unnecessary overhead.

Nevertheless, with some planning, hitting the ceiling as a freelancer can be an opportunity to take your business to the next level.

Where To Find Derrick Michaud

Website : shelbyrowproductions.com (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn pages can be found on website)
Free 15 Consultation for any questions about starting podcast.

Facebook Group : Podcasting for Creators and Producers

Podcast : Podlogix

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DerrickMichaudChannel

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The Rise of Podcasting for Side Hustle Nation

A side hustle is a fantastic way to make extra money on top of having a job. The great thing about side hustles is that there are MANY different ways you can make money with a side hustle. PLUS, you can have multiple side hustles along side your full time job.

Nick Loper of Side Hustle Nation Podcast is here to help us understand everything we need to know about Side Hustles and how we can be super successful to make lots of money doing a side hustle.

Essential Keys to Side Hustles 

Knowing your competition is essential if you want to succeed with a side hustle. You must be able to stand out from the crowd because many individuals have the same idea as you.

One way to do this is by seeing the need and filling it. If something is missing in the market, that’s your opportunity.

Remember that nothing is ever simple, and the time is never ideal. It takes years to build a successful business, so don’t give up if things get tough.

Your Passion Could be Your Side Hustle

If you’re passionate about something, likely somebody else is too. Side hustles are a great way to turn your passions into profit. But how do you know if your passion is profitable?

First, consider what people ask you for help with. For example, if you regularly give advice or input on a specific topic, others would likely be willing to pay for your expertise.

Second, think about what excites you. What are the topics that you can never get tired of talking about? When you’re genuinely passionate about something, it shows – and people are willing to pay for that enthusiasm.

Competence Instead of Passion

There’s no doubt that passion is essential. Having a true passion for something can help to drive you to achieve great things. It can also make the journey more enjoyable.

But competence has a lot to offer as well. Competence is what allows you to turn your passion into a career. It’s what will enable you to get paid for your work. And it’s what allows you to achieve long-term success.

So which is more important? Competence or passion? The answer may depend on what you’re looking for in life. Passion is probably more important if you’re looking for enjoyment. But if you’re looking to build a career and achieve long-term success, then Competence is key.

Podcasting and Having Your Own Brand and Website

Podcasts are a fantastic method to interact with people and ask them to contribute their knowledge and experience on a particular subject.

Your podcasts might gain a following and draw in more listeners if you have a strong brand and website. Having your platform is a great way to connect with people who may be interested in your products or services.

By featuring guest experts on your podcast, you can reach a wider audience and provide valuable information to potential customers.

In addition, by having your website, you can control the advertising on your podcast and ensure that only relevant ads are played for your listeners.

This can help build trust with your audience and attract more listeners.

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Should You Consider Podcasting?

It’s understandable why podcasts have quickly grown to become one of the most well-liked entertainment mediums. They provide a handy way to absorb content and cover almost any subject imaginable.

Whether you’re interested in true crime or comedy, there’s a podcast for you. And best of all, podcasts are usually free to listen to.

However, podcasts can also be a great way to build your brand or promote your business. You can share your message with a large audience by starting a podcast.

Additionally, if you create top-notch content, you can quickly amass a following of devoted listeners.

Podcasts are undoubtedly a creative option to explore if you’re searching for a means to promote your brand.

Making Money Through Podcasts

Podcasting is a great way to make some extra money on the side. It’s also a great way to build up your brand and grow your audience.

But how can podcasting genuinely bring in money? Especially when sometimes your listeners might not be enough.

1.  Sponsorships. You can approach businesses and propose to highlight their goods or services on your podcast. Usually, this is done in return for payment.
   
2. Another way to make money from podcasting is through affiliate offers. This involves promoting products or services that you use and love. Then, if someone listens to your podcast, clicks on your affiliate link, and makes a purchase, you’ll earn a commission.
   
3. Finally, you can also make money from side hustles. This could involve selling products you’ve created yourself to offering consulting services. Podcasting is an excellent venue to advertise your ability or experience if you have something that people are willing to pay you for.

Frugality With Time and Money in Podcasting

Building Your Team

As a podcaster, you know that time is money. Every minute you spend on your show is an investment of your time and money. That’s why it’s crucial to be efficient with your time and to delegate tasks whenever possible.

One way to be more efficient with your time is to hire somebody to do the editing for you. This will free up your time to focus on other aspects of your show.

You may also consider hiring a virtual assistant to help with administrative tasks. This will again free up your time to focus on the most important things—more time for your family.

 This will save you both time and money in the long run.

10 Tips for Recording a Professional-Sounding Podcast on a Budget

As the popularity of podcasts continues to grow, more and more people are looking to get in on the action.

However, producing a high-quality podcast can significantly invest time and money. If you’re working on a tight budget, don’t despair – there are still plenty of ways to produce a professional-sounding podcast. Here are ten tips to help you get started:

1. Choose the right microphone. When it comes to recording audio, quality is king. Investing in a good quality microphone will make a big difference in the overall sound of your podcast. If you’re on a tight budget, consider investing in a USB microphone – they offer superb quality at an affordable price.
2. Find a quiet location. Ambient noise can ruin even the best recording, so finding a quiet spot to record in is essential. If possible, try to find a room with good acoustics – this will further improve the sound quality of your recordings.
3. Use headphones. In addition to helping you hear your voice clearly, headphones can also help reduce background noise in your recordings. Be sure to use comfortable headphones that won’t slip off during recording sessions.
4. Use pop filters and windscreens. Pop filters help reduce plosives – those annoying little bursts of air that can ruin otherwise perfect recordings. Windscreens help reduce wind noise when recording outdoors or in drafty rooms.
   
   

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5. Invest in sound editing software. A decent editing program can make all the difference when creating a professional-sounding podcast episode. But, again, many affordable options are available – research and find one that fits your needs and budget.
6. Learn the basics of sound editing. Even if you’re using a simple editing program, knowing the basics of sound editing is helpful before you start working on your podcast episodes. This will enable you to ensure your recordings sound their best before releasing them to the world.
7. Keep your episodes consistent. One of the keys to producing a professional-sounding podcast is ensuring each episode is uniform in length, format, and content. This will give your listeners something to look forward to with each new episode and help keep them coming back for more.
8. Release new episodes regularly. Once you’ve got things up and running, it’s important to maintain a consistent release schedule for new episodes. This will help keep your audience engaged and ensure they keep returning for more. Try to release new episodes at least once per week, but don’t overdo it – if you start bombarding your listeners with too much content, they may become overwhelmed and tune out. Instead, find what works best for you and stick with it.
9. Promote, promote, promote! Make sure people know about your podcast by promoting it across your social media channels. Use creative marketing strategies like hosting giveaways or partnering with other podcasters to reach new listeners.
10. Have fun! Remember that podcasts should be fun! It will come through in your recordings if you’re not enjoying yourself. So, relax, have fun, and let your personality shine through – this is what will ultimately make your podcast successful. Podcasters passionate about their subject matter tend to be more successful than simply going through the motions.

Things That Should Not be in Your Frugal List

It is important to remember that your health is always worth the investment. Despite the temptation to save money, skimping on things like yearly tests and check-ups can cost you more in the long run.

Also, don’t be afraid to pay for travel-related expenses that will help you stay healthy and relaxed. Planning and preparing in advance can help ensure a healthy and enjoyable trip.

And finally, don’t be cheap on apps that help you on your podcast or side hustle. As simple as password managers are worth every penny if it makes your life easier.

Failures and Success in Podcasting

Before you hit record on your first podcast episode, know that starting a podcast is an experiment.

You’re seeking to understand how to best utilize this new medium to share your message with the world. Much like any experiment, it will take time, energy, and effort to create a successful podcast. But the rewards of using your voice to reach a global audience are worth it.

There’s no one right way to do it. There’s no guarantee of success. But there are certain things you can do to increase your chances of success. Certain things that, if done right, can lead you down the path to success.

The key is to focus on being genuinely helpful to your audience. Don’t worry about monetization at first – just strive to create content that will truly benefit your listeners. If you can do that, the rest will fall into place.

Don’t be afraid to take the plunge. Start your own podcast today and share your voice with the world. Engage with your audience and build a community around your show. Who knows, you might just end up changing lives along the way.

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Upwork is a terrific place to find customers for your business and grow it to be a 6-figure business helping you to retire early. Derrick Michaud teaches us how to use Upwork to build our business and become successfully unemployed.

Listen to the Podcast:

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// WHAT TO WATCH NEXT

Start a Podcast: https://youtu.be/YdKKwSSOnJA

Make Money Online: https://youtu.be/WDkRHg3uxR0

Flea Market Flipper: https://youtu.be/MYEoeQPT-5E

//BEST BUSINESS COURSES I RECOMMEND

Start an Online Business: https://successfullyunemployed.co/p24

Start a podcast: https://successfullyunemployed.co/podcourse

Make money on Etsy: https://successfullyunemployed.co/goldcity

Create a Facebook Ads Agency: https://successfullyunemployed.co/laptopempires

Make $ from nothing as a Flea Market Flipper: https://successfullyunemployed.co/fleamarketflipper

Learn how to invest in land: https://successfullyunemployed.co/retipster

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Doc G is the voice of the Earn & Invest podcast and has multiple streams of passive income. He shares his tips and tricks for acquiring many income streams and how he got it all started. 

How Doc G Makes Money

For a lot of his young adult life, Doc had a regular job. He didn’t see it as a Just Over Broke job because he dreamed of being a doctor when he was a little boy. All of his life, he was dedicated to the idea of being a doctor.

From a child’s eye, being a doctor seemed like everything he wanted to do. However, when he became a physician, he realized there were some parts of the position he didn’t particularly like. He says that is when the job became the Just Over Broke job.

Back in 2014, medicine burned him out, and he was writing a medical blog. Some guy called him and told him about a book he wrote about medicine and finances. He asked Doc to review the book within his blog.

The book was The Whitecoat Investor by Jim Dolly, and Doc read it in three hours. He said everything just clicked for him when he read the book. Doc said he discovered that he was already financially independent and had enough money saved to be comfortable in his life.

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But Doc says it gave him the vocabulary for a lot of things he already knew about. He grew up in a financially savvy home, and the book helped him put words to what his finances meant. 

Because his identity was being a physician, it took Doc a few years to move away from the job. He says he had all of the pieces in place but was not emotionally ready to take the jump. Eventually, however, he did. 

Dustin, now a real estate investor, worked for two extra years at his job. He was so nervous about leaving the job he had built and grown with for 15-20 years. Something clicked for him.

Dustin realized that even with his salary of $75,000, he was losing money by staying there. His other businesses were making him more money, and if he had the time to focus on them, he would be much better off. 

Docs Streams of Income

When he first started, Doc’s income came from his physician’s salary. He tried to maximize his ability to do that specific job. Doc built a large practice and built-in efficiencies to do a great job but still see enough patients while building other income streams.

He says what you want to do first is work on your main gig like he did. Eventually, he built it out to include some other streams of revenue. 

Doc’s “Lazy” Income Streams

The income streams Doc didn’t have to try too hard at had to do with his job. He was trained in internal medicine, so it was easy to do medical and legal consulting work. In the malpractice system, you need other doctors to act as experts both on the plaintiff’s and the defendant’s side about what happened.

This was a natural transition for him because he was already an expert at practicing medicine. One of the first income streams he added was doing medical-legal work. 

Then a local nursing home was looking for a medical director. They asked him to come work for them, and they would send him patients who added to his bottom line and increased revenue for his practice. They also paid him administrative fees to sit in on meetings and other things like that. 

He started building the lazy side hustles. Doc calls them lazy because he didn’t have to seek out new skills to accomplish them. He already had them. By practicing general internal medicine, he was serving a fair amount of older people who were in the process of dealing with chronic disease and hospice.

It seemed natural for him to help with that because many of his patients were going through that, and he didn’t need to acquire any more skills. 

Doc’s “Active” Streams of Income

Doc started the medical blog. People asked him to write for their medical sites, and he was a paid blogger. He comes from a family who is very active in real estate as well. Even his wife’s parents owned a few buildings. His parents owned up to 15 units when he was younger.

So he and his wife fairly quickly got into it as well. The first property they purchased was a condo in downtown Chicago. They lived in the suburbs of Chicago, so they bought the condo to use on the weekends.

It was a 1,000 square foot, one-bedroom, high-rise condo. They renovated it into a two-bedroom by converting the dining room into another bedroom. Doc and his wife used it for six months before deciding they didn’t use it often enough.

A realtor friend said they knew someone who was getting divorced and needed a place to rent. They ended up renting to the guy for two years. It was so easy to do that when the guy left, they rented it again, and it has been rented for the last ten years. 

They bought the second condo right about when the downturn in the economy occurred. They had a lot of luck with the condo because there was not much to take care of. It was small and in a building that employed its repair person.

Real Estate Downturn Made It Possible To Invest More

The downturn led to the purchase of a foreclosed condo in a great area that they knew they could rent it quickly. They bought the condo for half of what it would have been a couple of years before and had to do minimal renovations. Doc and his wife rented that one, then they ended up with four properties from which they receive passive income. 

Lastly, he receives some income from his podcast and his blogging. Altogether, there are multiple streams of income, but also he had invested heavily in his 401k and a taxable account.

Doc considers his dividends as income because every three months, he receives a check for those dividends. If Doc doesn’t need that money at the time, he will turn around and reinvest it. 

He says that if he ever decides he wants to work less, or not at all, he has his passive income streams of real estate and the dividends to cover him. 

Dustin thinks that it is important to have multiple streams of income for diversity and in case of a recession or if something happens to another income stream. 

Doc G’s Real Estate Business

The initial reason Doc and his wife bought the condo in Chicago was for them to stay in the city if they wanted to instead of driving back to the suburbs. There was a pool on the top of the high-rise and was in the middle of beautiful downtown.

He said they quickly realized that the idea of a pied-a-terre, or a little place in the city, was more fun than the actual reality. 

When Dustin started investing, he thought about buying places in Hawaii or near ski slopes so he and his family could visit when it wasn’t being rented out.

But as he got older, he changed his thought process. He decided he would go to those places and spend the money to stay somewhere else. Dustin thought it would just be easier to do it that way. With his current properties, he doesn’t visit or even sees them, for that matter.

They are just there to make him money. Since there are so many places to visit globally, Dustin never really thought he would want to go back to the same place more than once. He wants to see all of the countries someday. 

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Doc G and his wife have always looked at real estate. They are the kind of people who go to 100 showings a year and maybe buy one property. Doc says that his wife is the one who always had her eye on the market, so when the housing bubble burst, there were a lot of foreclosures available.

They thought that since there were that many foreclosures, it was a good time to buy. He also feels that buying real estate has a lot to do with confidence. Doc believes that when people buy their first investment property, they second guess and wonder how it will work for them.

He says it is all about mindset, and once you go through the process once, the following properties are a lot easier to obtain. 

When Doc and his wife went through the process the first time and made the property into a rental, they realized it would be easy to reproduce. He mentions that some people say not to invest in condos, but the market in Chicago at the time was very cost-effective for them to do so.

With the HOAs and assessments, you lose a little bit of money, but the upkeep and maintenance are low enough that you can still make a reasonable profit. Being at the place in their lives that they were and how they had their financial securities in order, Doc considered the investments as a means to diversify.

In addition to that, they purchased their properties in cash and did not leverage other money. 

Subsequent Properties for Doc

Doc says that it was a decision based on the fact that he already had cash-in flow from his job and his securities in place. He said it made sense for him to have even less of a return but guaranteed cash flow as a diversification plan. They ended up with two properties and treated the second property like the first.

Doc said they wanted a lake house, so they bought a big house on Lake Michigan. They did renovations on the property and realized they didn’t want to use it anymore, so they rented it out. They had a tenant there for three years, and when the tenants decided to move out, they put the house up for sale.

Since they had purchased the home in foreclosure and had only put $30,000-$40,000 into renovations, they would get a good return from the house’s sale.

Doc says they put the house on the market for sale by the owner and sold it to a neighbor, who also didn’t use a realtor. The fees were very low, and they ended up making about a 70% profit on the property.  

They took the money from the three years of rent and the house’s sale, did a 1031 exchange, and bought two more condos. 

Like the investors that told Doc not to invest in condos, Dustin doesn’t like to buy them. He shies away from them and focuses more on single-family homes.

However, he does say that there may be certain instances that investing in condos would work out for other people. As long as you have a piece of real estate that can make you money and is attached to the ground, it makes sense. 

Although Dustin likes using leverage and private money to purchase properties, he also likes the properties he has purchased for cash. All of the money just goes into his pockets and not to a loan.  

Doc’s Choice Not To Utilize Leverage

For Doc and his wife, the choice not to use leverage was a well-thought-out process, and leverage was just not significant to them. Doc says that they knew they could get the return out of the properties they needed and didn’t need the leverage.

He also says that the choice was diversification and a tax play. They used the cash flow as a sort of dividend without going back into stocks that they were already involved in. Doc said it fulfilled all their needs without having to leverage. 

Doc says he can use money and leverage to make money, or he can do the little bit of his job that he likes. He goes between the two but chooses to do it this way because of the better return.

Doc says that this is a benefit of having a highly specialized skill. He continues to work as a hospice doctor, making more money doing that than anything. While that is his greatest income, he uses the real estate portfolio as diversification.

It provides instant, easy cash flow, has a good tax flow, and minimizes paper investments. 

Leveraging Not Forseen In Doc’s Future

In the future, Doc doesn’t think he will use leverage for real estate because he doesn’t need to. He looks at real estate and financial independence in two ways. First, he frontloaded the sacrifice.

He built his skill and practice early, so now in his 40s, he can let the money work for him. So he uses real estate differently than how a person in their 20s would use it to build wealth and become financially independent. Instead, they are creating assets that provide cash flow to pay for their living.

Doc would look at leverage more if he didn’t go about real estate the way he did. He thinks that both ways are valid ways to use real estate and that it just has to do more with where you are in your life. 

If you are in your 20s and are not interested in becoming a doctor, lawyer, or engineer, Doc thinks that real estate is the best way to make a living. He believes you can go from being crushed by a job to financially independent in a short time. You can do that by being savvy, working hard, and studying the real estate markets. 

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Dustin loves that there are many different ways and many reasons to invest in real estate. Some people may not be comfortable with the risk of leveraging money to invest.

When Dustin first started investing in real estate, he made $40,000 a year and had a couple of kids. He and his family saved every penny to put towards properties, and they utilized leverage a lot.

He can now use it or not since he has built the business into what it is today. At this time, he only has about three mortgages left, and everything else is paid. 

Docs Transition From A Practice To Consulting    

Doc was deeply interested in being a doctor. However, he had an eye for efficiency. He believes that your brain should be working on how you can make it better when you work, learn more, and make more money doing it.

He started working for an established business before he practiced alone because he didn’t know how to run a practice. Doc looked at it as needing to work for someone to figure it out for himself. He worked with five other doctors and was a part of a more extensive hospital system.

At one time, the other doctors told him it was a great place to work but never to expect a bonus because it was impossible. Doc believed he was there to learn even though he had it in his mind that he would eventually start his practice. Within a year or two, he made a bonus, and within five years, he had doubled his salary. 

Dustin and Doc agree that when someone tells you that you can’t do something, it means that they can’t. Whether you can or not remains up to you. 

Doc took the time he had there to learn and understand how to run a medical practice. He focused on what made and didn’t make money and made and didn’t make a good doctor.

It became apparent around five years that if he saw double the number of patients that his partner saw, he could make more money independently. If he were able to generate $100,000 from the additional patients, he would only keep half. However, starting his practice, he would be able to keep far more. 

Doc’s Journey to Independence 

Doc worked for someone else and then for himself for several years. While on his own, he realized he was losing a lot of money by having an actual building with employees, supplies, and operating costs. The other problem he had was the change in medical politics. Doc notes that the change in insurance companies and Medicare’s control on his time was frustrating. 

Even though his income climbed through the years, something told him that it couldn’t last forever. The most significant liabilities were the office costs and employees, so Doc says he got rid of all of that and began doing house visits.

He would charge them a premium for the non-insurance coverage of him being in their home. 

Converting Patients To His Practice

At the time of transition, Doc’s practice had 2,000 patients. He chose to write a letter to each of them explaining the option of whether they wanted to stay with him or remain with the doctor he shared the practice with.

Doc ended up leaving with 100 patients, and he says that number was significant. He didn’t want too many patients as he would be traveling to their homes. Doc charged them $1800 each, and at the time, he was also seeing patients in the nursing home.

In addition to that, he had become a medical director for nursing homes and receiving a stipend for that work. He said he could balance the two populations because of the time allowed to him by seeing patients in their homes. 

Doc says that when he was worried about insurance companies, he could diversify his income streams because now he wasn’t just receiving income from them. He kept on building and changing his business model to get better and make it more efficient.

Doc went from working for someone else, working for himself with a ton of overhead, to finally working for himself without the overhead. Doc says he was then earning four to five times what an average doctor would be making. Doing this allowed him to save a lot of money and invest in real estate. 

Minimizing Patient Load

Doc was exhausted from working at all hours and every day, even though he was making a lot of money. He realized it was no way to live long term, so he figured out his finances and started making changes to the home practice.

It was hard for him to get late-night phone calls and have to visit someone early the next morning. He got rid of the home practice, which was great, but he was still receiving numerous nursing home calls.

Eventually, he got rid of that job as well. He was left with being a medical director of a hospice clinic who needed more physician time. Doc was working mostly by attending meetings and being on some phone calls. There were no nights or weekends or any on-call hours.      

That change was made about two years ago, but Doc’s net worth continues to grow even with a significantly smaller salary than before. He is still collecting dividends, and cash flow from his real estate, but also his salary affords him a comfortable lifestyle to things he wants to do. 

Dustin says that Doc has worked hard during this whole time. He says that as you work hard and iterate, or change and adapt, you can take on opportunities that come to you and let go of things that burden you.

Working hard and building up the side businesses has given Doc the ability to grow and do what he wants to do. 

Dustin says this is far different from what life looks like when your job dictates what you do. He says you can make your life look the way you want it to. Dustin thinks that now where he and Doc are in their lives, they can now say no to the opportunities that come to them if they want to. 

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The Future for Doc’s Income

Doc feels that you should continuously be looking to get rid of friction in your life. You want to look for the source of problems and how to remove them. At this point in Doc’s life that he is more focused on asset preservation and diversification.

He is not so much interested in building the assets. Doc says the beauty of front-loading the sacrifice is that compounding begins when you start the savings process in your 20s and 30s. Assuming that nothing happens that wipes us out; he believes he has diversified his skill set and assets enough that he hopes to work on risk modification and enjoy life. 

How Podcasting Fits Into Doc’s Life

Doc says not many people can make a living off being a podcaster, but he enjoys doing it, and it brings a lot of happiness to his life. Now in life, he wants to spend time with his family, do what he enjoys doing, going on family vacations, grow and learn, and not worry about money. The end goal is to worry less about money, Doc thinks. 

Dustin commends the hard work that Doc G has put into his businesses for the delayed gratification of it all. Dustin feels that he did the same. Front loading the sacrifice, and having the foresight to work towards something for later is important.

He sacrificed a lot during the time that he was building his real estate business. Every penny they earned went into the investing business. Now because he had the delayed gratification mindset, he believes it came to fruition sooner.

Dustin said that quitting his job at 37 was the best day of his life. 

With just a job, you can’t pass the job on to your kids. Dustin says that with real estate, you can pass that down, so he is currently working on asset preservation. Not only the property or the funds, but most importantly, the knowledge can be passed down. 

Dustin’s oldest son asked how much money he and his siblings all had collectively saved. He wasn’t sure why he was asking him this but found that his kids wanted to pool their money and buy their rental property.

Dustin and his wife have their kids save 50% of their money, so each kid has a savings account. What makes Dustin proud is that they realized he was making so much more money with real estate than what they earned in their savings account. 

Dustin also likes podcasting with Successfully Unemployed. He says he doesn’t make money from it, but it makes him happy to do it. He says it is a passion he has to show people the many ways you can quit your job and be successfully unemployed. 

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What Doc G Does To Give Back

Doc says that he volunteers for his daughter’s school. Unfortunately, while his daughter attended public school, she was bullied a lot. Doc and his wife decided to send her to an excellent private school in their area.

The school was connected to a teaching university, and when that left, the school had some issues with its endowment. The school has incredible teachers and a fantastic curriculum, so Doc wanted to help them out.

He volunteers to help the school build a podcast to help market their program. They put together a podcast about the school’s progressive education and what their school has to offer.

Doc loves giving back to the place that has done a lot for his daughter. They had watched their daughter go from a happy, excited kindergartener to an unhappy third grader.

Eventually, they realized that she was just in a school that did not fit her. Doc said when they moved her to the private school, she came alive again within months. That made him want to give to the school, not only by volunteering but also by giving financially.

In addition to that, they give financially to other charities like Doctors Without Borders, the ACLU, and others. 

Doc’s Advice to His Younger Self

Doc would tell himself to stop rushing around so much. Especially when he was younger, Doc made a lot of decisions because they were quick. For example, when he was attending medical school at North Western, he could have obtained his MBA from the connected business school, Kellogg.

His wife urged him to consider the option because she knew he has an interest in business, and it would benefit him in the long-run. Doc feels that he was in such a rush to finish medical school that he never took her suggestion seriously.

Even though he believes his career and where he is now is great, it was a missed opportunity to acquire more helpful information. Doc realizes now that it is OK to slow down. He doesn’t think it is about deferring your dreams, but slowing down and developing more dreams along with them.  

Dustin knows a quote about youth being wasted on the young. When you’re young, you don’t realize what you have. Dustin feels like he was much like Doc in that he was always rushing as well.

Dustin jokes that he should always listen to his wife’s suggestions to do or not do something and that he takes her advice to heart in life now. 

One Tool That Doc Uses

Doc says that his tool will be a little bit different from others but thinks it is just as important. He uses his blog as a tool. It is his accountability journal. He believes every smart move he has made in life comes after he has written about it in his blog.

Journaling is a tool he uses often and feels like it is essential. Doc feels he makes better decisions when he sits down and thinks about things while journaling. 

Dustin agrees that when successful people share what works for them, it helps others take note. He also feels that when he is writing, he can see where he messed up or could have done something different, so he uses it as a documentation tool. 

The Non-Fiction Book Doc Recommends 

The book that changed Doc’s life was The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley. Reading it clarified so much about finances for him. Another great book he would recommend is The White Coat Investor by James Dahle. He believes those two books radically changed his finances. 

Doc’s Advice To Start Side Hustles

Doc is really into the idea of lazy side hustles or lazy, passive income. Before you jump into something you haven’t done before or aren’t good at, he says to look into skills you already have.

He used the skills he had as a physician to develop the side hustles that didn’t require any new learning. They were easy for him in that sense. Doc says to look at your current skills first but doesn’t think you should not develop new skills going forward.

If income is your goal, look at the skills you have first when looking for side hustles. 

Where To Find Doc G

The easiest way to find Doc is to go to earnandinvest.com. He also has a Facebook group named Earn & Invest. People in the Facebook community talk about finances, a little bit about politics. News stories, and more. There is a lot of involvement and interaction within the group on various posts, so it is very beneficial. 

How Kelan Provides for His Family

Kelan and his wife run the Savvy Couple blog, a personal finance blog that helps families organize their lives, simplify their finances, and find the time to do more things they love.

They make money through the blog by providing content to help readers go from surviving to thriving with their finances.  

What Kelan Kline Did Before The Blog

Kelan graduated college in 2012 and says he jumped through a bunch of different jobs. He was an insurance salesman, a UPS driver, an office manager, and later a law enforcement jail deputy.

At the time, that is what Kelan considered to be his dream job, to where he would then go to road patrol. Kelan worked in that profession for about two and a half years, but around the one year mark, he realized law enforcement was not the thing for him.

He wasn’t fond of committing to other people, having people tell him when he had to work, and the terrible work environment with forced overtime. Kelan also hated that he rarely saw his wife, who, at the time, was working opposite shifts as a teacher.

Being their first year of marriage also, it was a stressful time for the Klines. They finally decided to sit down and talk about how their lives should look because they knew that wasn’t it.

Kelan and his wife sat down at the table, talked about, and planned what their life would ideally look like in the next couple of years. Most importantly, the steps that it would take to get them to where they wanted to be.  

Dustin worked in the jail in Fresno, California at one time in IT. He was able to be around the officers and deputies and thought it was a great place to work.

Dustin had to go to the jail area numerous times to set up computers and remembers it was just too much. He agrees with Kelan that it was not for him, and he can see why Kelan wouldn’t like it either. 

Kelan compared it to almost as though you are doing time with the inmates, and he just got to a point where he realized it wouldn’t cut it for the next 25 years, so he needed to figure something out. 

What Kelan’s Business Is And How It Makes Money

In the beginning, the Klines started the personal finance blog as more of a passion project. Kelan and his wife had seen other bloggers online making money and the idea was great for them because they like to budget their money, live frugally, and live on less than they earn.

They love to be in charge of their life and money. Over time, the blog was generating income from ad revenue and affiliate marketing. For the first nine months, the blog didn’t make any money, but they were working on it at night and on the weekends.

Their hard work paid off because on the ninth month mark; they began making money. Not even two weeks later, Kelan was ready to quit his job and talked to his wife about it. What Kelan did was he left the jail deputy position and went into managing an office part-time. 

He felt strongly that he needed to just get out of the deputy environment. Brittany landed a full-time teaching position, so Kelan thought he needed to search and get back who he was.

He felt he lost his identity and wanted to get it back. The whole time, they were saving up and budgeting their money for Kelan’s exit strategy. 

When The Klines Started The Blog

The Kline’s started TheSavvyCouple.com back in July of 2016. Kelan’s wife was getting bored being at home in the summer, so they decided to brainstorm business or side hustle ideas they could do online.

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During this time, Kelan was also enrolled in school, working towards his home inspector license, something he thought would also enable him to be his boss. He was ready with the license, paperwork in hand, but they decided to start an online business. And they are pleased that they did because there is so much more freedom. 

Dustin believes that as fathers, they have the responsibility to provide for their families. Some people can quit their jobs without a safety net, but that was not possible for him.

He worked hard to get his rental property business up and running and then quit at 37. He now has 30+ rental properties generating a lot of passive income for him every month, and he does not have to work much at all. 

How to Get Started With A Blog

Step #1: Choose What You Are Most Passionate About

Kelan thinks that the most important thing to do first is to find out what you are most passionate about and what you love to do. He says this is important because it may take you a while before you begin to see revenue from your side hustle.

He says it is essential that you are passionate enough to work on it and serve people just because you love doing it. 

Step #2: Choose Your Medium

There are three mediums and platforms to serve an audience, such as audio, video, or text. The next step would be choosing the most comfortable way and what also serves your audience the best. 

Kelan believes the most significant thing is just getting started. He thinks that many people get caught up in trying to make things perfect right off the bat.

Keland and Brittany just went for it and learned as they went. He says taking action is more important than sitting back and making a detailed plan initially. 

As someone who is not necessarily a perfectionist, Dustin likes to make sure that things get done correctly. He thinks that doing it right the first time is important, so you don’t have to waste time going back and fixing it.

His dad taught him that if you are going to do it, do it right and do it right the first time.

How The Savvy Couple Serves People

Kelan and Brittany began making their products. They think that many people struggle with sitting down with their spouse and talking about finances with pen and paper.

So with that, they have created printables for people to use that help with big things like paying off debt and a new one they created for meal planning. They make it super easy for people to take baby steps and form good habits, and make changes in their life.

Start Creating A Lot of Content

For the first year, Kelan and Brittany published three articles a week and would have a guest post every Wednesday. They were using the strategy for creating a ton of quality content, in the beginning, to see what resonates with the audience and what people relate to best. 

When Dustin began Master Passive Income in 2016, he would put out an article once a week, thinking it was a lot of work. He then went to publishing one article a month.

He assumed people would be coming back to read the next article. Kelan says that is not the case. He thinks about 80% of people who visit your site will never come back again.

Building an email list is important in this case so that the readers have an opt-in and never miss what you are publishing. Kelan and Britney have a list of 20,000 people they serve and love and give their everything.

They treat their email list readers as friends or a part of their family who they are trying to help through a rough time or transition in their lives from surviving to thriving.  

Deciding What to Write About

Kelan says it circles back to you are passion. Asking yourself what you can talk about at length or what people always ask you for help. For example, if you are a person who can keep your grocery budget low, write an article about that, and teach people how to do it also.

Another idea Kelan has is to go to Google and search keywords that you would be curious to know about and read the articles that come up. 

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How Much Content to Publish

For the first year of your blog, Kelan thinks you should publish as much quality content as you can. Even though they began with three articles a week, they found that it was a little overkill for their site and did not have to continue doing that.

Kelan thinks that if you can publish one quality article a week, you are on your way to building your tribe and getting traffic to your site. 

For clarification, a quality article is an article that serves a purpose. It should help your readers solve a problem that they came to your site for a solution.

Kelan says that it should also be an in-depth article and probably over 1,000 words. It should answer all of the questions that the reader has about the problem they wish to solve. Finally, you would want to offer a solution, your own products, or affiliate products. 

Ensuring you hit the headline on the head is something that Kelan believes will help your article. Creating a click-worthy headline is important to get people to your site.

The formula that Kelan and Brittany use is curiosity+value=clicks. After the headline, the featured image is also significant as well as H2 headers that are easy to read. Additionally, you would have a lot of white space and make the article interactive by asking questions. 

Kelan Kline’s Favorite Way to Monetize

As most bloggers do, Kelan and Brittany started by running ads in the blog. They were using many “Pinterest-Worthy” articles to get the traffic to increase and get onto Mediavine. After they did the ads, they moved on to affiliate marketing.

Last year, their biggest year, they focused a lot on sponsorships, which is Kelan’s favorite way to make money with the blog and the business. They began partnering with companies that they already know, love, and already use.

They were getting the company’s products in their audience’s eyes by using their blog’s platform and encouraging their audience to start using the products. 

Pro Tip: Sponsorship Is Different Than Affiliate Marketing

Kelan says that sponsorship is a one-off marketing campaign that you write a direct post just for the sponsor, or it could be a Facebook ad, social media amplification, or email marketing.  

To find those companies, Kelan says there are many different sponsorship networks that you can apply to and join. Kelan also has an article on the FinCon website with all of the ones that are a part of The Savvy Couple.

When you apply, Kelan says to make sure you link all of your social media accounts and analytics so that companies know what you are all about and the kind of traffic you are getting.

Another way Kelan says to find sponsors is to go onto other blogs within your niche and type in “sponsorships” in their search bar. That will give you a good idea of what companies are looking for sponsorships and which ones are spending money with bloggers to make money.

Besides Dustin’s rental property investments, he also loves to teach people how to invest in rental properties and how to quit their jobs. One hack he gives his students is about how to find good deals.

He tells them that they should find a wholesaler and get on their list of contacts. 

What You Should Charge

Instead of having a price sheet or spitting out a number, Kelan says it is just like a negotiation at a garage sale. 

Pro tip: Hold Your Cards Close To You And Ask Them Their Budget First

When making new deals, Kelan will ask the company what their budget is and how much they have to work with them. He will then put together a proposal and a package to move forward. 

For example, if their budget is $300, Kelan will likely charge that or above to make it look more enticing to the company. This technique has added thousands of dollars in revenue for the blog, which is why Kelan says it is so important to ask them their budget first. 

Dustin and Kelan both like the act of negotiation. Dustin’s wife does not. Since Dustin is the only person in his company, he has a different outlook on budgets.

He says that he would have a smaller budget being that he is so frugal. Larger companies have separate budgets meant for things like sponsorships. The more prominent companies may start low and know that they can go higher,  but they will let you know what works for them if you just ask. 

How To Scale A Blog

A big thing that Kelan and Brittany did was all of the money from the first year went directly back into their business. They did this so they could focus on paying for tools and freelance writers.

From there, Kelan only took $1,000 from the business for the following six months. They didn’t begin taking much from the company until they made around $10,000 a month.

Kelan urges to stay frugal and treat it like a business and continue to invest money back into it. 

Other Ways To Invest In Your Blog

Kelan says that time is the biggest enemy of business owners, so a huge thing they invested in was outsourcing. They use the Eisenhour chart, which is four quadrants where you lay out what your day looks like making sure you are focusing on your urgent and important tasks.

For Kelan, his high ROI task is focusing on sponsorships. He knows that if he can get sponsorships, he can create a high hourly rate for his income. If he can outsource the tasks that are eating up most of his time with a virtual assistant, it allows him to focus on the sponsorships.

One cool thing that Kelan and Brittany do is hire from within their network or their audience. They feel that it is important for them to hire someone that knows the business the way they do. 

Be Cautious With Who You A Working With 

In the beginning, Kelan believes he would have said yes to any sponsorship because he just wanted to make money. However, now that they have grown and have cash built up, they are more cautious about the sponsorships they use.

They would instead use companies that they know and believe do the most good for their audience. Kelan says it is OK to be picky with who you work with to make sure it aligns with your brand. 

If Dustin is asked if he accepts sponsored posts for Master Passive Income, he usually says no. However, there are companies that he loves that he would have on the blog for free because they serve his audience. 

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Beyond the Blog

The Savvy Couple also has a Facebook group called Family, Finance, Freedom, where they are posting articles and answering questions often.

They have a blogging group called Blogging with Purpose that they are also inside frequently answering questions and helping blogger begin their blog and make money online. Kelan and Brittany have two core opt-ins with their email list. The main one is the budgeting template that leads to their budgeting binder.

There is an eight-day sequence where they provide a lot of quality content and then finally ask for the sale. They offer it at a discounted rate to ensure the audience can get the products in their hands.

This year, Kelan is continuing to work on digital products that help readers get organized on top of their finances. In the long term, he and Brittany want to create a retreat called The Savvy Couple Retreat.

The retreats would be local and in different areas of the country. Eventually, they will also build a membership type program where the viewers will pay a fixed monthly price to be in the community. 

Dustin’s brother loves playing poker, and he plays and teaches people online. He also has a podcast called The Smart Poker Study. Dustin’s brother was a part of Patreon, where people can donate money to him.

He was only making about $200-$300 a month with that, but Dustin encouraged him to create a membership. He now is making $2,000-$3,000 a month by switching business models. 

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What Kelan Does To Give Back

Kelan and Brittany are a part of a handful of different groups at their church. They are also a part of a “pay nothing” group where they donate a lot of stuff regularly. This year, they went from surviving to thriving themselves to help people do that locally and online. 

Kelan’s Steps to Get Started

Step #1: Write It Out

Sit down and purposefully write out what you want your life to look like in the ideal situation. Ask yourself what each hour of your day would look like, your morning, etc. The more detailed, the better because then you are focused more on the goal. 

Step #2: Don’t Overthink It

Don’t overthink and just get started. Once you have your goal and know what you need to do to get started, just do it. Taking action far outweighs being perfect. That will continue to drive that progress forward.

Step #3: Be Persistent

Be persistent. When they began doing this, Kelan decided if it took five years or ten, he would do whatever it took to make it happen. 

Kelan’s Advice To His Younger Self 

He would tell himself to start a blog. Back when Kelan was 13, his dad showed him eBay for the first time. They started selling stuff on eBay together, and he loved it. He didn’t need a high school or college job because he made money from eBay and Amazon.

He remembers that even though he knew about blogging, he blew it off and thought it was stupid. But now, he would tell his younger self to start the blog. 

Dustin has been encouraging his children to get into blogging, and he even purchased each of them their domain names. It only costs him $10 a year, and he is teaching his kids how to blog. He doesn’t even care if they use the domain, but it is there if they want it.   

The One Tool Kelan Uses The Most

Kelan uses simple whiteboards and currently has three in his office. He likes to use them for braindumps and tasks he has to do, and that it easily erases. Kelan believes a whiteboard helps someone with ADHD that needs to write something down quickly before they forget. 

Additionally, anything that you can use to give you positive ROI in your business or increase the time you have available for things you like, use those tools. 

The NonFiction Book Kelan Recommends

The book that changed Kelan’s life was Work Less, Make More by James Schramko. The book is about the Eisenhour chart and focuses on increasing your EHR, Effective Hourly Rate.

Effectively, anything you can do to increase your hourly rate, you will be able to work less, make more money, and have more free time. 

Where You Can Find The Klines

Kelan and Brittany are on all social media platforms and available at thesavvycouple.com. They also invite you to join their Facebook group Family. Finance. Freedom., or send an email to savvyklines@gmail.com. 

The process to self-publish a book has gotten so easy with technology and you can be a successful writer if you know how to do it. Best selling author Jeff Goins shows us how to become a successful author just like he has become.

How Jeff Goins Makes Money

Jeff is a speaker, a writer, and a teacher of online courses and programs. He helps creative people succeed through his work and while teaching others.

Jeff got started with a $2.99 ebook and sold about 1500 copies in a week in 2012. That same year his first child was born. Working for a non-profit at the time, Jeff was interested in trying something new. 

What Jeff Did Before Being a Successful Writer

Jeff worked for a non-profit organization as a marketing director that he sort of fell into. He was hired as a copywriter, then became manager, and then took over as director.

He once toured with a band and was a Spanish major in college. At the time, he was helping other people share their stories while doing international service projects to raise money.

Jeff realized he had ideas and stories that he wanted to share, so he started a blog, and it grew quickly. Then came some ebooks, online courses, events, and masterminds that he created.  

Most people assume everyone goes to college to make money, so he and his siblings did the same thing. However, Jeff intended to go to college and get a job afterward, not necessarily with the intent to make a lot of money.

Many people have the notion that if they go to college, then the world owes them a job and then becomes disappointed as a result because that is not the case. Jeff studied Spanish and Religion because he was interested in religion.

He chose Spanish because he wanted to study abroad in Spain. He thought about maybe being a missionary in a Spanish speaking country but ended up with a non-profit mission group. He thought it would be fun as most things in his life. 

Jeff’s whole life, he was told he could not be a writer and make money. He has always been a creative person. He has acted, joined a band, written songs, and poems, and drawn Garfield comics. He just never knew he could do that all and make a living.  

Jeff’s first book was self-published on E-junkie. He more describes it as a 10,000-word pdf, but he made a few thousand dollars from it. He was sort of embarrassed by the ebook, so he took it down.

He later republished it as a book called You Are a Writer (So Start Acting Like One). This book was his story of wanting to be a writer, becoming one, and what he learned along the way about building an audience, building a platform, finding your voice, getting noticed, and eventually getting paid.

He self-published and sold about 10,000 copies in six months. At the end of the book, Jeff included his email, and people began contacting him and asking him to teach them the things that he talked about in his book.

Because of this, he launched his first online course, and a few months later traditionally published another book. Jeff has been writing books and teaching online courses ever since.

Dustin says he is not a creative person but has written and self-published four books. It was a lot of fun for him, but it was a struggle. 

How to be a Successful Writer Without Being Creative

Jeff thinks everyone is creative in everyday life as we are making things all day. The act of making a podcast is creative, by definition. He believes when people say they are not creative, they think they are not artistic how they understand typical artists.

Even by having children, you have created life, and life itself is creative. The necessary process of growth, things coming together, and things falling apart and then creating new things is the creative journey. 

Jeff says that step one is to recognize that everything we make and do in some respect has never been done before; therefore, it is creative. We also realize that not everyone is creative in the same way.

Jeff is a different type of creative than Dustin and Picasso or any number of other great artists. 

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To live a good life, you have to make things and create things. Jeff believes there has never been a better time to harness natural creativity and share it with the world because we have an opportunity to connect directly to the audience that needs our work.

If you work for yourself and are successfully unemployed, having some sort of business you are running that you created is a very creative act whether you think of yourself as an entrepreneur, artist, musician, or not.

Jeff points out Dustin’s guitar hanging behind him and reminds Dustin that he is, in fact, creative. Whatever you do, the things you make, it is easier than ever to find and connect with people who need those things from you. 

Second, figure out what you want to make, and step three is asking who this is for and how you connect with them. The Internet is an efficient and affordable way to find and connect with people who need your work.

You could connect through a podcast, a blog, or an article. When building an audience or platform,  there is a misunderstanding that if you want to make something and make money off of it, you have to go and find people who need that thing. 

Dustin agrees that we are all creating. He is not creative; it’s much easier for him to see something that someone else is doing and copying that. That gives him a leg up because if Dustin has to sit down and create something new, he can do it quickly.

He can eventually, but his brain takes 100x longer to get there than other people. Jeff sees this as iteration, taking something that someone else has created and adding your take to it or making it better.

A lot of the world’s greatest artists were not original. They took somebody else’s idea and did it better or differently, like Walt Disney, Michelangelo, and Twyla Tharp. Jeffs says that all great creation is sometimes recreation. 

Where to Start Writing A Book

According to Stephen King, if you want to be a writer, you have to read a lot and write a lot. You have to absorb a lot of good writing and study the craft, then write it.

Jeff thinks many people set out to be original, and that is the worst way to start. The same goes for a business if it is an original concept, assuming no one has ever done it before.

What you should be doing is paying attention to what’s working in the current markets, seeing what people have already done, and trying to do it better or differently. 

Writing is similar. Jeff says to pay attention to the books you enjoy reading, observe what the writers do that you like, and start copying them. Jeff thinks writers begin as thieves and quotes Picasso, “good artists copy, great artists steal.” 

Jeff says to learn, then find your style and your voice. Pay attention to the books and authors you like and mimic some of the things they are doing. Jeff compares the learning process to learning a martial art.

You would understand the dojo’s fundamentals before even daring to try to figure out your style. 

He advises not writing a book first but writing an article, blog post, or an Instagram caption. Start small and begin learning how to communicate your ideas.  

If you have an idea and the shortest way to contain it is with a book, then write a book. Figure out the smallest form of writing that includes your message and do that. 

Jeff doesn’t believe that everyone should write a book. People say writing a book will build your platform, give you authority, or be a great business card.

No reader wants to pick up a book and think of it as a business card. That makes for, often, not a good book, according to Jeff. A business card is a better way to go over a business card book. Jeffs is a purist when it comes to books. \

He believes in good books and that we don’t need any more bad books in the world. 

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That said, if you have such a big idea and you have written the article or blog post and put it on a podcast, and there is still more to say, then maybe write a book.

Or if there is an audience interest and can contain the whole idea inside and show them how to do something, then perhaps write a book.

Jeff thinks all good books begin with big ideas, and the best way to write a bad book is to start with a good idea. Good ideas don’t make good books; good books start with interesting ideas.

What Topics Have Been Used

You want to know who has talked about this before or what books are out there on this topic. There should be some. Otherwise, you shouldn’t write the book because there is probably no interest in it, Jeff says.

If what you want to say has already been said, you probably don’t need to repeat it. But if you can add something to it, or take what someone else has done and do it better, then do. In marketing, “same but different” is used often.

So, read a lot of books in your industry to know what is already out there. 

Jeff says in all great books, they have this theme in common. Writing a book with “what everyone thinks is X but what’s true is Y.” Some big ideas that change the way people thought about the genre category is another good way to begin a book idea. 

Think carefully about the first or the next book you write and ask yourself what you want to say.  Ask what already exists and whether you disagree or agree or can add to it in some way.

Jeff believes we pay attention to people not because their ideas are right, but because they are interesting. Something that is counterintuitive, surprising, or takes something we take for granted, attacks it, and subverts it in some way is how some people write interesting books.

If it doesn’t change the way people think, then why even write the book.

There are a lot of general books, like business cards. Dustin has seen them a lot on amazon. He notices there are 1-star reviews on these types of books from people stating that the author is just this guy trying to get us to buy his courses.

As a writer, Dustin wants his books to stand alone and not like general books like those. You don’t want to be salesy. You want the reader to be interested in what you have to say without feeling forced to buy your additional products.

Outlining Importance For Writing A Book

Jeff explains the concept that all models are wrong, and all models are useful. All of the frameworks are wrong, but help get in the flow. Jeff says there are two basic structures: 

#1: The Modular Structure

The modular structure treats each chapter as almost an independent piece of a larger whole or stand-alone articles. Tim Farris is an example of who writes like this.  Someone told Farris when he writes a book, writes every chapter as a stand-alone article.

This concept is very different from that of a book like the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, a narrative arc format. 

#2: The Narrative Arc

This type works like a novel or a story that could be nonfiction or fiction. Jeff describes how it would be like missing 20 minutes of a movie if you enter the book in the middle. It won’t make sense.

Each part builds on the other, and then there is some final big payoff.  Malcolm Gladwell writes this way because he enjoys reading spy novels. Reading Outliers is like reading a detective series.

He structures his self-help and business models like spy novels. They are suspenseful and interesting. He uses the narrative structure but uses ideas as a sort of character. 

Figure out which structure will serve your audience best and convey your idea best. Whatever is most appropriate for a book or audience is Jeff’s advice. Then when you outline it, there becomes a series of questions. Outliers is about how people succeed.

The book describes two things: opportunity and practice. It has two parts, so for the opportunity, they would be born at the right place and time and be exposed to certain things; practice would be networking and knowing the right people and being a part of a specific community.

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As you answer the questions, you are finding new questions, and essentially each question becomes its chapter. Jeff views nonfiction books as an answer to a question, and each chapter is an answer to a smaller question underneath the larger question. So once you answer all the questions, the book is done.

When Dustin wrote in the past, he has found an outcome that the reader should be getting to. They will have questions along the way, and if you can project and figure out the questions they may be asking, you will help the reader understand the content better.

He sees the difference in the two books mentioned earlier. Gladwell leaves you wanting more, like a cliffhanger. Dustin finds that his style is just wanting to say what it is he wants to share, following Tim Farris’ style.

As he was writing his first ebook on investing in rental properties, he felt it kept getting longer and longer, and soon he realized it was not going to be an ebook any longer.

Once he finished, the structure was “do XYZ” for his audience. It was academic and straightforward. At the time, Dustin asked himself what books he likes to read. He enjoyed Rich Dad Poor Dad because many stories helped him understand what the outcome is.

The Richest Man in Babylon had great stories about living in principle as well as Tim Farris’s books. Tim’s books start with a random story and then later ties it in with the central concept.

So Dustin began doing that with the rewrite of his book. He would start with an off the wall story in each chapter and then tie it in. 

What to Do When You Nail Down Your Writing Style

Jeff recommends using the book and the podcast called The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne, which is about how to tell compelling stories. It focuses on the craft of fiction and different kinds of books and conventions associated with them.

One thing Shawn describes is figuring out what kind of book it is. Dustin’s book is a “how-to” book. The question is literally how to invest in rental properties and several other questions such as how much capital you need and where to invest.

It is written in some sequence or logical order when you answer the questions or be written out in steps.

To understand the genre, try to begin to see what conventions they use. Anecdotes, or detailed short stories, that support the overall idea of the book.

Then help the reader get to the point of understanding.  There are a lot of different genres to consider.

Jeff says a lot of people don’t know, but you can pick up any book, turn to the first page, and it will tell you what kind of book it is you are reading. Usually, the book has two or three categories. 

Jeff said Dustin doesn’t have to make his book academic like Gladwell and that he can just talk about his success in real estate and what he understands about it. He also would suggest citing a few people.

It could be something that you learned how to do and show others how to do it. Jeff says you can borrow and steal the tools that work well with the genre you choose.

Shawn Coyne calls them conventions or something that always works inside a specific genre. You can’t tell a science fiction story without having some creature come to earth from another planet.

It happens every time, so you have to use it if you write science fiction, for example. Otherwise, the reader may not get it or even understand why they don’t get it. T

here are rules to every type of book, and you can break one or two, but if you break all the rules, it will no longer be considered the kind of book you started with. 

How To Choose A Title

Jeff thinks that every book starts with an idea, so people sometimes begin with a working title that almost always changes. Most books are a journey or an adventure for Jeff.

He wanted to write a book about making a living as a creative person. Most people were told you could not make a living this way. Jeff recalls touring with a band after college, and they had so little money that they would stay in people’s homes.

This was great, and they were very generous. Some were trailer homes, and some were mansions. He remembers people saying that he is doing this now because when he gets older, he will have to get a real job. And he agreed.

Maybe he would plan to do it for a year and move on. A lot of people view artistry this way. Eventually, he stumbled into being a full-time writer and creative entrepreneur. He soon had some people ask him how he did it. 

Creative Advantage was the first title for his book. Jeff learned the Michelangelo was the richest artist of the Renaissance and died with a worth of 50 million. So he realized you don’t have to sell out or starve as an artist.

Jeff began finding other people, regular people, that were living off their creativity as well. As he was writing, he was trying to put the pieces together. A friend read his book and told him he more or less had two books; one about creativity, which was kind of boring, and the other is about how not to be a starving artist, and that was more interesting.

He told him that that is a book people need to read. The friend said it was almost like he was trying to convey real artists don’t starve. That was when he had the epiphany and the new title of the book, Real Artists Don’t Starve.

So he says to start with whatever you think the book is about. Madeleine L’engle says, “write the book that wants to be written.”. Throughout the process, you are becoming more precise about what you want to say than when you began.

The working title may work, but for a lot of people, it changes. For example, Tim Farris called the Four Hour Work Week, Drug Dealing For Fun and Profit to begin with. It was controversial, but it wasn’t the essence of the book he was going for.

The belief that you have to work more to get more, but you can work less and get more was what he was going for. 

Dustin chose to go a more straightforward route and name his book How to Quit Your Job With Rental Properties. His second book was a little more creative being called Successfully Unemployed.

He was still working but had 30+ properties, so he wondered why he was still working because it was a waste of time. He wanted to write a book about the big lessons he learned in the process, and people were intrigued by the title. 

Jeff thinks there has ever been an easier time to make money and get your content out as an artist.

What to Do When You Are Ready to Publish

Jeff supports independent publishing. Now people have all the tools that a traditional publisher has at their disposal. You can design the book with the same software as actual publishers.

Some people Jeff knows will self publish a book and then get hired by a publisher. Many people are freelancing, and many publishing companies aren’t employing an editor or a designer full time if they don’t need to. 

Jeff has done both traditional and self-publishing, so he is not biased either way. Most authors he works with, unless they have a big platform or an excellent idea where working with a publisher would help the book’s success, he encourages them to self publish. 

It used to be that if you self-published, you wouldn’t be able to get on with a traditional publisher later. It was taboo, and there was a stigma surrounding it. Now that is not true. People like Jeff, who self publish, will partner with a traditional publisher to reach or distribute their book. 

There are two instances where Jeff thinks it’s beneficial to work with a publisher:

#1: Suppose they give you a bunch of money upfront. An example is they offer $500,000 in advance or working the next 20 years, making that off a self-published book. Jeff said he would take the upfront money and then invest in rental properties and live off that. 

#2: They have some excellent distribution deal that will get the book in front of many people. They would have the capability to bring you to an audience you otherwise would not have access to.  A book like Atomic Habits by James Clear sold a million copies and generated interest in other things he has going on.

The traditional publishing route brought many people to his website, speaking opportunities, and online courses. Jeff says that it is crucial to understand it as traditional publishers will put you in different places and even sell internationally.

Publishers can translate a book into many other languages and distribute it far and wide, which would be hard to do alone. Jeff also says to remember; you can make a lot of money from these companies’ royalties.

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At that point, you would benefit from self-publishing. A useful reference for this is APE, Guy Kawasaki. He says for about a $3,000 investment. You can successfully self-publish a great book.

Another great tool is Amazon’s KDP is a great way for people to get started for those who don’t have a huge following or a ton of email subscribers. 

Scaling the Business

It is essential to decide what kind of writer you want to be. Jeff says there are three different kinds of writers:

#1: The Working Writer

The answer is to write more books. They make a few hundred bucks a month, like investing, feeding the book wheel. Eventually, they create enough books where they can make a great living.

This is a revolution for creative writers. A good route if you can write fast. Another idea in this category is a book group where you have a team of writers and become a little book factory writing and publishing together.

#2: The Authorpreneur

Like Jeff or Grant Balwin, they write a book every few years and have a handful of other things going on like courses, products that end up being 50-80% of their total revenue.

Books are their lead generators. Jeff and Grant wrote a book called The Successful Speaker. It wasn’t released long when someone had read it and signed up for a $5,000 coaching course. Some authors will give books away to lead readers to their other products. 

#3: The Thought Leaders

Writers like Brene Brown, Malcolm Gladwell. They sell many books and get big book deals but are also going out and speaking or maybe doing some consulting.

This author type has big ideas that impact the culture of the world. They usually have some other things to sell, which is generally their time. They may have books come out every 4-5 years, and the rest of the time is speaking and consulting. 

Dustin is an Authorpreneur. At one point, he was sitting around and wanted to do things. He had people asking him how to do these things that he was doing.

He started the podcast to get the information out as far and wide as possible. He likes that it just ends up helping more and more people. Dustin began to realize how influential he is by helping people get out of where they are and into where they want to be. 

Jeff doesn’t just think that everyone should write a book but if they have an idea burning inside them, or something obvious to you and not others, then write it. He believes then it is something you can’t not do.

Jeff likes that Dustin’s podcast permits people to do what they usually wouldn’t think they can do and make a living. It has never been easier to do this stuff. Our Grandparents could not do this, so we are in a time of privilege, opportunity, and responsibility.

If you have a burning desire to teach people, you have an obligation to teach the world what you have to offer because people may need it. Jeff has met many people who just say they need to get a job, and that is great if that’s what you want to do. 

Now is the time, and maybe the opportunity won’t last forever. Maybe our kids won’t have the same opportunities. You just never know, so you have to take our current opportunities seriously.

Jeff Publishes a Book With Grant Baldwin

Dustin has had Jeff on the podcast before, and he is excited to have him back now with his name on a book with someone who is pretty well-known, Grant Baldwin.

Grant is a good friend of Jeff and Dustin. A while back, a publisher called Jeff and asked if he knew of anyone with whom they should write a book and recommended Grant.

Grant had a podcast and a coaching website dedicated to teaching people how to become successful speakers, but he needed a book! 

Grant was not immediately interested unless Jeff wrote the book for him. He was joking, asking Jeff to do that for him, but it became an interesting idea to Jeff. He got excited about it and has a personal rule to say yes to things that scare him a little. 

Everything that Jeff has done has been because he says yes to something that he typically wouldn’t do or has never done. So they did it. He went to the publisher and said the book would be like an interview with Grant, and Jeff would interview Grant’s top clients and get stories or anecdotes to use throughout the book.

They would talk together, bring the stories, and share theories. Jeff says it was a long but great two-year process, and now they have a book. Jeff thinks this is the book about being successful.

There are many books about speaking, but not so many about how to be a speaker, much less being successful at it. It is an authoritative book about understanding all of the business elements of being a part-time or full-time public speaker. 

While writing his book, Dustin realized that you couldn’t just buy one property and call yourself an investor with real estate investing.

You have to build your business first. So with his book and his courses, he teaches his students that building the business first is essential.

He has found that they are the ones he buys out for those who don’t because they get fed up with the issues without building the business first. 

Successfully Unemployed Rapid Fire Round

What Jeff Does to Give Back And Serve Others

Jeff believes his business itself is inherently helpful. He is employing people and creating experiences and content that make people’s lives better. They are paying him for it too, which is also wonderful for him.

Jeff is helping the world be a better place by being successfully unemployed and having a business that exists to serve other people and help creative people succeed.

In addition to that, Jeff has partnered with multiple nonprofits over the years, where they have been working on building projects in Africa. Currently, they are working in a school. Sometimes, Jeff even volunteers at his kids’ school for school dances. 

Jeff feels like in America; people have guilt about success like we have to give back. For example, it is hard to decide what has given society more, Amazon or Jeff Bezos’s philanthropy foundation.

The thing is that they are both great. Dustin agrees that Bezos wouldn’t have philanthropic contributions without Amazon, who employs a lot of people.   

Jeff thinks that the idea that we are giving back implies that we have taken in the first place, which isn’t true. Instead, we should keep it flowing and keep giving.

Jeff does this by employing people, his charitable donations, and remaining in the business of helping creative people succeed.  

The most successful companies, the best companies, are the ones that serve and look to serve, Dustin believes. To make things better for other people and solving problems is what makes great businesses. 

A Piece of Advice From Jeff Goins

A former boss or Jeff’s would always say that before you pursue your dreams, serve someone else’s dream first. Jeff says to try to first act as an apprentice.

If you are interested in being a real estate investor, go work for Dustin. Volunteer or do admin for him, ask him to hire you as manager of some of his units. You can see up close and personal what it would be like and get guidance from his years of investing experience.

Another idea is before you be a writer, help edit somebody’s book, or before you become a full-time musician, be a roadie. See what the job is like and then what the art is like. The art of writing is the writing of the book.

The job of writing a book is checking email, remembering interviews, flying somewhere to speak, or similar tasks. There are so many other things associated with writing that you may not end up liking the job but loving the art.

Jeff says the best thing you can do is figure out what the job requires, work for someone who does it, and then decide if you would like to do that. 

Dustin would pay $10,000 a year to Warren Buffet to work for him.  He would do this simply for Warren’s knowledge, his connections, and his experience. 

Even though it wouldn’t be much for Warren Buffet, Dustin would be so huge for all of the additional benefits of working with him. 

Jeff Goins’ Advice to His Younger Self

Jeff would tell himself to trust his intuition but also to test it. One of the hardest parts growing up for Jeff was having immature ideas that he thought were ridiculous. They were real; he just didn’t know how to apply them.

There were so many things that he wanted to do, but he just started telling himself, no, or rather life said no. He got a job, put his head down, and did what was expected of him for seven years.

There were yearnings and desires to do more, but he didn’t know if he could trust that feeling. So when he turned 30, he quit his job and created his business. He waited too long for some people, and for some people, he didn’t wait long enough.

He was just glad he did not wait any longer than he did. Since then, he has had to learn how to trust himself and realize the things he wants are usually good, good for himself, and good for others.

He says that just because you may trust yourself doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t test yourself. Jeff says to try, experiment, and dip your toes in. He wishes he would have understood this better earlier that you can trust your intuition, but you also have to test it.

One App Jeff Uses Daily

As a writer, note-taking is essential to Jeff. From grocery lists to next blog posts to other book ideas, he writes it down. He uses Bear, an iOS app that syncs with his iPhone or tablet. He calls it a beautiful note-taking app, and he loves it. 

The Non-Fiction Book Jeff Recommends

Jeffs loves books, and there are so many that he has already suggested and would suggest. He recommends The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.

Where to Find Jeff

Head over to his website goinswriter.com, his podcast and blogs are there also. Or IG, where he is most active. His handle is @jeffgoins and he responds to DMs. 

Ashley Barnett is producing, editing, and publishing content for three major sites. She is the owner of HitPublish.com and has shown Dustin good content and what it looks like. 

How Ashley Barnett Makes Money

Ashley helps bloggers create content for their blog. This includes editing, writing, and making sure the content goes out that she runs. Ashley had her site that she started in 2008 just having her 12 year anniversary this year.

She says that as you are blogging, you meet other bloggers. You start going to conferences to hang out and meet people. You start to find out the parts of blogging that you like and are good at that other people need help with.

Most people don’t realize blogging is a huge job, and you may not like all aspects of it. Ashley loves working with other bloggers and gets to do the parts that she likes and doesn’t worry about what she doesn’t.

Dustin runs a handful of sites, and there is a lot of things he likes about it, but there are some things that he doesn’t like. Dustin enjoys the things that generate revenue for him.

Even though he is very frugal, he realized hiring someone to do the things he doesn’t like to do, was a good idea. The people he hires make him money and alleviate time and tasks off his plate to do the things he wants to do and is good at. 

Ashley runs three major sites. There is a lot of money made from running three sites that are big enough to pay the writers and someone to manage the site. When you realize how much value you get from Google and SEO it is incredible.

What Ashley Did Before HitPublish

Ashley used to work at a call center, answering customer service calls. She thought it was awful. Her son was born in 2006 so she quit her job and became a stay-at-home mom.

She got into blogging at that point because she was at home with her babies. Ashley was on the internet, while her kids were sleeping one day, and she came across a personal finance blog.

She didn’t realize it was a thing that people did. Merely 15 minutes later she was all in and had her site. Ashley wrote content six days a week for at least two years.

Around 2008 when the economy was crashing, her husband was in jeopardy of being laid off. This freaked them out a little bit because her blog was only bringing in $500 at the time, and they had two small kids. 

Choosing To Help Others

Together they decided they would start a temp-agency and hire the laid-off workers from her husband’s company. They contracted about five to six guys for skilled labor jobs.

They called the company and told them that they have their guys. The company then contracted with them, and they would do on-demand labor for the company. Ashley believes it worked out beautifully.

Her husband was one of the only guys that were not laid off but still wanted the temp-agency to work and help out the coworkers who were laid-off. 

Dustin likes how they saw a need and there was an opportunity. He thinks people who have their business need to be able to figure out how to solve problems.

Dustin thinks their idea was brilliant and that he maybe would have tried something else because he never thought about going to the company doing the layoffs.

The company did eventually hired the guys back. At that time, they could employ the guys for the hours needed instead of full-time and paying benefits like insurance.

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When Ashley got started in the personal finance space, the idea that you could make money in a different way than a regular job, she was hooked. She decided there was no in-between so if she was going to do it, she had to go all in. 

Dustin mentions that Ashley has been into real estate a little bit where she bought at the right time, rented it out, and then sold at the right time. A little shoutout to Dustin’s passion. 

What Came Next For Ashley

When you start getting into an industry, also true for any small business, you get to meet people and begin to make friends. Ashley had a vendor table at 2013 FinCon in Phoenix, and one of the speakers stopped by her table and they just hit it off.

They had never met, but he came to say hello and ended up hanging out with Ashley the whole weekend. They talked about a lot of stuff but most importantly he needed help on his site.

He was doing it on his own and it was successful, but he didn’t hire because of the risk and the cost. 

Ashley really just wanted to help out a friend and she feels that is something you should be doing when you first get started anyway. Find someone you can help and charge whatever you feel at that point, and just start building your business.

Ashley started editing for him and doing some writing. The site was a large site, it was successful and he was doing really well. She was able to see behind the scenes how to run a big site.

The business started to click for her when she realized a different and higher level than she was used to is where she wanted to be.  

In business, Dustin believes the more people he helps, the better he does in his businesses. If you are seeking to help someone, make it into a paid gig by freelancing or writing.  

One of the big things about this guy’s site was his audience was very clearly defined. He knew the exact audience he was speaking to and about the topics that they wanted.

In fact, it was so important to him that he stayed true and closest to his ideal audience, he wouldn’t even choose affiliates just to make money. If he believed they didn’t fit the audience, he wouldn’t use them.

Learning this about him was a game-changer for Ashley. The way he thought about content and SEO was in a way she had never done. She was always chasing readers and got caught up in statistics and page views, but he was far beyond that.

He was creating something bigger than just getting a hit article and that was an important thing to learn at the time for Ashley. 

Research Competitor’s Websites

What Dustin learned to do at one point was to go to a competitor’s website and pull out the keywords they used and were ranked for. He looked for the high ones like 1,000 page views a month.

Then he looked for ones that have a low ranking and he assumed he could write in between the two. 

Ashley says it is more about strategy. For example, posting a controversial topic and getting a lot of page views as opposed to Dustin’s strategy which is more beneficial long-term.

Beyond the keywords, you want to reach the reader’s intent then search for similar articles and answer the same types of questions that they are responding to. 

Ashley once wrote an article about how to host a Christmas party. The keywords “office Christmas party” seems like a logical choice. However, Googling that title, she realized it is an actual movie title.

All of the rankings were for the movie so she had to come up with something else. Knowing what is ranking and trying to match that is a big part of the strategy of blogs.

She goes after the minimum page searches per month and just wants to make sure that there is traffic to the page. If it was zero, that is not a good sign because that means that no one is searching that topic or keyword and no one cares.

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Pro Tip: You don’t want to write an article that no one cares about the content, or even knows to search it in the first place. 

Ashley says any volume works but Dustin has heard that if it is over 1,000, that is something to go towards and mimic on your site. This can be on an individualized basis, but Ashley shoots for anything over zero.

Finding Keywords For Better Ranking

Ashley says you can go straight to your audience such as a Facebook group and ask questions there. Any Facebook group about your topic is a great way to get ideas. Additionally, you can ask for guest posts with new topic ideas. 

How to Land Your First Client

If you already have a blog, you probably know what you like to do already. If you have a regular job right now and feel the need to get out of there, start blogging in your free time.

Ashley says to learn the skills first because the best way to learn how is to start doing it. You will start meeting people who need your help, and you can start helping them.

Find someone to help and charge them whatever you think is fair to charge for that help or service. 

As you get better and specialize, you can start charging more and more moving forward. Ashley believes that every new client you bring on should be charged a little bit more than the previous one.

If you can’t find someone who will pay you for your services there are online forums like Upwork and Fiverr where you can get on the job boards and put services out there.

Ashley has hired from those types of platforms but has never been on there marketing herself. She believes if you don’t know anyone, that is where you should go. If you start, you are going to meet people with similar talents very quickly so it is just about getting out there.

Why Networking is Important

Dustin blogged for three years and never met anyone, but that was intentional. He believed he was in competition with the other bloggers but realized that was not the smartest thing to do at a certain point.

Dustin believed it hindered his business for so long that he wasn’t out there meeting people. Then in 2017, he went to his first conference for his business. 

Having gone to conferences for his previous job with the government, Dustin says he didn’t even want to talk to anyone because of the different personalities and he didn’t think they were driven.

Networking was not on his mind at those types of conferences, so he went to sessions and went back to his room. Unfortunately, Dustin took that same mentality to the conferences he could attend as a blogger, but quickly learned it was not the case.

Dustin attended FinCon, which is where he met Ashley. He meets so many great people now every year he goes to FinCon, and they work together even if they’re in the same niche.

At one conference, Dustin met someone who invests in land real estate and he has made a lot of money from the referrals from this guy and vice versa. 

Pro Tip: Go to Conferences and Network!

Ashley puts on some great meetups in Phoenix where everyone just has a great time, and people help each other out. There are also tons of Facebook groups for bloggers.

Ashley is in a group specifically for new bloggers. She says just to look for those types of groups because if you are a new blogger, you are going to have questions.  Join the groups and ask them the questions you have. 

Ashley says there are courses you can take that are also a great way to meet people because they usually have a Facebook group or community attached to them. MeetUp.com is another option to meet with like-minded individuals locally and they are very active in Phoenix. 

Dustin believes that in this business, the more people you meet, the bigger your audience can grow. He also believes you have more significant influence because you are tapping into other people’s networks.

Since not everyone will mesh with your personality, they may move on to someone else that they do mesh with. Dustin isn’t bothered with this because they are self-weeding themselves from your audience, so you don’t end up wasting each other’s time. 

How to Grow Your Blog

Ashley says it takes time and that you want to create quality content. You have to be the best on the internet at what you are talking about. That may sound scary, but you can definitely be the best. 

If you write on a particular topic, and you have your niche, each post will be answering one question better than anyone else. Google already tells you who is the best by the search results, to find them and do better than them.

She also says SEO and being active on social media are really important. You will grow slowly over time and it may seem so impossible, but it’s not.

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Even though it takes time, it doesn’t have to take too much time. It doesn’t have to look like working for 40 years and retiring at 68. Dustin interviews people that within two years, replace their income from their regular job with their passion job or side hustle and they have been able to quit their regular job.

Dustin thinks never in history has it been that easy to make that amount of money in that quick of a time frame. 

Ashley Barnett Fun Fact

For example, Ashley has a fantastic ability to put together puzzles. Dustin hates puzzles and legos, but his wife and children love them. Ashley created a video that shows her putting together a puzzle and put the video on YouTube.

The great thing is if you do one video a week; that is a lot of content, and people will watch it. Even though Dustin doesn’t like puzzles, he watched the video and was amazed at her talent. 

At one point, Dustin went to a friend’s site to see what he was ranking he saw P/PC. At the time, he wasn’t sure what that was but then he learned that it was from the book 7 Habits for Highly Effective People.

The P/PC stands for Production/Production Capability. There were over 30,000 people searching that and eventually Dustin added it to his blog post and was ranked #4 at one point. 

Another keyword that Dustin found that is used lately and is wholetailing. He wrote an article with that keyword and it only took him a month and a half to rank #1. 

What Ashley Does As A Content Manager

Maintaining affiliate relationships is really important it takes up the majority of the time when running a site. You can’t just add a link to your posts and be done. They need to be updated constantly because things change and programs change.

For example, if you are talking about a bank and their fees change, then it is imperative that you keep the links up to date. Ashley thinks about 75%  of the time is spent on that.

They have affiliate managers whose job is to manage the affiliate relationships to keep them up to date and It is a lot of work. 

Ashley says you also want to come up with ideas and get those to the writers and get their feedback. Then there is the tech, the design of the site, and testing everything.

There is someone managing SEO and social platforms. The ideal schedule for Ashley is five articles a week. You can definitely do more but you can’t forget updating old articles is really important. 

Ashley Doesn’t Do All the Writing

As the content manager, Ashley is not quite a blog manager but makes sure things are done and are correct on the site. She will usually come up with the content ideas but sometimes the content ideas come from the SEO manager or the affiliate manager. 

Ashley does the keyword research and does all of the rankings. She then gives the writers the articles that are ranking to determine how long she wants their article to be based on those.

If there is a chance they rank for it, Ashley wants it to be the longest article and if not, she will aim for the middle or average length. 

You can provide your writers with the subheadings you want them to use which are based on SEO searches. Google provides some keywords and related words that are searched on the bottom of the search page after you have entered the keyword you are looking for as well.

Keyword Search Tip

Google also has a section called the “people also asked” so it is imperative to answer some of those as well as using the keywords or related words. You spend time editing and making sure you have a consistent look on your site. 

You don’t want different size images, bolded or not bolded links, or some links that open in another tab when others don’t. 

Ashley mentions that not all three sites publish five times a week. One blog publishes more but the average for the three sites is about 15-20 articles a week.

How to Charge When Managing Sites

Ashley says that charging per article would be a good place to start. However, if you come up with content ideas and publishing, you would want to charge more. For two of Ashley’s clients, she has a flat monthly rate that she charges and the other one is a percentage of the writer’s budget. 

If you are a blogger just getting started, Ashley suggests getting paid per article but if you already have a schedule and things are running, then it would be beneficial to have a flat rate. 

Consider The Volume of Articles Going Out

Ashley is a big fan of volume so she believes as many articles as you can get out, do that. She says every article you put out is a little “army guy” going out and getting you more traffic. So the more of those you have out there, the better.

You will then figure out what is ranking and what Google and your audience likes.  

Ashley says it is also so important to go back and edit old articles. Ashley tries to go back and look at every article once a year. To cut down on some time if you have two articles that are similar then you can combine them down to one.

The more volume you have the easier you can tell what is doing well. If you have highly detailed articles or some that the details can change, you may want to consider checking those once a month.

Ones with interest rates or details that are frequently changing are best to check back on. Ashley has a list of each article she needs to look at every month for each of the three sites because they have frequently changed details.  

Dustin has some friends that he has met through FinCon that as they have their sites, they make money from affiliates. Affiliates like banks who pay the blogger to share their names with their interest rates and other important information.

He assumes it takes a lot of time to go back in there and change all of the ones similar to those.

Some Tricks On Formatting

As an article is being written and it’s formatted, Dustin is curious if bloggers should just put random images in your blog post to get attention. Ashley doesn’t recommend images just for decoration except at the top of the post and she really likes screenshots or anything that enhances comprehension.

She also thinks if you are relying on images to keep people on your page then maybe you have a bigger problem. 

How to Scale Your Business

Once you have a system in place, you can hire your own virtual assistants to work for you. The key to making enough money to do that would be to specialize in something.

She thinks that if you are not sure what you can offer a client, then you probably lost some of the hourly rates that you could charge. It is important to know exactly what you can do for a client to satisfy a need they have.

Once you specialize, you can start building processes, routines, have training materials, and checklists. You will then be able to hire people to accomplish the more mundane tasks the eat up a lot of your time. 

Ashley has virtual assistants working for her but nothing goes out to her clients without her checking things over first. 

What a Blog Manager Does

Most of what Ashley does is content, managing schedules, writers, and works with coordinating everyone. She makes sure everyone is getting what they need and getting feedback from the SEO person as to how things are going.

Dustin is looking into hiring more people to help with the tasks he doesn’t like to do. Ashley thinks that is a great plan because if you don’t like it, you are not going to do it as well as someone who does like it. 

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What Ashley’s Tombstone Would Say

Dustin remembers going through this exercise and it stumped him, too. Ashley is not sure what her legacy would be. Dustin remembers a time when they went hiking and he was unsure of how to feel about turning 40 and wondered why Ashley was so excited to be in her 40’s.

Ashley said that when you turn 40 you stop caring about what other people think. She was excited about that. She also said that everything that you have built up from when you were born to your teens, twenties, and thirties that by the time you are 40, you can just enjoy life. Especially if you are not working that J.O.B you are just enjoying things. 

Dustin says his 20’s and 30’s were rough having worked really hard between 5 am-10 pm. Now he doesn’t have to do anything like that because he worked really hard to get to be successfully unemployed.

What Ashley Does to Give Back

Ashley is creating a course to help new bloggers improve their content and put out really good work, grow their site, and live their dream. She also just rented an office outside her home and she is really excited about it.

It has been great in the first week and she feels like she can be more present when she goes home now without her computer right there in the background as a temptation. She says she felt an instant release of stress the moment she moved her computer out of the house and into the office.

Dustin quit his 40 hours/ week job to work 80 hours and it doesn’t bother him because he loves it and there is always something to do or someone to coach.

He feels like since there is always something to do, he feels weird when he is hanging around thinking about what he could be doing for his businesses.

Ashley’s Advice To Start

Start your own site if you don’t already have your own. You will learn all the skills you need even though these skills are teachable, you need the experience and they take practice.

Ashley says it is easier to practice on your own stuff because if you make a mistake it is just yours, but if you mess up on a client’s work then that’s a bigger deal. It is less stressful to learn and figure it out before you do it for someone else.

Ashley compares it to sending a newsletter to a thousand subscribers with a typo versus sending that same newsletter to 50,000. It becomes a little bit bigger of an issue. 

Ashley’s Advice to Her Younger Self

It is easier said than done but she would tell her younger self to relax and that everything is going to be fine. One thing she has learned is that when you tell someone you can do something, they believe you.

She says the whenever people start something new they feel unqualified but if you know you can do it, your client is going to know, too. 

An App Ashley Barnett Uses Daily

Todoist. It’s a to-do list manager. She loves the app and doesn’t know what she would do without it. 

The Non-Fiction Book Ashley Recommends

How We Got to Now. It’s about the six innovations that made the modern world. She finds it fascinating.

A business book she recommends is What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith. Even though it isn’t a thick book, Ashley said it took her a month to read because you have to really focus on each page and process what it says.

The book is for people who are already successful and want to go higher. It talks about the skills they used to get where they are currently not being the same skills that will get them to the next level.

Ashley’s biggest takeaway from this book was people not realizing they are telling people that you are smarter than them. If you think about it, we really do that sometimes without realizing it.

Reading the book you also realize that you actually do have a lot of little bad habits. 

Where to Find Ashley Barnett

Hitpublish.com You can find her course there and her email to reach out. 

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Chandler Bolt has a good size business and has written many books. Additionally, he has helped many people write and publish books through his business, Self-Publishing School.

If you have ever wanted to write and publish a book, his course is for you.

There is no better time than now to let that book idea come to fruition.

Chandler shares about the ins and outs of his business of helping people write the book that is wanting to be written. 

What Chandler Bolt Did Before Self-Publishing School

Chandler was in college when he realized he was taking classes about how to run a business from people who had never run a business.

He dropped out shortly after this realization and pursued his passion of being an entrepreneur. He began teaching people how to self publish books through Self-Publishing School and the success of the business snowballed from there. 

Chandler had some jobs but not many. He feels it was a blessing and a curse that he never had a traditional job.

He worked for his dad in construction, at a fitness center doing tennis court maintenance, landscaping and pressure washing business, and exterior house painting.

The exterior painting job, which was more of a franchise, would be the closest he was to having a career. After those jobs, he went to school, dropped out and started Self-Publishing School. 

Dustin’s dad was also a construction worker and he remembers being outside in the heat working on roofs. He remembers starting many businesses but real estate is what stuck. 

What Prompted Chandler to Write His Own Book and Starting Self-Publishing School

Chandler wanted to write a book for people about things he felt like other people wanted to know.  He feels a lot of writers write a book because they have an idea they want or need to share, the mechanism being the book.

Chandler believed in the message but was afraid of the mechanism. He got the book done while another business he was involved in was failing.

Everyone kept asking him how he writes and publishes books and he finally got it.

He realized there were a lot of people willing to pay him for the knowledge he had about writing books. He suggests that this is a good lesson for people starting out. 

Figure out what the people are already asking you about and what they want to pay you for. 

At first, Chandler would get on phone calls and coach people for free just because he is a nice guy. After doing plenty of those calls, he realized that he should start charging for it.

They started the first cohort of 44 students, and then it just snowballed into now having helped thousands write and publish books. 

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Dustin was buying property after property and realized his passion was real estate. He was about to literally quit his job and began telling people about what he was doing.

They asked how he was able to quit his job and if he would be willing to show them how to do it as well. If you have something that people keep asking you about and how to do it, you can potentially have an idea for a business.

Dustin was teaching people one-on-one and realized it was taking so much time, even though he loved doing it. So he started a coaching business called Master Passive Income.

It is all about rental properties, teaching people, coaching and courses about how to invest in rental properties. Dustin loves Self-Publishing School because it helps so many people get to where they want to be, which is writing a book.

With Master Passive Income, Dustin helps people get to where he is so they are buying properties and making upwards of $250 on them, perpetually. Dustin is always wanting to reach more and help more people. 

Where to Get Started With a Business Like Chandler’s That Teaches Someone How to Do Something 

Something that Chandler and his team are really passionate about a business like this where you are teaching how you accomplished something.

For them, books are the starting point but it’s what you do with it that matters. They have a PR and Speaking for Authors program, Course Building for Authors program and how to turn a book into a course. 

One thing Chandler thinks is really important is to sell and then build. Until you have your first sales, you don’t have a business, you have a business idea. One of the biggest mistakes Chandler sees people make is they spend months or years creating this whole thing that people don’t want.

They then try to sell it without talking to potential customers. This is something that Chandler said happened to him. He wrote The Productive Person. It was successful and he wanted to create a productivity course.

They did all the work and put in the time to realize no one wanted it. He felt the messaging was totally off. They had spent $10,000-$15,000 developing this course and it probably has not sold to one person. 

That was the basis for starting, Self-Publishing School, or Best Selling Book System at the time, and what not to do. They pre-sold to 44 people and it was a live delivery over 12 weeks.

Chandler and his team asked the students what they wanted or needed and then created that exact thing. His recommendation is to first get sales which bring revenue.

He says sales and happy customers are pretty much the two things that matter for your business. However, you can’t have happy customers without first having sales.   

Dustin agrees and thinks people believe they just have to pump out a physical product. If you don’t even know if someone wants it or will buy it you are wasting so much time and effort.

Preselling Your Product Proves Your Concept and What You Are Selling

This happens in the online space as well, you presell what you will eventually sell. So by then you are validated because everything you are talking about and trying to sell, is already pre-sold.

Dustin appreciates that when he pre-sells something, it lights a fire under him to get the product done. Chandler agrees and says it is a force function and deadline but also can be a feedback mechanism.

Chandler says that each new product they create has a beta program. Currently, they are near the end of PR and Speaking for Authors beta, the new product they are developing and next week it rolls out.

They believe that every new product should have a beta, sell it then build it. In addition, it is a force function to get the content done and get the product built.

Now after the beta, you have feedback, testimonials and have raving fans in the community that have an amazing experience. Now people know that they should get in on the beta for the best product, the best price, and the most one-on-one attention they will ever get.

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The beta group gets a steal of a deal and his team gets the feedback and testimonials. It makes it beneficial for everyone involved. They are upfront about their goal and that is to make the student successful in exchange for their testimonial.

Chandler says not to join the beta unless you are going to do the work.

How to Pre-Sell Without a Following or Audience Base

Whether you do the course or the book first, it’s not a one-size fits all method, Chandler says.  Depending where people are at, Chandler makes different recommendations for them to follow.

What worked for him was he did his book first as well as some other people.

For example Ruth Soukup, who was recently interviewed on the Self-Publishing podcast, sold 500,000 copies of her book How to Blog for Profit which ultimately became known as Elite Blogging Academy.

On the other hand, Chandler doesn’t believe in teaching theory, but teaching by actually doing. They started doing training webinars for three weeks leading up to a product launch.

At the end of the webinar was an opportunity to apply for the beta program. They only accepted a percentage of the applicants who would then sign up. Some accepted and some didn’t.

So following this,  they made “why didn’t you buy” calls and got a lot of feedback. In addition to the feedback, some at that point ended up signing up for the beta program anyway.  

The Challenge to Get People to Sign Up for Your Sales Webinar

The first challenge for Chandler was how to get people to show up to the webinar. What he found was a lot of it was just guerilla marketing.

He began messaging every single Facebook friend telling them he was doing a webinar and asking for them to share to anyone they think might want to write a book.

With these messages, he was not asking the friend to come, just to share based on the idea if they wanted to participate, they would.

In addition to that, they had a couple strategic partners that they offered affiliation commission to. He was fully transparent with the partners by reminding them that he wasn’t guaranteeing that it would work.

Worst case scenario for the partner was they won’t make a lot of money off of it. However, the audience is going to get an amazing training on how to write their book and the partner will look good for having sent them there.

Because he built the personal relationships, they took a chance on him, and they got a few people to the webinar. 

You Must Become A Self Promoter to Help Others

Dustin mentions he is not a huge self promoter and does not like to be. To help himself get out of that process of being “me-centered,” he switched his mindset from himself to how much he could help other people.

Dustin realized if he didn’t share this with people, they might miss out on important information. Maybe they buy the wrong property or potentially lose money and never want to buy property again.

He wants to help them and save them from that possibility. He makes it more about helping and serving people.

Dustin brought Chandler on the show because people have said he wants to be there for people and help and serve for people to get what they want. As he was doing the gorilla marketing and getting people to the webinar, he proved people want it.

What To Do Once You Have A Course

With every process whether it is with a book, a course, PR or speaking, Chandler tells his clients to begin with the end in mind and figure out what success looks like for them.

Chandler encourages them to identify the goal and once they have that, they can focus on the end result which could be more clients, more sales, etc. With Self-Publishing School, they almost always use courses and coaching together.

When Chandler does a webinar about how to start and launch a course, he shows the example of Udemy describing an online course and says, “No.”  It’s an online education program and it is done together.

Chandler describes his friend Marci as an incredible coach. She works with a lot of children’s book authors, memoir authors, and faith based authors. 

Chandler and his team believe that the course is the lion-share of the curriculum, and the coaches are there to support and hold accountable.

They try to provide different types of coaching calls like one-on-one, group calls, and then also have the community aspect of the program. 

They provide a list of outsourcers like cover designers, formatters, editors and they have negotiated exclusive rights for these services. The goal is to save about what they pay to them, for those services. 

Solve Your Customers Problems to Make More Money

No matter if you are doing a course, coaching or whatever, Chandler says it exists to help people solve a problem and it doesn’t really matter how they get there.

Although, most people want the least amount of work and time in order to complete the goal. Not a lot of people want the features, they just want the benefits and the results.

Self-Publishing School decided to design it in the way to maximize student results. Chandler points out that oftentimes, courses by themselves rarely work, not as high of a result rate as everything else.

They have found that the coaching and the personal help has made a huge difference in the success rate of their students. 

Chandler confessed that he didn’t like sales or marketing at first.  He woke up one day and all his accounts were negative, and he was going to drop out of school.

He found humor in that he almost failed at dropping out of school. He remembers talking to some people who told him he needed the skill set of sales and marketing regardless of him enjoying it or not.

They told him that his business was struggling because he didn’t have paying customers. In order to get paying customers, he needed sales and marketing experience or training.

You can’t outsource the sales and marketing for your business because no one else is as passionate about your business as you are. He says it is possible on a level but it is very hard to hire people for a job that you do not know how to do.

Hiring People Is the First Thing To Do To Scale

It is also hard to hire people when you do not have any money! Instead of doing what a lot of people do, follow the advice right away to learn sales and marketing at the beginning.

Do not wait until you have burned up most of your resources 6-18 months later. One of the early things for Chandler that flipped a switch was thinking when you believe the thing that you have or the person’s life will be better because of it, you are morally obligated to sell it to them.

He says that sales isn’t sales, it is problem solving and it’s helping people. When you shift to that mentality, sales and marketing becomes so much easier. 

To wrap it all up together, Dustin says the course, the coaching and helping others, is not about what you can get out of it but how many more people can you help. The last thing that Dustin wants to do is create a course to just make money.

He makes his money from real estate so the course would be mostly for helping people. Statistically only about 15-20% of people who buy a course actually finish it.

Dustin wants people to finish his course and if he tacks on coaching in some form, it helps them stay engaged. It can be overwhelming to people to see all the course stuff. 

In 2016, Dustin joined Chandler’s Self-Publishing School course. He wrote his very first book because of it. He was referred by his and Chandler’s mutual friend because of all of the benefits she had seen from promoting books and the course showing people how to promote books.

Dustin’s book was a best seller after he followed the steps from the course. He currently has four books and likes how people respond to that information. People see him as more of an authority figure now that he has published four books.  

How to Scale The Business After Creating The Course and Coaching

Chandler says there are only two things you should be doing in your business which is  getting new customers and making customers happy.

Optimizing these two things first is important. At some point you will get to the point you can afford to hire and grow. Chandler says that if it doesn’t drive revenue or results, it is not that important.

As you start to scale, that’s when the systems and operations stuff comes into play. Chandler has a podcast called the 7 Figure Principles podcast and YouTube channel called the 7 Figure Principles Show.

One episode he has recorded is the A-Player Hiring Process, how to hire your first employee. Hiring your first employee, Chandler recommends  someone in customer service, or an assistant.

Someone to take some things off your plate, or things you don’t like doing or takes up too much of your time. 

Focus on creating systems and bring in a person to do that for you. Chandler and his team had hired a student of theirs. At the time, they had scaled the business and offered each student a 30 minute call with Chandler, and then were sent to their coach.

This particular student used his call to talk about what the struggles Chandler and the team were having with the business and asked how he could help.

They hired him about a month later. Chandler believes they got really lucky. Right away they got their new employee busy on Zendesk, which the team had never used.

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There were a ton of customer support tickets on the platform while they were having a summit online. They had him get to work on the near thousand support tickets on the platform. 

That may be a crash course on how not to set someone up for success but the guy figured it out. He still works for them today and is one of Chandler’s right hand guys.

The First Person You Should Hire In Your Business

For them, they hired a customer support team member first, and Chandler recalls that he waited too long to hire an assistant. He thinks that it may be possible for some places to hire a person who can be both.

There are a lot of lower level tasks that they can be taking off of your plate for you to be able to spend your time on other things.

Dustin has started hiring people for various tasks and it’s been a little hard because he is so frugal. He finds it humorous that with his 30+ properties, he has other people do all the work for him.

He spends about 30 minutes a month just checking the statements and making sure money is coming in, then moves on because he has other people take care of the work.

He knows that his business gets better when he hires other people to do the management of the properties. Dustin has both an assistant and a customer support person for his businesses.

He has also brought on a student to work for him who has quit their job by investing in real estate. He wonders how to release the control of some tasks to an assistant.

Chandler says there are two things to evaluate. People may baulk at the cost to have an assistant or employee but don’t consider the cost of NOT having them which is mostly the cost of your time.

He encourages taking what you earned last year and dividing it by 2,800 hours, the estimated time you worked, to see what your time per hour is worth. Then your challenge is to raise the average in your business.

Empower Your Team To Do The Work and Make Decisions

In order to raise that average, he says you have to say no to things and empower someone else to do them. 

That exercise clicked for Chandler because the number was really big. With his blue collar upbringing, it is sometimes hard to spend money.

However, he looked and saw a large amount he had to pay per hour. It all goes back to you creating systems and your assistant creating systems.

Additionally it is about being fine with their four hours may be worth one of your hours from just a time and value of time perspective. 

He says it can be tough to wrap your head around and a lot of mental stuff may need to be worked through. For Chandler, humility was a big thing growing up.

His mom would always say not to ever make people feel they like you are better than them. While he was growing up, he watched his parents move from lower class to upper-middle class where they made sure not to act like they were better than anyone because of where they were.

It was a blessing and then a curse Chandler says. You don’t want to get In your head thinking you don’t want to make someone feel bad or make someone think that you are above them.

So now, it is perfectly fine if something takes you 10 hours instead of one like me, that’s fine because the pay off is significantly better. It will be different for everyone and you might have to work through a lot of belief structures. 

Dustin says not to overlook that you are providing someone else with a job, for them to be able to provide for their family.

Dustin believes that if he could help more people, it is that much better.

Regarding some of the things we don’t like to do, there is always a line of people who love to do those things. Some people may believe that is their dream job and if you don’t like doing it, then allow them the opportunity to.

You don’t want to project your belief system on other people just because you don’t like doing something. For example, Dustin hates editing articles, or editing anything. He now has someone who edits all the articles now. It is a win-win.

How To Scale The Business Even Further

Chandler believe is comes down to three things:

1. Rhythms- meetings
2. Systems- the playbook
3. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Above all of these things, he believes that really great people are so important and all of the listed things make it easy to attract and develop the really great people. 

 Successfully Unemployed Rapid Fire Round

The Non-Fiction Book Chandler Bolt Recommends

Chandler likes to contextualize book recommendations. So he asked Dustin what the one area he would like to grow in. Dustin would like to help more people. So in that case, Chandler recommends The Go Giver.

He says it’s a really great book for helping people and is also the next on the list for his company book club. 

Chandler’s Advice To Get You Started

Chandler says to sell then build. Some other important things are not to work on your logo or corporation at first. He says until you have sales, you don’t have a business, you have a business idea.

What Chandler Would Tell His Younger Self

He says he would tell his younger self to trust yourself and to be confident in your decisions. Additionally, he feels you shouldn’t let anybody tell you what you should be doing.

Too often for him, there was self doubt. If you feel like you can do something or in some way, trust your personal convictions and then act on them. 

Where You Can Find Chandler

Self-publishingschool.com. There are free training sessions and resources such as a book outline generator. Also on the site at self-publishingschool.com/free you can get a free copy of his book Published.

A fair amount of people are looking for side hustles to supplement their current income. There are endless ideas for making money and Nick Loper talks about some of them.

Nick also talks about side hustles on his podcast, Side Hustle Nation, and many of them are capable of becoming the main income stream in many instances.  

How Nick Provides for His Family While Being Successfully Unemployed

As his first official side hustle in 2005/2006, a comparison shopping site for footwear took most of Nick’s time. He imagined that if he could build a dedicated site for comparing items in one place, he was going to give it a go.

One main reason he did this has to do with other comparison sites falling short on accuracy. They were trying to be everything for everyone including too many comparison categories.

In order for Nick to compare soft goods, he would have to come up with a cool comparison algorithm. He not only did it, he also ended up beating competitors ¾ of the time. In addition to this, the site also offered integrated coupon codes.

After doing this for about three years, Nick was finally able to leave his regular job. Nick noted that many people believe you have to raise venture capital but insists that people should just start and build it slowly. 

How Nick Felt Leaving His Regular Job

Nick believes It’s never easy and the timing will never feel right leaving a consistent paycheck. When he quit his job, it was 2008 and the economy was collapsing. There were a lot of layoffs, and gas was at an all-time high.

However, since he had been building for years prior, he felt empowered and that it didn’t phase him much. Nick felt it was a freeing experience when he finally quit his job but things were still difficult.

It made him question if he could really be capable of cutting his own paycheck. Nick was grateful he had left when he did because Google had closed his account.

If he had waited even two weeks, he felt with the account being closed, he potentially would not have made the choice to leave. Thankfully, the account closure was a misunderstanding and he was able to have that continue to bring in revenue. 

What Nick Does Now Compared to When He Started

Nick tried to get back on Google’s good side. Eventually they told him they had made a mistake and he was given the go ahead to continue the business. It was 2013 where Nick experienced his transition point.

It took soul searching to figure out what he wanted to be known for and what he wanted to do. Nick analyzed different business models and how he wanted to make money.

There was some peer pressure because people said he needed a personal brand like a podcast or YouTube channel, so he began to spend more time on his blog writing and started the podcast.

Although the comparison site was making money in 2013, it didn’t make sense for Nick to continue with it and dedicated his time to the podcast that was making things happen for him.  

Dustin remembers hanging out with Nick on a ski trip to Tahoe where he got to know him a little bit more.

He realized they both loved not only skiing and side hustles, but also being frugal. Dustin knew he liked Nick at this point and they had a lot in common. 

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The Process to Start a Brand or Side Hustle

Step 1: Decide on a home base

Nick recommends a website, podcast or home base so people can find you. Nick’s podcast was and early content channel because he thought of himself as a writer first. He recommends making adjustments as you go and use it as a relationship builder.

He believes there are tons of benefits of podcasting but you have to try and conquer your self-doubt, how to be different and how to stand out.

Even though there is bigger money in podcasting now and a lot more crowded, you have to keep trying and make sure you have good content.

Step 2: Learn how to stand out

Nick points out that half the planet doesn’t know what a podcast is, yet. There are millions and millions of websites and channels but only a couple hundred thousand podcasts.

Learn how to differentiate yourself from all of the other podcasters. Additionally, Nick says that niche selection is key.

Find out what excites you or what people ask you for help with and go from there. 

However, Nick believes you should not niche down in something you are passionate about. If you are, then someone else is, too. People who are very passionate about a subject may do irrational things like working or doing it for free.

Instead, Nick says to do something you are competent or skilled in. Every entrepreneur has the meta-skills to find a new skill. He says to be cognizant about what is out there in the market, and then make sure to differentiate. 

Side Hustle Nation Example

As an example, Nick’s wife and her friend decided they wanted to get into wedding photography.

They had never done it before and were not competing with the professionals as they didn’t have a portfolio. Once they built their portfolio, they were able to show that to potential clients and also charge a larger cost.

Dustin has a similar story where he saw a need and began Master Passive Income. Successfully Unemployed became his passion project. He has 30+ properties and literally does not have to work.

He can then enjoy the work he does with Successfully Unemployed as a passion to help people and does not have to worry about making money. Essentially, Dustin is able to have his base project and his passion project working at the same time. 

Nick emphasizes that you do not have to know everything about something and that shouldn’t stop yoFu if you don’t. You can have confidence even though someone else may know a little bit more than you. That is where the differentiation comes into play.

Step 3: Write content and get it out there

Anything from long form blog posts, audio content, and even summary of podcast episodes are what should be going out. You may want to recognize that the podcast may not be the main draw.

You could be doing content marketing, creating lead magnets and opt-ins as well.

Side Hustle Nation’s Main Draw

For a long time, it was the podcast and the blog. Nick says he didn’t understand SEO and that it was more of an afterthought. He does say that there is definitely still a need for SEO.

Nick also learned how to get traffic to his site from FinCon. Nick recalls wanting to write an article about how to make money. He naturally Googled just that and was inundated with numerous articles.

Even though someone else may have already written about this idea, the key is to put your own creativity and perspective on it. And who knows, you may end up taking the top spot on the search.

Nick stresses that podcasting is currently less competitive than blogging so now is the time to start. 

He started out with 11 or so friends and family on his list. Now he has a network of friends and colleagues that are interested in what he does. Nick recalls starting an email and just went through his list in alphabetical order. 

Pro-Tip #1: Do not ask for anything in the first email.

The initial transaction is to just ask the recipient what they have been up to and it is human nature to reciprocate the question back. Then you have an established dialogue and can add an opt-in or call to action for something pertaining to what you are doing. 

How Nick Loper Monetizes From Other Options

Three things generate income for Nick:

1. Sponsorships on the show

It took about three years to get official sponsorships on the show so this is not something Nick would have you count on. 

2. Affiliate offers on the website

Several years ago, Nick put out a list of The Best Udemy courses for entrepreneurs. Every year he updates the list because of Udemy’s yearly sale. People were thanking him in the comments for creating and updating the list. 

Over time it ranked well in Google as he built on SEO. He credits learning more about this to FinCon, DollarSprout, and Well Kept Wallet. That article alone over time brought him $30,000-$40,000.

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3. Nick’s own side hustle experiments

Nick recommends trying some experimental side hustles. This would include self-publishing, course creation, freelancing or e-commerce. Nick recalls being interested in the Virtual Assistant movement.

So he built out a project similar to Yelp for Virtual Assistants and it is still doing its thing eight years later. 

Dustin believes guys like him and Nick are going to keep working and finding new ways to make money. Now he has plenty of money, buying and selling.

He also has so many businesses and opportunities he has to pick and choose which ones he spends time on. Dustin say when this happens, you just have to learn to say NO. 

Pro Tip #2: The best opportunities are not visible until you are in motion

Nick recalls hearing this on episode 72 with Ryan Finley. He said, “The best opportunities are not visible until you’re in motion.” At first Nick didn’t think much of the quote but now, six years later, he totally agrees. 

Dustin agrees as well. It is hard to get opportunities if you are not moving. The “objects in motion tend to stay in motion” idea. Real Estate is a good example.

If you don’t invest in a property that comes up right away, someone else will be there and be ready to do it.

Additionally, if you are ready to invest, you will have the means later to make those quick choices, thus, continuing to “be ready” later on as well. 

The First Products Nick Started to Sell with Side Hustle Nation

1st Product: Private Mastermind Sessions

Out of 600-700 people reached, 6-7 folks signed up to hang out with Nick in a private mastermind session. He ran this for a couple of years which cost $100/person/month.

Nick recalls this not being significant at the time but still remembers the first cohort he worked with. He now sees some of them have some pretty substantial businesses that they run.

2nd Product: Books

Nick has a book on Amazon called, Work Smarter, a compilation of online resources. This was helpful in getting his name out there with a lot of different people in the entrepreneurial space.

3rd Product: Side Hustle Coaching

After building up his email list a bit more, he began offering private coaching on the client’s side hustle. He did not love this part and found it very stressful. 

4th Product: Venture Projects

He was able to begin group venture projects where an audience will want to learn about a subject.  He would then find someone to do a training for his audience and at the end they would be invited to purchase the product.

This is very common in the entrepreneurial space and served Nick well because he didn’t have to create a product that he wasn’t qualified to do and also serve his audience. 

 The Importance Of An Email List for Your Business

An email list will really help you. The emails lend a way to offer an opportunity to get things, services, or work with us options. The email list is a way to show the audience how you can serve them.

The email list had been huge for Nick. He noticed this from some of the newsletter he was subscribed to. Nick felt that Steven Chou from My Wife Quit Her Job was ascending him up the listener pyramid.

The pyramid brings strangers to listeners, listeners to subscribers and then subscribers to fans. 

The first battle for Nick was awareness, how to get people to notice him. This came from compelling titles, marketing, SEO and word of mouth. The second level is what is the call to action when you have someone tuning in.

For a lot of years, that for Nick was downloading a highlight reel, or a summary of the episode. In terms of effectiveness, this has not had much return.

Recently, Nick had a guest that for every post would do a video, written instructions and then an opt-in with a template download or the like.

Her email list was around 375,000 people. Nick urges people to see what’s working for other people and paying attention. You want to deliver some value that is worth opting in for.

Dustin thinks that the logistics of this sounds daunting. Nick offers the 80/20 plan where he realizes he may have a long post so he offers the option to download the post to read later. 

With Master Passive Income, Dustin started a  membership with group coaching and an investor mastermind. Basically a huge group of people doing it all together. He was able to get five people in a week.

There is a $200/month charge and a $600 buy in for this course and he already has five people.

He believes it comes down to what the listener likes. The audience opens his emails and like him so they stick around. If they don’t, they will leave and move on and that’s ok.

Types of Podcasts to Choose From

For Dustin, his podcast is 90% his content. He is teaching the topic. This shows that he is the expert on his business model. If people like him and are listening to him then they will continue to do so. If not, they will leave and the time will not be wasted.

Another option is Interview based. One important question for this model is how do I also make sure I show I am an expert as well when I am interviewing people about a subject.

Nick says it helps if you can speak the language and add to the conversation in an interview style podcast.

Try and do a wrap up at the end about what you took away. Nick also offers that you use a consistent format and also try to mix things up now and then. Some of the ways you could mix it up are with solo podcasts or have Q&A or even round table types.

He urges just to try something outside the normal. 

You will have your mastermind members and as soon as they have success, bring them on your podcast to talk about how it worked for them.

Nick assures Dustin he will never see a bigger spike in membership and listeners if he tries this.  You will not only have social proof but a testimonial. 

How to Scale This Type of Business

Scaling for Nick has looked like drawing back the group programs, and delegating where budget or revenue allows. He has recently added to the team and then scaled it as it grew.

The advantage is already a one-to-many and that is a powerful place to start. Imagine you get the same question over and over so you write the content, be more intentional. This will be the biggest return on investment.  

Dustin has a hard time with frugality. It is hard for him to hire someone when he knows he can do it himself, potentially quicker. Dustin can edit a podcast in an hour or pay someone else to do it and spend $50.

He thinks he could use that hour to coach and potentially make $1,000. At the end of the day, he chooses to make money elsewhere and have someone do it for him. Then he feels he is helping someone else get a side hustle and help them make money.

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What Nick Does to Give Back

Nick hangs out a lot with his kids. One thing that came up to try came from a friend’s daughter who started a park clean up day. Even though they live in a clean town, it was appalling how much garbage was there.

Nick also loves being a part of 1% For the Planet where you donate 1% of revenue to environmental causes. This has been helpful for philanthropy goals that he has.

Dustin describes a scene from The Tick. A villain say to The Tick, who is a superhero, that he will blow up the whole Earth. The Tick responded with “Oh no! That’s where I keep all my stuff!”

Nick’s Advice to Get You Started

The most important thing is full transparency with potentially dozens of failed projects. Approach each with the scientist mindset where you experiment. Think about having a hypothesis and attempting to test it.

Nick also says to be ok with the outcome no matter what it is. Even if it fails, learn something and apply it to the next project. Lastly, he says to be persistent which is the entrepreneurial mindset.

What Nick is Most Frugal With

For Dustin, he is most frugal with consumables like razors. Nick’s more has to do with the fact that he has been the same size for quite some time. He doesn’t feel the need to buy clothes when all of his clothes still fit.

But housing is where he is most frugal. While recording from his child’s closet, he talks about how maybe an office space would be nice but does not want to waste the money on that yearly amount. 

Where Nick is Least Frugal

Lately, health related things and buying foods. Nick’s family could eat cheaply on rice and beans but they have decided to pack their meals with veggies, etc.

Nick believes that some medical tasting like blood tests are important in making sure everything is on a safe level.

He says you have to have a baseline on your health if you ever want to improve. Travel has been big with Nick’s family but usually use points and are frugal on the trips. 

Dustin Tip: every time he had to spend money, he would remind himself it was travel and fun and shut the brain off on the amount being spent.

He and his family spent six weeks in Europe visiting 11 different countries and used this tip each time there was a large cost involved. 

What Nick Would Tell His Younger Self

Nick would tell himself that he can figure it out. He is grateful to receive that at the age of 19. His girlfriend at the time, and now wife, gave him that advice. Nick was considering taking a house painting internship.

His wife said, if it sucks it is only three months of your life and you will figure it out. We all have the ability to learn new skills. Nick talks about a book he likes, Everything is Figureoutable, by Marie Forleo.

The App or Tool Nick Recommends

Last Pass has been the unsung hero for Nick. It is a free service for password management. The app frees up so much brain capacity and you can share with members of a team. He says it just makes life better. 

The Non-Fiction Book Nick Recommends

Nick loved The Go-Giver, by Bob Burg. The book teaches the power of being helpful first. Nick read the book when he was working on a wine site. He asked himself how is this site helpful. It helped to figure out what he wanted to share and what to broadcast to the world. 

Where You Can Find Nick

The best way to find Nick is to tune into the show, Side Hustle Nation. Or if you want some side hustle inspiration, head over to sidehustlenation.com/ideas. This is an updated laundry list of how to make money.

If by the end of that list you have tabs open about something that would be cool to try, then Nicks considers that a win. 

Neighbor to Dustin, Meg has been traveling the US with her family for the last seven months. She shows us how it is not only possible, but how it can be quite enjoyable, educational and fulfilling.

It is possible to live in an RV full time AND not work a Just Over Broke J.O.B. Learn how to successfully travel the country being successfully unemployed with Meg Brunson.

How This Became a Reality for Meg and Her Family

The transition was more of a 2-step process for Meg Brunson. She had previously been a service coordinator for adults with developmental disabilities.

During this time, her 3rd pregnancy was a traumatic, awful event where she nearly lost her life. This was when she told her husband that they needed to figure it out and she wasn’t going back to work.

It would just be too hard after what she had gone through. 

Meg began trying anything she could like direct sales, network marketing, and crafting but couldn’t find a thing to consistently bring in money. Then, she started a blog.

She had started a local mommy blog for parents to find fun things to do with their kids with a focus on things that were free and affordable. At this time, she called it a successful venture.

Meg leveraged her social media to grow the blog and pretty soon bloggers were asking how she maximizes her social media and Facebook ads.  A couple years later, Meg interviewed for a job at Facebook.

She felt that she almost didn’t get it because her educational background was criminal justice and had never worked in actual marketing.

However, the work she was doing for her blog, and how she was able to leverage marketing ads, she had the experience and skills she gained from her self-directed studies and entrepreneurial endeavors.

She got the job at Facebook, but not in Silicon Valley. She worked at a satellite office in Phoenix. That was three years ago.

That is about the time Meg met Dustin. They lived down the street from each other and their daughters are friends. 

She decided to go on her own and leave Facebook where she became successfully unemployed. She felt that when she went back to the corporate world, she thought she was healed.

She felt that the trauma had been healed and that maybe she could resume normal productive work. This is how she, and a lot of other people, are raised to think.

Normal work, like the 9-5, is the only way to go. It only lasted a year. Around Thanksgiving, Meg had one kid in kindergarten who had a play at school. She recalls going in to request the time off and she had only accumulated 1.67 hours of PTO.

In that moment, she realized she didn’t want to parent that way and didn’t want to do life that way. She was grateful for the newly acquired level of skills she got from Facebook.

So what she did was leveraged the skills to enhance the path she was on. Meg recalls thinking, maybe she jumped into the RV life sooner than she should have but her and her family have made it work.

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How Meg Brunson Affords the RV Lifestyle

After Meg left her job, she was able to travel the US, just like she had always wanted. Meg feels there isn’t a lot of fear until she actually jumps into something.

But she built her business for 2.5 years so that her income was sustainable. However, her husband is more logical and did not think it was a great idea. He had all the fears that Meg did not.

Once they jumped, they just had to push through and difficulties they faced.

Meg continued working on Facebook ads and helping other companies with theirs, too.

She believes that having multiple streams of income is important. Most of her income comes from one-on-one work with people or companies who want to leverage and grow their business with Facebook.

How she does this is she just takes over the marketing for them. They have little to do with the process so they can stay in their zone of genius. Some of the other things she did are less one-on-one so she can spend more time traveling with her family.

Currently, her and her family have been to 30 states and even went to a conference in San Diego focusing on Facebook marketing.

How RV Living Works for Meg’s Family

Being location independent is important to Meg and her family.  Her husband is a stay at home dad so they balance each other out.

She is able to focus on building her business while trusting him to take care of taking the kids places and keeping them busy if she needs to work.

Meg notes that they are actually saving money by traveling. They have their RV so what came next was all of the planning. 

Steps to Prepare for RV Living

Step 1: Soak up all of the information before jumping in

Meg decided to join a group called Full-Time Families on Facebook. The group consisted of other families who RV full-time. She spent about one year in the group just soaking up all of the information before making the choice to jump in. 

At first, Meg confesses she didn’t like the idea of camping or dealing with the bugs. However, she wanted to travel but couldn’t fathom traveling with a family of 6 paying airfare and lodging.

So, with that, the idea of RV travel was more appealing and a more cost effective way to see travel in the U.S.

Step 2: Do your research

Meg and her family went to numerous RV shows. The first one they went to was in October and purchased their RV in June. At the shows they would just walk through a bunch of different rigs and set-ups.

Meg and her husband decided to bring their kids to the RV shows to try it out because ultimately they would be a part of it.

They thought about maybe buying a bus style RV but ultimately chose the trailer with a floor plan that suited them and was far more cost effective than the bus option.

They now have an SUV they all fit in that tows the trailer nicely. During this process, they weighed a lot of options based on weight risks, the size of a 5th wheel, towing capacity and more. 

Step 3: Try it out on a small scale first

Meg didn’t want to take off indefinitely without making sure they knew how everything worked. So they did a trial run on a 3-night trip to the Grand Canyon, about three hours away from where they live.

From her research, Meg remembered inclines can be an issue so the air conditioner has to be turned off to avoid overheating. This was in the middle of summer, she recalled, so it was a bit warm. 

Dustin knows how new things can be challenging. He went through Japan for six weeks with his family where you have to drive on the left hand side of the road. After about 2 days, Dustin was comfortable with driving that way.

It is all about adapting to the changes.

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The next time they set out didn’t go as smoothly. They were delayed to their destination because their U-haul was delayed. Their hopes were to find a pull-through site but when they got to the destination, there was only a back-in site option.

They were a bit panicked as they had never backed their trailer in before. Thankfully, their site neighbor was there to help them back in and Meg believes he saved their marriage that day!

One thing Meg suggests you do is make sure you give yourself and your family grace, try to go with the flow and adapt.

How the First 7 Months Went

Since they are location independent, Meg and her husband have been homeschooling their children. Because homeschooling depends what state you live in, they are happy that Arizona is more relaxed.

They call their take on it, road schooling. The Brunsons approached RV living and homeschooling as a “jump in and tweak as they go” type experience.

Rather than a traditional school day, the Brunsons mix it up depending on where they are. Everyday the kids do 30 minutes of reading. Meg recommends Raz-Kids.

She likes it for their e-books, downloadable books and even book quizzes. The family reads, or more accurately, listens to audiobooks while driving and regular books located in the RV.

Math is usually taught everyday and everything else just depends on where they are going. For example, when they visited the Florida Everglades, they learned about Earth Science, or Washington, D.C. they learned a lot about history.

They have done some fun factory tours like Anheuser Busch and Jack Daniels, learning science.  Meg recommends purchasing a National Parks pass for $80 (you can find that here). 

Successfully Unemployed Pro Tip: Maximize your money savings

Make sure you are utilizing the National Park Service’s 4th grade pass. This includes 4th grade and following summer months for homeschooled, public schooled or free-choice schooled learners 10 years of age.

How to Score Free Experiences on The Road

Meg explains that there is a wise way to do fun things on the road for free. She mentions that her family rarely has to pay for doing some of the things they want to. 

Meg has been blogging for roughly seven years for Kids Out and About who have about 37 different markets from New York.  She pitched to them about being the travel editor who would post reviews for everything that she and her family do. 

Meg would reach out to someone telling them they will be at their destination, they have a family of six, blog for this platform, etc. She said to them that they would love to do a review and asked if they would provide passes for the family in exchange.

Because Meg is working for a travel company, the publicity is great for the company or business they are wanting to visit. Meg recalls that they have not only been offered swag bags or free passes but once someone offered a drone to try out in exchange for a blog post.

Meg Brunson Pro Tip: Don’t Overlook the Visitor’s Bureau

On a trip to Wilmington, Meg visited the Visitor’s Bureau as a blogger. They presented a list of 12 places to visit where she picked 4-5 they were interested in.  The Bureau then put everything together and her family was able to do all this stuff there.

Being able to barter prices for exposure has given the Brunson family more activities and experiences than before. As long as you have the foundations, your exposure will benefit them and their target market. 

How Far and How Much Meg Wants to Do

Meg wants to go to all the lower 48 states. She doesn’t think it will happen in a year which was the original plan. After that they plan to slow down and go back to their top favorite places and figure out where they want to put down their roots.

Meg’s husband would like to go back to regular living at some point so they will go back to normal living some day. A good  way to decide where you would like to live is you can try multiple places and decide if that is where you want to be.

Meg mentions that there are places that are only desirable during certain periods of the year. They would like to avoid hurricane season in Florida, the dead of summer in the South or the winters in Vermont.

So her idea would be to have a plot of land in Vermont where they can park their trailer and maybe a bit of land in the South to bypass the undesirable weather patterns.

Meg mentions a couple of people who live in an RV while renting out their house in the same yard. All of this has opened up their eyes to different ways of living.

Meg tries to relate with families who are coming from different backgrounds and gives tips if necessary on her blog.

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Meg Brunson’s One Piece of Knowledge to RV Living

Meg says to just do it. Make the decision, learn all you need to learn. Then you can adapt and go with the flow later. 

Meg’s Advice to Her Younger Self

Meg would tell herself about RV living sooner. She can’t stop thinking about how cool it would have been as a young adult. Even though she never would have considered it back then, looking back, she would have done it knowing what she knows now. 

The One App or Tool Meg Uses 

Google Calendar is the #1 thing Meg and her family uses. Since she is pretty busy and her husband is at home, he needs to know when things are planned. Google Calendar is helpful so they are all on the same page and are able to communicate about things happening.

The Non-Fiction Book Meg Recommends

Meg just finished reading Superfans, by Pat Flynn. She likes how she learned how to build super fans in your business. Since she has met him, she has used his tactics.

Where to Find Meg

Best place is megbrunson.com for all things and also her travel stuff can be found at www.familyroadventures.com. Meg talks about a summit you can attend at influentialsummit.com where you learn to increase income in not only money but also experiences.