Create 7 Successful Businesses by Working for Free and be Successfully Unemployed

Who would have thought that if you work for free, you can become successfully unemployed?!

When you work for free, you get paid so much more than just dollars and cents. Working for free gets you:

Learn from people who are much further along than you are
Networking with connections you may never have achieved
Business Ideas
Experience
Business Opportunities
Knowledge and Wisdom for Future

Well, at 21 years old, Cody quit his high paying job to work for himself. Now he has 7 businesses and gives the credit to working for free. He gets paid in more than just money! Listen how he is crushing it by working for free.

Today, I am excited to have Cody Berman of The FI Show on the podcast. Like Cody, you can be successfully unemployed.

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How Cody Makes Money Without Having a Job

Cody is 24 years old and first started a disc golf business that is still running to this day. It slowed down a little, but it still brings in income each month.

He also started and runs a blog and podcast, The FI Show, in the personal finance space. He makes money from sponsorship and affiliate and he has done some freelancing through these platforms.

Listen to the Podcast Episode:

Cody has three online courses he confounded with his friend, Julie, and he is running a personal finance summit call the Financial Freedom Summit with two of his good friends, Grant and P.T.

He has done other random side hustles like Uber Eats, because he loves making money.

Watch the full interview here:

What Cody Was Doing Before

Cody’s transition point happened in college. He grew up in a super frugal household, and he had that savings mentality in him. He knew about the power of compounding interest and it was hard wired in his brain from a young age.

Cody went to school for finance and economics, because he wanted to make as much money as he could. He wanted to be an investment banker and make six figures. He had friends making $150,000 out of school with bonus packages and he wanted that life. However, that life included working over 100 hours a week.

When Cody was 19, his mom gave him The 4-Hour Work Week, by Tim Ferris, and he learned that time doesn’t need to be linearly related to money. Instead, you could work 40 hours a week building business that will eventually reap huge benefits.

Since then, Cody fell into the financial independence hole and he has been all about maximizing his time since then.

Cody Had Two Failed Businesses, Before He Found Success

After reading The 4-Hour Work Week, Cody started thinking about businesses he could create. He started a tutoring business that failed miserably, as did the specialty clothing business he tried to start.

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At age 19, the third business he stumbled on was disc golf. He partnered with another person and utilized his engineering and mechanical skills, while Cody handled the business, marketing, and finance portion. From there, he built Arsenal Discs.

All of the mistakes he made and the lessons he learned positioned him well for working online.

From Manufacturing to Working Online

Cody had no intent of working online, until he went to Camp FI. He met some great people there that encouraged him to work online.

A few months later, Cody moved to Australia and while he was there, he started his blog Fly to FI. It was about getting financially independent as fast as possible. He still has that blog and makes money from it.

Originally, Cody’s podcast, The FI Show, was called FIRE Below Zero and he had a partner named T.J. After 10 episodes together, it became too much for T.J.

After Cody and T.J. parted ways, Cody met Justin, his current partner, and started The FI Show and they have been running it ever since.

Cody has three online courses that he created with Julie from the FIRE Drill podcast. Cody had done a lot of freelancing, so he spearheaded the Freelance Toolkit course.

Julie had done a lot of work on Etsy, so she spearheaded the Etsy Printable course. They both teamed up for their Blogging for Profit course.

Check out all of Cody’s awesome courses here:

The Secret to How Cody was Able to Leave His Corporate Job

The only reason Cody could take the leap and not work a job, is because of the massive savings rate he had during the seven months working in his corporate job. He saved up $35,000, because he saved 90 percent of his income. He knew he wanted to leave his job and he needed a cash cushion.

In FinCon 2018, Cody knew a guy named Grant was going to be there. Grant was about eight years older than him and financially independent and Cody wanted to work with him.

They talked for about two hours at the conference and, later, Cody sent him an email about working with him.

Grant didn’t open his email, so Cody followed up about five days later and he didn’t open that one either.

The third email Cody sent to Grant referenced the book Grant was launching. Grant finally responded to that email and said he would love help with his book launch and his book tour.

Cody quit his job five months earlier than expected and one month later, they hit the road and went on the book tour. They covered 33 states, 15,000 miles, and over 80 events.

Cody did not get paid during this time, but his food and lodging expenses were covered.

The Creation of the Financial Freedom Summit

When Cody and Grant were driving from Calgary to Montana, they brainstormed ways to get to the next level. Grant had a book, a blog, and a podcast and he was looking for something else to reach a larger audience.Join me at the Financial Freedom Summit. Get your tickets here: https://successfullyunemployed.co/ffs

They came up with the idea of a conference to reach people outside of their market, and they contacted P.T., who created FinCon, for advice.

After conversations with him, P.T. thought it would be a good way to grow his brand too. They have been working together ever since creating the Financial Freedom Summit.

How to Find the Right Partners

Cody’s first instinct when looking for someone to partner with is to ask himself if he likes spending time with them. He needs to like a person if he is going to be spending a lot of time with them. If he can’t sit down with them and have a beer, he doesn’t want to partner with them.

The next thing Cody does is vet people heavily in the background. He researches them online, looks at the quality of their work, and determines if they are honest.

After that, he looks at the other person to determine if they can fill in his skills gap. He wants someone who has a different background and different skills.

Networking and Finding Other People to Do Business with. Hard Money Lending for Passive Income

Cody met a woman that does real estate investing in Indiana, who was looking for someone to invest with her. She didn’t want to use her own money, so Cody acted as her hard money lender and loaned her the cash.

Cody is acting as the bank and he is getting about eight to ten percent in interest. It is risky and it is important to have good contracts in place to protect you.

Every month, Cody receives a payment plus interest and, in six months, when she flips the house, he will get all of his money back.

How Cody Keeps it All Organized

Cody hit a burnout point last year, because he was juggling seven or eight business ventures. He wasn’t outsourcing much at the time, so he hired virtual assistants to help.

With the blog, he slowed down a lot and evaluated how he was spending his time, especially on things that didn’t really matter.

The burnout came, because Cody was working 16 to 18 hours a day. He realized he needed to build in some automation, like email sequences and FAQs. He built out systems so he didn’t have to be the front person and answer every email.

How Cody Networks

Most people are afraid to reach out to others. During Cody’s freshman year in college, someone told him he should reach out to three people every day on LinkedIn and start a conversation asking them what they do. Cody thought he was crazy.

Cody finally started doing it and one in four or five people would respond. He would have a 15-minute conversation with people and now he has no shame in reaching out to other people.

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Getting out of your comfort zone is one of the best ways to learn. As you reach out to people, you grow that networking muscle.

Finding Business Connections through on Conferences

Cody is an interactive learner and he goes to conferences to network with others. It is powerful to talk to someone in person. So many business ventures have been made from these connections.

You don’t know the intentions of others when you are communicating online.

Local meetups, mini events, or big conferences are great ways to find people who can help you in your business.

Other Ideas to Get You Out of Your Shell

If you want to get out of your shell, create something. If you are thinking of starting a gardening business, create a two or three page PDF and see if people who are already in the space are willing to distribute it. This is a great way to gain trust with bigger influencers and it is a great way to get thousands of subscribers quickly. Leverage people who have large audiences.

How to Travel and Have a Business that Allows It

Cody is a huge fan of traveling, and he spent December in South America last year. Internet access was not great there, so he automated before his trip. He scheduled out his blog posts and social media. He pre-recorded podcasts and pre-scheduled things for the online courses.

His businesses are still going strong. Once you have systems and people in place, it frees up your time so you can do other things.

The SU Rapid Fire Round

The Legacy Cody Wants to Leave

Cody wants to impact as many people he can and help them get to the next level of their lives.

The Advice Cody Would Give to Anyone Who Wanted to Become Successfully Unemployed

Cody recommends asking other people within your niche how they did it, how they got started, and learn from them.

Especially learn from their mistakes.

Ask them about their business failures and if there is anything they regret, because that is where you learn the most.

Cody’s Biggest Failure

The biggest failure Cody experienced was all of the strategic moves he tried to make with the disc golf company.

They had way too much physical overhead.

If he could go back and change that, he would have a 50/50 set up with another company that had all of that stuff and do some co-branding. He learned a lot from that failure.

The Advice Cody Would Give to His Younger Self

Cody is 24. He would go back and tell himself not to doubt himself.

Even if there are people better than you in your niche, it doesn’t mean you are not qualified.

Start influencing, start making content, and don’t doubt yourself.

The Tools Cody Uses in His Business

Cody loves the Reminders app on his iPhone.

It helps him to stay organized and stay on task.

The Non-Fiction Book Cody Suggests

Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari

Cody’s Thoughts on College

Cody went to college and earned a degree. That experience taught him how to learn. He applied himself and he was a good student and he is now a much faster learner. The necessity of college depends on what you want to do.