From Bourbon to Finance: How to Find a Financial Advisor You Can Trust

How to Find a Financial Advisor You Can Trust

In From Bourbon to Finance: How to Find a Financial Advisor You Can Trust, James Vermillion, founder of Vermillion Private Wealth, joins host William Glass to discuss what to look for in a financial advisor. You’ll learn:

  • Preparation is the key to success
  • How to pick a financial advisor
  • Finding peak performance in your career

James has built multiple businesses including a real estate flipping business, bespoke candle company, and his own financial advisory practice. This episode is jam-packed with value. In addition, I had the pleasure of sitting down on James’s podcast called Bulls, Bears and Bourbon. Check it out wherever you listen to Silicon Alley.

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About James Vermillion

James is the Founder of Vermillion Private Wealth and Wixology Candle Company. His curiosity about entrepreneurship led him to start his first company while serving as an officer in the US Air Force. Since then, James has continued to grow as an entrepreneur. As the owner of Vermillion Private Wealth, James serves as a fee-only financial advisor and investment management, overseeing investment portfolios that focus on innovative and disruptive technologies. With Wixology, James works alongside his co-founders to continue to grow the brand, emphasizing sustainability.

Learn more about James Vermillion: https://vermillionprivatewealth.com/

Transcription

This transcription is autogenerated and may contain errors.

William Glass: [00:00:00] One of the areas finance I am most skeptical about is finding a financial advisor. Who’s actually good at what they do and will put your interests first. Unfortunately. Uh, not so great things out in the wealth management industry, but luckily we were sitting down with James Vermilion who was going to give you all of the things that you need to know in order to find the right financial advisor for you, and really understand what you should be looking for when interviewing and talking to financial advisors, James Vermilion is from Vermilion private wealth.

And has started his own firm after going from the air force to being in the bourbon business, to working at a large financial advisory practice where he wasn’t always able to put his client’s interests at heart, because it would go against what was best for the firm. And instead started his own practice where he can really focus on building those relationships.

What he’s learned is that preparation is key above anything else. And if you were properly prepared, that is the most important thing. Business. And second is how to find that peak performance in your career in life. James actually hosts a podcast called the bulls bears and bourbon podcast, which I had the pleasure of sitting down on.

So definitely go check out that episode. We got to sip some bourbon and talk a little bit about money and finances. So definitely go check that out. I’m William Glass CEO and co-founder of estrogen, of course, your host of the Silicon alley podcast. Whereas my job to talk to top performers, entrepreneurs, and VCs, to understand what it truly takes to grow and scale a business.

If you have not already, please go and pound that subscribe button so you can notify one when it air every Friday and without further ado, I hope you enjoy today’s finance focused episode of the Silicon alley podcast, featuring the James Vermilion. 

Are you interested in growing and scaling your business? Welcome to the Silicon alley podcast, where you’ll hear from entrepreneurs, venture, capitalists, and top performers on what it truly takes to grow and scale a business. You’ll walk away with actionable insights. You can apply in your own business and life.

Now Dwayne blasts, the CEO and co-founder of ostrich and your host of the Silicon alley podcast.

 James welcome to Silicon alley podcast. Super excited to have you on.

James Vermillion: [00:02:07] Yeah. Good to talk to you again, William. 

William Glass: [00:02:10] I know. Yeah. I feel like we just did this one a couple of weeks ago, but, uh, inverse 

James Vermillion: [00:02:15] I’m on your turf now, man. So 

William Glass: [00:02:18] exactly. Yeah. And so if you don’t know what I’m referencing, James hosts, a podcast called bulls bears and bourbon, which is a lot of fun. We, had, a very strong Ry, uh, during that conversation, which was, uh, delicious.

But man, I was feeling it at the end there. 

James Vermillion: [00:02:32] Yeah, it was. Not mild. Put it that way, but, uh, this is, this is not bourbon in my glass by the way. It’s just coffee today. So 

William Glass: [00:02:41] fair enough. Fair enough. Well, yeah, I’m excited to dive in. We kind of touched on it and you’ve got a really interesting background, um, as an entrepreneur in finance.

Doing all these, these various things. But I’d love to just start out and understand before you got into your career, you’re in the air force. Can you talk to me a little bit about your time in the air force and how that’s kind of impacted you moving 

James Vermillion: [00:03:05] forward? Yeah, definitely. The. Reason. I went into the air force that, you know, yes, I’m patriotic.

Yes. I love America and all those things, but if I’m being perfectly honest, the reason I joined the air force was to, to get an education. And I was a junior senior in high school and I was talking with my mom, you know, how are we going to pay for this college thing? What’s the, you know, w w what’s the situation.

And so she and I sat down. Um, I actually did want to join the military at some point. Didn’t really know both my parents were in the air force. Didn’t really know about the officer side of things. And my mom, you know, came up with, you know, she was like, if you’d looked into this ROTC scholarship and I hadn’t, I hadn’t heard of it.

We didn’t have ROTC at our school at the time. I think they may have it now, as far as junior Razzi. So that sounded really good. So I went through that process of, you know, applying for that ROTC scholarship and was very lucky, um, to get that and had a four year ride to university of Kentucky, which is about 45 minutes from my hometown in Frankfurt.

So that worked out great. So that that’s kind of how I ended up in the air force, but, what a unique experience that was to be thrust at age 26. As an officer into a leadership role, not knowing what the hell you’re doing and, and trying to figure out, figure it out step by step and, and day by day.

And it really learned so many things, you know, that whole trial by fire and that sort of thing. That’s really what it was. And a lot of those lessons directly correlated with trying to start a business. Whereas, you know, you’re constantly putting out fires. You’re constantly learning new things. You’re constantly realizing you’re ill-equipped in certain areas and trying to write those, those before they get out of hand.

So it was definitely a great learning experience, a great leadership opportunity, great educational opportunity. And it just kinda set the stage for my future. It was never something I intended to make a career of really. And, but it’s something I definitely have no regrets about. It was a fun. Exciting and very educational experience.

Yeah, 

William Glass: [00:05:18] no, that makes a lot of sense. And, I think that’s one of the great things, about what the military and ROTC scholarship pride is the ability to go get an education and take advantage of some of the benefits that are, that are unique when you choose to serve the country. What have you translated into your entrepreneurial career?

I’m curious if there’s anything specific that like you’ve really, really taken, you mentioned trial by fire, you know, learning to overcome some obstacles. What are some of the things that you as an entrepreneur really look back on and say, I can tie that back to my time in the 

James Vermillion: [00:05:50] air force. Well, I think the cliche answer would probably revolve around discipline, right?

I mean, that’s kind of the thing when people think of, when they think of serving in the military, going through boot camp and waking up early and, you know, hospital corners on your bed and don’t get me wrong. All of those lessons are super valuable. I think. A fairly disciplined person, even before that.

So it was a good fit for me personally, but really the lessons that I think resonated and carried over the most were more relational because here I was at 22 year old kid didn’t know anything about what I was doing. I ended up being a munitions maintenance officer, working on components for nuclear Wells.

Basically. So obviously I know I did, I had no background. I was a political science major for crying out loud. And so here I was working on the nuclear program in the air force and I was quote unquote in charge of, or, or overseeing people who had 25 years of experience. And, you know, the classic young officer mistake is to walk in to the show.

Like you own the place and start telling people how smart you are and how much better you’re going to make things. And I learned from my parents who were enlisted and. Incredible people. And we’re, we’re, you know, in the air force, that’s, that’s not a good approach. That’s not going to get you very far.

And so I really tried to embrace and learn from the people that were there. And, and I realized pretty quickly that if I were going to be successful in what I was trying to do was going to be because of the people around me, not because of me. So I’ve always tried to kind of take those lessons and apply them even, you know, for my business, with Vermilion private.

I’m a solo practitioner, but relationships are still the most important part of my business. Yeah, 

William Glass: [00:07:45] no, I’m I appreciate you diving in there. And I think that’s a really important mistake that, I know when I first moved into management and it was, was managing people and, you know, a couple people that were older than me, I’ve made some of those mistakes, right.

That, uh, you know, oh, I, you know, I can do it better than, you know, the other bot, the other boss. Right? Like, and then you get in there and you’re like, wow, this is a. A lot different than, than what I anticipated. So that’s incredible that you came in with that knowledge and your parents helped to guide you because it’s definitely a mistake.

That is a, is a common one. 

James Vermillion: [00:08:17] My dad made. Very sure that I wouldn’t do that. I’ll put it that way. And I appreciate that very much. 

William Glass: [00:08:25] Yeah, absolutely. And I think one thing that’s really interesting is that it sounds like you made the decision. You sat down with your mom, it sounded like it was you sitting down saying, Hey, how are we going to do this whole college thing?

Um, right. So there’s a focus and it sounds like about planning and thinking about finances. Can you talk to me a little bit about that? Cause you’ve obviously ended up in wealth management, so you’re, you’re interested in investing in finance, but have you always had that. 

James Vermillion: [00:08:49] That was a hell of a good transition.

I’ve got to say. Oh yeah. Yeah. I think so. You know, one thing I’ve always been proud of with my parents is they both have done better than where they came from. And I don’t mean better as far as people, I just mean financially and being in a position to. Provide us with opportunities. And I’ve always taken that very seriously and tried to not screw that up and, and hopefully continue that and provide my children.

I have one daughter now with even better opportunities than I had. So I’ve always taken that really seriously. And I was, you know, a really good student in high school for the most part. And no one in my family had graduated from college. So we hadn’t gone through that before. So yeah, there was an element of that.

Me thinking forward. I knew I wanted to, advance my education. Didn’t really know exactly what that would look like. And my parents knew as well, and they obviously wanted that for me. So I think it was a combination of my parents realizing that’s what I wanted to do and wanting to be available to help me, but certainly in my mind as well, there was, the thought of what do I need to do next?

What’s what’s the best move for me, kind of looking forward in my life and where I want. 

William Glass: [00:10:04] No, that makes, that makes a lot of sense. And so when you came out of the air force, you ended up in finance. Can you talk to me about that transition and, you know, definitely want to get into what ultimately led you to want to strike out on your own and talk about some of the other first entrepreneurial 

James Vermillion: [00:10:24] endeavors that you yeah.

And I won’t give my whole life story here because there, there are a lot of twists and turns, I think. It really started when I, when I got out of the air force, like I said, I knew it wasn’t going to be a career. You know, I wasn’t going to be a lifer. I really never planned on it. Um, I did consider it a little bit, but never too seriously.

I was already married and we were ready to move back to Kentucky and, and, you know, go ahead and put some roots in and things like that. So that was kind of off the table. At that point, I actually got a call from, a very good friend, one of my best friends from high school who was working in the bourbon bit.

He said, Hey, are you still getting out? Are you still moving back? You know, what’s that look like? Someone at our company just left and I think you’d be a great fit. So I ended up in the bourbon business, working for Blanton’s bourbon, which is a fantastic product out of Buffalo trace. If you haven’t had it, go try it.

It’s it’s amazing. And I did that for a while, working on the international side, kind of this hybrid sales, logistics, position during that period, I met another friend and he was in the wealth man. Business. And he’d asked me a couple of times, as we got to know each other a little more. Hey, would you ever consider.

You know, coming into this business and maybe working at my firm, it’s a great firm, all of these things. And I said, no, you know, I’m really happy. I’m traveling the world, you know, pushing bourbon, you know, how much better can it get? But over time, you know, I, I considered it a little more and he’s a pretty convincing guy, which is why he’s so successful.

And I ended up making that switch. This was, you know, about three, four years ago and. Didn’t really know what I was getting into. So fortunately I kept one foot in the door and still do some work with Blanton’s. But yeah, so I made that shift over to wealth management. There were some things that I love, some other things that I didn’t like quite so much.

I, I, you know, then we could fast forward and get to the why I kind of struck, struck out and decided to, to. You know, develop my own firm, but it’s a really good fit for me as a whole, because I do like those planning elements. I do like talking with people, I like relating to people and, and, and all of those things.

And I just felt like, Wealth management gets a little bit too bureaucratic, a little bit too stuffy. I think when people think about going to talk to a wealth advisor or a financial advisor, whatever, they, they feel like they’re getting ready to go play in their funeral and pick out a casket. And I don’t want it to feel that way.

I want it to be fun. I want people to actually enjoy thinking about their future instead of, of dreading. Yeah, no, that 

William Glass: [00:12:55] makes a lot of sense. And you know, that the planning aspect, right. It sounds like that that was a really nice fit. So what were some of the things that you liked about financial planning, working for a firm and some of the things that ultimately led you to, to strike out on your own?

I think if I’m not mistaken, real estate was a, was a part of. In terms of what you incentivized to essentially advise clients to do, but we’d love to hear a little bit about what ultimately led you to start your practice. 

James Vermillion: [00:13:25] Yeah, that’s a great question. And there it’s really, it’s difficult to answer, to be honest with you because there are so many kind of bits and pieces that, that on their own, weren’t really a big deal, but combined in the timing of things and, and COVID happening and my daughter being born and some of the things going on.

In my life kind of collided with some of my thoughts on the business side of things. And it kind of just really made for this situation where I said, okay, this is the right time. I should go ahead and do this, but kind of going back to where I was before. You know, I love the wealth management space in the sense that I’m fascinated by this stuff.

Right. I love learning about it. Even now where I’m doing it every day, I still just really enjoy reading some white paper on some fascinating topic that I maybe don’t understand as well as I want to. And I love thinking about the future and I get excited about the world 20 years from now. And I get excited when I think about the world that my one-year-old daughter is going to live in.

I look around so many other people are so scared of the future and they’re so worried about things going wrong. I don’t, I don’t see most of those things. And maybe, maybe that’s not always a good thing, but I’m very optimistic. I really believe that things are improving even when we don’t see them in the news and we don’t see them in the media.

And that’s the part I like. I like talking about the future with people and hopefully shining a positive light. On things and getting people excited about their future and what they can achieve. And hopefully being just a small part of enabling people to find success in a way that they want to. But there were also some things I didn’t like and namely it was around how I could do these things.

And as you know, anytime you get in a big company for that company to operate efficiently, They just have to kind of put people in boxes and this is your role, and this is your role and you stay in your box, you stay in your lane. And I struggled with that because there were some things I wanted to provide.

Some advice I wanted to provide. And you brought up the real estate thing. If, if a client came to me and really want to talk about buying real estate or something like that, I had to be pretty careful about it. Especially if it’s an investment property, about how much advice I could provide.

On that investment, since it was kind of outside of the firm, you didn’t want to, you know, sell away clients when they could be putting their money with you. They’re putting it somewhere else. And things like that. On the marketing end, I really wanted to do a podcast. I really wanted to spend time creating content writing.

I’d love to yeah. And I couldn’t do those things. So I wasn’t spending my day in a way that really kind of was peak happiness for me, you know? And I, and I struggled with that a little bit, and I’ve said this, on some other platforms and I truly believe it, peak performance occurs when you can be yourself and when you can play to your strengths.

And I really wasn’t feeling that I was operating at at peak capacity. So I wanted to make a change to hopefully get to that. Yeah, 

William Glass: [00:16:22] no, that makes a lot of sense and the limitations, right? I think that’s, that’s one of the key things that drives a lot of people to start something of their own is, you know, being stuck in that structure and not being able to, you know, do the things that you really want to do create.

To, you know, advise people on what you felt like was the best full picture versus just, Hey, here’s the one thing that you’re allowed to talk about. Right? Know, there’s all these other things that might be a great fit and, you know, being stuck in that, in that structure. So, James, what’s it been like starting the practice.

What have, what has been that experience and what are some of the challenges that you’ve, that you’ve had to face early? 

James Vermillion: [00:17:02] Well on the whole, it’s been fantastic. It led me to a world of things that are out there that I actually had no clue existed. There are financial tools that are just incredible, that I didn’t have access to before there are platforms to work with my clients that are out there that are very easy to use, very intuitive and great fits for my clients.

So there, there are, there’s a whole world, a whole suite of things out there that I have no clue about. So it’s been really exciting to. Not just learn what those things are, but to incorporate, incorporate them into my practice and, and, you know, get client feedback and determine what’s the best way forward.

Is that something you like? Is that something you didn’t like? So really building the practice that I want that gets me exciting or excited, but there, there have been some challenges, no doubt. And as you can imagine, and as you know, with what you’re doing with ostrich, and I don’t know, maybe not to the same extent, but it’s a very, very heavily regulated.

Industry and, you know, for a small business, I mean, big firms have compliance departments that are staffed with many, many, many people. So, you know, trying to make sure that I’m doing all of the things I need to do by the book. And the book is massive. It’s definitely a challenge, but again, there are tools out there that make those tasks easier and it’s a matter of finding them and implementing them.

So you’re juggling as, you know, as an entrepreneur you’re juggling and right when you get into a good flow with, with four balls here comes another one. So. That’s the challenge. It’s making sure you’re spending your time on things that are actually productive. And for me productive means, are they benefiting my clients or is it just something that makes me feel good?

Because ultimately my job is to make sure my clients feel good. And that’s what I wanted. 

William Glass: [00:18:49] Yeah, no, I love that. And the, the compliance piece is definitely a whole monster in and of itself. There’s just, especially if you’re creating, right. So creating a podcast, if you’re writing, like there’s, there’s so many things that you have to think about when you’re in such a heavily regulated industry that, you know, most people don’t even think about it.

They can post whatever pictures, say, whatever they want on social media and it is what it is. Right. They might get a little blow back from. You know, they’ve got strong opinions, but beyond that, it’s not like they’ve got to worry about, regulatory bodies 

James Vermillion: [00:19:20] coming down on them. Yeah. I got, I had a conversation the other day.

Yeah. And I, I, I think I got a little animated, so I’ll try to keep it a little calmer today. You know, I was thinking about the medical profession and I could be wrong. I don’t want, you know, any doctors or whoever you might have listening to come at me, but the amount of information on clients that I have to get, keep understand before I can implement certain things with them.

And then I think about going to a doctor where I fill out a form. Yes. But the doctor’s in there for three minutes, didn’t ask me anything. And then they just prescribed something. I’m like, it seems like, you know, as, as important as money. Health is probably even more important or not probably health is more important.

So I, I feel like there’s certainly an outsized eye on the financial space, but you could obviously argues for good measure and to keep people from getting taken, if you will, by by bad players. Yeah, 

William Glass: [00:20:14] no, no. I mean, there’s obviously obviously a purpose. That’s interesting comparing it to yeah. To the medical profession.

I think collectively less time than I saw the doctors, like the last three or four times I maybe saw them for like, I don’t know, maybe five minutes, if you add up the entire time, uh, you know, there’s three visits, right? It was maybe five minutes the whole time. Cause it’s like, I wasn’t one of the 80 year old clients that had a lot of problems.

Right. So. Uh, not yet. Yeah. Yeah. Knock on wood. Hopefully it stays that way, but, it’s very, very interesting how, how another still heavily regulated industry just in different ways,

James Vermillion: [00:20:49] operates. It is. And, and, and it can be frustrating at times, but it’s one of those things. Kind of the cost of entry.

So you do those things, you do them well, and you create as few problems for yourself as you can later. So that’s kind of the attitude. I try to take like that. 

William Glass: [00:21:07] So what are some of the things that make your practice unique that make it different? And maybe it’s the, you know, talking about the kind of like target customers you go after or how you work with them.

But I’m curious, what are some of the things that make you unique? 

James Vermillion: [00:21:23] That’s a great question. I think it goes back to. Kind of the origin of how I built the firm instead of starting with what experiences did I like, my prior firms and trying to replicate those, I started with, what do I not like, what do I not think?

The clients like. And I tried to find ways to ensure that they were not part of the experience with clients of Vermilion private Wells. So that was my starting point, but some of the things I think that are different, I was willing to step out a little bit and try some different things. And a good example is the custodian platform that we use.

We use altruists which the CEO, Jason wink is just an incredible guy. Great team of people behind the scenes, really working to modernize and provide broader accessibility of financial services. And they’re doing an incredible job. They’re very young though, and they don’t have the robust system that a Schwab does.

And, you know, some people might have said, Hey, I need to check all of these boxes. But for me, the important part was. Will this work. Does it meet these requirements? Yes. Okay. That’s good. Are they improving? Are they really trying? Are they listening? Are they accepting feedback? What’s really behind the scenes.

What’s that culture like? And that to me was the difference. When you look at some of the existing traditional finance, and then you look at some of the new stuff out there, there’s a culture gap. And I would rather for the most part. Work with people, whether there’s a cultural fit and maybe there’s a feature missing that I can figure out a way to plug something else in, then to go with someone that’s a terrible culture fit.

It doesn’t work with what I’m trying to do. But it’s got 500 features, only 10 of which I use. So that was, that was another thing that I think kind of makes, makes what we’re doing a little bit differently or a little bit different. And then frankly, you kind of alluded to it. I serve a younger clientele.

I don’t, I don’t see myself as a sales person. I see, truly see myself as a portfolio manager and a financial advisor, not someone who my job every day is to go get new clients. Of course, I have to get more clients. That’s part of, you know, my livelihood and keeping this business going and growing. So that’s definitely a part of my everyday routine, but I’m patient.

I can play the long game. And I know if I take care of my clients, if I provide an experience that they actually enjoy, instead of dread the growth will take care of itself. And I was listening to a podcast recently. I think it was Arnold Vandenberg. He said when he was young, this is, you know, he’s probably in his seventies and growing his business.

He focused so much on trying to get new clients every day. And he was realizing I had, he had, he said he had the best prospect you could ever imagine. They were ready to do business with somebody. And he was the first one there and he didn’t, I didn’t get the business. And he said, what I realized was I was spending too much time worrying about getting the business.

I wasn’t spending enough time being prepared. So he reset his life focused on preparation and becoming knowledgeable and putting his platforms and systems and getting his mind prepared. And he said the business started flowing. So that’s kind of the approach that I’m taking. I’m doing the things that I enjoy, and I’m trying to create an experience that will help my clients become advocates and help grow my business that way.

And we’ll see how well that will work. But I, I think it’s doing pretty well. So. 

William Glass: [00:24:54] Yeah, no, I like that. And it kind of goes back to the whole planning aspect, right? When we’re talking about why you, why you ended up in the air force, right. Is thinking ahead and planning, preparing, making sure that you’re creating a great experience that your customers, clients are gonna absolutely 

James Vermillion: [00:25:09] love.

Yeah. And a lot of financial advisors are very impatient, which, you know, it’s not what you’d really want or expect, but when you’re trying to hit some quarterly or some monthly metrics, And that’s all you’re focused on. I think you’re really doing yourself and your, your clients and your future clients, a disservice.

So, you know, yes, those things are still important for me to grow my business, but that’s not what I’m going to focus on when I need to be focusing on the clients. Yeah, absolutely. 

William Glass: [00:25:36] I think I can’t remember the stat, but it’s like somewhere around like maybe 10, depending on what industry are 10 times more expensive to go get another, to go get a net new customer than it is to just work with an existing customer and help them see success.

So really growing, growing your client base internally and helping them be successful also helps you as a, as a, as an advisor. 

James Vermillion: [00:25:59] Yeah. And my clients are in their, you know, late twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties. And they’re going to come into a lot more money. They’re going to earn more as they grow their own businesses.

A lot of them are entrepreneurs themselves, or as they move up the, the structure at their, you know, at their current place of employment, you know, we’re getting ready to see a massive, massive transfer of wealth coming up over the next decade. So a lot of those clients are going to inherit money and they’re going to need someone to help them determine what the best use of, of that is.

And my future revenue is already here. It’s just a matter of time. And I kind of look at it that way and adding new clients is bonus, but I also want to make sure those clients are a good fit, both for me and for them. Yeah, 

William Glass: [00:26:42] absolutely. So along those lines, then James, what are, what are some tips, advice you have for someone who maybe hasn’t worked with a financial advisor before, but has thought about it as interested, wants to explore it?

Like, what are some of the things that you should look for? 

James Vermillion: [00:26:59] It’s a great question. I, I tend to want to say some of the industry standard stuff about fiduciaries and all that stuff, and that’s fine. People can Google those things, but what I would really just tell people is make sure that culture is there.

And on the investment side, when I’m looking to choose a new stock to add to a portfolio, for example, I really try to look at a company’s culture. Is that a place I would want to work? Do they have a mission that’s really inspiring or is the mission just to make money making money? Big part of, of the equation of whether or not that’s a suitable stock for me to select, but companies with that mission that is really inspirational, both to employees and to customers.

That’s really important. And I would say that’s very important with an advisor to make sure that, that, that advisor, when you’re, when you’re talking to them, It was just a good fit that you get along, because this is someone you want to be honest with and talking about your life and the good and the bad, and sometimes the ugly it’s someone that you want to be able to relax around.

Instead of, like I mentioned earlier, feeling like you’re planning your funeral, so yeah. You want to feel good about it? It doesn’t have to be, but it’s, you know, younger clients in particular don’t want to feel like everything is a white tie. You know, sometimes they want to just go in and have a conversation and they want to get some things off their chest and they want to plan for their future, but not in a way where they’re uncomfortable.

Sometimes they might just want to have a glass of bourbon with you and talk through some of their goals and aspirations. A financial partner is, is kind of the way I look at it. Not just someone who’s going to tell you. We need to make some adjustments to your asset allocation. Like yeah, that’s, that’s all important, but if you don’t enjoy having those discussions with that person, it’s probably not going to be a very fruitful relationship.

Yeah, 

William Glass: [00:28:52] no, that makes a lot of sense that culture fit and being able to build trust and really connect with, with an advisor makes complete sense and creates a better relationship, as you said, for the long-term. 

James Vermillion: [00:29:03] Right? Because definitely the 

William Glass: [00:29:05] idea of switching advisors every, every year is not advised nor will that probably lead to success.

So finding someone that truly is a good partner 

James Vermillion: [00:29:14] is key. Definitely. Yep. 

William Glass: [00:29:17] You talked about really being interested in the future and that you’re very optimistic. Can you talk to me a little bit about some of the things you are most optimistic for or things that you’re really excited about based on, based on what you’re seeing in terms of, uh, you know, investments 

James Vermillion: [00:29:33] and just.

Yeah, I love talking about this stuff. So you, you might have to stop us at some point because I can really go on, you know, for a, for a long time, but I’ll kind of start more broadly and, and just say, and I wrote a piece about Rosie retrospection and the idea that people view the past more favorably than it was.

And that leads to them thinking worse about the future. And I think that’s a big problem investors, have they underestimate how good it’s going to be in the future? And in a couple pieces I’ve used historical references. I always talk about 1960. And as everyone probably knows that was a pivotal year in American history.

A lot of very difficult things were going on during that time. And I think a lot of people had a hard time seeing light at the end of the tunnel for America and for themselves and their children and their futures. And there are going to be time. Like 1968 where we’re looking at each other saying, oh my gosh, like, are we going to survive this?

And it’s very scary. I mean, COVID, was that to an extent nine 11 was that to an extent the financial crisis, but we get through them and things go on and we’d learned from them and we make them. Better and we’re never going to be perfect. We’re certainly not now, but thinking about the world through that lens of how difficult things have been in the past and how we got through them and generally came out better on the other end, gets me thinking about the future.

You can see that reflected in my portfolio management style, by the way, because you’ll see a lot of things that are kind of based on what I think are macro trends that are shaping the future things. Artificial intelligence and deep learning robotics and digital wallets and decentralized finance, genomic coding, and some of the healthcare possibilities around some of that work that’s going on.

So all of these things, I see brilliant people doing brilliant work, and it’s not in the news every day. I honestly don’t even watch the news all that often because it’s not particularly useful in my opinion. But yeah, those are the things I get excited about and I think. The problems we’re solving now.

And of course we’re going to have new problems. I mean, right now, some of the things that are happening in the green energy space and things happening that are going to help us solve the climate crisis. Now, granted, we pushed them shit to the very edge. We wait until we’re staring down the barrel before we decided to do something.

But when we decided to do it, we’d usually do it pretty quickly. And with a lot of fun, And I think that’s what you’re seeing right now. So yeah, I just, I really do. I see so much opportunity for investors. I see so much opportunity to make everyday life better for people. I want my money to, to benefit from that as well.

And I think. Yeah, no, I like 

William Glass: [00:32:22] that a lot, James. And I think that you’re spot on in terms of how we, how we look at the past and have those rose colored glasses. And we forget about all the bad stuff and how are we feeling? And just, you know, we came out of it. So therefore, you know, there were actually good things that happened.

And, you know, we missed that. A lot of the, the same things that we’re experiencing now is what we’re experiencing. 50 a hundred, 200 years ago, whether in history, but we just don’t recognize that there’s that same level of conflict. And feel like, you know, the future’s the challenging part. Yeah. Where do you recommend people go to, you know, you’re not consuming the news.

If I want to educate myself, I want to get smarter about some of these different emerging areas that could be great investments or just interesting things to know, because that’s, our world is going to change because of them. Where do you recommend people go to find those type, that type of thing. 

James Vermillion: [00:33:10] Here’s what I see happening.

It goes all directions. You have a choice every day. Of what information you want to consume. If you are thinking of very evil, main thoughts, you can go find a community of people who will echo those thoughts and make you feel good about them. You can do the same with people who. Are very positive about the future.

You can do the same with really any opinion you have. You can go find someone no matter how ridiculous that opinion may be. You’re going to find a group of people out there who will make you feel like you are absolutely right. And that’s where we’re at. I’m not saying it’s the worst thing of all time.

I’m just saying it’s, it’s what I think is the truth of where we’re at with social media and rapid fire information. And reducing very complex ideas. And to headlines, what I have done is I’ve really tried to read more. Books, actual books and that’s foreign to a lot of people. It seems, but reading podcasts, sometimes you don’t need some, a quote unquote expert.

Who’s going to make money off of telling you the news to talk about something. You can hear two people like us having a conversation about it, and maybe you learn something that way. And then even social media, there are really good opportunities. I have learned an incredible amount of information in certain areas in particular artificial intelligence and decentralized finance.

Because there are some brilliant, brilliant people who openly share their knowledge in places like Twitter. Now the danger is you can create your own little bubble where, like I said, you’re hearing exactly what you want to hear. So I think being self aware. And, and understanding that those things can happen and trying to make sure just like you had diversify your investments, make sure you’re diversifying your information and not getting married to some idea that you remain open-minded.

But I think largely it’s a choice you can choose to be open-minded and choose to go find information a different way, or you can choose to sit around and watch the news and get angry and frustrated and fearful about the. Yeah, 

William Glass: [00:35:25] no. Yeah. You’re, you’re spot on. It’s so easy now to find the, whatever you’re looking for online, there’s a, someone’s created a blog, a community, a subreddit, a whatever, whatever it is, a discord server or something where you can find absolutely find like-minded industries.

So being able to diversify your information, I think is absolutely spot on. I, I, I’d love to dive a little bit deeper into, into defy specifically. So decentralized finance, I think that’s such a interesting space. And in the context of when we’re recording this, which is early July, 2021, there was a big project that mark Cuban was invested in the defy space that I think a couple of weeks ago went from, looked like he was doing well to zero.

So I’m curious, like, what are you, what are you seeing in the defy space? What are your thoughts? Whether it’s following certain people on, on Twitter? Like what are you thinking when it comes to decentralized finance? 

James Vermillion: [00:36:20] Yeah, that’s a great question. I think it’s a really interesting time. I think we’re not even in ending number one yet.

I think we’re still warming up prior to the game and stretching. So I don’t have really strong opinions on it just yet. I think people, people always want it. Some opinion, right? I’m open to admit that I’m learning right there, along with everyone where I don’t want to find myself, especially as a financial advisor is five or six years from now as if the industry’s changing and the financial world is changing.

And I’m totally ignorant to it because I said, all this is silly. I don’t believe in this or this isn’t beneficial to me. So I’m going to ignore it for a decade. So what I’m really trying to do is learn. I’ll give you an example. I just started the COVID. Actually today for the certified digital asset advisor.

So it’s the first certification that financial advisors can get to have that certification to advise clients on digital assets. Now, my goal is not to go build a practice on advising on digital assets. That’s not, not where I’m at. That’s not where my mind is, but I want to be informed. And I want to understand these concepts.

And I think it goes back to. 2008 that’s when Bitcoin was created coming at, you know, financial crisis was happening. Public trust in financial institutions was, was not, not high to say the least. And another system was offered up. And of course it’s been a 13 year journey from then to now and a lot’s changed.

And now there’s this whole budding space of defy and digital assets. A lot of which is, is probably gonna prove to be absolutely not. And you’re going to hear a lot of those stories of this token or this coin or this digital asset or this cryptocurrency that ended up being absolutely nothing. But on the other hand, I do think that finance system is going to be up ended at some point, not, not in a bad way.

But it’s going to advance, you know, the internet does almost everything at this point and it’s, hasn’t really been able to disrupt traditional finance. And I think that is going to happen in our lifetime. And I just want to understand the concepts. I want to understand what is cryptography. What is Bitcoin mining?

What, you know, when people say mining, what do they mean? You know, when you hear about the blockchain, what is the blockchain, how might that apply to my clients or what other technologies could the blockchain be used for? So it really, if nothing else is exploring what other questions I come up with and tried to seek answers, and I do get excited about it.

I don’t know where it’s going, but I think the possibilities, I think it’s probably like the very, very early days of that. We can’t even fathom at this point, you know, you hear about black swans, like these bad events that no one saw coming. I think they’re also reverse black swans, these good things that we never could anticipate.

And I think when you look back 20 years on around this time, I think it will be one of the big things. You know, the nineties was the internet. Boom. I think this kind of period of time will be a shift in, in finance to, to a largely digital EcoSys. 

William Glass: [00:39:30] Yeah. No, absolutely. And that makes a lot of sense. And I wasn’t it, wasn’t trying to get you to take one opinion or just interested in what you’re saying, because there is a lot of, a lot of noise, 

James Vermillion: [00:39:40] so much noise just 

William Glass: [00:39:41] specifically around cryptocurrencies, but 

James Vermillion: [00:39:44] I’m not advocating anyone go load up on cryptocurrencies.

All, all I’m saying. I love thinking about these things. And I think if you are going to do something like that, or if you’re considering buying some cryptocurrency, you need to do the same thing. You need to educate yourself and make sure you actually understand what, what it is you’re doing, what it is you’re buying.

And. A question. I always ask why, if someone comes to me and says, Hey, James, I’ve been looking at this particular stock or this particular cryptocurrency, do you think I should buy some? Well, first off, I probably haven’t done the research on that exact asset. So I’m not going to give them a, a buyer sell opinion.

But second, I usually ask them why, if they have a compelling reason and a thesis as to why. Why they came to conclude that this would be a potentially good investment, then it probably will be okay for them to do that. But a lot of times it’s, well, you know, it’s that FOMO, it’s that hype it’s that seeing crypto millionaires and wanting to be, that’s not a good why, if your, why is because everyone else is doing.

You probably need to go back to the drawing board and really think about how you’re choosing your investments. Yeah, no, I 

William Glass: [00:40:50] think that’s, that’s spot on. There’s just so many different coins that pop up and they just try to price some. So they’re super low. So if it goes to a dollar, you know, but there’s, I don’t know how many trillions of coins out there, you know, it’s just, it’s the 

James Vermillion: [00:41:03] wild west.

It really is. When I look at that stuff. I can never even keep up. Even if I tried, I couldn’t probably keep up if I had a team of 10 people. So what I’m really trying to do is go back Bitcoin. To me, that was kind of the base. The Bitcoin white paper was really kind of what started this whole movement. So that’s kind of where I’m starting and make sure that I at least have a base level understanding of why it was created.

How it might impact the future. And then I can start to look at, does it make sense to include whether it’s Bitcoin or potentially some other digital asset as a portion of client portfolios? Does it make sense to include 3% or 5% allocation into a growth portfolio? Because Bitcoin is largely uncorrelated.

You know, those are the questions I want to ask and I’m not to the stage at this point and feeling comfortable. Coming up with those conclusions, but I want to get. Yeah, no, that makes sense. 

William Glass: [00:42:03] That makes sense. It’s thinking about the underlying use case for a coin, right? Like Ethereum has shown that as a blockchain, there’s, you’re able to build smart contracts and NFTs have come off of that primarily off of Ethereum and there.

So thinking about like, what are the actual uses that people are actually, is there utility in something or is it just, maybe it’ll be doge coin and go to them like, and someone will keep buying it as a joke, like, you know, 

James Vermillion: [00:42:28] Uh, yeah, there were a lot of shit coins out there. Right? 

William Glass: [00:42:32] Exactly. Exactly. Well, James we’ve, we’ve kind of taken this, this into a very, uh, decentralized, conversation around cryptocurrency, which wasn’t the intent, kind of bringing it back to, to your practice and you know, what you see for the future.

How do you define success? Like what does success look like to you? 

James Vermillion: [00:42:53] Oh, I love these questions. I really do because it makes you reflect and examine yourself. I think to me, it really doesn’t even have anything to do with money or objects. I would say it’s how happy I am and satisfied. I am with myself and how proud of myself I am.

If I can look in the mirror every day and feel like I’m doing a pretty good job, then that’s success. And, you know, we all have our demons and we all have our areas for improvement that, you know, we need to work on, but I want to feel like I’m learning every day that I’m challenging myself. That I’m trying to be a good husband and I’m trying to be a good dad, a good friend, a good advisor.

If I’m doing those things. And I feel good about myself and I feel good about what I’m doing then that to me is success pretty simple, but it is yeah. 

William Glass: [00:43:42] Getting a good night’s sleep and being able to, to feel good about what you’re doing, what you’re putting out into the world and what you’re accomplishing.

I think that’s absolutely a great point. So we’ve talked a lot about finance in general. What would you say is the best investment that you’ve made 

James Vermillion: [00:43:59] yourself? The best investment. Well, people have listened to my podcast, probably know the answer, this, and, yeah, at least from a return standpoint, at least as far as stocks go from a return standpoint, it would be Tesla that said probably the best investment I ever made was some of the early real estate transactions I did because I was, you know, 24, 25 years old and had some, some nice, you know, singles, doubles and triples.

That allowed me to reinvest and, and put me in a position to have a better start than I would have had otherwise. So probably I would say that the real estate, some of those real estate transactions early on. Yeah. 

William Glass: [00:44:39] So what type of real estate? I think everyone’s familiar with Tesla. So what type of, of, of real estate investments.

James Vermillion: [00:44:47] Yeah. So, you know, I’ll, I’ll go back just a little bit. I was in the air force and a good friend of mine was here in Lexington and we had kind of talked about real estate before. And when I was a kid, I was fascinated with those flipping shows and all that stuff. I can remember sitting around the living room with my parents and telling them I’m going to do that one day.

That looks fun. So I did. So that friend ended up kind of managing. The actual projects and I was more on the analysis side. So what we did, we basically took a year, tried to learn as much as we could about real estate from the local markets to financing, to actually running, managing a construction project, to, you know, the numbers.

And to me, the numbers part, as you can imagine, that’s what, that’s where I had a lot of fun and, and I spent a lot of time. I can remember. Sitting around and looking around, you know, looking at a house that’s for sale, going home and basically running a simulation. What would this need to look like for this deal to make sense?

And for me to me to make money and. I found an online community called BiggerPockets, which I know you’re aware of. Probably a lot of the listeners are aware of too, but if not, it’s a great place for learning about real estate investing. And I just dug in and I, I started reading everything I could, I started interacting.

I started asking questions. I started writing for them. I was the writer who provided the knowledge. Point of view. So that was, you know, that was kind of fun and, I just really enjoyed it. And then after that year or so we, we bought our first house and I think I ended up doing, I don’t know, probably about 20 flips and made money on 19 ma.

That’s awesome. 

William Glass: [00:46:22] That’s awesome. Yeah, so, and definitely, uh, definitely check that out. Right. I think you were one of the, one of the first, the first few guests on bigger pockets. 

James Vermillion: [00:46:32] Yeah. And I have no idea why Josh dork had, and Brandon Turner had me on, because frankly, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I was a young guy who was just getting started.

I don’t know if they were throwing me a bone or what, or if they were that desperate at the time, I think it was episode 22 or three, but it was a lot of fun and it, it made me uncomfortable being on that podcast. And anytime I can make myself uncomfortable, I feel like I learn a lot. So, that was a good primer for things to do.

Yeah. 

William Glass: [00:47:02] No, absolutely. And definitely, yeah, if you’re interested in real estate, real estate investing BiggerPockets is a great community podcasts, tons of books now. Oh yeah. Forums. And you can find deals now on there. They keep expanding what all’s, what all is on the platform, but it’s a 

James Vermillion: [00:47:15] big time now.

William Glass: [00:47:17] Yeah. So definitely, definitely worth checking. James, we don’t always make a decisions. What would you say is the dumbest money mistake that 

James Vermillion: [00:47:26] you’ve made? Oh, wow. It’s never fun talking about your mistakes, is it? But it’s, I think it’s really important. I made the same mistake twice, actually. And, and I’ve done a lot of silly stuff, especially when I was younger and had a harder time envisioning 20, 30 years out.

Can I, than I do now, one of the reasons I understand the importance of really. Getting my clients to understand the long-term perspective. Is because I had a hard time doing that when I was younger, I was really hell bent on fast moving things. You know, I liked the excitement of it, almost a gamblers, not almost, it really was a gambler’s mentality.

So I’ve made a lot of those mistakes, but something that sticks out to me, this is the one that still bothers me. I guess I didn’t take my own advice. As far as when you have a high conviction, an idea, or a company or a stock or whatever it is. And you really understand it very well. That’s, especially when you need to tune the noise out and stick with your thesis and go from there.

I hate to bring Tesla back into the fold, but I’m going to anyway, I sold a good chunk of my Tesla position. Way too early, because I got freaked out by what people who probably didn’t know what they were talking about were saying. And you know, that was one of the bigger regrets and it’s not just because of the money I missed out on.

It was because of the feeling I had. Of, I didn’t stick to what I believed in and I allowed myself to be influenced by outside noise. So that was kind of like the disappointing part, you know, shame. You’re like looking at the mirror and you’re just mad at yourself. And again, it wasn’t so much the money, but just that feeling.

But I learned a valuable lesson and that’s one of the reasons I really have these conversations with my clients. And I really have that conversation with myself when I’m managing money. Why would I make this change if I don’t have a good reason? I’m not going to do it. I’m not getting paid on churning portfolios pain because people trust me to help them reach their goals.

It’s a, it’s a fight. You have to fight every day because it’s very easy to find reasons to be active when the best thing to do is not to be active. Yep. So, so that that’s one and I’ll give you another one too. Another one was, and this goes really, it’s an entrepreneurship lesson. As much as it is a money lesson.

A couple of times I’ve quit too. And I say that not in like a quitter’s mentality, like I give up, but in the sense that. And it really goes back to that real estate piece. I was building a nice little real estate business, and again, I allowed myself to be spooked. This was back, you know, several years ago, everyone’s saying interest rates are going to go up housing market’s over priced.

We’re going to see another oh 8 0 9. Oh, here it comes. And I ended up divesting a lot of that, which luckily I put into things that, that also did well, but again, I let that noise influence my decision. And I mean, look at how look at the housing market today compared to six years ago, five years. Would have been fine.

I would’ve done a spine. Had I left it in there. So those are two of the lessons, unfortunately, the same lesson twice. But I think, I think I finally, I learned it that second time. I’m 

William Glass: [00:50:44] glad you, you brought that up. I think it’s a, it’s very easy to get spooked or distracted or, you know, let other opinions, which you should be taking in other information, but also, you know, making sure that it’s valid and not just for them.

Someone who’s just has a loud voice and doesn’t really know what they’re talking 

James Vermillion: [00:51:02] about. Well let’s face it. I mean, most of those people, or at least a good chunk of them, they’re getting paid for, for clicks and views and things like that. So the louder and more obnoxious they are, and the more fear they can conjure up, oftentimes the better, the better they do.

So their interests aren’t necessarily aligned with, with what you’re trying to achieve. So I think people just need, keep that in mind, 

William Glass: [00:51:25] James, along those lines, what would you say. The biggest challenge, one of the biggest challenges that people are facing today when it comes to 

James Vermillion: [00:51:33] finances and building that’s a good one.

I think expectations are really challenging. I think people set their sights too low to be perfectly honest. I know it’s probably not what you were expecting me to say, but I’ve noticed this with, with a lot of my younger clients, they’re making good money. They’re doing a pretty good job of saving they’re investing.

And then when you go to sit down with them and talk about the future, they vastly underestimate what they’re probably going to achieve, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Obviously that’s better than overestimating what you’re going to achieve. But I think a lot of that is maybe a humility thing.

People don’t want to weird to talk about being rich in the future. Especially if you come from like a humble background, but I think a lot of it too is just not understanding how powerful some of these things are. I mean, compounding, I think we talked about it when you came on on my show, it’s incredibly powerful.

And when you run even just some basic future value calculations with somebody, you oftentimes blow their mind because. Just can’t wrap their head around how a relatively small amount of money along with some contributions over time and compounding returns can just absolutely blow the top off, you know, so I want to get people excited about the future.

Get them thinking about buying yachts. I mean, if they do it even better, but you know, I want to get them thinking about being successful. And I think when people can start to taste it and feel it, and they can start to see it, that gives them a little extra fire to keep doing what they’re doing instead of getting discouraged after the first two or three years.

As you know, with, with compounding, when you look at that chart, that’s the whole nature of compounding. It hits that velocity. Yeah. I try to keep people focused and really thinking longer term. And I think that’s the challenge. Everything is. So short-term today, it’s it’s quarter to quarter it’s month to month.

It’s day to day it’s what’s the market up or down today. And it distracts people. They underestimate. The the longterm impact and they overestimate the short-term fluctuations. 

William Glass: [00:53:41] I think that’s a great answer. The expectations is a, is definitely something that, especially if you’re just thinking short term and not thinking about long-term, don’t understand compound interest, it’s easy to feel helpless that you never can really get ahead or that, you know, you’re not doing enough because you saw someone on social media who did, you know, whatever bought that coin and ended up, you know, And doubled their money in two days.

And you’re like, why didn’t I do that? You know? So I think on both sides of the equation, I think that’s a great observation. 

James Vermillion: [00:54:13] Yeah. And maybe it’s a little counterintuitive because of course there are a lot of people out there who are overestimating what they’re, what they’re going to do. But I found that most people, they just don’t see it.

And then maybe it goes back to that Rosie retro retrospection thing, or maybe it just goes back to some of those concepts and some probably cognitive biases that people have. But it’s really hard for people to imagine just this abundant future. But I think if you go back and yeah, Your grandparents or, you know, if you could go back and ask your great, great grandparents, things probably turned out a lot better for a lot of people than they expected.

And what I would like to see is more people to have that experience, people who didn’t have access to some of the things that are out there, the concepts, the education for those people that have those same futures ahead of them, and to not only have them ahead of them. Just be able to see them and to be able to reach for them.

Yeah. And I know you’re working on that. 

William Glass: [00:55:08] Yeah. Well, that’s, I think, I think we’re aligned there and this goes back to what you were talking about earlier, about how you see the future in more of a positive light. Right. I think that’s exactly what I heard there. Things will, will be better. They can get better.

And if you stop listening to all of the instant, let me grab your attention right now. The world’s on fire and everything’s terrible and horrendous. And look past that and look at what’s what’s going on and see the positive things and see how things can get better. You’ll have just a completely different experience life.

James Vermillion: [00:55:38] Absolutely. And there’s that famous? Jeremy Siegel quote, fear incites human action, far more urgently than does the impressive weight of historical level. And that is so true, right? I mean, all sides can be pointing one way, but if something freaks people out, they’re going to lose their minds. 

William Glass: [00:55:57] Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. That fear uncertainty and doubt that’ll, that motivates that fight or flight instinct that kicks into our lizard brains when that gets triggered. So yeah, 

James Vermillion: [00:56:06] exactly. 

William Glass: [00:56:07] Absolutely. James. This has been a, been a lot of fun. I really appreciate you sitting down. And we talked a lot at the practice, the wealth management practice.

We didn’t even talk about the other business that you have, which we’ll have to save that for another question. Cause I think there’s a lot of lessons learned there and I know we talked about it a little bit on your podcast, so have to save that for, uh, for round two, I think. 

James Vermillion: [00:56:27] Absolutely. Absolutely. 

William Glass: [00:56:29] I really appreciate you sitting down and spend a lot of fun.

If you could leave the audience with any last words that you want impart them with, and then also please let us know how we can connect with you outside 

James Vermillion: [00:56:38] of this. Yeah, I would just say, if you’re not investing or thinking about your, your future start today and you don’t, you know, it doesn’t matter where you’re at.

Doesn’t matter if you’re doing well, or if you’re struggling, it doesn’t matter if you’re 17 or 70, if you start now, you’re probably going to be better. Then you would be if you didn’t. So I would say that’s the parting wisdom. I would give someone, and give the listeners and then you guys can find me online.

Obviously you mentioned the podcast, bulls bears and bourbon, so they can listen to that anywhere where they’re listening to your podcast and then for a million private wealth.com, that’ll take you to my website. I’m on LinkedIn, Twitter, all those fun things. I’m notoriously bad at social media though.

Take that take that for what it’s worth. 

William Glass: [00:57:24] Awesome. And all the links will be in the show notes for sure. But, uh, James, thanks again for sitting down. 

James Vermillion: [00:57:28] This was a lot of fun. Absolutely. I enjoyed it. William. Good stuff. And I appreciate you. Yeah. Thank you. 

William Glass: [00:57:34] Way out. Please share the podcast with others. It’s the only way that the community grows and others hear these incredible stories from entrepreneurs and top performers.

Pound that subscribe button. So you’re notified when new episodes drop every Friday, I’m William Glass, CEO and co-founder of ostrich. And of course your host of the Silicon alley podcast have a very profitable day. You got no time 

to waste, but still you, as it say, caught in a circle say, and I’ll never leave this place

Some words got you searching for the bright side over and over.

End of Transcription

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How Insurance Works for Small Businesses & Self Employed | Eric Geier, Puresurance

How Insurance Works for Small Businesses & Self Employed

In Understanding How Insurance Works for small businesses & the self-employed, Eric Geier, founder of Puresurance, joins host William Glass to discuss insurance and business. You’ll learn:

  • Understanding Health Insurance for Small Businesses and the self-employed
  • Biggest misconceptions around insurance for small businesses
  • Relationships are more important than ever in business
  • Having a servant mentality and the importance of word of mouth marketing

Our Sponsors

Ostrich helps you go from being one of the 92% of people who fail to achieve their financial goals to one of the few who does. 80% of Ostrich members are on track to achieve thief financial goals. Sign up for free at https://www.getostrich.com/download

About Eric Geier

Eric Geier is the CEO of Puresurance, advising business owners and entrepreneurs on the implementation of life insurance as a retirement vehicle and custom-designed health coverage solutions. With over 25 years of experience on Wall Street, Eric is a financial professional with a lifelong goal of helping people with their personal finances and retirement plans.

Learn more about Eric Geier: https://puresurance.com/

Transcription

This transcription is autogenerated and may contain errors.

William Glass: [00:00:00] Are you a small business owner or freelancer and unsure about the health insurance you have, or maybe don’t have any health insurance. If so, then this episode is for you. We’re diving into the misconceptions that small business owners and freelancers have when it comes to health insurance, what you can afford, what’s adequate coverage and something that won’t break the bank, sit down with Eric Geiger from pure Sharon’s, who talks about all the things that you need to know as a small business.

I myself had these misconceptions and it was really eye opening to understand a little bit more about how the industry works and what you can actually access that you won’t see just doing a plain Google search online. In addition, Eric talks about his experience on wall street and how he ended up moving into the insurance business and why relationships are so, so important even in today’s day and age, where you can do everything online and you don’t have to talk to a human.

That gets into word of mouth marketing and how that fuels his growth as a business owner and why it should feel yours as well. I’m William Glass CEO, and co-founder of estrogen, of course, your host of the Silicon alley podcast. If you haven’t already go ahead and pound that subscribe button. So you get notified when it says air every Friday without further ado.

I hope you enjoyed today’s episode of the Silicon alley podcast, featuring the Eric Geiger. Are you interested in growing and scaling your business? Welcome to the Silicon alley podcast, where you’ll hear from entrepreneurs, venture, capitalists, and top performers on what it truly takes to grow and scale a business.

You’ll walk away with actionable insights. You can apply in your own business and life now to William Glass, the CEO and co-founder of ostrich and your host of the Silicon alley podcast. Eric welcome to the Silicon alley podcast. Super excited to have you on today. I 

Eric Geier: [00:01:40] am very, very happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

William Glass: [00:01:44] Yeah, absolutely. And, um, I’m excited to dive in and talk about a few different things. Cause you’ve had an interesting journey. Having lived overseas, been in the equities business and been in finance. So definitely want to dive deep and now opening up your own, your own business. So really excited to touch on a number of topics.

Eric Geier: [00:02:02] Cool. Yeah, there’s a lot of history there. I’m a little older than I, uh, than I wish I was at this point in my life. But with age comes history and wisdom. So yeah, let’s do it, man. Absolutely. 

William Glass: [00:02:15] Yeah. So have you, so I’d like to, to kick this off, have you always been interested in food? Cause that’s where you ended up, right, right after 

Eric Geier: [00:02:21] school.

Yeah. So I, I pretty much didn’t have a choice. I mean, I was interested at an early age, pretty much right out of the womb. My grandfather and my father would have me looking at the wall street journal with them at a very, very young age. So, um, I don’t think I had a shot at doing anything else, but being in finance.

Gotcha. 

William Glass: [00:02:41] Yeah. As a kid. Yeah. Wall street journal at a, at a young age. That’s a, that’s definitely unique. So talk, talk to me about that. So did that, how did that interest kind of grow from, from studying wall street journal and your father and grandfather? 

Eric Geier: [00:02:55] So my father passed away when I was, um, 12 years old and.

Big profound impact on my life. So finance to me was a way of carrying on his legacy a little bit. Not that he’d loved finance so much, but it’s what he did. And it brought a connection to him in that way, if that makes any sense. So, you know, I guess when the world is open to you and you can choose anything, you gravitate towards those things that brings some sort of meaning in your life and finance accomplish that for me.

William Glass: [00:03:29] Yeah, that’s really interesting. And, uh, you know, that’s got to have been really tough, losing, losing a parent’s never easy, but especially, especially at that age, how did that, so it made you interested in finance, but how did that impact your journey and 

Eric Geier: [00:03:43] career? So life became a lot more serious for me. I would say at that point, I would say my childhood pretty much ended at that time.

You know, I still did mischievous things and, you know, had fun, but I definitely took a more serious track after that. And, you know, school became more important to me. What would go on after school would, would, would happen to have a huge effect on me? I mean, In lieu of taking a couple of classes in my senior year in high school, I was able to get a job at Merrill Lynch, 17, 18 years old, working for a huge broker, which gave me great retail experience.

I didn’t end up on the retail side. I ended up on the wholesale side covering asset managers, but it did give me a, a lot of exposure. To the markets. And, uh, that was right around the time. You’re too young to remember, but black Monday when, uh, the market fell over 508 points, and that was the biggest single day drop, uh, up to that point, not including the great depression, of course, you know, to be a part of that.

And to see what kind of impact that had on people was, was, was extremely profound. So, you know, from there. I, I was kind of all in on the finance side. I, I studied it in school and went right from college to, to a brokerage company named Instinet who basically invented electronic trading. So it was really exciting to be a part of that company, uh, during the advent of electronic trading.

So the fact that when you look the New York stock exchange, you don’t see any brokers or anything on the floor. Uh, you have Instinet to a thing for that. Yeah, I know. 

William Glass: [00:05:28] That’s yeah. That’s, that’s really interesting. It’s actually. And what was that black Monday? Was that 87 or was that 89? What’s 7 87, right?

Yeah. So context, my, my dad had just gotten licensed as a, as a broker and six months later, six months later that yeah, black Monday happened. And that was, that was the end of his, his career in finance. But. Yeah. Yeah. So you also didn’t have the chops for cold calling. He was on the retail side trying to, you know, here’s the phone book go, go 

Eric Geier: [00:05:58] dial.

Yeah. And it literally was a phone book back in those days. 

William Glass: [00:06:02] Yeah. So that’s, that’s really interesting. So you were at the very kind of forefront of the internet, really taking over trading. And now when you look at it today, it’s just, it’s a whole, whole nother world. As you said, no traders on the floor.

It’s mostly algorithms that are doing a lot of the heavy lifting. This 

Eric Geier: [00:06:17] was actually presented. This was, they called them idiot boxes. These were these screens that we would put on people’s desks and it would give them access to trading activity that was happening off the exchanges. And eventually we, we achieved the critical mass and all of these.

Brokers and specialists who would refuse to do business with us, we’re forced to be cost that’s where the liquidity was. So it became a snowball effect. And, you know, as you know, you could just see what’s going on right now that it was a successful, uh, endeavor. So yeah, even before the internet, we were using Lotus Lotus notes to communicate with each other.

So yeah, 

William Glass: [00:07:01] those, those were the days. Yeah. That’s really, really interesting. Take it, taking it back in terms of how technology is changed, the finance industry in general, could you just quickly to make sure that we don’t lose anyone? Could you break down when you mentioned you started out on the retail side and then move to the wholesale side, could you break down what that is in case someone’s listening and is like, what the heck are these finance terms are being thrown around.

Eric Geier: [00:07:27] Sure. So retail side is just, you know, like a stockbroker talks to an individual investor that’s retail. When you go and you talk to your stockbroker, your financial advisor, whomever it is who manages your money for you. That is a retail relationship. When you’re talking about representing the asset managers who ultimately invest the money that you have, that’s the wholesale side.

I worked on a trading desk for the better part of 25 years. And my clients were the largest asset managers and pension funds in the world. And I helped them invest in the equity markets around the world. So that was my. John, that was that’s the wholesale side. Uh, and, uh, yeah, I mean, it was great. I got to, um, work obviously in New York, that’s where I’m from and spent most of my career there, but also, uh, in Hong Kong where I lived for a while, I’m helping Instinet grow that Asian equity business and all know.

Pretty much traveled around Asia. Uh, we had an office in Japan, you know, in, in Europe we had several offices and I would, I would be there as well. So, but yeah, it was, it was a real exciting time because international equities were just kind of becoming a thing. Asset managers, portfolio managers, we’re looking for exposure outside of the United States.

And there were emerging markets at that time that were very attractive Brazil being one of them, bunch of Latin American countries, as well as a Southeast Asian country. So, you know, there was a lot of value out there that managers hadn’t gone to before that. And now, you know, the world was just becoming a much smaller place.

William Glass: [00:09:07] Yeah, no, absolutely. It’s really interesting seeing that exposure. What did you learn during that time? Right. 25 years on a trading desk, what are, what are some of the kind of key things that you learned during that time? 

Eric Geier: [00:09:20] That nothing stays static. Everything moves very, very quickly and being outside of it for a month, even can have you way behind the curve.

So it was just really, really. Important to always stay ahead of what was going on, because everything was just always in your rear view mirror. So, you know, it forces a focus and a sharpness that other professions don’t have. So yeah, it was good. It was, it was really, really exciting. It was an exciting time to be part of the business.

Certainly things were changing at record. Yeah. At record pace market makers became less and less necessary, more and more things moved over to the electronic side and for good and for bad things and move forward. So one of the disadvantages, as I think electronic trading has taken the relationship out of the business a little bit, but there’s a price to be paid for everything.

So in my opinion, the advantages, um, unquestionably outweighed the, um, the disadvantage. 

William Glass: [00:10:23] Yeah, no, that’s, that’s really interesting that you, that you bring up the relationship side of it, because I think at least, you know, I’m coming from a millennial lens as long as if it depends on if you’re working with a fiduciary or if you’re just working with a broker.

And, but that relationship hasn’t really seemed that important. Um, at least to, you know, at least to me, Maybe I’m, maybe I’m not speaking for millennials here, but at least from my, you know, my experience, could you talk about what we’re losing in terms of relationships and what you’re talking about?

Because you know, at least to my mind goes to, well, you know, I can go make decisions myself now, so that’s. That’s better. So what do you think we’ve lost? 

Eric Geier: [00:11:02] So that was actually one of the things that made me leave wall street and kind of make an impact on, on a one-to-one level is I’m an old school guy. I think.

Yeah. Technology is great and it should be leveraged, but I don’t think it should be hidden behind and everything done there. I think the human relationship is incredibly efficient. And when, you know, when I started seeing it go away a lot, uh, you know, it made me kind of want to go back to that. And, you know, it made sense for me to choose a different path altogether to get back to that.

So I don’t like the fact that people just sit behind computers all day and I guess. Are in their own little world trying to solve their problems when the, the, the biggest, uh, accomplishments happen between a meeting of the minds. And you just can’t get that behind us. Yeah, 

William Glass: [00:12:00] no, that’s really, that’s really insightful thinking about how we do accomplish things together more.

Are you, when you, when you say that, Eric, are you thinking about it from an individual perspective of, you know, setting someone’s personally up for success or are you thinking even at a, at a larger level, um, in terms of the importance of bringing people in. 

Eric Geier: [00:12:21] I think people being brought together on a larger level from a philosophical discussion is, is, is something worth having, but I’m just kind of talking about the relationship on a one-to-one basis when you’re doing business with people.

One of the things that I think my clients appreciate so much about me is that. I don’t send them to talk to other people to solve their problems. I am the liaison between them. And in this case, health insurance products. They can reach me at any time. We can talk through different scenarios at any time and I am completely accessible.

And I think that in itself is a differential advantage. And that’s what I got from working on wall street at a time when relationships were still very, very active. 

William Glass: [00:13:12] Yeah, no, that makes, that makes sense, Eric. And so you’ve, you’ve kind of touched on it, but can you talk about, and it sounds like it had to do a lot with the relationships, but what led you to start the insurance business?

Eric Geier: [00:13:22] Yeah, so a couple of things. Number one, I wanted to make an impact on an individual. Which I’m doing right now. And the other thing was I wanted to do something myself. Like I was ready. I had worked for these huge mammoth organizations, the last one of which was a 50,000 person bank. And, you know, I wanted to cut the cord.

I wanted to have my own thing and I wanted. Also to find something that was very inefficient market and make it more efficient like we did in trading. Right. So what is the biggest inefficiency in our economy today? Health insurance. So this was an opportunity to bring transparency to something that traditionally has been very opaque.

And those who had the biggest problem with health insurance are the small business owners, the aspiring entrepreneurs, the independent agents, the, you know, the freelancers. Because if they’re not lucky enough to have a spouse, who’s on a group plan that they can leverage, they’re basically on their own to find out, you know, what it is that they can, that they can do.

And insurance is so incredibly important. It’s out of reach for a lot of people. If they don’t know. The right places to look. So, you know, my specialization has always been to uncover that which was previously hidden and make it available to the masses. And I’m doing that with small businesses and health insurance.

William Glass: [00:15:01] Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. And I can definitely relate since starting, uh, since starting our company right now, we, you know, we’re, we’re individually insuring ourselves. And I essentially joke that I’ve got the, you know, I’m, if, if I don’t get hit by a bus, then my insurance doesn’t cover anything.

Like, you know, that’s the plan that I’ve got. Right? I’ve got that large of a deductible deductible. You know, and, you know, we’ve looked at, as we, as we’re growing the business, looked at different kind of, I guess, HR outsource that, that kind of includes some of the health insurance and other benefits or benefits providers.

And it’s really, really difficult to understand and figure out what’s quality versus. So it’s definitely a problem. 

Eric Geier: [00:15:44] Yeah, it is. It’s a huge problem. And being that you’re so young, you have more options than you even realize. And right now, if you have a high deductible, you’re basically just have catastrophic coverage, right?

Correct. If you’re paying your premium every month, I’m guessing you’re not even coming close to hitting your deductible. So you’re basically, you’re basically self-insuring you’re, you’re what the business calls functionally uninsured. So, yes, there are options at your disposal that are a fraction of the cost of a comparable ACA plan that you might not know about just because it’s not in your wheel house.

Right. That’s not your specialization. This is kind of what I do. Right. So I’m always. For value, you know, I’m taking in all the information I need and looking where I can construct policies to benefit business owners like yourself. So insurance is not a, an albatross on your shoulders where it’s either going to cost you a tremendous amount of money.

Right, or it’s not going to cost you a lot of money a month and you’re going to get nothing for it. So, you know, those are, those are, those are the options for a lot of people who are not working with someone who they trust really knows the business inside of that. Yeah. No, 

William Glass: [00:16:59] that makes a lot of sense. And you, you mentioned a few different types of people, but who, who, so who do you serve?

Right? You mentioned freelancers, you mentioned small business owners, like. Can you, can you elaborate a little bit on like who that ideal customer is that you’re serving and the problem that you’re solving and the health issue? Yeah. 

Eric Geier: [00:17:18] So there’s in order in order to kind of do that, we’ll take a step back just a, just a little bit, because what we’re seeing right now in this economy is a lot of people wanting to go out on their own.

If COVID has kind of done anything, it’s really, people want a better way of life. They don’t want to spend nine, 10 hours in an office every day. Right? One of the biggest concerns for an aspiring entrepreneur is especially if they have a family, is what am I going to do about health insurance? When I leave my cushy group.

Right. So I work with a lot of franchise organizations and marketers who deliver people to franchisors, and we start the conversation really early on so they can get over that hurdle of what am I going to do about my coverage? I have a wife and two kids, or a husband and three kids. We have to be insured and we need good insurance.

It’s not a sexy conversation, but it’s a, it’s an incredibly important conversation. So that’s where we start franchisors will bring me in to talk to existing franchisees, right. Because they’re not, they’re all distinct. Businesses. They’re not a big organization where you can get on a group plan. So we need to solve for existing business owners.

We need to solve for aspiring business owners. And back to your question, like, what is the profile of the person who comes to me? The end user’s profile is the following no insurance, because you can’t. High deductible not getting any value, like in your case, premiums are going up, you know, year over year.

And it’s really becoming unaffordable. That’s a huge reason. And underinsured like gone on one of these faith-based ministry health share programs. That’s not real insurance, but looks a lot like insurance. And because of that, they get buy-in on it, but it’s a very dangerous. Kind of thing. If you know, you’re paying money to transfer a risk and there’s no real transfer of risk.

So I’m kind of on top of it. I that’s my niche. I only work with the self-employed and those who can’t buy or you know, who can’t. Yeah. Yeah, I have a corporate plan or leverage a spouse let’s, you know, and it’s a big niche and it’s growing. And if you’re in your mid twenties, for example, or thirties, it’s not going to be expensive at all.

And you’re going to have coverage. Just kind of look, what else is out there. If you have a really good insurance agent, leverage your really good insurance agent and ask them and say, this is my problem. What, what are my options? And it shouldn’t be that. It is unfortunately, but 

William Glass: [00:20:03] no, absolutely. Yeah. And that’s, that’s really, really helpful too, like things for, for narrowing down who you really serve and kind of some of the problems.

Cause I think that that, that helps clarify who that target market is. Right. Gets could get value because health insurance is definitely one of those things where, you know, I don’t know what I would do if I had a family right now, or, you know, I’ve I had pre-existing conditions or anything like that. I probably, that would be a huge factor because it’s such a, a financial constrain, additional risk in addition to going out on your own and starting a business.

So it’s an extra layer of risk that you’ve got to, you’ve got to. And 

Eric Geier: [00:20:37] pre-existing conditions are a huge problem in this country because they’re very expensive to treat the government is basically forcing private insurers to take on that risk. So what you’re seeing is deductibles going higher and higher, uh, so they can protect themselves to some extent from having to.

Get somebody sign up and in two weeks, you know, they’re going in for their diabetes treatments, you know, it’s, it’s hard. So what I think you’re going to see in this country and president Biden’s spoken about it is a Medicare like option for those who are under 65 years. And that should support the high risk pool of people.

So private insurers could get back to doing what they do better. And look, there’s ensuring somebody with diabetes. Isn’t a problem. If you have fun. People in their thirties who use the doctor once a year. Right. It all balances it out. It’s when you have 20 people with diabetes and no younger people who are going, that’s the problem, because it’s, what’s called a adverse selection.

You have too much of a bad hole and not enough of a good pool to balance it out. So, you know, that’s what you’re seeing right now in this. 

William Glass: [00:21:55] Yeah, no, that’s really, really interesting. And I’m, I’m glad you brought that up because I think it’s just one of those things where when you think about, well, why don’t we ensure everyone, like, you know, there’s just so many different components and forcing private companies to take on risk.

W it’s just going to make it really unaffordable. Yeah. 

Eric Geier: [00:22:12] You’re, you’re subsidizing that. That’s why your deductible, so. 

William Glass: [00:22:15] Yeah, exactly. So it’s really, really interesting. I’m curious to get your take on, and again, it’s probably going to be a little bit of a case by case basis, but when you think about, um, the benefits of a high deductible plan and HSA, you think about FSA, which is flexible spending account, the, um, health savings account.

Can you talk a little bit about those and how they can impact not just the health aspect of insuring yourself, but also thinking about retirement and long-term and some of the benefits of those programs. 

Eric Geier: [00:22:45] So I think that the reason, well, the reason HSA is exists is to fix a systemic problem of high deductibles.

I think what you’re going to see is, and, and I’d like to see more, more companies doing this. Or ICH RAs, where firms are setting an amount of money that they’re going to give to each employee every month. And that employee has the option of buying whatever health insurance, or paying for whatever medical expenses they have.

And not everybody is a one size fits all situation. But when you have a group plan, you know, like, like I worked for this 50,000. Yeah. Person company, you can’t have differences for each person when you have 50,000 or, or even a thousand people, right. You’re on one group plan. So I think the better model going forward is to say, okay, I’m going to give you $500 a month.

Pre-tax income and you can use that money, however you want. As long as it’s, you know, a qualified medical expense. And I think that benefits people, um, altogether, now you talk about, about retirement. I kind of keep the two situations distinct. I use life insurance as a retirement vehicle, and I’m happy to talk to about that because I’m extremely enthusiastic about it.

And it often. So much flexibility around not only saving for retirement, but also in providing a slew of living benefits, such as investing in a business, leveraging cash value of your life insurance policies to buy a business, to put a down payment on a property that you want to live in to pay for your kid’s college or your daughter’s wedding or whatever it is.

There’s a lot of flexibility around life insurance on the living side, rather than. Passing of, um, money tax free to beneficiaries that people don’t consider a lot. One of the things, one of the advantages of putting small business owners in health insurance plans that are affordable for them is now they have all this excess money now that they can use that they can now allocate towards retirement.

Through a life insurance policy and, and things like that. So that’s kind of how I work with that. I keep the two, the two are closely linked, but they serve two very distinct functions. Yeah, 

William Glass: [00:25:14] I know that, that, that makes a lot of sense, Eric. And I was just thinking about some of the, the benefits that you can do in an HSA, right?

Where it’s, I think it’s the only one where you can continue to contribute pre-tax and the earnings aren’t. Actually taxed when you pull the money out, but you do have to use it for qualified medical, et cetera. So it’s like one, it’s one of those loopholes where if you assume that at some point in the future, you’re going to need it depending on your age and you have the enough cash and you’re able to risk a little bit of the money by putting it in the markets.

You could potentially grow that 

Eric Geier: [00:25:45] the danger in relying on something like that for future health costs. Is that right now? Average cost of nursing home is $90,000. Uh, in about 10 years, it’s going to be about 120,000 based on a 3% inflation rate year over year people. If you’re, if you’re married, you have a 5% chance of living to age.

100. Right. So you really need to, and with that, you’re going to have a higher percentage, a higher chance of needing long-term care. Right. So in order to address those medical issues again, that’s what we do in life insurance contracts, right? Yeah. I agree. I’m not a big HSA person. I get why it’s there, it’s there to fix an issue and it’s nice that you have pre-tax money and you can take it out tax for qualified expenses.

And that’s great, but I don’t really get involved. Too much of that in retirement, there’s better retirement vehicles to address those situations. Sure. 

William Glass: [00:26:43] Yeah, absolutely. And that makes sense. And yeah, there’s obviously limitations to every product. Right. And every, and every situation is going to be different in terms of, so we’ve talked a lot about life insurance now.

There’s different types of life insurance, right? So there’s there’s term and there’s whole, I’m sure there’s probably a. Hybrids and mixtures, but those are kind of the two, can you talk to me a little bit about the difference between term and whole, because whole has been vilified for the most part, right.

Okay. 

Eric Geier: [00:27:11] Yeah. Yeah. So there’s a lot of noise out there around term policies that it’s better to buy a term policy and invest the difference as opposed to buying a permanent life insurance policy. That could be more expensive. And using that as an investment vehicle term is doesn’t have a lot of value. How do I want to say this really nicely terms sucks unless you’re young and it’s your own, the only option and you can’t do anything else.

Right. And the idea that for retirement, that you’re going to buy term and invest the difference is unrealistic because human nature is going to say that you’re not disciplined enough to invest the difference. And if you are. Disciplined enough to invest the difference. You’re not going to achieve the same set of returns that you would if the money was invested on your behalf.

So I think the greatest, um, benefit that term policies provide is the. Health profile that you can grandfather in when you buy permanent life insurance, when you can afford permanent life insurance, right term term policies have no cash value at all. Only about 2% of all term policies ever pay. But if you’re, if you’re 25 and you’re married and you have a child, you have another one on the way it’s going to be cheap to buy a term policy.

And you know, it’s good protection. But if you have the option, I’m always in favor of buying permanent policy and within permanent policies, you have whole life and you have universal life. And the difference really is whole life is, is fixed premiums, uh, throughout the life, uh, with a fixed rate of return, a universal life has more flexibility around paying premiums and you have the chance of better returns because it’s, it’s tied to often an index like indexed universal life.

It’s very popular right now. Yeah, those are the two. They both can accumulate cash value. You can use that cash value. For practically anything. And obviously both have death benefits. The whole life policy is a fixed death benefit. The universal life policy has a, has a death benefit that can be adjusted based on your, your cash needs while living.

So, yeah, but it is. But it’s a better product, right? So I guess the best way to explain a universal policy and the costs around it is assuming that you are a real estate developer and you build a five story building. You have to pay the mortgage on the entire five story building. Right. But the government in the first year is only going to let you take rent from the first one.

Okay, so you have a five story building to pay a mortgage on, and you’re only getting revenue on the first floor, year, two floors, one and two, you can take revenue from, and then year three, you start realizing a little bit of profit and then so on and so forth. And that’s when the cash starts accumulating.

So yeah, you pay into it more than you get out of it in the beginning. But over time that cash value is going to help you bridge the gap between your retirement. Maybe you have an annuity, your social security, whatever that shortfall is that life insurance product could be a great tool to help you bridge that gap between longevity risk in your retirement.

Right? Because nobody wants outlive their money. No fun going, w you know, if you’re 90 years old and you’re. What are you going to do? You can’t go back to work, right? 

William Glass: [00:30:45] Yeah, no, exactly. Yeah. Unless you’re famous and can hop up on a, on a TV show and get paid for an appearance, but that’s not 

Eric Geier: [00:30:53] me. 

William Glass: [00:30:54] Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. So, yeah. Thanks for breaking that down. So it definitely sounds like it’s very, you know, it depends on situation and understanding what your needs are, where you are. 

Eric Geier: [00:31:04] There is no one size fits all to everything. There’s no one size fits all to everything, right? I mean, and at your age, you, you might want to, uh, health insurance policy with pregnancy coverage, right.

But a 55 year old, couple. They’re in a one size, all fits, you know, one size fits all approach. They might have to pay for pregnancy coverage and their policy, but they certainly don’t need it. So, you know, there should be a reevaluation of needs quite frequently, as much as you reevaluate your retirement plan.

It’s, you know, they’re, they’re both very, very important financial considerations. Yeah, 

William Glass: [00:31:42] absolutely. That makes make sense, Eric. So Eric, thanks for breaking that down. And there’s obviously, you know, as you said, one w no one size fits all, what would you say some of the biggest misconceptions or just things that you have to correct?

When people start looking at health insurance for their. 

Eric Geier: [00:32:01] Yeah, that you need to have an ACA plan, a marketplace plan, or you’re going to be assessed a penalty penalties went away on January 1st, 2019. There’s only a one size fits all approach to insurance. There’s no way to build policies that are specific to your needs.

That’s a huge misconception. And another misconception is that. Deductibles need to be satisfied before you can get care. And there are policies out there that don’t have any deductible for 99% of the things that you’ll meet. So it really makes a lot of sense to not even hire. I don’t hire is the wrong word, but you enlist a professional who knows what they’re doing and who knows all of the choices out there and who doesn’t.

Concentrate on one thing in a vacuum, but is actually there to, to provide you, uh, that, which is the most suitable for your situation. 

William Glass: [00:33:07] Gotcha. No, that makes a lot of sense. And that goes back to what you talked about earlier, right? The relationships, and being able to have that person that understands your situation and not just you and experience, not your area of expertise going and finding something online and purchase.

Eric Geier: [00:33:21] Yeah. And you know, here’s the thing. And this is like with any business, right? Any business grows the best through word of mouth, right. If you’re doing right by people and you’re actually taking a servant’s mentality and you’re not just in it for yourself, but you’re true. Purpose, your true why is to serve those who and trust them their, their lives to you, then it comes back tenfold.

So, yeah, that’s just kind of the way that I’ve always conducted my, my life and the more that you do right by people, the more you grow as a business. And there are things that, you know, I envisioned for this business that I hope to make an impact on a much bigger level. In people’s lives. So, so far so good.

William Glass: [00:34:08] Yeah. No, absolutely. So yeah. Tell me a little bit about what the process has been like starting pure assurance and how, how that’s been going out on your. Yeah, 

Eric Geier: [00:34:20] I left a 50 hour week job making mid six figures to working a hundred hours a week and making, you know, in, in the beginning, at least mid five figures.

So it’s a big, uh, you know, anybody who wants to go into business for themselves, so they won’t have to work as hard. I would urge you to readjust those expectations, but if there is a rewarding aspect of it, then. Don’t have when you work for somebody else and you know, the journey has been, um, it’s been difficult.

I’m not going to sugar coat it, but the victories. Are that much sweeter when you have to, you know, when you have to travel and I’ll use the, the metaphor, you remember Shawshank, right? The Shawshank redemption, when Andy deferring had to crawl through whatever of sewage to get to the other side and you get, when you get to the other side, it’s that much sweeter when you have to crawl through that sewage by yourself.

And, uh, you know, any business is going to have that, right. You’re going to fail miserably. You’re going to pick yourself up. You’re going to, sir, you’re going to show. Yourself, what metal you really have. It is a lesson in character building, nothing that I’ve ever done has built as much character has made me grow as a person.

Then the work I’ve done to build this business. 

William Glass: [00:35:42] I think that’s, I think you’re spot on there. Uh, Eric, and I’m curious in terms of, uh, any examples, do you have any examples of, you know, some of those challenges that you’ve had to overcome so far and you know, how you’ve, how you’ve approached that in your.

Sleeping 

Eric Geier: [00:35:57] pills.

Yeah. When you’re, uh, when you’re laying in bed at two in the morning, and this was more early on, this hasn’t been, or things have actually been going really well recently, but early on when you’ve tried everything that you thought would have worked. Right. When you’ve spent the marketing dollars, when you’ve really put yourself out there.

And we’re absolutely convinced that this was going to make a difference and move the needle. And it hasn’t that really tests your metal. And there’s been a lot of sleepless nights and waking up in the middle of the nights, drenched and. Wondering when it’s going to click and you just got to show up every day and just keep on punching because it’s going to happen at eventually if you’re teachable and if you can pivot quickly enough, then, then it’ll happen.

But you always have to, if you start a business, you really have to start it for the right reasons. And not because you think it’s going to be cool or you think you’re going to be admired because of it. But there really has to be a while. There, there has to be a purpose because in those dark hours, that’s the only thing you have to cling on.

That’s going to remind you why you did it in the first place and why it’s the only shot you have. That’s going to keep you going. 

William Glass: [00:37:17] No. I love that. Yeah. Focusing on that, why, and really, really knowing what that is to get you through the tough times, because there’s a lot of, a lot of highs, but a lot of lows.

Eric Geier: [00:37:26] Yes. Yes. It’s uh, everybody loves the story of the, of the guy that sold this company for a billion dollars or whatever it was. But nobody wants to hear about that. 20 years of, of anxiety and, and sleepless nights and divorces and relationships that have gone south and all that other stuff that had to happen to get to that place.

So everybody has a hero’s journey and it’s never goes from, from a low point a to a high point B it’s. It is definitely a rollercoaster, but I wouldn’t have it any other way because I’m smarter now than I’d ever been. And I’m just a much. I’m a better person now than I’ve ever been. And had I not gone through each and every one of these experiences, there was absolutely no shot I would be here.

So it, it builds a lot of character. Absolutely does. So 

William Glass: [00:38:20] along those lines, Eric, how do you define success? Like what does success look like 

Eric Geier: [00:38:25] to you today? Yeah. So when I can actually go out on my balcony at six o’clock and open up a beer and just lay there with my eyes closed and not worry about anything and just kind of enjoy the breeze and the sounds of Florida and, and just kind of be present, uh, that’s that’s success for me when you’re not worrying about.

I, I look, I don’t even have to be rich. I honestly don’t have any aspiration of being rich. I just want to be comfortable enough to pay my bills and make an impact in people’s lives. And, you know, that’s where I am. No, 

William Glass: [00:39:00] I love that. I love that. And so we’ve covered a lot of ground today and I always like to wrap up with a little bit about personal finance.

And I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this, especially with your experience and kind of what you just aligned to there in terms of not trying to be rich, right. That’s not the goal. So could you describe your relationship with money? Yeah. 

Eric Geier: [00:39:22] Yes, I can. It’s evolved over time and I have a respect for it now that I never had in the past, when you are committing your own capital to something, you do not want to see it go when you work for somebody, it’s almost like the money is not real.

It goes into your checking account, direct deposit, and then you pay your credit cards and you do whatever living under your means. Is the greatest freedom in the world because you’re not going to worry about things. And if anything needs to change, you have a reserve there to do that with. But if I was to give anybody any recommendations at all, it would be to consciously try, make it a game if you have to, but live under your means.

And don’t be afraid to take risks that are smart. Don’t spend money because you’ll think it’ll impress other people, or it’s going to give you a temporary high. There’s a lot of investments out there. There’s a lot of opportunity out there that you can take if you have the right relationship with it. I 

William Glass: [00:40:32] think that’s great.

Great advice, right? It’s just, it’s so simple, but really powerful when you can live below your means and not, not try to impress everyone with new fancy car watch or clothes or shoes or whatever it is personally. 

Eric Geier: [00:40:47] And I’ve got an incredible wealth manager. Who’s coached me on this as well. Not only has she proven to be a skilled at actually managing assets, but she’s written books on relationships with money, and she’s just really helped me to change my.

Perspective. And that’s another thing I just kind of like to say that I’m a big fan of surrounding yourself with experts in every single area of your life that you want to see change. If you want to a six pack stomach, hire a trainer, or at least model yourself after, you know, somebody like David Goggins or someone, if you want to grow your assets.

Get a good financial, whatever it is that you want to do, there’s somebody out there whose specialization is that don’t try to figure it out by yourself, enlist that mentor. Uh, and there are tons of people out there and it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money or any money at all. And you could really learn a lot from people.

Well, yeah, 

William Glass: [00:41:49] that’s great advice. What would you say Eric is the best investment that you’ve made? 

Eric Geier: [00:41:55] In myself. My best investment is as has been in myself, in my education, in my, in my journey from wall street to health insurance. I’ve made good paper investments that have done well, but I don’t think that it holds a candle to the successful investments.

I made it myself. 

William Glass: [00:42:13] Yeah, it makes sense. I like that a lot. What would you say on the other side of the coin? Right? We don’t always make great decisions. Is the dumbest money mistake that you’ve made 

Eric Geier: [00:42:25] squandering an inheritance that was given to me at 18 years old after my father passed away. It wasn’t total squander.

I mean, I paid for college and I traveled the world, but you know, I didn’t need the BMWs and stuff like that. That could have, uh, waited. That makes 

William Glass: [00:42:41] sense. Yeah, that goes back to the, uh, the other question about relationship with money, right? Not spending money on things to impress other 

Eric Geier: [00:42:49] people. And that’s right.

If there’s anybody listening to this and you want to leave money to your kids, don’t leave it to them. At 18 years old, do not give a kid a pile full of money at 18 years old. 

William Glass: [00:43:01] Well, this has been a lot of fun. I really appreciate you sitting down and dive in deep into finance and health insurance and a number of topics.

Um, I want to leave you with the last word. So anything you want to leave the audience with, and then also please let everyone know how they can connect with you outside of this podcast. Sure. 

Eric Geier: [00:43:18] So first thank you so much for having me on this has been an absolute pleasure. I love the fact that I can look at different buildings in New York that I know of right behind you.

Um, and I’m going to, I, you know, my message to your audience around health insurance is just. Enlist somebody who you trust. If you don’t have one and you’d like to run something by me, you know, feel free to reach out to me. You can go to pure Sheeran’s dot com or you could just download my digital business card by texting the word cover.

Two 21,000 and I’m happy to answer any questions. I’m happy to look over your current policies and make some recommendations. Won’t cost you anything. You know, I just wish luck and health for everybody from here on in, hopefully the rest of 2021 into 2022 will be one of more life and not such, you know, demise as we’ve seen over the past 12 months.

William Glass: [00:44:17] Exactly. Exactly. Well, thanks again for sitting down. This was a lot of fun. 

Eric Geier: [00:44:22] Thank you so much 

William Glass: [00:44:24] on your way out. Yeah. Please share the podcast with others. It’s the only way that the community grows and others hear these incredible stories from entrepreneurs and top performers. And of course, pound that subscribe button.

So you’re notified when new episodes drop every Friday, I’m William Glass, CEO and co-founder of ostrich. And of course you are the host of the Silicon alley podcast have a very profitable. 

Eric Geier: [00:44:45] You got no time to waste, but still you, as it say, gone in a circle say, and I’ll now leave this place

somewhere else. Go to such a bright side over and over.

End of Transcription

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Side Hustles: How to Start a Podcast with $100 | The Frugalpreneur, Sarah St John

How to Start a Podcast with Less than $100

In How to Start a Podcast with $100, Sarah St John A.K.A. the Frugalpreneur, joins host William Glass to discuss the keys to starting a podcast and building a lucrative side hustle. You’ll learn:

  • How to take your show from idea to reality
  • How to avoid podfading (when podcasters quit after the first 10 episodes)
  • Key tools to run your show for less than $50 a month

Our Sponsors

Ostrich helps you go from being one of the 92% of people who fail to achieve their financial goals to one of the few who does. 80% of Ostrich members are on track to achieve thief financial goals. Sign up for free at https://www.getostrich.com/download

About Sarah St John

Sarah St John is an entrepreneur, podcaster, online course creator, and author. She has created several startups throughout her entrepreneurial career of over a decade. She currently owns a podcast production agency called PodSeam. She is also the podcast host of “Frugalpreneur: Building a Business on a Bootstrapped Budget” which aims to show people how to launch and manage an online business on a budget.

Learn more about The Frugalpreneur, Sarah St John.

Transcription

This transcription is autogenerated and may contain errors.

William Glass: [00:00:00] Sarah welcome to Silicon alley podcast. Super excited to have you on today. 

Sarah St John: [00:00:03] Well, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it. 

William Glass: [00:00:06] I’m excited to dive in as someone who , brands themselves as the frugal preneur and has a podcast by that name. And I’m really excited to dive into bootstrapping and, and all the different things that you can do in terms of building a business on a tight budget.

But we’d love to get a little background on you, Sarah, and kind of open up to the audience as to who you are. If they’re not. 

Sarah St John: [00:00:27] Sure. Yeah. So , I started my entrepreneurial journey probably over a decade ago,  2008 is when I really started. I had had six different jobs that year, not at the same time, but throughout the course of the year and realized that I wanted to be my own boss.

And , so I started a photography business. And I realized that while I liked taking photos of animals and landscapes and architecture, I didn’t like taking photos of people, but that’s where the money is. I was doing weddings and portraits, but the bigger issue than that was actually just the expense to maintain and, you know, equipment and software and all that stuff.

So I decided to switch to an online business model, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. So I. A bunch of different things like affiliate, marketing, drop, shipping, blogging , it was in that process that I discovered all these free or affordable tools, resources, and software to run a business on a budget.

 And so I decided to, or I got the idea to write a book called forego preneur. Uh, that kinda covers like the different online business models and how to run them on a budget. And then while I was writing that, I got the idea to start a podcast, to coincide with the book. Also called frugal preneur, but it was just going to be, you know, like 10 episodes or something, an extra marketing outlet, I guess.

But I was getting more traction and leverage with the podcasts and the book, and I love the connections I was making. So I kept doing that. , I’m been doing that for a couple of years now have almost 90 episodes and , I’ve been producing my own podcast all along and the way and,  enjoy. And I decided, well, why not launch a podcast production agency and get paid to do it for other people.

And now I’m working on a podcasting course. And so I’m kind of all in on podcasting, but it took over a decade of trying this, that, and the other thing. Before I finally landed on that thing. 

William Glass: [00:02:31] That’s quite a journey. It sounds like you’ve ran the gamut of, of ways to,  build out businesses online.

 going back , what  motivated you to make that leap. You said you’d had six different jobs that year and  wanted to take over your own. I guess schedule in life through entrepreneurship. Like what was the impetus though, to really make that leap? Have you always been an entrepreneur at heart?

Sarah St John: [00:02:54] I feel like I have been, it was one of those things where I didn’t really realize until I started doing entrepreneurship and then kind of looking back on my life and realizing, oh, I think it’s always been there because when I was a kid, I would gather up. Stuff that I got for free, like candy or pencils or whatever, and sell them to my friends and just different things like that.

But I guess I didn’t really make the connection. , I just kinda went along with the expectation of going to college. I only got as far as an associates degree in journalism, but, um, but you know, just kind of followed that path that’s expected and didn’t realize. Think about entrepreneurship, I guess maybe it was just buried or suppressed or something until I had had a few jobs after college and was like, Hmm, I don’t know about this.

William Glass: [00:03:54] Yeah, just,  , over time developing , , that interest in going back to, as a kid, being able to, to sell everythings that you got and make some cash that way. So you started off in photography, realized that wasn’t going to scale. And man, people are a lot harder to take pictures of than landscapes and sculptures, and they’re much more demanding.

So talk me through  the journey of all these different things that you tried from affiliate marketing and blogging and pod, like, talk to me about like that journey and  what you’ve learned.  Cause it sounds like you’ve tried most, most everything in terms of ways to make money on. 

Sarah St John: [00:04:31] Yeah, I feel like I have.

 so after the photography business, I tried a bunch of different things. Like , I still do some affiliate marketing, but I did have a drop shipping business. , which what I liked about that was that you didn’t have to have an inventory, so there’s still very little overhead, but depending on what your drop shipping, I mean, I was doing baby onesies.

And so the average sale is what I, I mean, I was making maybe making like 20 bucks profit or something per sale. And it was just kinda like, I don’t know, , small margins. Yeah, exactly. And then blogging. I didn’t do a whole lot, um, okay. But, you know, try to incorporate affiliate marketing with that. But I do affiliate marketing through the podcast like if I have an author on, in the show notes, all linked to their book or, you know, something like that.

 Or if they own a software program, you know, something like that. But, um, let’s see, I did print on demand, which is kind of like drop shipping, but I was creating. My own designs and things like that.  I had a, 

William Glass: [00:05:43] that process, like what, what were some of the things from the drop shipping print on demand?

Like what, it sounds like the margins are really small. Like what made you move? 

Sarah St John: [00:05:51] Yeah. The margins are small and. It’s  hard to, I mean, first of all, you have to run ads pretty much to get traffic. So then your profit margins even smaller and like to compete with Amazon. Yeah. It’s difficult. I mean, I know there are people who do it successfully, but I realized that it wasn’t me.

Passion. Oh, I also had an online travel agency which actually did pretty well , had that for about five years while I was kind of doing this, that, and the other thing on top of it. And I thought that that was where I was going to end up , you know, stick with that. The problem was especially with COVID.

 so I closed that. Like a month after COVID hit, because all my bookings got canceled. And the thing with a travel agency is you don’t get paid until the person completes their trip, basically. And so I did a bunch. So I did a bunch of, you know, work researching and booking all this stuff for people, but then never got paid on it cause they didn’t get to take their trips.

And so I was like, oh, plus I was really getting into podcasting and enjoying that. And so I was already thinking about stopping the travel agency and going all in on podcasting. But then when COVID hit, I was in all of that intense. I was like, okay, now’s the time to close up, shop on that.

William Glass: [00:07:23] 

Makes sense. . So, so talk to me a little bit more about the podcast frugal, preneur. You have a book by the same name and the podcast sounds like kind of accidentally spurted from the book. , talk to me about the podcast and how everything’s 

Sarah St John: [00:07:35] going. Yeah. Yeah. Accident in a way. I mean, I guess it was intentional that I started one, but that wasn’t something I was planning from the get, go and.

I wasn’t planning on it being a long-term thing. I just love the connections that I’m making, like meeting people like you and I actually recently interviewed pat Flynn. I’m assuming you know who he is. Yeah. 

William Glass: [00:08:03] Yeah. I was looking on YouTube earlier and saw that you did the interview there.

Sarah St John: [00:08:07] Yeah. So just like getting to, well, maybe not technically me, like not in person or not right now anyway.  meet these people, but like being able to talk with people and, you know, even people I didn’t know before podcasting, just interesting people and their stories I feel like with podcasting, you’re almost kind of getting like a one-on-one consultation in a way.

 and learning. And then that person might know someone who might know someone and it just kind of snowballs. I feel like. so I I’ve just loved it and found like people find you easier. I feel like with podcasting then maybe blogging or even YouTube or whatever else.  

William Glass: [00:08:51] I’m a, obviously I’m a big fan of podcasting since why we’re here.

And I completely agree. It’s a great way to connect with people. What are some of the things? So whether it’s from the conversation with pat, or just in general, like, what are some of the things that you’ve learned or taken away from some of your conversations with people that have built businesses with little to no money?

Oh, 

Sarah St John: [00:09:14] wow. So. Originally, when I started the podcast, I was interviewing  CEOs or founders or people within companies of like various software programs that I use that are free or affordable. Then I kind of started interviewing people that I admired or looked up to in various niches within, entrepreneurship, whether it was.

Podcasting or affiliate marketing or whatever. And then this year I started interviewing people who started their business with less than a thousand dollars and built it to at least seven figures. In any timeframe, it doesn’t matter what the timeframe was, but without any kind of like outside capital or loans or credit or investments or whatever.

And so I’ve learned some really interesting or heard some interesting stories from some of those people. Like one guy I interviewed who, when I was looking at my statistics, actually I have currently the most downloads on his episode, I don’t even know if people know who he is.

 but he came from Africa and came to America with only a hundred dollars and has built three different businesses to seven figures by all bootstrap. And so just in his process, was that. So, I guess here’s one thing I learned was that his process was, he would try to remember what his first business was.

I think it was building websites or something and you know, start that for hardly anything. And then. As he started getting income, then he would spend like maybe 2000 that he earned and then he bought a camera and then he started doing photography. It seems to be a common thing that people try where he could charge $2,000 per, wedding or whatever he was doing.

With just a $2,000 investments, a one gig, you know, canceled that out. Then he would take money here and from that, and then he would invest in something else. And now he has a software company. That’s kind of like an all in one business management platform and then let’s see someone else I interviewed recently.

She. A lot of these people were immigrants. Actually. She came from Germany and started a business  bootstrapped it and. One of her businesses. It was actually also photography, whatever, a lot of photographers. Yeah. But her particular type of photography was like for magazines, like Vogue and stuff like that.

And she was able to sell. Her photography business to bill gates for seven figures  but I’m just like, wow. She started in dead actually 130, 5,000 in debt. Bootstrapped sold a company to build gates for seven figures. Now she has like a coaching business and whatnot, and yeah, just different stories like that.

It’s inspiring to know that, other people have done this and you can do it. It just takes determination and hustle and resources, like just being creative, I guess, in a way of how to kind of. The almost like stepping stones or building blocks. 

William Glass: [00:12:55] Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. And it’s really, yeah.

Really interesting.  to hear other people that have bootstrapped and, you know, I think that’s obviously a very attractive, attractive model, especially because most people don’t have a ton of money that they can throw at a business or trying to. create something because they need to pay a bill or X, Y, and Z, you know, whatever, whatever the motivation is.

So, you know, being able to lean on and see other people that have been able to do it and know that it’s possible to build, build businesses with little to no capital. It’s. , very important to talk about and share those stories. When you think about What you want people to take away when they listened to an episode what is it that you want people to come away feeling or knowing, or what action should they be taking after they hear a, an episode?

Sarah St John: [00:13:44] So I guess with episodes like that, it would be inspiration. And there’s usually in those episodes, the person I’m interviewing usually gives. Kind of a strategy or tips or something that someone can implement or consider. And then if it’s an episode where I’m interviewing, someone who’s an expert in some area of entrepreneurship, or maybe they work for a particular software company, if something that I use and recommend, just, taking away.

A lot of times people  haven’t even heard of these platforms that are free or really affordable. They’ve heard of competitors that are,  expensive, but they haven’t heard about these, these just as good, if not better, like free or affordable options. And so a lot of people I’ve heard, like, there’ll be taking notes, like, oh, I gotta check that out.

I gotta check that out. And then they, sign up for it and whatnot. And, um, So, I guess just like, I feel like in the process of writing the book and then the goal of the podcast is saving people time by them not having to research these types of things. Like every day, I feel like I’m online looking for new tools, resources, and software to try out or to recommend.

and so I think. It does save people time or people might not even spend the time anyway, to look up all that stuff and do comparisons and whatnot. But, I like doing it bigger. 

William Glass: [00:15:25] Yeah, no, it makes sense. Yeah. Being able to save people time or depending on, like you said, the type of the episode, whether it’s strategies or tips from guests of how they can, how they were successful and implementing it makes a ton of sense.

In terms of, of pod team.  How did you develop the business and talk to me a little bit about going from producing your own show  learning all about all these tools and resources,  sharing them with, with other,  frugal preneurs.  how did you end up starting pod scene?

Sarah St John: [00:15:55] So. I’ve always produced my own show and people would compliment me on it and say that it was, you know, for doing it myself, that it was done pretty well. So then I got the idea and then I implemented it by, I mean, there’s so many tools that I use myself for my own show, whether, and all I can just list some of them, So like a D script is a good one for creating transcripts or even I like to edit my audio and or video through Descript because you can edit out, you can remove filler words and with a click of a button.

So basically you edit the audio or video by editing the transcript so you can remove ums and UHS and things. And then you can even create like audio grams in there now. which I also use headliner or,  repurpose I l.io. Those two I use for audio grams . So before I started doing video podcasts, and it was just audio, I would create through repurpose a.

A long form audio gram, or it turns it into a video, better than nothing, I guess, but now I’m starting to do like video podcasts, like kind of like what we’re doing and then put that on YouTube and then take the audio from that and turn that into the podcast.

And then like, caption social media,  like where it has clips of the interview. But it’s like caption. Cause a lot of people, when they’re on social media, they they’re in a situation at work or wherever where they can’t listen to it. So the captions, you can read it as it’s playing without hearing it. And there’s something called clip scribe for that.

And then I create graphics in Canva. I mean, all of these things are either free or really affordable. And so, and there’s some others I can’t think of at the moment, but basically just using all these tools and then it’s like, other people wouldn’t have to pay for these tools and they can just pay me to use these tools to create.

but then also. What I’ve discovered is that it isn’t really starting or recording a podcast that people have an issue with. It’s the post-production. And that’s why so many people pod fade that’s the term used, like when people usually on average, only put out seven to 10 episodes and then they.

They’re like, forget it because of all the post-production people don’t think about that when they start like the editing production intros, the outros, if you want ads put in, if which I don’t personally do, but some people do. And then, the audio grams, transcripts show notes, social graphics,

and some people don’t do any of that, but I recommend. If you want it to sound the best and make the most impact or reach most people or, or whatever. I recommend doing all those things. Right. , basically the way podseam works is that when someone just records their episode, whether it’s audio or video sends it to me, and then I do all the post-production backend stuff.

So then it’s, it’s. A lot less likely that they’ll pod fade. If all they have to do is record the episode. 

William Glass: [00:19:32] That, that makes it a lot easier. I, as someone who has self produced, I can, I can second that , it takes a lot of time and effort and things that you don’t realize. And  it’s not easy.

So I see the value.  in Podseam and what you’re doing. And I was not aware of a lot of those tools. Some of them I’ve used like headliner and Canva, but I’d never heard of Descript. 

Sarah St John: [00:19:55] Oh really? Yeah. Yeah. Descript will pretty much change your life. 

William Glass: [00:20:01] It sounds like it, it 

Sarah St John: [00:20:02] sounds like it, they do have a free plan, but it’s limited, like.

Only, I mean, you might be able to use it for a month or two, but the plan that I’m on is only $15 a month. And I’m thinking about switching to the, to the $30 a month plan because of what it offers. It’s very, it’s one of the very few things that I actually pay for to run my business, but it’s a big time saver.

Oh, 

William Glass: [00:20:31] absolutely. Yeah. I think the editing process is, is, uh, is definitely, one of the biggest times sucks, I would say.  even if it’s not necessarily hard, it’s a lot of time. 

Sarah St John: [00:20:44] I’ve noticed that for every hour episode or so that I have, it takes anywhere from three to five hours for all the backend stuff.

William Glass: [00:20:55] Yeah, it takes a lot. So Sarah w what would you, if you were advising someone who’s just starting a podcast or wanna start a podcast, like, what steps should they take? Like what, what are your thoughts around, around that for a newbie? So they don’t podcast. 

Sarah St John: [00:21:08] Yeah. Uh, well, the first thing is to find a niche.

there are some podcasts out there where they talk about anything and everything. but very few people can pull that off.  so it needs to be niche down, but it’s very specific topic and audience and then have some kind of,  clever, I suppose, name,  but something that people can tell. Means by, by reading it, I like you, the title of your shows, it’s Silicon alley and, you know, people think of Silicon valley.

And so I thought that was creative. So a creative title that tells people what it’s about. Some people want to name their show after them, but unless they’re. Well known, like unless you’re Oprah or something, I don’t recommend saying the, your name show or whatever. And then as far as like, cover are definitely something that pops out, not a whole bunch of words.

I guess you could have your face on it. If you don’t use your name. I think if you use your name, like the so-and-so show, And have your face on it. If no one knows who you are, then that’s just, it’s a lot. Yeah. Yeah. I think yours has your face on it, but it also has, , it has a building of some sort.

I can’t remember. Oh, it was, yeah. 

William Glass: [00:22:32] It’s the flat iron and, uh, the, the clock that’s in front of the 

Sarah St John: [00:22:35] building. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, having some kind of image like that, I think is good. And if you’re going to put your face on it and that’s all that’s on it, ideally it would be cart, like kind of a cartoon. I think those pop better than someone’s actual face, but each have their own.

Um, and then of course with your title, I think it’s good to say whatever your title is with. So-and-so like your name. and then, okay, so those are just some kind of basics to get started. and then you need a podcast host.  There are a couple of free ones, but I personally recommend one. I recommend that this is one of the areas that you actually pay for.

I use captivate, which is like 19 bucks a month and they’re really good. You can have unlimited podcasts and all this stuff. They have a lot of like marketing tools within it, but there’s a lot of good ones out there. Like Buzzsprout is pretty good. So, yeah, usually you can get hosting for under $20 a month.

And then as far as equipment getting started, you technically could use your like, well, you have your, your buds w apple earbuds with the little mic that’s built in. Um, and. Oh, that’s just so you can hear. Okay. 

William Glass: [00:23:56] Yeah. Yeah. I try not to, unfortunately, sometimes I have caught myself post production that I did record with this and you’ll hear the, the little it’ll hit the 

Sarah St John: [00:24:05] collar.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I recommend a Mike. I have an ATR 2100, which was like 60 or 80 bucks. There’s also Samsung Q2 U, which is about the same. And then. It’s a USB mic, plugged it right into your computer and then like what you’re doing and what I’m doing using some kind of earbuds or headphones so that when you’re listening to the person so that it doesn’t come through the computer and cause an echo.

I would say those are like starting out. Those are the areas that you want to first focus on and invest in. If you want to go completely free, you could use your earbuds for both the listing and the recording, if you wanted to and use like anchor for your hosting. But I would say if you have like a hundred bucks and , a hundred bucks to start with, get a Mike and you probably have headphones or earbuds laying around.

Um, and then if you have $20 a month, then yeah. Get a podcast hosting platform. 

William Glass: [00:25:14] Why, why the hosting do you think it’s important to pay for versus using like an anchor or one of the other free tools? 

Sarah St John: [00:25:21] Yeah, so I think anchor has improved. but I know the issue with them and maybe this is the issue with any free one, which I’m not sure how much.

Or actually totally free, but yeah, it might 

William Glass: [00:25:34] be one of the few WordPress. I think you can use some plugins, WordPress plugins and hosted on your own website, but you still pay for the website hosting. So I don’t know if it’s really free. 

Sarah St John: [00:25:43] Yeah, yeah. That’s probably the last way better way to do it. but as far as I think the issue with anchor in the beginning was that, and maybe they sold you this, I don’t know, is that like, at least for apple podcast, When they distributed, it’s like through their account, you don’t do it through yours.

And so. Any kind of changes or any kind of, you want it, if you want to log in and look at your analytics or whatever, you don’t have access to that. And then if you try to change, it’s apparently a big mess. And then plus I think like maybe they put ads in. I’m not sure. I know in the beginning I heard negative things and now I hear it’s slightly more positive because they’ve made some changes, but.

I don’t know. So I just stay away from it. A sounder actually has a free plan and paid plans. and spreaker as well, I started on spreaker because it’s free up to like, five hours. I don’t know if it’s five hours. Yeah. It must be five hours total. So you, it doesn’t get you very far. But then the paid plan after that was like seven bucks.

So that’s a little bit cheaper. Or sounder, they have a free plan. Yes. 

William Glass: [00:27:04] So any, and then in terms of like, how do I decide if I want to do an interview show or a solo show or a panel, or I don’t know, what are, what are the, you know, how do you figure out what, what format to use for the podcast?

Sarah St John: [00:27:19] Yeah, those are the three main types. Um, I think the majority of shows are probably interview. And what I like about the interview style is that you get to meet people, connect with people, network with people.  but those could potentially become your clients. If it makes sense,  form friendships, they might know so-and-so that 

but then also. You’re getting someone else’s perspective. And,  so I think for the listeners, that’s good because you’re getting someone else’s perspective and learning from that person. But then for yourself, kind of all the other things I said, with a solo show, the advantage of that. And I’ve done a few solo episodes that I’m thinking about doing more, the advantages, then you’re more of the expert because when you have an interview and there’s the guest on, they become more of the experts.

So they get to really know the guest and not as much, the host. so I think really the best way to do it is to do both, like to have, yeah. To have interviews for the pros of that, but then have the,  solo episodes for the pros of that. So that you’re kind of, you’re kind of getting the best of both worlds.

And then as far as like a panel or like,  a co-hosting or something like that for some people it’s makes sense, but I don’t know. I feel like with that scenario, you’re almost getting the worst of both worlds and maybe the best, I don’t know, but I’ve never been interested in that format.

I think it’d be a lot more to manage with like scheduling and cause if you have two hosts and the guest, or if you have like three hosts and no gas, Any more than two people? I don’t know. It seems like it was scheduling. It would really become kind of a nightmare. Yeah. 

William Glass: [00:29:13] Yeah. You have to have like set times of  here’s when everyone’s free and.

 Some people that I know that have started off have started off with co-hosts and then they’ve split. And one person’s been like, I don’t think I want to do this anymore. So you’ve also got to make sure that the person that you are, if you’re co-hosting is committed or that you’re committed, if you’re, you know, that you at that way.

So that’s another consideration that I’ve at least I’ve seen. Hmm. Sarah in terms of like success. When you think about the podcast, when you think about,  podseam, like, what does success look like for you? Like what does, what does that look like? 

Sarah St John: [00:29:51] I think a couple of things,  probably the most important actually would be knowing that you’re making an impact in some way, shape or form.

 I think kind of the goal with the podcast that I have is. Helping people understand or know of different ways to make money online, how to do it affordably on a budget, whether it’s something they want to do. Full-time at some point, or just as a side hustle and for extra income, with their day job, you know, pointing them to the right types of online businesses, the tools or resources, software to run that.

So I think when you, when you get feedback, I think that is encouraging. And,  and then I guess another thing would,  would be on the monetary side, of course, would be, , once you start seeing income coming in of some sort, then, then that would also be. I guess the second thing. 

William Glass: [00:30:53] Yeah. Side success, right?

Yeah. You’re providing an impact to people who are, whether it’s through advertising or affiliates or subscriptions. However, however, the monetization works, being able to see that impact and that people are getting value and want to want to pay. And that’s coming down to your bottom line. 

Sarah St John: [00:31:10] Right? Exactly.

So how do 

William Glass: [00:31:14] you recommend people sort through kind of the noise around. Entrepreneurship and creating online businesses. Cause there, there are a lot of legitimate ways to make money. And then there’s a lot of people out there that are trying to sell, get rich, quick schemes, or, just take advantage of people or make it seem like some of this stuff is a lot easier than it actually is.

What are your recommendations for someone that is. Trying to navigate this space and, and figure out like who to trust . 

Sarah St John: [00:31:48] I think one problem, most entrepreneurs have, I know I’ve had a, is the shiny object syndrome where you start something and then you hear about, or think of something else you’re like, oh I got, just try that.

And that’s part of the reason I have so many different businesses and it took me so long to. Figure anything out. I feel like I waste a lot of time, was trying anything and everything. And so trying to recognize when that happens and reel it in.  But then also. When you’re trying to decide what to do, or how to make money online.

I would say there’s a few things to keep in mind. If there’s something that, you know, you’re good at or something that someone or that multiple people have told you that you’re good at, that should be a sign that, is there a way you can monetize whatever that thing is. and another thing is what is something that you enjoy doing?

That is maybe just a hobby, but is there a way you could monetize it? People make money in the weirdest ways, like it might be a hobby of some sort, and then somehow they’re able to maybe teach other people how to do that thing. Or, you know, maybe there’s something that they’re making. That they could then sell to other people, maybe other people want that thing, or, they’re an expert at something that they could teach and maybe it’s very niche,  if someone is into something the surely there’s a few other people out there that are into it as well.

so just like finding your hobby, what you’re good at. What you enjoy doing what you could see yourself doing long-term or something that people tell you you’re good at and finding a way to monetize that thing versus, trying this, that, and the other thing. Cause what I found was that I guess I tried a bunch of different things.

Cause I was curious, I just didn’t know what would take off, but it was like most of the things I didn’t even give it enough time to even see if it would take off. I just lost interest because it wasn’t like a passion or something. I was that interested in, it was more just like getting my feet wet or something, like with the drop shipping, for example.

And so, but with podcasting, for example, that was something, I didn’t know. It wasn’t like I tried. For the purpose of, I didn’t have long-term goals for it. It just, but then I realized how much I liked it and all that stuff. And it became a passion and I guess a hobby in a way. and so I found a way to a few ways actually to monetize that, through the production agency, but just, you know, filling marketing or whatever else.

And. So, yeah, I think that those would be things to take in to consideration. 

William Glass: [00:34:50] That’s great advice, Sarah. I thinking about what is it that you enjoy, whether it’s a hobby and then. Focusing on that, versus someone said a shiny object over here, you should try drop shipping or blogging, or, become a TikTok star and get a, you know, whatever, whatever it is, and actually focusing on what it is that, that you enjoy and then kind of what business might,  might be the best way to monetize that, that interest.

I like that a lot. In terms of your relationship with money. And I’m curious, could you, could you describe what that is? 

Sarah St John: [00:35:24] Sure. I grew up and a family that’s very frugal. I mean back in the day, maybe they probably didn’t make much, my parents, they got married young in their late teens, like right out of high school and started having, they had a kid and then we’re pretty spaced out.

But, and then my dad went on, like he has a PhD and so he went on with schooling for several years. And so I think. Maybe because they had tied finances because of schooling and being so young and having a kid and all this stuff, they probably had to penny pinch. But now all their kids are out of the house.

They’re all they’re practically retired or semi-retired, You know, their houses, you know, all this stuff, and yet they still penny pinch. And so I think, because I grew up that way, kind of the frugal mindset. I mean, they still use coupons and just all these different things and, So I think that’s kind of been my mindset.

I don’t know if I’m as bad as them, but, but you know, being frugal. And so I kind of incorporate that into the business, or a different kind of spin or take on entrepreneurship is that you don’t have to have a million dollars to start a business. I mean, well, it depends on what kind of business you have.

That’s why I like online business versus like retail or brick and mortar because you don’t have all that overhead. So I guess it’s still kind of on the frugal side, but it used to be where any kind of money that I would bring in from business.

I felt like I needed to. Save it or use it for bills and things like that, which I still do to some degree, but now I try to invest more of like what I bring in. I try to invest most of it back into the business so that I’m not really spending out of my pocket per se. I’m just kind of recycling the money, I guess.

I still manage my businesses. Well, my goal has always been under a hundred a month, but I think it’s actually down to like 40 or 60 a month. Wow. Yeah, 

William Glass: [00:37:44] that’s impressive. 

Sarah St John: [00:37:46] So yeah, I guess that’s my take on money. 

William Glass: [00:37:52] Yeah, the frugal focus and being able to recycle it in the business.

I mean, that’s how. You grow your business, right? Is,  obviously it depends on the model, but even whatever the model is, right. And being able to invest that back into whether it’s better tools or advertising or marketing or whatever it is to help you continue to grow and grow that revenue stream makes, makes a lot of sense.

Sarah, what would you say is the best investment that you’ve made?

Sarah St John: [00:38:26] Well, I suppose in terms of podcasting in particular, I guess it would be a mic which was a cheap investment.

William Glass: [00:38:34] Go good returns on that. 

Sarah St John: [00:38:36] Yeah. 

I would probably say books like. I have tons of books. I’m always reading a new book, always,  business-related but just,  10 and 20 bucks for a book and some books, you feel like you’re getting like a two or $20,000 education.  Yeah, so probably various business books.

I like 

William Glass: [00:38:59] that. Yeah. I’m a big reader, myself side. I love that answer. Are there any books in particular that stand out is, is ones that you recommend or must reads, 

Sarah St John: [00:39:10] Are you familiar with Russell Brunson?

William Glass: [00:39:15] I think so, 

Sarah St John: [00:39:15] but he’s the ClickFunnels guy. Um, yeah, I don’t, I don’t even know I use his software cause it’s like a hundred bucks a month. And since my budget is a hundred a month, then that would take it all up. Maybe that sounds silly, but I have his three books which are really good. Dot com, secrets, expert secrets and traffic secrets.

And they’re just so jam packed. Like I’ve read them both like twice, which I rarely read a book twice. I think in kind of business owner, especially online business owner would get value out of those books. And there’s a whole bunch of other books. 

Robert Kiyosaki. Rich coordinate. Yeah. Let’s see. I will teach you to be rich. Mike McCalla was, I don’t know if you’re familiar with him, but he has a bunch of books. I’m not sure. Mike McCalla it’s like profit first and fix this next 

William Glass: [00:40:12] profit first. 

Sarah St John: [00:40:13] Oh, are you familiar with John Lee Dumas from entrepreneurs? 

William Glass: [00:40:17] Uh, I, I am, I’ve listened to his, to a show, but I’m not, I don’t know. Does he have books as well? 

Sarah St John: [00:40:22] He just came out with one called, uncommon pat, on to comments as sec success or something along those lines, I’m totally messing it up. That’s a really good book. It has like 17, each chapter is a different, like thing that he’s noticed.

Entrepreneurs he’s interviewed, like that’s a recurring thing that, that every business should, I guess, implement. And then I’ve read like pat Flynn books, like super fans. There’s just so many. Yeah, 

William Glass: [00:40:55] yeah, no, I love that. Yeah. A couple more that I need to add to my list that you recommended.

So it’s not all good. Right. We don’t always make the best decisions. So what about the flip side? What would you say is the dumbest money mistake that you’ve made, 

Sarah St John: [00:41:14] okay. I had forgotten about this, back when I was trying this, that, and the other thing, I, one of the things I did was became like a white label reseller type thing for some different companies, but it was like a hundred bucks a month just for. To be able to be a reseller. And I was like, okay, this is getting too expensive.

I mean, That works for some people, but for me, I guess it was, I don’t know if that was my biggest mistake, but, I guess just wasting time and money on a bunch of different business ventures that I, once the website was up. That’s about all I did with it.

Yeah. 

William Glass: [00:41:59] That makes sense. Unfortunately, I think a lot of us have those have those. I know I’ve got a couple under my belt as well, 

Sarah St John: [00:42:07] so, or just like buying up domains because you like the domain and you think you. Have an idea for it, but then, but I don’t know. Sometimes that can be a good thing. Cause one time I bought a domain, a preneur press, cause I actually have three books.

Now they all end in preneur for prenuer authorpreneur and podcasts for newer. So I created like, I was thinking of how like my own little self publishing thing. And so I just bought preneur press because it was available. Never ended up using. And then not even a year after I bought it and I bought it for like a buck on, I always use one-on-one dot com for my Domains.

It’s the number one and one a, because they’re like a dollar. So I bought it for a buck and then before it was even up for renewal, someone contacted me like a domain broker or whatever, and wanted to buy it. And I made like 700 bucks or something. So nice. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good return 

William Glass: [00:43:14] right there. Yeah.

A hundred percent. Yeah. 

Sarah St John: [00:43:19] So, I mean, I guess it’s okay to, if you think of a creative domain that, that wasn’t my intention to, you know, sell it when I bought it, but since I hadn’t started using it and I was like, okay, sure. I guess that wasn’t such a bad way to spend a buck. Yeah, no, 

William Glass: [00:43:42] not at all.

I would say that’s good.

Sarah. I appreciate you coming, coming down and sit down on the podcast. Is there any kind of final words of wisdom you want to impart on the audience? And then obviously, please let us know how we can reach you. If folks were interested in using, Podseam or just in general, following the podcast, how can folks connect with you off?

Sarah St John: [00:44:08] One mistake that I’ve made and sometimes still struggle with is spending so much time learning and not implementing,  like I read all these books and watch. Webinars or trainings and listen to all these podcasts and all of that. Stuff’s good, especially in the beginning.

But at a certain point, if you’re not implementing what you’re learning, then it’s pointless. So for every hour I spend learning, I try to spend another hour implementing. And I think that’s kind of a good thing to kind of keep in mind. Like the whole Justin time learning today, I was listening to a podcast and I heard him say, Just in case versus just in time, I’ve always heard of just-in-time learning where you’re learning, the thing that you need to know right now.

But I had never heard of just in case, which I guess would refer to the type of learning that I’ve been doing. You know, that I struggle with is like learning all these things just in case I need it. Of course, by the time you need it, you forget it. But anyway, which is why I’ve had to read Russell Brunson’s books twice.

But yeah, as far as finding me the podcast is called frugal preneur, which you can find in any podcast app, just search for an it’ll come up, pod scene it’s pod S C a m.com. I actually give away all three of my books for free the PDF version at the Sarah St. john.com forward slash free. And that Sarah with an H and then S T J O H N.

And then yeah, on my website, I have, Like there’s a tab up there that says like 27 tools. I use that’s all the tools. I actually need to update it because I started using a new one and stopped using one. So I need to switch them out, but I usually keep it up-to-date, but it’s all the tools that I use and recommend that are either free or really affordable. Social media everywhere at the Sarah St. John. 

William Glass: [00:46:02] Awesome. Well, thanks so much for sitting down and I appreciate you sharing your wisdom about how to build this. This is a, uh, on a frugal budget. It’s been a, it’s been a lot of fun, Sarah. 

Sarah St John: [00:46:13] Awesome. Well, thanks so much for having me.

End of Transcription

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How to Successfully Crowdfund, The Keys to Building a Marketplace

Ed Vincent, Founder of festivalPass

How to Successfully Crowdfund, The Keys to Building a Marketplace

In How to Successfully Crowdfund & The Keys to Building a Marketplace, Ed Vincent, founder of festivalPass, joins host William Glass to discuss the keys to raising money from your customers and creating loyal fans. You’ll learn:

  • “Always on” crowdfunding
  • How to build a marketplace one geography at a time
  • How to develop an innovative business model

Our Sponsors

Ostrich helps you go from being one of the 92% of people who fail to achieve their financial goals to one of the few who does. 80% of Ostrich members are on track to achieve thief financial goals. Sign up for free at https://www.getostrich.com/download

About Ed Vincent

Entrepreneur with over 25 years business, technology and management experience including 6 years banking and valuation experience. Founded an e-commerce business in 1999 which was sold to a competitor in 2001. Repeat Founder including SimplyEngage, myProducer, & Predict Ventures. Currently Founder & CEO of festivalPass.

Learn more about Ed Vincent and festivalPass.

Transcription

This transcription is autogenerated and may contain errors.

William Glass: [00:00:00] Do you love live events? Have you ever wondered how to successfully equity, crowdfund or interested in building a marketplace business and how that works? Well, so then this episode of the Silicon alley podcast is for you. I sit down with ed Vincent, he’s the founder of festival pass. And talk about all three things.

This is one of those episodes where you just come away learning so much, and we dive deep into the nuances of equity, crowdfunding, as well as how to build a marketplace for live events and creating community. While you build a marketplace, it’s really, really interesting. And you’re going to take a lot away that you can apply in your own business and life.

And that’s what this podcast is all about. It’s all about talking to VCs entrepreneurs and top performers to understand what it truly takes to grow and scale a business in this episode will not disappoint. If you haven’t already, please go ahead and pound that subscribe button or click follow on whatever app you are listening or watching this episode without further ado.

I hope you enjoyed today’s episode of the Silicon alley podcast, featuring the Ed Vincent. Are you interested in growing and scaling your business? Welcome to the Silicon alley podcast, where you’ll hear from entrepreneurs, venture, capitalists, and top performers on what it truly takes to grow and scale a business.

You’ll walk away with actionable insights. You can apply in your own business and life. Now to William Glass, the CEO and co-founder of ostrich and your host of the Silicon alley podcast. Ed, welcome to Silicon alley podcast. Super excited to have you on today. 

Ed Vincent: [00:01:28] Thanks Will. Yeah, absolutely. 

William Glass: [00:01:31] I want to start off.

You’ve done a lot over your 20 plus years as an entrepreneur, also on the investor side, advising side. But I’m really curious because the venture that you’ve started right now is called festival pass and it’s in the entertainment industry. But if I look back at your background, you actually have a finance background.

Can you talk to me about the, how you went from finance to entrepreneur and entertainment and media and creativity? 

Ed Vincent: [00:01:53] Sure. I mean, there there’s context, every story, of course. I came from the finance world as a finance major in college. , even sat for the CFA, if anybody knows what that is.

And then went on to be an investment banker first at KPMG, then a Toronto dominion bank. And you know, that was the full aspiration sitting in college and a state school in New Jersey, you know, to be an investor investment banker in New York city. It was like the, the, the. Until I got there and realized that while.

Yeah, it’s cool. And I’m sure if I stayed in it, it could have made a ton of money. But the reality is, is, I had the entrepreneurial bug since I was 10. Yeah. And it, it, it there’s there’s context to it. I started by, uh, throwing big new year’s parties in New York city with a buddy of mine. And,  one year probably, I guess it was 1999, we threw the party and realized that, Hey, there’s this thing called the internet where we can accept credit cards and actually pay for the tickets rather than running all over the five boroughs of New York and collecting cash on the street corner for new year’s Eve tickets.

And that was kind of the introduction to the internet. And from there things got built. 

William Glass: [00:02:59] Nice. So I’m assuming that wasn’t what the, where the bug started at 10 years old, but it’s how it developed a later. Otherwise you were very adventurous. Ten-year-old throwing parties in New York city. But talk to me about that initial interest that led  to, that decision and, and building the business around accepting payments.

Ed Vincent: [00:03:17] Yeah. I mean, if you’re talking about like the 10 year old that are, who are the 10 year tenure, I was like, I always say that I was a, a, a poor kid in a, in a rich town, meaning that I grew up in, on the Jersey shore in a really nice town and area, but we were the poorest family in the town. Various reasons along the way.

So even at 10 years old, I was putting newspapers together at the local luncheonette at secret luncheonette to get my $5 and a free breakfast. And that was always kind of the concept of being self-sufficient and you know, that rolling into, you know, working through most of my life. And then in college, I ran a real estate appraisal business out of my dorm room.

And, I was one of the few kids that actually have. Fax machine. And if anybody even knows what that is, the fax machine and a laptop in my dorm room, you know, working in between class. That’s awesome. Okay. 

William Glass: [00:04:09] So yeah, it sounds like you’ve you have that drive wanting to be self-sufficient as you said.

So talk to me about how that developed the 20 year old you, and then wanting to go in investment banking, thinking that was, you know, the epitome of success as being a big wall street guy, and then that translated into, you know, accepting some of these entrepreneurial behaviors that you clearly, you clearly 

Ed Vincent: [00:04:32] have.

Yeah. I mean, I remember when I, when I had the real estate appraisal business and this being a finance type show you there in the concept evaluation, you know, I say this then, and I’ll still say it today. There’s only three ways to value anything in life financially. I mean, Not talking about love and all the, uh, nice things that are valuable that aren’t financial related, but in the world of real estate, there was three ways to value a piece of property.

It was, you know, what is the discounted cashflow? What would it cost to build it from scratch? And what are other things like it selling for same, goes to stock. Same, goes to companies. Same, goes to anything in life, and I’d be hard pressed to have anybody prove to me differently that those aren’t the three evaluation metrics to create.

That all being said fast forward to going into banking and realizing how fun it was. But I realized that even in banking, you’re always a service provider to the, to the leader of a business. And I loved being part of the transaction and helping people raise capital. And, but then I’m like, well, I kind of want to be that guy that I’m helping raise capital for.

And then that kind of. Was that inspiration and launch. And back in 1999, when I was mentioning we’re throwing these big new year’s parties, after realizing that there just seemed to be so much fun opportunities to take a business online and build it. And the first company was city stuff, dot com, where we sold things that made cities famous.

And that was an offshoot of our new year’s party. Nice. 

William Glass: [00:06:01] That’s awesome. Yeah. I love that kind of transition. And I guess, talk to me about the creativity side specifically, right? So you’ve got festival pass. You’ve decided, Hey, I don’t want to be in this, stuffy investment banking, kind of a world anymore.

I want to be the guy that’s getting the checks written or the entrepreneur. That’s kind of taking all the risks. So can you talk to me about, that, and then the first venture. As you, as you took the business online and start thinking about festival pass, 

Ed Vincent: [00:06:30] Yeah. So if I, if I could start with festival pass and go backwards, one of the things, and we can get into what festival passes, but I like to think that every entrepreneurial company that I’ve built in the past all led up to what festival passes today, and you know, On the outside people that I go, you know, it’s in live events.

I get that, but it’s much more than that. It’s, it’s very much a financially driven credit based currency model that all of my, finance background really helped drive. It has a lot to do with my agency. I had throughout the two thousands, I had a bout a 70% experiential agency called Minson partners.

And we, uh, Bring big brands to big events and help launch and build a few film festivals. We owned a film festival at, down in the Dominican Republic and all of that kind of love of live events is what kind of drove me to that path. Subsequently after that agency, I had a SAS business. Got me understanding the concept of monthly subscription.

And I was like, okay, I get this recurring revenue is actually a good business model. And then leading up to the next business I had, which was a data-driven business called predict analytics, where we helped a lot of big entertainment companies understand their consumer data. So if I look at what festival passes today, it’s a very data-driven dynamic pricing subscription-based model that I only would know about had I.

Been in the data business for five years, I’d only think about subscription. Had I been not been in the SAS business and then leading back into the product, which is live events themselves. 

William Glass: [00:08:06] Gotcha. That’s really interesting. So all of your experiences leading up to festival pass is really, what’s enabled you to get to the point to build the company today.

And I think one of the companies, right, that you consulted for in the data side was movie pass. Can you talk to me a little bit about, obviously very similar in terms of movie pass festival pass, there’s a naming there, but can you talk about how the business model is different? Because for those. Are familiar, you know, that the business wasn’t successful because of their business model had a ton of success in terms of consumers loving the product, but they didn’t have the economics.

Right. So can you talk a little bit about, the distinction between festival pass, movie pass and what you learned from that experience? 

Ed Vincent: [00:08:43] Yeah, so it’s a very different business. You’re right. The name is very similar and I did enjoy the experience there. Um, I was the interim chief data officer, so I was able to kind of get under the covers and had the opportunity to see what three and a half million subscribers look like in terms of the data.

But, um, it is a very different business model. And, you know, I like to use the, the John Bolton or Hamilton theory, whichever one analogy you want to use, but it was the room where, where it happened. I was sitting in the room watching a really great product market fit, but a very bad execution of a business model.

So it was a, it was a great learning experience. The core of the differences is festival pass is a credit based currency model. Yeah. I have no problem sharing that. We learned a lot about it from some others successes, like ClassPass, if you’re familiar with ClassPass, I like to, I like to tell people that it’s a, Airbnb meets ClassPass for live events.

If, if, if they can put their head around what that means. So it’s a marketplace utilizing a credit based currency for a subscription product that just happens to be live events. So the difference between movie pass is movie pass was an unlimited product based upon a industry where the, the actual person supplying the supply, the inventory, had no control over the pricing.

So think of a studio studios control the pricing of the ticket. The exhibitor, which is the movie theater,  has no control over the fact that it’s $15 in New York to see a movie at noon on Wednesday. And it’s still $15 on Friday night at eight to see a blockbuster film. So there was no pricing disparity.

The independent film is the same price as the big $200 million blockbuster. So that causes a lot of problems being able to. Play with, or even understand dynamic pricing for supply and demand. So on top of that, the, the core issue is that when you’re promising people and unlimited use of something that you don’t own, meaning you don’t own the inventory, you have a difficult model that you’re trying to accomplish.

You know, everybody tries to say, well, okay, it’s just like a gym it’s breakage. The truth is, is that it’s not breakage because in a gym it’s a self regulating. So you go to a gym, you pay 30 bucks a month. And all of a sudden at five o’clock it’s busy, what do you do? You stopped going at five and you go earlier or you go later.

So you, it eventually self regulates itself where supply and demand comes together. Problem is, and, and MoviePass business that didn’t exist. So they were subsidized. The customer for far too long, and that really hurt the growth business. 

William Glass: [00:11:24] That’s a really interesting distinction. The two pieces around not being able to control your pricing right.

And having control over, over that aspect of it, movie theaters, didn’t didn’t have that capability. And then the self-regulation, which is something that I hadn’t thought about. Can you talk a little bit about how that stiff. For festival pass and how you are able to work with venues and kind of talk through the model that you’ve developed, in a little bit more 

Ed Vincent: [00:11:50] detail.

Sure. So first of all, a lot of people don’t realize how big of a business, the, um, live events businesses. So it’s a $200 billion global business. And also sometimes people confuse the fact that we call ourselves festival pass with the assumption that it’s only for festivals. That is not the case. I mean, we chose that brand name just because it evokes some kind of emotion, especially for kind of the millennial and gen Z said, it’s that experiential thing that you feel when you’re at a festival?

But we’re all live events. And when you look at the live event, spectrum it’s, it’s movies, it’s concerts, it’s festivals, it’s food and wine events. It’s feeder, it’s sporting events. It’s, it’s pretty much everything that is alive event. So globally it’s a huge business. The other misnomer that a lot of people forget is that everybody thinks of the large companies that control a certain portion of the industry.

So I’m sure you, you know, some of the names, live nation, a few others. But the truth is, is they don’t control as much as everybody thinks globally. You know, there, there are a small percentage of the overall live events market, meaning that there’s tens of thousands of producers, venues, event owners, rights holders, all the above.

So when you take a market where you have tens of thousands of people contributing the inventory to that money, it’s a ripe for a marketplace business model. So that’s one of the key things. And then the second key thing was the credit based currency model. So the way festival pass works, which is not the way a movie password is that people sign up and pay a subscription fee, whether it’s nine or $99 a month.

And they get a certain amount of credits for that. So if they’re willing to commit to $99 a month, they pay less per credit for the credits they’re buying. And then once they have those credits, They can choose to use those credits to go to as many live events as they can can for that amount of credits.

So I liken it to the you’re probably too young to remember this, but the old world or the arcades. Some people might remember Dave and busters these days, but the old world of their kids is you go in and you put $20 in the token machine. You get some tokens. And the cool shoot ’em up game is four tokens and the pinball is one token.

So you can choose how you spend that money. So for us, there’s a couple of things we’re solving, is one. We allow people that commit to a higher monthly, ongoing subscription to effectively attend events cheaper because they’re paying less per credit. And then we’re also solving for a lot of the friction that has existed in the business for a long time.

Nobody likes paying ticketing fees. They don’t like, you know, a hundred dollar fee. And then on the way out, it’s an extra 20 bucks. It’s just, a lack of transparency of the market has been dealing with for decades. And it almost doesn’t matter. The consumer, the price they’re actually paying.

It’s just, it’s just, they don’t like that extra surprise at the end, but not only are we moving to a model where there are no ticketing fees, we’re also making sure when people are getting events, they’re going to be costs less than they will elsewhere because of the fact that. We can have predictable revenue with the ongoing recurring revenue sessions.

That’s awesome. Yeah. 

William Glass: [00:14:57] And thanks for diving deep there, ed. So you’ve got to really get the venues as well, because as you said, this is a marketplace, right? So the reason that you’re able to the credit based business model works is because you have both sides of the marketplace. Is that correct? Cause you’re being, you’re able to.

Provide some sort of service or benefits to the venues, the producers, the people that are putting on the events, as well as the consumers that want to go to live events. And as you said, not have to pay fees, which I hate fees, bank fees, any kind of fee I had to pay a fee to earlier today. And I was really upset.

It was only like a dollar 50, but I was still upset. So I completely get that. So that’s why this works though, right? It’s because you’ve got the, both sides of the market. 

Ed Vincent: [00:15:36] That’s correct. Yeah. So there’s a, there’s a lot of ways to the consumer side is easy, is the wrong word. But in the world of today in digital marketing, it’s easy to reach a lot of people to let them know about your offerings and to have a little.

Discipline over the price, you’ll pay to reach them. So we, we, I wouldn’t say we have that down at scale yet, but we have pretty consistently know how to fill the funnel where as long as we tell people what we’re doing, we’re getting a big, huge response of people wanting to come and join festival pass initially as a free member.

And then when they see an event, they like moving into a paid membership. So, the consumer side, I think we have solved in terms of the brand, the promise, the value prop on the flip side. We need the inventory right? To, to make people be able to use those credits and still be excited to continue to stay on month to month.

So there are, there is an interesting way to gather a lot of this inventory. So we have partnerships across the board. So we have partnerships with some event producers. We have partnerships with some venue owners. We have partnerships with some ticket aggregators. We have partnerships with some primary ticketing companies.

We have partnerships with, Overall, how do I call it a data feed supplier of event listings? So what we do is pull all of these mechanisms together, and then bring it into our database. So we can actually showcase these thousands of events for our, for our users. 

William Glass: [00:17:03] Gotcha. So that makes a lot of sense.

So the value prop for venues is being able to sell out essentially right, being able to sell all their inventory, make sure that they put on really great events. And I’m assuming essentially partly marketing, right? If you’ve got this huge consumer base, the benefit is I don’t have to go list it on, you know, live nation and meetup and all these other different websites where you can Facebook events or all the, all the different places now where you can put an event.

It’s you just go to festival pass. And it’s, it’s done. You sell your. 

Ed Vincent: [00:17:34] Yeah. So there’s a couple of things is one. Yes. We, our members tend to be high frequency event. Goers becomes a popular group to present information to. It also is very helpful that we’re building this recommendation engine that really doesn’t exist anywhere else.

So kind of like a Netflix like recommendation engine. So as our members join, we know a little bit about our members, you know, I come from a data background, so I know. How do, how do I say, provide more insight into who our members are. And then as they create behavioral aspects within our environment, we start to learn a little more about, do they like rock and roll?

Do they like country music? Do they like soccer? Do they like football? And what that allows just like Netflix is when you have thousands of opportunities to choose from, how do you show.  Will the right 20 events on the right day at the right time. And, and how to ed, how does that get different events then we’ll get based upon the location based upon the interest.

And what that does is it really puts the right opportunity in front of the right person. So when you talk about the marketing aspect, that is absolutely part of the case, right? So we already know. Our members are high frequency live event goers. We already know that if I list or have a partnership with festival pass, my event’s going to be shown to the right people at the right time.

So yes, the idea is over time, we’ll be able to drive as many people to that event as desired based upon the capacity for an event, either sell it or not sell out the one thing, add to that, which is interesting and why. Event producers, the venue owners kind of like what we’re doing is because we’re a membership based community.

And because we are credit-based currency, it doesn’t cannibalize their full price ticket sales. So a lot of times in the past, Somebody has a, an event. And they’re like, okay, well, we can fit 5,000 people at our event. And I know typically I’m going to sell 4,000 tickets or 3000 tickets, and I’d love to get an additional 500 people there or another a hundred people, whatever the number is.

In the past, the way they would do that is they go to a group on, or a couple other different venues and they’d listed for 30% off. And people come in and get a ticket for a discount, which is great. They fill, fill the seats. But what that does is it creates a problem for anybody coming and buying that full price ticket.

Because it’s public because now people see it’s discounted on Groupon. Why would I ever go buy it for full price? If it’s just Canada and Groupon. And because of the way search engines work, Groupon will come up just as quickly as the a hundred percent ticket. So in our worlds, it’s a membership. People are pre committing their dollars to pre committing to be a live event goer, and it’s not available for a discount to just the general.

William Glass: [00:20:19] Yeah, no, thanks for pointing that out because it’s a really interesting point that you made, because I think about like the, the subscription food delivery services, I don’t know, like hello, fresh and blue apron. Like I think I will never ever pay full price because I get so many coupons and discount codes.

And part of that is a little different right. Where everyone’s fighting to get market share, and they’ve got billions in their coffers from VCs. So that’s part of it. But as a consumer, once I know that I can get, you know, the meals for half off, why would I. Pay full price. And I think that’s a really, a really important point from both the consumer perspective and the model that you’ve got set up towards credit based.

So I I’m getting a discount, but the public doesn’t necessarily know that. And then also protecting the venue and the integrity of the venue to still be able to incentivize people to, to go to the event that wouldn’t necessarily, and they’re getting a discount, but it’s a way to kind of mask that discount.

Yep. So really, really, really interest. Perspective there. So I’m going to assume this answer, the biggest challenge so far, it’s probably, yeah. Pandemic and no live events going on for, you know, a better part of a year, longer than a year. So I definitely want to touch on that, but I also am curious to think about moving forward, building a marketplace, building this credit, as you keep saying, credit based this currency as well.

You know, the overall, the overall business, what are the kind of the biggest challenges that you’re tackling today? 

Ed Vincent: [00:21:44] Yeah, so I do think. Yeah, full transparency on it is, is when you have a marketplace, you do have to fill both sides. So it’s about filling ’em in the right time, in the right place. So in, in the concept of a marketplace, you either have a route density or a global density marketplace.

The analogy would be like Uber or Lyft. As long as there’s enough drivers and passengers in one market, you can have a route density marketplace only in New York, only even Queens, and still have a successful marketplace, as long as. Buyers and sellers are meeting there. So in that capacity, as we go fill more and more live events that are in our network, we’re doing so in geographical, areas.

So, you know, right now, central Texas is important to us. New York’s important to us. South Florida is important to us. LA is important to us, Phoenix and Nashville, But eventually we want to make, we want to have events in every major city throughout the country that are enough to sustain somebody’s desire to be a subscriber.

But that’s the challenge is, is to, to focus on meeting the needs of people where both sides of the marketplace are growing. It’s a similar capacity, making sure our marketing span is going where our events are. 

William Glass: [00:22:51] Perfect. It makes a lot of sense. And I like that you brought that up the route density. So you can have a successful marketplace in one location and you don’t have to worry about trying to, you know, make your Toronto subscriber happy, even though you haven’t, you don’t have any venues in Toronto because you’re focused on U S markets and specific locales.

So it’s a really interesting way to think about it. 

Ed Vincent: [00:23:08] It also helps us in the future for global growth. So it’s easy for us or will be easy for us to say, okay, now we have hundreds of thousands or millions of subscribers in the us. Let’s just do Germany. Okay. And let’s spend six months building a route density marketplace just in Germany.

So then let’s go to the UK, then let’s go to Australia. We can do that because you only need, tens of thousands of users in each market in order to support a route density market. 

William Glass: [00:23:35] Gotcha. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I’m assuming, there’s probably large companies that own venues or put on events and multiple locations.

So if they’ve already having success in one market with festival pass, it’s probably easier to get that, that same provider to open up. And as you said, Germany in Munich or wherever, wherever that is. Agreed. So ed, one of the things that you’ve chosen to do as well is, use equity, crowdfunding. And I’m curious if you could talk about why you chose to do equity crowdfunding pretty have a pretty good pretty suspicion as to why, but we’d love to hear your rationale of why you chose to go that route in terms of raising.

Ed Vincent: [00:24:17] Sure. So a lot of it is, explained if anybody wants to read an article, I wrote called zero to a hundred million dollars in revenue with no VC funding. You can just type a type that in, Google and it will show up with my name. But it, it just really explaining the concept that today there’s just so many more sources of capital and it’s not that I dislike.

VCs, it just comes down to there’s so many, sources that can allow so many other people to participate. So in my kind of 20 years of going through the process, I I’ve raised capital from VCs have raised a bootstrap companies have raised capital from private equity groups and each one comes with a different flavor of, uh, how do I say.

Opportunities and challenges. So part of it is really understanding what capital sources, right? For what stage of a company and today with equity crowd funding, where you can raise up to $5 million a year with reg CF and up to $75 million a year with a reggae. It becomes this really amazing opportunity, especially with a consumer product to allow your members to actually own part of the experience.

So I just have always loved the idea that a member of festival pass can actually be an owner of festival pass and vice-versa and owner can be a member. And as, as time goes forward, those who are investors and owners are going to be much more likely to be the biggest fans and biggest influencers telling everybody else to participate.

So that’s one big piece. And then the other really is, is the idea that, I’ve always believed that main street investors should have an opportunity to be a part of something that has the capacity to grow to multiple hundreds of millions of dollars before it goes public. So not just waiting till Airbnb goes public and, and then having the Robinhood investors come in and pay five times as much as all the VCs did originally.

So I just have that kind of. Democratized way of thinking about how investing works and that’s, it’s Democrat democratic with a small day, but I’ve always wanted that. So, and just to share with everybody is, we have a multiple prong approach. Yeah to our capital raising. So we do have a crowdfunding available as we speak today, probably be alive for another month or so, for this first campaign and we’re planning to do an always-on equity crowdfunding campaign.

So we’ll never not be raising money. It just, every quarter to valuation is going to go up. So we’ll go up to match the fundamentals of the business. So in the process of that, I look at capital from three sources. One is equity crowdfunding. The other is strategic equity. And I’ll share in a minute, we have a lot of amazing individual investors that are part of it.

And then the third is low cost debt. So up until a couple of years ago, there wasn’t the ability for direct to consumer companies to go access low cost debt capital, you know, in the hundreds and the tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars for digital marketing. So when I look at all of our future growth dollars that we’re going to use to acquire new customers, it’s all going to come from low cost debt.

And then we’re going to use our equity, crowdfunding, and strategic investors for operational capital. Got it. Okay. 

William Glass: [00:27:34] So that’s, that’s very interesting. So can you talk, so a couple of things that I want, I’m wanting to dig in on, I guess the first is this, you mentioned something that was interesting. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone talk about it before.

Is this always on. Funding. So, can you talk about what you mean by always on crowdfunding? 

Ed Vincent: [00:27:50] Yes. Usually what happens in the crowdfunding space, and this is something that I haven’t seen yet either, but hopefully it will work is, people have a campaign and they say, okay, we’re going to go out and raise a million dollars or $5 million.

We’re going to do it over three to six months. And when it’s over, it’s over and then maybe a year or two from then they’ll come back and say, okay, Maybe I’ll try and raise more money. And then there’s been companies that have been successful in doing that. And most of the ones that have gone on to raise tens of millions of dollars do so through a reggae.

But what we’re doing is we have a campaign that’s live now and we’re raising at a certain valuation and we’re building the company. But within that three months that the campaign went live to one we’re going to complete. It is a, there’s been a lot happening in the company in terms of growth. So. After the three months, we’re going to pull the campaign down and then we’ll go live with another campaign immediately or within a few days.

And the valuation will match the current valuation of what the fundamentals of the business say it should. So I’ll give you a random example. Like right now we’re raising money at a $20 million evaluation on start engine. Once we do the second campaign, maybe it’s a 25 million or $30 million evaluation because now we have 50,000 more subscribers.

Now we have a thousand more events. Now we have, you know, X amount of people that are, paying $50 a month to be subscribers. So when we can match the valuation with it, what it does is it creates a mark to mark a value. So I know if I came at $20 million valuation and now it’s trading at a $30 million valuation, but as an investor, I’m excited because I saw, okay, cool.

You know, it’s on paper, but I now have 50% increase in the value of my investment. In the traditional private company world, it’s very difficult to understand what something’s worth. So this creates a quarter to quarter mark to mark valuation. It also helps with outside strategic investors.

So we’ve raised a bunch of money from some really influential people. And a lot of times they’re excited to invest because they know within a few months we’re gonna, valuation is gonna increase again. 

William Glass: [00:29:55] Got it. That’s really interesting. And. It’s just something that I haven’t heard anyone doing.

Cause typically it’s, you know, at least in the VC world, every 18 months, you’re raising, if you’re doing really well, maybe it’s it’s sooner or if you’re not doing so well, you’ve got to do a bridge round to get to the next round. So you’ve essentially just kind of turned on this, way to allow mainstream investors.

But also it’s a way to kind of always have continuous funding for the business as you’re building. What about giving away too much equity? Is that a concern of that? You’re going to dilute yourself out if you’re always raising or I guess curious about how that piece works. 

Ed Vincent: [00:30:31] Sure. So, so it’s, it’s actually the exact opposite because if we had taken traditional institutional VC money early on in the C seed stage or the classic kind of series, a worlds that comes with a lot more restrictions to say it lightly, and there’s, there’s a lot of different ways.

Some institutional investors require their investments to be made that protects them. I’d say from. And anti dilution, but also, ends up diluting some of the initial investors. So what happens in this concept of crowdfunding is because on a quarterly basis, the valuations increasing the you’re never really been diluted at all.

So it’s funny when people in the world of dilution, sometimes they don’t understand the concept. Sometimes they say, oh, well, I used to own 5%. Now I own 3%. That doesn’t matter. The concept is, is, is the money that you pay. At 5% now with more in total than it is at 3%. So as long as the valuation’s continuously increasing, you’re not really being diluted.

You might own less percentage of the company, but you’re whatever you own is worth much, much. Yeah, 

William Glass: [00:31:41] I appreciate you explaining that because I think that’s the common misconception is, is you typically don’t want to phrase it a lower valuation, then that is not the case, but as long as your valuation is going up, then the fact that you now own 3% set of 5%, you should have, it should be worth more in terms of value.

So, what is, I guess, success look like for festival pass? Right? We’ve kind of talked a little bit, and I alluded to some of the things that you’re thinking about in terms of, you know, where you’d like to be globally, but, you know, talk to me a little bit about the future festival pass and what successes.

Ed Vincent: [00:32:15] Sure. I mean, for me, it’s about having this, this way for people to connect live. Like, the overall mission really is about getting people to connect with humans, more often and more regularly and build that community. So that’s what always has driven me. That’s what I’ve always loved about live events.

It’s a once in a lifetime experience, no matter what event you’re at, it will never happen. So the, the people that are at a specific event at that specific time is a magical experience. Whether it’s a, you know, a football game or, or a cool little concert in a dive bar, they’re all really cool experiences.

So I think the dream or success to me is when, you know, I can see somebody, I don’t know, looking at festival pass. You know, really enjoying the fact that, you know, here let’s as an example here in, in Austin, maybe they’re looking at ACL, which is one of the biggest festivals here, and they’re like, cool, I’m going to ACL.

Cause I got it through festival pass and there’s 50 other venues in town this weekend. And there’s a band playing at each of these 50 venues. And I can look at the app and plan my entire weekend just by using festival pass, knowing I’m going to go to. The show at X X venue, I’m gonna, you know, whatever the, the concept is.

I just want people to be able to experience that discovery, and to be able to do so. 

William Glass: [00:33:39] Love it. Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. I think that I know when it comes to live events, if it’s not a big market event, like an ACL, but even with ACL, there’s obviously, you know, nuances of how do you actually create a great experience?

Because there are so many performers that are playing at different venues at different times. Sure. But it’s also just like, for me as a consumer it’s discovery, right. I mean, there’s just. You know, H how do I know which event or live event to go to? And I, you know, you go do a quick Google search and it always returns results that are old, or they’re only on, you know, one type of event.

And I’ll see all the events for networking events around entrepreneurship, but I actually wanted to go see something else, but that’s just what meetup or whatever Google, you know, shot back at me. So I really like the fact that you’re, you’re really focused on this, connecting people with events that are meaningful to themselves.

Ed Vincent: [00:34:27] Yeah, it’s fun. And like all of the, there hasn’t been that many social experiences in the life of them business. So, you know, there’s a couple of ticketing companies that have tried a social approach, but you know, the way I look at it is I want to see when I log in a festival pass and that these are features that are a few months out, but you know, I’ve interconnected with 500 people on festival pass that are all also members because I’ve connected my Facebook or Instagram or whatever, chosen social network.

And now I flip up an event, let’s say, this event is. I’m trying to think of an example, city winery in New York and it’s, you know, for the old people out there, it’s Joan Jett playing or whatever, or for, for young people, it’d be somebody else. But now I can immediately see these little faces on this event page and be like, oh, okay.

10 of my friends that I know are totally going to this. I’m going to go to, and now it creates this ability for us to interact pre show after show, during show, we’re going to let people be posting, you know, photos from shows and then kind of creating this experience that people want to be, on festival pass pre during and post the entire live show.

William Glass: [00:35:30] Yeah. Not like that at it. Cause I think you’re, it sounds like you’re tapping into something that the social media platforms used to be good at when they were smaller. Right. Where you could discover that a friend or someone was going to be in the same place or same event venue. And now there’s just, you know, you’re inundated with so much stuff that you, you know, you might find out a week later that someone was at the same event as you.

And you’re like, man, we should have connected. So I love that you’re creating that ability again. 

Ed Vincent: [00:35:54] Yep. No, I agree. It’s really just about connection and community and having a frictionless approach to, to experiencing live events. Awesome. 

William Glass: [00:36:02] Well, Ed, I want to transition now and talk a little bit about personal finance as someone that’s been on all sides of the equation.

It sounds like in the entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial world, I’d love to get your take on personal finance. And specifically I’d like to start with your relationship with money. How would you describe that? 

Ed Vincent: [00:36:21] Yeah. I don’t know how to answer that question so much. I mean, I have three daughters and an ex-wife, so there’s been a process along the way, but, I do realize that, in and of itself, as an entrepreneur, for me, I constantly reinvest in, in what I’m doing and in myself and my time, as well as capital in order to kind of explore what’s important for me in life.

So. While I’ve had many successes in the past, the actual dollar amount of money. Isn’t that important to me what’s always been important is to, you know, wealth, to me is being able to kind of experience what you want to experience when you want to experience it without any, you know, weight of financial.

William Glass: [00:37:03] I love that. Yeah. It’s that, yeah, that kind of like capturing your time. Right. Being able to in the live event space, right. Go and have experiences with the people that you care about and when you can and not worry about, am I going to be able to keep the lights on or, you know, feed the family? Exactly.

And what would you say is the best investment that you’ve made? 

Ed Vincent: [00:37:25] Yeah, I, I guess I can go there. There’s some good ones and bad ones. So at the end of the day, there’s public market investments that are as good, which are interesting. And then there’s, just entrepreneurial investments. So in investing in myself and time, Here’s one example, I would say, and it’s not even a classic financial investment, but I’m part of a, an entrepreneur group called EO.

I don’t know if you’ve heard of EO entrepreneurs, organization. There’s a there’s YPO and EO, which are two very similar organizations and one is for entrepreneurs and one’s for presidents. Anyway, it’s a, it’s a global organization of 14,000 entrepreneurs, and I’ve been part of it now for about 14 years and, you know, costs X amount of dollars, every year for dues.

And, there’s an investment into participating in a bunch of the events. I was lucky enough through the program to go to MIT for three years for an entrepreneur master’s degree with 70 other entrepreneurs globally. But, but going through and investing in that process of, being a part and spending the thousands upon thousands of dollars necessary to do it was, you know, the return that I’ve received from that organization has been a mess.

That’s 

William Glass: [00:38:33] awesome. Yeah, no, I love that. And I’m glad you brought that up because I think that there’s that opportunity to connect with other people. And as you said, the organizations that are really focused on development and it’s not just, I got X amount of money for, investing in this stock or this startup it’s, the kind of those intangibles, going back to the things that we can’t value, right.

That are harder to value. 

Ed Vincent: [00:38:55] Yeah. No, it just goes back to the place where some people might get an initial financial return from, as you said, a stock or something else, but having built their capacity to earn any more so than anything else. And, you know, at some point in time, the market might go down or, an investment might not pay off as well as it can be.

But when you continue to invest in yourself, you’re, you’re always have the capacity to earn perfect. 

William Glass: [00:39:20] So ed not all the decisions we make are always good. So I’m curious to get the flip side of the coin. What would you say is the dumbest money mistake that you’ve 

Ed Vincent: [00:39:28] made? Yeah, I think I’d have to say when we had city stuff back in the day, we ended up selling at a time where it was a fear-based sale because we’d, we’d launched in 1999.

It was a 2001 and you know, the internet 1.0. Bubble turned into a bust. And, we didn’t know if we’re going to need more capital. We didn’t know, how we’d continue to run the company, even though we were successful, we had all these great, you know, you being from New York, you would recognize it.

You know, Junior’s cheesecake from Brooklyn. Yeah, absolutely. So we have juniors chase. Can we sell millions of dollars of cheesecake through city stuff? Because that was before juniors had their own website. Right? So they, they were doing mail order and you know, around the holidays, we would just crank out, you know, cheesecake orders amongst other things like H and H bagels and all the other great things in New York.

But, and this was all. Put the timing and perspective. This is all before Google and Facebook even existed. So the way you get information out back then was all about PR. It was all about, let me, let me, uh, hold a big sign in front of a today show or good morning America with city stuff, dot com, which we did many times, because you couldn’t just go to a search engine and find it.

You couldn’t, you couldn’t buy media through Facebook to get to people. So it was a different experience, but at the time we ended up selling to a company. And Connecticut for what I thought was a great deal. It was stocking this other company. I was worth millions by millions of dollars on paper at 25 years old.

But then subsequent events happened nine 11 came, in New York, the economy dried up, especially in Manhattan. Things came to a big halt, all that millions upon millions of dollars, you know, basically went to zero. So it was an experience that I wish we, I wish we didn’t. And, cause if we just held on, even if we had a kind of reduce expenses and kind of reformulate the team for a period of a year, on the other side of it, everything started growing again.

Google actually came to be, all these other things that would have easily excelled us to, a different level. The reason why I bring that up as it was a bad decision, but also a bad investment of money or a depletion of value. But even today with festival pass, we launched festival pass prior to the pandemic, you know, nine out of 10 other entrepreneurs, maybe not entrepreneurs, but, had we taken, institutional investment capital prior to, we would have been told to shut down.

We would have been told you can’t start a, a new company. Based upon live events when we don’t know if live events will ever come back. And that was a learning experience that came from city stuff, which I said, well, no, what we’re going to do is we’re going to take the money we have today. We’re going to spend it wisely.

We’re going to keep building infrastructure and we’re going to be ready. Thanks come out the other side and that’s what we did. And right now it’s awesome because it says the roaring twenties are coming back. We’re just, uh, we’re in a place where the economy is good or growing live events is, you know, one of the biggest businesses, you know, for the next 18 months, it’s going to be crazy and we’re ready because we have the tech built and we have the partnerships in place.

So we’re excited to go on this ride. That’s awesome. Yeah. 

William Glass: [00:42:47] I love that. I love how you were able to take that, that, that lesson. And from city stuff and be able to apply that to a festival pass and hang in there and not, not take that fear-based approach, but really think about where are we going to be in the next year, 18 months and prepare for that eventual future in reality.

So ed, one thing that I, that I missed that I wanted to dig in on is that you kept using the term, this credit based currency, and you’re also, work with a blockchain incubator. Is there, is there some future plans where you’re going to turn, where you’re going to take what’s going on in the crypto and blockchain space and utilize that with festival pass.

Just a shot in the dark here, but I’m just curious, based on your background. 

Sure. 

Ed Vincent: [00:43:32] So it’s a good question. And there will be some. Integration with the concept of blockchain in the future? Not probably not in the way you’re thinking now. So the credit based currency that we’re using internally, it’s important to understand the way cryptocurrency or any kind of currency works on the blockchain is that there’s either decentralized or centralized, um, uh, govern governance.

It’s important for festival pass to have centralized governance because we’re actually maintaining the value of the currency. So for us to be able to have gross margin, positive metrics on every transaction, we need to be able to manage that supply and demand and the dynamic pricing that enables our consumers to get the best deal and enables the event to sell the product at the right value and for us to get a margin.

So the answer is. Our credits likely will not turn into cryptocurrency in any capacity, but where I do see a lot of value is the ability to create a couple of things. One is rewards programs within a crypto environment. So will there ever be a festival past coin maybe, but it won’t be the core coin that drives the ticket pricing.

What it may be as a rewards mechanism that can be tracked or converted into festival pass credits. So there is value. So that’s one aspect. And the other one, whereas more likely is in the, crowdfunding world. So there are, as you can imagine many marketplaces that in the future of the next call it one to three years, we’ll provide, more and more exchanges available for privately held companies.

Some that may be blockchain driven, some that may be crypto driven. So. Another strategy to this overall crowd funding concept really is, is as we have tens of thousands of investors in the company, we will be having secondary markets for our shares. And that can happen on many different exchanges. Some of which will be blockchain.

Gotcha. 

William Glass: [00:45:36] Thanks for explaining that. And delineating between blockchain and just a centralized and decentralized cryptocurrency, because I think that’s a really, important, uh, important thing to note. And I noticed that you’re on start engine now, but had you used other equity crowdfunding platforms?

Is that because start engine now has the ability to trade shares, secondary shares, and you’re going to have this kind of always on 

Ed Vincent: [00:45:55] model. It’s a great question. And you are right. That was a big factor. When we chose to go with start engine. However, what I’m realizing is over time, start engines. Great.

I’ve no issues with start engine, but I’m realizing all of them will have that secondary market. Anyway, it was just start. Engine was better at marketing it initially. And I think over time, We’ll see how long the process will go. There are a lot of other opportunities to manage crowdfunding without a traditional marketplace.

Or how do I say, a traditional company, like a start engine or others? I think once we’re past, you know, call it a year or two from now, once we’re in a place where we already have tens of thousands of investors, we may be able to manage that whole system ourselves through a white label process so that we’re not always, and then the core reason, and I don’t know why I’m being so transparent right now, but the core reason is I’m a consumer marketing conversion guy.

And when you’re, when you market and tell people to come in and learn about your process, and then you ask them to invest. And they have to then sign up for another platform in order to get to the place of making that investment. It’s like the old Amazon, you know, reduce the clicks. So I just want to create the least friction and letting a main street investor participate in the auction.

William Glass: [00:47:14] Yeah, no, that makes sense. And I appreciate you being very transparent of look, I’ve personally spoken with a lot of these different platforms. So just curious as to your decision-making and as to why you chose to go that route. And then the last thing I’ve got just around festival passes is their ability to transfer credits, or is that something that might be on the roadmap?

Because I could see that where it’s like, I want to gift credits too. You know, a friend or  maybe I got sick and I can’t go to any live events for a while. So, you know, I still want to continue to be a consumer and get value, and be a part of the community, but can I, you know, trade or sell or gift 

Ed Vincent: [00:47:50] credits?

So the answer is you’re right. It’s on the road. It doesn’t exist today. And there are a couple of nuances, especially with the understanding of data. And this is something I did learn at movie, which was very important was that having a deterministic dataset is important. So we, we want to know and be able to provide even anonymously who goes to what event.

So we all always want to try and. Make sure that somebody that’s using one of our tickets, is actually, a user. Even if they’re a free member of festival pass, we at least want to know who they are, what their email address is, et cetera. So what we’re going to be doing is allowing people to that are on the platform connect.

So almost like a social network where you and I are now both festival past members and we’ve friended each other, if you will. So once that has happened and we’re kind of interconnected within festival pass together, we then will allow you. To transfer credits to me because we’ve chosen to be connected in our environment.

And that will, I think, facilitate some of the kind of group planning. And we’re also looking at things where it’s not necessarily the transfer of credits, but you might say, Hey, I just got a ticket to black Pumas. And, I want these 10 of my friends that are all on festival pass to go with me, click a button and they all get an invite to say, Hey, let’s all go to Blackpool.

Cool. 

William Glass: [00:49:15] Okay. That makes sense, ed, and yeah, I appreciate you on the roadmap. I assumed that it was probably a future thing based on, based on what you shared or the challenges and kind of focus at the time of the business, but that’s awesome. I’m really excited to, and I appreciate you sitting down and this has been a lot 

Ed Vincent: [00:49:30] of fun.

Thank you for having me. This has been awesome. 

William Glass: [00:49:32] Yeah, absolutely. So, I’ll leave it at the last word. If there’s anything that you want to leave the audience with, and then please, let us know how folks can connect with you outside of the box. 

Ed Vincent: [00:49:42] Sure. So, I just think for connection, I mean, festival pass.com is the easiest way to go sign up, be a free member.

Even if you don’t see an event you like today, you will, there were new events coming every day. And then, on social Instagram, tick-tock you name it? Facebook, all the above, depending upon,  what your preference is. And then if you go to invest.festivalpass.com, if anybody wants to participate more only going to have that campaign open for another month or so before.

Raise the valuation and go to the next, that’s just a great way to participate early on. We’re excited about building this and the next 18 months is going to be a lot of fun. 

William Glass: [00:50:18] Awesome. Well, thanks so much, ed. And again, appreciate you sitting down. 

Ed Vincent: [00:50:22] Cool. Thanks, Will. Appreciate it. On your way out. 

William Glass: [00:50:24] Please share the podcast with others.

That’s the only way that the community grows and others hear these incredible stories from entrepreneurs and top performers. And of course, pound that subscribe button. So you’re notified when new episodes drop every Friday, I’m William Glass, CEO and co-founder of ostrich. And of course you are the host of the Silicon alley podcast have a very profitable.

You got no time 

Ed Vincent: [00:50:46] to waste, but still you say caught in a circle say, and I’ll never leave this place.

Go to such a vulnerable right side over, over.

End of Transcription

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