When it comes to the world of freelance and side hustles, few people know it better than Jordan Mazziotti owner of Mazziotti Design (https://www.mazziottidesign.com) and JMazz Digital (https://www.jmazzdigital.com/). He has been doing creative work for companies and his clients for the better part of two decades, and his ability to build lasting relationships and turn them into partnerships is very impressive. We discuss how he got to where he is and his new focus on creating avenues of passive income. You do not want to miss this one!
I’m at a family reunion for the week and I learned some valuable life lessons while playing a game of “horse” with my 13-year-old nephew. If we tell ourselves we can’t do something, the chances of failure increases. If we tell ourselves we CAN do something, the chances of success certainly increase as well. There is no formula for guaranteed success in everything we do, but we can move forward with confidence and personal belief knowing that is going to make a big difference. We are not wholly defined by our successes or failures, but by the way we consistently approach life.
It could be argued that time is our most valuable asset. Some might consider money their most valuable asset, but good luck coming up with new ways to make money if you don’t put in the time to learn financial and business principles and skills. Good luck create passive income if you don’t take the time to learn new skills and brainstorm new ideas to pursue. Spending all our time making other people money will not take us as far as we truly could go either. If we don’t put in the necessary time to grow and foster meaningful relationships with family and friends, then how can we truly appreciate and enjoy any wealth we do end up acquiring?
If time is so valuable, why do we find ourselves wasting it or not doing the things we value the most? Today my guest Joesph Kane discusses this with me. It was a great conversation, and I’m so excited to share it with you!
Phil Salter 0:00 Hello, welcome to no better time. I’m Phil Salter, and I’m here today with Joseph Kane. Thanks for joining me. You bet. Hello. Joseph is an all around great guy and great ping pong player. You might even say championship player.
Joseph Kane 0:15 At least go react. Yeah, we work together at a company called go react and we had a tournament and he won. Didn’t you win? Like twice? Or did someone else win the second time? Do you want twice? Right? I’ve won twice. Yes. Yes. He’s very good. Very good.
So Joseph is awesome, because I’ve been kind of posting about this podcast on LinkedIn. And you actually kind of reached out and I guess I want to know, kind of, not, you know, not Why’d you do that as an accusatory way, but just kind of what got you to feel like he wanted to engage you knows as a co worker and friend or like what I guess got your attention? I was just curious about that.
I’d say it was topical for sure. Not not, you know, it wasn’t like a pity Listen, by any means. It was definitely topic intrigues. So in general, I also am interested in my future, and finances, investments, etc. That’s what your whole podcast is about. But then specifically, your cousin’s episode. Samson, I believe, right? That Yes, yes, talking about starting a business, and how to turn it turn your side gig into a full gig full time. I don’t have any side gigs. But I’ve always thought I would like to own a business and, you know, do that. And now having a family and responsibilities, it feels like one of the only ways really to do that would be through a side gig journey. So I was intrigued there. I’ve and then seeing that some of them were short form, I jumped in and listen to several others. And and then I think I found a recent one with your brother, Matt. Yeah, who also had a business tie. And now I’m trying to remember exactly what you talked about. But anyways, that one was also super intriguing.
And we spoke I spoke with him, I have a couple where we talked about real estate as an investment. other one was about retirement and passive income. So you might have been maybe that passive income one. Yep. Because that’s something that’s very interesting to me, because it’s not necessarily something I’m dying to get in a position where I just quit my job and have some other business that it becomes a full time gig or I like the idea of passive income and still doing what I want to do career wise, or or not. You don’t I mean, right. So it’s all very interesting. But I thought was really cool. And you gave me feedback on ways to engage with people. I thought that was really awesome. And that seemed like the kind of person who likes to reach out and to engage with people. I’m sure that served you and your career in life quite a bit.
Yeah. I think, you know, so my background is in sales. I don’t remember how much we said that or not. But, um, and I think there’s, you know, you have to be comfortable doing that for sure if you’re going to work in sales. Yeah. Well, you know, I genuinely like to see people succeed. And one of your questions on the on a different episode was around, like, where you are posting it, and, you know, that kind of stuff. And so I felt like, you know, I had an opinion that would help you out. And so I was happy to reach out and share that for sure. So,
but something you said earlier, in the beginning conversation, you’ve always been interested in finance, and investing and kind of getting into that. And I, I thought this question earlier, that actually wrote down. Yeah, it’s something that interests me because my relationship to money as a child, and you may have not heard not heard me talk about a little bit in one of my episodes, just like, I didn’t really know how to save this idea of saving money. This was foreign to me as a child, and I would just if I had money for like, I need to spend it are just going to disappear anyway. So might as well do something fun. In the meantime, that’s kind of the mentality. Yeah, whether not necessarily consciously, right, but kind of what would you say your relationship to money and saving was as a child or and throughout your life?
Yeah. So my parents were always pretty good about, you know, pulling the curtain back and talking about budgeting and saving and things like that. But there’s a nature piece of that to which I was opposite of you probably in that I. Either, I would have something I wanted to buy that cost money, or I didn’t know what I wanted, but I was always sure there was something going to show up that I would want money for and so I generally didn’t spend a lot of money because I always knew there was going to be something big that I wanted to buy and would want the money for. Contrast that with my brother who grew up with the same Parents, and he was much more like you is like $1 and $1 out and yeah, bar was well worth it. But then when he wanted something big, that’s like, boy, how do I save $10? I don’t know about that. And even at times he would buy candy bars in between his process of getting to the $10 thing. And whereas I was like, Well, I have the $10 because I hadn’t bought candy bars. So that was my kind of overall relationship with money at a young age and now with the family and trying to think about how do we provide the best possible support our lifestyle goals and desires? And certainly the essentials? But then also, you know, is there a way that we can increase our time spent with the family or our time? Well, I don’t know, I don’t know different way to say that, like
Phil Salter 5:57 a time management kind of thing. Is that,
Joseph Kane 5:59 well, can we be rich in time? And yeah, right. Now I have to trade time for dollars so that we can then pay for things? And is there a way to change that formula a little bit, which is kind of the passive income stuff. Yeah, brother. Whew, there you go. That’s
interesting thing you bring up because it’s like, we can fill this scarcity with time, whether it’s real or not, like, you’re right, if every time you make money requires you taking time to be at work, or to do that side thing, or whatever it may be, you know, then yet, like we do have been getting less and less time to do the things we really want to do, like spend time with family. Or just relax sometimes to is great, even us on our own or with our spouse, or significant other or whatever. But I have found that so maybe thinking about lately is sometimes we have this scarcity mindset around time, where we feel like, there is no time to do the things that we want to do, or those extra things, right. And so we may not go to the gym, because it’s like, it’s just more time or we may not try to do that side thing. Or we might not even like to help somebody you know, or, or spend time with friends because you think, Oh, it’s just seems like such a hassle. And I don’t know how that necessarily leads to conversation. But I just think that there is a real problem where we can not have the time we need if we’re too busy. hustling, right, and also convinced ourselves that we don’t have time, really, if we, we could find time for things that really matter the most right? You know,
one of my greatest challenges, is you, if you if I were to ask you and mute, you can insert any sort of hobby or vice or distraction or whatever, right? Whether it’s watching something on Netflix or YouTube or,
you know, insert whatever. If you were to ask me at the beginning of the week, hey, you’re gonna have 10 hours of time spent? Which do you want to put that into? Said distraction or
unwinding activity? Or would you rather put that into learning or a preferred hobby, or starting a business or whatever? Well, I think 100% of the time, I’m going to choose the business or the hobby or whatever, right? If I were to say, hey, you can watch 10 hours of Netflix and movie or you can go play 10 hours of tennis or basketball. I’m playing tennis and basketball for 10 hours every single time. But at the end of the week, we look back, what did I actually do? I watch Netflix, what why did they do that? And I think Yeah, because there’s a time commitment, you can watch half hour of Netflix, but you can’t go play basketball for a half hour, it’s a two hour commitment or, you know, whatever. And so that’s one of my biggest challenges around that.
That’s a good point, actually. Not bright. So what’s the answer there? Because I agree with you, because on paper, it’s like, oh, yeah, well, of course, you always want to do the most rewarding thing with our time, but then we find ourselves watching Netflix for 10 hours a week. Right? You know, and, and they don’t necessarily feel good. It seems like that when I find myself wasting time. You don’t feel satisfied, you don’t feel enriched, you know what I mean? But then you do certain things. You’re like, I did something productive. I did something meaningful, whether it be spending time with family or doing some other, like working out or doing something active, you just feel better. Right? So what do you do with that?
Oh, it’s tough. I I feel like part of it is the root cause right? Like maybe I actually am tired. Right and I do need a break. And this other stuff requires effort. Whereas, you know, Netflix is mind numbing task. And you can check out you can. And you think because of that you’re going to be rejuvenated. But that’s what you’re getting at is I actually wasn’t rejuvenated by it. So I think first, it’s acknowledging, why am I going to that activity? Well, I mentally tired. And then I think you have to have a replacement activity for it, then we’ll rejuvenate but also doesn’t task, the mind in the same way that has caused you to feel the fatigue. So, you know, one of the ways I’ve been able to break away from some of these in the past is replacing it with a fictional book. I couldn’t do nonfiction, because it was still mentally tasking. But if I did a fictional book, I enjoyed that. And I felt better about having read something versus watching something. And then, you know, I’m choosing what I’m reading versus rabbit hole on YouTube. And now I’m watching, you know, I don’t know, buddies hop around, or I don’t know, whatever, right? Like you get these rats. How do they land? From here to bunnies, I don’t even know. But
Phil Salter 11:08 actual, actual rabbit holes, you’re watching bunnies.
Joseph Kane 11:12 Right? So I think there has to be a replacement activity. But then I also think there’s a level of, you know, acknowledgement, and then making a conscious choice ahead of time to say, hey, when I am faced with this choice, next time, I’m going to choose this instead of that. And then if you don’t plan ahead, then then you you don’t make that decision.
Phil Salter 11:39 That’s such a good point. Because I think that we only have so much discipline in each day. And I don’t know where I’ve heard this, but I just know that people tend to make the worst decisions that they regret, like, at the end of the day, when they’ve used up all their self discipline, you know, and so the more times we can plan ahead, to do something, and how would we address the situation, we don’t have to use that mental energy to like, make those choices if we’ve already made it ahead of time. And it can be hard at first, because you have to break your kind of deep rooted habits, like something I brought up earlier that is going to the gym is something I’ve been doing for actually several months now, but hadn’t done for years and years. You know, I used to go when I think I be catch a tail. But I, I used to go with my roommates when I was single, like all day, every day. And then I got married and it’s just like throws off the patterns. And then I have a neighbor that suddenly was like, Hey, we start going to the gym, you know, and we started going to the gym, I guess I’ve been doing it for a while. But at first it was the whole idea of like going to the gym seemed like so much to do. And like, you know, this idea of like even the same thing with finances and saving and being disciplined. You’re like, okay, I come up with a budget, and I have these plans. And then like, I guess I just do that forever. I just have to be disciplined forever, right? And that sounds so overwhelming, like, okay, so I go to the gym, and I get in a certain level of shape. But then I have to go forever to maintain that. And so that would be enough to keep making me not want to do it for so long. Right? Right. But you learn though I decided no, I’m just gonna do it. And then once you get to a certain point, it becomes not a question of the alarm goes off in the morning. It’s not a question of like, should I or should I not get up that’s already been decided it’s now become ingrained in me. It took a little bit of time. And it’s just like getting up and going and knowing even when I feel a little tired, it’s that inner that only discipline need is that two seconds to just get out of bed. And then it’s like, okay, I may be tired. But you also learn the value of doing these things. You kind of learn, you know, you have enough evidence that Oh, if I don’t do it, I actually feel more tired during the day in the morning. It’s hard to get going at work. I feel better when I go and I’m happier. And I enjoy it start to look forward to six. I mean it can you does that make any sense? what I’m saying?
Joseph Kane 13:47 Yeah, it doesn’t. It feels a little bit like you’re you’re learning how to hack the mind, if you will, right? Yeah, you’re starting to, you know, you said you only have so much discipline in a day. I kind of like that. And I don’t know if I’ve heard that before. But um, so you’re pre making decisions so that tomorrow I can use the discipline on other things. And so I like that a lot. But then, to your point, then you start Okay, I’m doing it, I decided that so that’s off the table, and then you start finding the rewards of doing them. But I also think like I had a period of time I also I hate working out. Anybody who knows me that’s not a secret. Now, I’ll run up and down a basketball court for four hours but go to the gym for a half hour and pound weights. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it anyways, there was about eight months of time where I did go to the gym every morning 6am before work with a buddy. But it started with Hey, I’m just showing up and shooting hoops. As all I’m doing. I’m in I’m here, and I’m awake and I’m that but that’s all I’m doing. And then after I don’t A week or two of that, then it’s like, okay, let’s shoot hoops. And then I’ll go do five minutes of working out or 10 minutes working out. And then eventually it got to a point where I was like, okay, every other day is basketball day, and in between is a workout day. And then I think by the end, it was like, Hey, I’m okay if we just play basketball once a week or something. But I had to find a way to that I would enjoy as a segue into the action thing. Yeah. And, and kind of make, I guess, maybe baby steps in a way. And I related to finance, there’s, there’s pieces of it there too, right? You? Can you make baby steps to the actual path of what you want, and then set up ways to reward yourself when you hit milestones. And so it’s not forever. But it is, or we figured out how to make lots of money. And then we don’t that, yeah,
Phil Salter 15:57 that’s true. But it’s like these things. But it’s funny, because as we learn that these things work, it doesn’t become something we dread, we actually enjoy the process like, Oh, this is paying off. Right? Like, I have money I have. I have security, or I have health, I feel good. Yeah. So yeah, cuz if you think about it, like there’s certain things that just become innate and natural that you don’t have to think about anymore, like, you’re not going to go just blow money on a bunch of candy bars, because that’s just not you. Maybe that used to be you, you know, but it’s not a problem anymore. You’re not gonna just not take care of your body you’re not, you know, it’s like when you drive a car, if everything, you if you had to constantly be focusing on everything all the time, then you’d be so exhausted, our brains learn these patterns of like, I just put my hands on the wheel, and I push the gas, you don’t consciously think about doing any of this stuff, right? I mean, and it could, it could be the same way, the more we do things, the less our brain has to kick in, it becomes just part of us. I just love that you had mentioned earlier about just like, how you naturally have always kind of been a saver and person who looks towards big goals. And that’s something I’m working on is is doing that, you know, yeah. Because like I’m similar might like my brother’s the saver is your brother that is different more like me as he Unger older than you. He’s younger than me. Okay. Cuz my little brothers when it’s like, Hey, I looked at him. I was like, how did you save up? 100 and whatever dollars for this workout machine? It is. And I’m like, I’m like six years older than you. And I’m like, Huh, you know? So right. That’s really cool. Well, thanks so much, man. I appreciate you coming on and talking about this. Yeah,
Joseph Kane 17:38 you bet. I don’t know if there’s more topics you wanted to chat through, but I’m happy to. But yeah, happy to have come on. And
Phil Salter 17:46 if anybody has questions for Joseph or for me, if they have any ideas of topics, or just want to add to the conversation at any way, you can email me at No Better Time. podcast@gmail.com if you’re watching this on YouTube, right now, the video of it. Subscribe. And if you’re not on YouTube, go to YouTube. Search, No Better Time Podcast and subscribe so I can start making some money. Get some, get some people on there. Alright, thanks again, Joseph.
Joseph Kane 18:14 If I call this one passive income, because you got to put in the work to get the videos, but I guess
Phil Salter 18:19 at some, I think no one thing but any type of income starts with a certain effort upfront, and you don’t I mean, so I kind of see that. Like, if I can actually get to the point of people listening to these podcasts or watching YouTube videos. Yeah, it becomes passive income, because that’s the this content is evergreen, as they call it. It’s never did never go stale. Right. This is content that will always be of interest, potentially, hopefully. And then people watch it years to come. That’s the plan.
Joseph Kane 18:45 Eventually, maybe somebody will listen and be like, what’s Netflix?
Phil Salter 18:48 Yeah, they’ll look it up. Like oh, look, I love this history podcast. Awesome. was nice to chat. Yeah, then you too. Bye.
There are universal truths all around us. As we start to engage with the people and world around us, we start to recognize patterns, we connect the dots and we start to better understand how things work. We look for and put positivity and success out into the world, and it comes back to us. We help another person, and suddenly we find others helping us in the ways we need. Today I get into some specific examples of seeing this in my life. Hope you enjoy it!
Phil Salter 0:00 Hello, and welcome to no better time. I’m Phil Salter, and this is another one of my good old fashioned quick dives, I actually just finally got a haircut yesterday. And you know, I think we’re you, we don’t really know, until a day or two is passed, if you’re happy with your haircut, maybe that’s just me, or I usually wait way too long to get hair cut, I don’t know, it’s time for hair cut until I look in the mirror and I hate what I see. And then I’ll wait another month to get a haircut. It was a new person to give me a haircut. But I think she did a pretty good job. And I’m happy with it. But I’ll know in two days, if I’m really happy with it, the thing I wanted to talk about today is this concept of recognizing the universal patterns and truths around us. They’re all around us. They’re always there. And when you started looking, it’s just something I’m realizing the more you start paying attention to the world around you, you start to recognize patterns, you start to recognize truth, start to recognize opportunities, and abundance, all these things are all around us. And the one thing that going back to Ron Aguilar from Utah Valley videos, after I know another shout out to him, because after he did those conversations with me on the phone took the time to help me figure out some ways to improve my efficiency with my photography business scene ended up I ended up shadowing him. The day I recorded that episode about, you know, abundance, and about telling that story of him later that day shadowed him. And it’s funny because I thought, Hey, man, going with someone who is more experienced than me, and someone who may do things different than me has a lot of value, and I’ll shadow him and but I didn’t necessarily think it was going to be as valuable as it was. I didn’t think it was a waste of time by any means. But I was like, Hey, you know, I’m sure I’ll get something from this. But watching his process, his flow, what he did, there are multiple things, I learned that I mean, permitted my next photoshoot, and immediately, life was better already. just dumb little things I was doing that I never really thought about, you just kind of get in these patterns. And you don’t necessarily always step back and think, is there a better way to do this, this is how I do it. So that was really awesome. He also was using a specific type of tripod that I were like, I need that tripod, I see how he’s using it, how efficient it is how effective it is. I was using the wrong kind of tripod for four years, but it’s just the tripod I had is a really nice high quality video tripod. But that’s not what I was doing with this tripod. It was heavy, had the big old fluid head, you know, for using for video. And that’s not what wasn’t the appropriate tool. And I saw what he was doing. And so I immediately was with him went on found the tripod ordered it came in the mail started using it, it was more glorious to use than I ever expected. And there’s some other things I noticed he was doing in this flow. So it’s like man, just learning from other people, open your mind to realizing there has to be better ways. There’s nobody has everything figured out in the most efficient, effective way. So open your mind to potentially re looking at how you’re doing things that you do every day, and how can I be better? Another thing I noticed I’d mentioned in a previous podcast, such as universal principle, right? abundance, and just helping others and looking for help, will pay off. Right? So I’m not gonna speak for Ron, but him helping me helped him in some way. I’m not saying Oh, look at me, I helped him because he helped me. But I just know, based on these universal principles, him helping me helped him in some way, mentally, or otherwise, it helped him I guarantee it’s in some way. In fact, I’d love to hear from him. If If that was the case, if he recognized something. The fact is, maybe he doesn’t recognize it. And just because we don’t recognize something’s happening, doesn’t mean it’s not happening around us.
Unknown Speaker 3:37 Anyway, so I mentioned I had this microphone I bought for my iPhone, right? And I said, Oh, I, one of the episodes, I driven into work, and I recorded something, just the audio while I’m driving and I’m having these thoughts because I just find I think more clearly, not necessarily the ideal place to be recording because of the noise and maybe you can even argue, hey, that might be distracting, but I have conversations all the time while I’m driving.
Unknown Speaker 4:03 No more distracting than that. So maybe, maybe I’m doing something wrong there but I don’t think so. So I recorded myself something had these thoughts. Got to work was just going to post it because this is towards the beginning. And it sounded terrible. It’s like as I hit bumps, it was losing connection. Like you know, it was like it wasn’t really connected. The the mic, I was like, oh, that stinks. I guess I can’t do that while I’m driving. I’ll just have to. I like the mic. I like how it sounds I like that I can do it my car which it actually sounds pretty good in this kind of enclosed area. There’s not like echo right so it’s a really decent place to record actually. Anyway, so then I I noticed a couple things a pattern. I was helping my wife we have this van and you know the little
Unknown Speaker 4:48 auxiliary jack Do you plug into your phone so you can listen to stuff on the in the car. It’s an older it’s like a 2005 Honda Odyssey so it doesn’t have like Bluetooth any of those things and it turns out
Unknown Speaker 5:00 You know, over time that the little via connection for like, where you plug it into your phone, we had an adapter to the lightning thing until the phone but it were often it separated, I’d taped it up with like electrical tape one point, but it just kind of ended up finally failing. So I told her for Mother’s Day, I’m going to repair that for you. And I finally got around to it like a week or two ago, and got help from my neighbor who’s willing to help me, which is another way of just putting yourself out there. And he had things I didn’t have as far as tools and expertise around some of this stuff. But I would plug it in, and I got it working. But I noticed that I moved my phone just so it wouldn’t place to kind of like, do it just try and I thought oh, maybe this lightning, you know, male input has is kind of wearing out or something. And then I tried to plug in something else in my phone. And then I started to realize it hit me last night, it was like, because it’s a thought I’ve been having. And I’d like to have an option to record while I’m driving, just to see if it could work. But I don’t like it. But I can’t. I was like, What am I gonna go spend money on a different mic, I don’t really want to go spend money in different mic. If I’m not sure I even want to do this. And so I was just kind of had been thinking about this, you know, in the back of my mind for several for a preset period of time.
Unknown Speaker 6:13 intensive, something that was in my mind. All the sudden I realized something, wait a minute. I’ve had multiple things not connect for a while to my phone. It’s not the microphone. It’s not the connection. It’s my phone. The pattern showed me, you know that my phone was a problem. And then I remembered years ago, I had a phone where it wouldn’t Connect, I had to move it just right to charge. I took it into the Apple Store to have him fix it. There was lint.
Unknown Speaker 6:44 There was lint in here in the connection. And I realized last night I’m literally laying in bed and a half dream sleep in the middle of the night. And I think, wait a minute. There’s Lenten there. It’s not connected because of the land. And I imagined myself going downstairs in the morning grabbing a toothpick and scooping out lint. I remember I even looked in there like before, it’ll be like, Is there something in the flow? And I kind of forgot about the Lynn in the past, you know. And I was like, a part of me was little skeptical. Because I looked at it this morning, I was like it just seems thinking I got light in there and was like seems fine. I go downstairs to the toothpick.
Unknown Speaker 7:23 I pull out lint. And I’m like, okay, the pattern showed me once I was paying attention.
Unknown Speaker 7:30 I couldn’t notice the first time, right? Oh, well, it’s not really connecting another concept, a universal concept that we could draw from this of like, when we’re not really connecting, things don’t you know, we need to connect with the world around us and the universe to recognize the patterns. And this pattern had to do with connection as well. And so then I, I pulled the link, I haven’t used the microphone yet. But I feel very confident that it’s going to connect now. And if I wanted to use that mic, while it’s driving, it will actually be in there all the way. Because imagine lint at the very top, and it can only pull there’s like little connections right inside on the on the lightning input. And, and the male and female part of it. And if it can’t plug in all the way to kind of snap in, it’s just barely connecting. And any turbulence, any bumping causes that to kind of be spotty. And so I have a feeling it’s going to snap in there now. And this is gonna work, I may decide I don’t want to do this,
Unknown Speaker 8:28 you know, while I’m driving, but I have the option. And I learned and I recognize the patterns and the truth behind those patterns.
Unknown Speaker 8:37 And really awesome another thing really quickly.
Unknown Speaker 8:40 I don’t say this to brag or anything, but it just seems like this is something about abundance and about not being afraid to share of your resources. So I bought these vanities from Lowe’s a few months back on clearance because I decided I’m gonna replace all the batteries in my house in the bathrooms, I have to finish the bathroom in my basement. So I have evaluated for that, but I’ll buy two more to get the other two bathrooms upstairs on the upper floor. But then I decided later like if I replace the vanities based on how old they are layout, I’d have to replace the flooring and then I need to do this and that I was like, I don’t think I want to do that. You know, it’s fine. It wasn’t really a scarcity thing I just realized I don’t really value making all those changes to this house. So I’m not going to do it. So I need to bring back these vanities, which is a hassle. They’re heavy. I put them in my basement. I take them upstairs, put in my car, find the receipt all these things and hit me like last week.
Unknown Speaker 9:35 I think it was on Memorial Day actually. No, it was Yeah, it was Memorial Day. And I was like I’m just gonna post it on Facebook marketplace and just like knock off 25 bucks from what I paid from so I can move them quickly. I already got them on a good deal plus I took off another $25 just to not have to deal with the hassle taking the back Yeah, I could have put I could have sold them try to sell them for more than what I bought them which wouldn’t have been wrong, but I just was like
Unknown Speaker 10:00 I’m gonna get rid of these. So then I post them on Facebook marketplace. And you know, multiple people say, Hey, I’m interested, what’s the size? And like asking questions, and this one lady says, Oh, I want them. My boyfriend is at the store right now. So I don’t know if it’ll fit, but can you give me the dimensions of the box. So I know if it’ll fit in our jeep, and our trucks in the shop right now. But you know, if you can wait till next Wednesday, or Thursday, like, we can definitely get it then if it doesn’t fit in the jeep. And I was like, well, I could bring it to you if you live nearby, which they did. But you always are kind of going back and forth. something I’d rather get them out of my life. Plus, it seems like they could use it. So I was getting kind of excited. And as I’m waiting from the show up, they’re gonna Venmo me the money and everything.
Unknown Speaker 10:49 I just thought like, man, it would have been so cool. How to just post these for free. You know, on Facebook, like, yeah, I could. It’s not that I can’t use the money and like, you don’t want to just, but I thought, Man, if someone could use these would be so cool. If I could just give it to them. And I thought, yeah, but if I would have just posted it for free on the marketplace, then like, some random person would be like, I’ll take it because they want to maybe resell it, I don’t really need it. You know, that’s possible. You know, I don’t want to get too in the weeds of like, if I give a homeless man money, what’s it going to do with it? But you know what I mean? Like I wanted really someone that could really use it, and needed it to have it. But I was like, I already posted I got two people coming, separate people coming for each of them. Anyways, I see them show up. And I’m about I’m doing something and I’m like, Oh, I see. And I just told him grab it, you know, you don’t have to knock on the door scratch on the porch. I see him walking up. And he’s had this thought, like, wait a minute, these people need a vanity.
Unknown Speaker 11:44 They’re willing to pay for this vanity. And I just opened the door like on a whim. And I said, Hey, you guys,
Unknown Speaker 11:52 I want you to have it. And I felt kind of awkward and sheepish. Because it can be kind of a vulnerable thing to do something like a charitable thing for somebody. Because you don’t want to get rejected. And some you know, people have a hard time accepting those things sometimes, right? Because they, there might be pride or they’d be like, I don’t need your charity. And I didn’t think these people were so poor. And I’m so much better than them. Because they were driving a nice car, you know, it was like this really nice Jeep, like a newer model. And like, I don’t know what their financial situation is, it doesn’t matter. You know, what it was was, I just wanted to do this thing, because it just feels good. I had something they needed, and I wanted to give it I ended up selling the other one. You know, I didn’t feel I just something about the situation. I felt like I want to do it. And they’re like, Oh, really, and she’s like, I had her she had her phone out, literally about to Venmo me the money. And I was like, No, I just I was like, You know what, I don’t want to be patronizing. You know, whatever. It’s nothing other than I want to do, like doing something nice. And I want you to enjoy your holiday, and just enjoy it. And I told them, I was thinking about it. And I thought if I needed something and I was willing to pay for it, and someone just gave it to me, that’d be a pretty cool thing to happen. And I would kind of make my day go well, and they’re like, Wow, thank you. And the man was just like really serious. This tall, big guy, you know? He’s just like, Wow, really? Thank you. You know, he’s just like, very grateful. But whatever. I goes, close the door, they loaded up. And then she messaged me a minute later. In fact, what if I were to pull that up? Oh, here we go. So and then she says, In messenger back to me, within minutes of leaving. You’re so very sweet for doing that. For us. He served as a marine for 10 years and greatly appreciates this gesture, especially on this day. Remember, it was Memorial Day. If there’s anything at all we can do for you please let us know. And I was like that kind of you know, got me choked up a little bit. So I was like, Oh, and I just told her I was like, You know what, honestly,
Unknown Speaker 13:50 I said Honestly, I honestly don’t know why I had the urge to just give it to you guys. I saw you pull up and I thought how cool would be if I needed something and I was willing to pay for it. And then it was just given to me. I would have hated just posting for free and then someone that didn’t need it snatching it up. I hear here he served as a marine lets me know that was the universe telling me what to do this for you. I feel kind of embarrassed doing it because I would hate to come off as condescending or whatever. But I’m happy to make your day better. Thank I thank him for service. I’m very long winded sorry. And she says don’t apologize at all. This is the cool thing. Now listen to this. She says don’t apologize at all. Sometimes things happen for a reason. And this really did make our day we have been put in the situation a few times where the person in front of us at a grocery store couldn’t pay for their groceries. We think this happens because they know we are capable of helping out and then he just said to me her boyfriend see paying for that guy’s groceries last week made a must have had the universe let this happened for us. so grateful. Anyways, like I said I’m not doing this to say Oh look, I did this nice thing. I think that is important for us to look for these opportunities and it doesn’t need to be us giving
Unknown Speaker 15:00 things if we need the money, but generosity comes in a lot of forms, Ron didn’t spend $1 to help me.
Unknown Speaker 15:07 He gave me his time and his his knowledge. Um, I know I’m going back to this wrong thing again. But it’s just so it’s such a powerful example my life right now. And then one last thing, Todd, who was on my podcast last week, we went to this, you know, point Express days Carnival thing last Friday night. And you have to pay $25 for these wristbands to go on rides. And I wasn’t going to do it at first, but then it turns out my daughter’s too short to go with her brother. But tall enough to go on the rides if she’s with an adult. So I’m like, I guess I will get a wristband go back in line. And there’s this one ride of the whole place that even with the wristband is still takes three tokens, which are $1 each. And my buddy, Todd was there and we was towards the end of the night. And he had this bag of tokens left and his kids were new on this thing called, I forgot what it’s called. But it was really crazy, right? That swings up in the air and spins, you know, and it’s like, pretty legit, you know? And I was like, Hey, dude, you have all these coins. Let me buy three of those from you. Because I really want to try this ride. And I didn’t want to go buy coins, and he had the coins, you know? And he’s like, Nah, dude, just take them. And I was like, well, I’ll pay for him. He’s like, Nah, it’s just take them, you know. And so I go on the ride with him, you know, at least two of his sons. And it was a lot of fun. And they come down and we get in line for this Ferris wheel gonna be the last thing we do that night, work towards the front of the line. And this lady walks up as she’s getting off it. And she just goes to Todd, straight to him and says, Hey, I have these five tokens. I don’t need them. I’m leaving you on them.
Unknown Speaker 16:38 And he’s like, yeah, and he points them He’s like, Dude, that is like, the law of attraction or whatever was what he said, because he’s really big into that. In fact, I want to have him on to discuss that concept. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, he was generous. And then it came right back to him. And I told the story about the vanities. And he’s like, That’s so cool. And just, it’s around us. I have some other examples I wrote down, but I’m going too long. But man, just look for these connections in the universe around us. And as you start to, like, try to problem solve, and you think about these things, or if you look for opportunities, and you just, you’ll see these connections, they’re all around us, the universe is telling us, if you do a if you do these things consistently, a result will come. It’s not like, Oh, I’m gonna be generous. And the next day, I’m going to get it right back. I don’t give away three coins and get five back that specifically in that quickly, but generally speaking, you do these things, the universe has a way of returning it to you. So just keep that in mind. And if you have any questions or want to contribute, you know, let me know. And I’d love to interview anyone that has something to talk about with these concepts of finances. I will I’m looking for experts on finances or people, not even experts, people with experience, you know, whether they do it for a living or they have a lot of personal experience with, you know, investing, saving, retirement, figuring out the retirement what’s needed, whether it’s building forms of passive income, I want to talk to people about this stuff, making big career moves, you know, because there’s a lot of ways to improve your financial situation beyond, you know, being an entrepreneur, you could be how do I become the most effective employee where I’m at now, even if I plan on being an entrepreneur, why not? Why can’t what what’s the most I can do with my current situation and build from there. So thanks so much for listening, and until next time,
This was a great conversation I had with Brian Schermerhorn, a software engineer with better.com! We talk about the value of having (and being) a mentor. What does it take to learn new things, and how to know what advice to follow or ignore? How and when to give constructive criticism and feedback? Something that really stood out to me in this conversation is how important it is to allow ourselves and others to make mistakes. If those opportunities are not afforded, then a huge amount of learning and growth is bypassed. It’s so important to be willing to fail and “fail quickly”! There is a lot of talk of software engineering in this episode, but don’t let that stop you from listening, because we are able to draw lessons that will apply to anyone on how to better learn and teach others, and how to be bold and take big risks that really pay off. Hope you enjoy it!
Phil Salter 0:00 to no better time. I’m Phil Salter, and I’m actually here today with Brian Schermerhorn. He’s a software engineer at better calm currently and former Facebook, senior developer correct at Facebook previously. Yeah, I was a software engineer at Facebook. Excellent. So I’ve kind of been connect with you on LinkedIn for a while now. And I don’t know how far go that goes back, I probably saw you were a software engineer or something I was trying to be and I’m doing now. And kind of connected with you. But something I’ve always noticed about you is I followed you on LinkedIn, I’ve cut into your posts, you’re somebody really engages with people and cut it, I see you as probably someone who’s a mentor to people. And I see you kind of giving real honest feedback. And it’s not always like, hey, everything’s great. You’ll tell people if he if he thinks they’re wrong, or needs to do better, seems like am I right on that kind of say it like it is kind of,
Brian Schermerhorn 0:57 yeah, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, you know, you can give someone some advice that makes them feel good, and then waste a bunch of their time and resources, or you can just course correct them early on. You know, I kind of look at it, like, if a pilots slightly off course, you know, maybe correct them early on, and then they’ll get to their destination sooner. Right?
Phil Salter 1:20 Yeah. And obviously, that’s way more useful. And I’m sure people take a different ways, I’ve been different places in my life, when you’re not, we’re not self assured, you get correction, you can kind of be very defensive. And I don’t like being in that place. Have you found people kind of responding differently? I’m sure.
Brian Schermerhorn 1:37 Um, you know, yeah, I mean, I’ve seen it both ways. Like, part of the problem is the some of the boot camps, you know, they’ll they, you know, they want, especially before the income sharing agreements, I’ve been seeing some controversy, or income sharing agreements being shady. So maybe they’re not actually that great. But I know that back when you would charge people up front for money. I mean, it’s really about just getting butts in seats. And then they’ll say whatever they need to say, to get a button to seat. In fact, there’s actually a point in time where I wanted to start a code school with a friend of mine driver. And we were both passionate about teaching people. And we were kind of tired of, you know, we were interviewing people that were coming out of like, local boot camps that were just not ready, you know, and they just didn’t know like, those basic stuff. And we were like, we want to solve this problem. And we would,
I would try to give some advice to these people just, you know, they’d be interviewing and I’d be like, Look, man, like,
this product. This is your this is your final project. Like this was the final project that the school told you was good. And they’d like, yeah, I think I think it’s great. And I’m like, well, that’s, that’s nice. You think it’s great, but it actually matters more whether I think it’s great. And I didn’t say that arrogantly, but like, I’m not the only company you’re gonna be interviewing with, right? It’s gonna be a bunch of people, presumably, like, hopefully, you didn’t think this all on just this one company that you’re interviewing with this for Facebook, and some some people that like pretty defensive, I know my skills, I know where it’s at. And I believe it’s fine. I’m like, Okay, well, I’m not sure how far you’ll go with that level of humility and willingness to take feedback, but good luck. And then I saw them and they, they did my killer, you know, going where they thought they were gonna go. And so I, yeah, pretty much I just, I just love giving people legit feedback. I love getting legit feedback myself. Sometimes it hurts, but it’s always led me to a better position.
Phil Salter 3:53 And it feels better when you you’re in that right place mentally to accept it and take it and do something with it. And you feel better, you don’t feel I don’t think many people or anyone feels good when they recognize I’m being defensive. And I’m not listening. And I’m, like scrambling to justify, you know, what I’ve done or what, you know, my position, wherever. So you found yourself interviewing people for software engineering positions at different companies, it sounds like and that’s where you kind of come across these situations? Well,
Brian Schermerhorn 4:25 I’d say when I was working in Joel, that is probably the first time because we were talking to a lot of people from boot camps that are and so that was more likely where it would come from. But you know, advice, that what what advice to reject and what advice to take is a tricky thing. I mean, because there it really is like there is advice that you do not want to take. Like I remember when I first joined TAC reactor, and I was pretty confident that it was a good thing like it was a rigorous it looked like the most rigorous course at the time, I saw the student projects that came out of it, they looked pretty dope. And I had a cup, I had a guy who was like a senior engineer who had worked at Microsoft and was working at some other company. And, you know, that sounds like a guy you’d want to take advice from? And he told me like, Oh, yeah, you have to get a CS degree, which is absolutely essential. And, and then I had another friend of mine, who was towards the end of his CS degree, oh, yeah, these jokers coming out of code camps. Right. So that those are the mentors. I’m getting advice.
Phil Salter 5:37 We saying that’s what you did, then, like you were looking to become a software engineer at this time, right? And you were looking at a potential, like school or boot camp? Is that what you’re saying?
Brian Schermerhorn 5:46 Yeah, this was like, Okay, I don’t know how long ago, Kevin something years ago, like, okay, yeah, back back, when I was looking to get into I was trying, originally trying to go through YouTube tutorials and self learn. And back, then the resources were just kind of terrible. They’re just either really basic, or just way too advanced is what it felt like, and then a Code Camp seemed like a better ramp. And my point was that like, that was the advice I was getting from people who were basically telling me not to do this, and then I did it anyway. And then it worked out. And then they’ve been completely surprised by the results of it. In fact, the one who was the friend who was actually in school still said, Yeah, I think I just didn’t like the fact that you were taking a path that was going to make me feel like my four years were a waste. And then I imagine it’s kind of like that with the other guy who’s like, Hey, I did this, you you pay your dues to like it. Sometimes it’s like, I don’t even know if it’s about true advice. It’s just like what they did. Yeah, there’s a little bit of ego where they’re like, well, I paid if I paid my dues, and I want you to pay your dues or something.
Phil Salter 7:04 Yeah, it’s an interesting point. And it’s like not necessarily even conscious maybe, right. Maybe they think this is solid advice, but they have this kind of bias or ego that they may not be aware of. But I it’s funny, because in the Sep different episode, I was talking about something very similar, like you need to be, it’s good to take advice and look to people with more experience, to turn to them and say, hey, I want to learn, I want to kind of be where you’re at. Look at you there. That’s something reason I reached out to you, because I see you as someone who’s very experienced. And that’s just my impression of you. And your confidence level is high. And I think that’s awesome. And I think that, that makes me believe, hey, there’s something behind that. It’s not just someone with, you know, blind confidence just because they believe in themselves. Like, I feel like you really can back it up by what I’ve seen you post and articles you’ve written and things like that. But, uh, something I thought about is, yeah, you have to be careful who you take advice from, because someone might say something that’s not really for you. And something for me that I struggled with, I still struggle with is like, I really like having validation and as can be a huge crutch. You know what I mean? I want to hear good things about myself. I like that attention. And it’s like having to come to terms with that. And if I had a friend who was a developer, a software engineer, and he’s doing the kind of said, Hey, you should do this, I did a boot camp as well. That’s what got me kind of, in because I went to college actually got a four year degree. Not It was a CS related degree, but it wasn’t in software engineering. Because at the time, I thought, that’s not for me, I’m not smart enough. I’m not technical enough, I had this lack of belief had to like, learn that I can do complicated things and take those challenges head on. But he gave me he always told me like, Hey, you should just go for it. And it was like getting the permission is what I needed at the time. It’s unfortunate that I needed that. But I’m glad I got it. Because that’s what I needed. You know what I mean? But I’m really impressed that you had people saying, that knew what they were doing in theory saying, don’t do that. But you said, No, I feel like this is my path. And you did it. Where’d that come from?
Brian Schermerhorn 9:00 laziness. I didn’t want to spend four years to do something that like, like I was, it’s kind of a joke. But yeah, I was I was actually in college. I was going to Utah Valley University, I was actually doing CSS classes, like towards the beginning of it. And, you know, to me, I was always just impressed with like, looking at an app that would did something like just any app, just like just seeing press buttons and see it do stuff. I just thought that was really cool. And I was like, I want to do that. I want to let you make stuff that I see. And in the beginning computer science classes, you’re not doing any of that you’re doing like some c++ or maybe some C sharp or some like, you know, like, I don’t know, you’re learning about like low level very, very low level things and it didn’t feel at all like I asked one of my friends like When am I going to learn how to build something that is like, when does it click? I think I asked one of my friends. Oh, when you’re taking data structures. data structures and algorithms. And I’m like, that doesn’t sound like that would make what I want to click. And then I saw from hacker yet and then I started talking all the code camps. And my question is always let me see your student progress, your final student projects, right? Like, what’s the out? What’s the culmination of going through your thing. And then I looked at,
Unknown Speaker 10:19 like,
Brian Schermerhorn 10:20 at the time hack reactors, they’ve been like, sold off to think galvanized or something. So I do not vouch for their curriculum running anymore, necessarily, but like back then, they had just like these awesome projects. And I was like, Yes, that’s what I want. Like, it felt like something clicked where I was like, that’s the stuff I want to be able to build, like, seeing those things and all that. So it just, it kind of felt like I was already trying before your path, I would have been willing to do the work if that’s what it took. But I didn’t feel like I was getting satisfactory, satisfactory answers from those people about like when I would arrive to be able to build those things. Yeah. And then I saw these other people building these other cool things. And I’m like, and then I mean, I validated I was very skeptical. Like, I looked around tons of places for reviews about it. And I mean, they said that they had like, you know, average student 100,000. I mean, they had a lot of reviews and a lot of data behind it. And I was like, do I listen to these two people? Or do I listen to all these people and seeing the student projects? And it just like, it just felt? It just it just to me, it felt like I just where it made sense. And so I was just
Phil Salter 11:39 blind stab in the dark, you were looking at data, and you’re looking at information. And I’m sure you listen to what they said. And that was in your mind, I’m sure. But then you said, Let me hear the other see the other side of this. And let me make my choice. I mean, I felt they were kind of the only Code Camp that really like that I was willing to like I really wanted to make sure I pick the hardest and the most rigorous one because to me, it was actually a pretty big gamble. To go all in on that like I just scrounged up money from every possible thing. Like I even borrowed, I took out a credit card from American Express that had 0% interest for a year. And I was like, Well, I was a 1000s going on that thing. I borrowed like a couple grand for my brother, you know, just every I tried to go to a bank to get like a signature loan, I didn’t own anything that was worth collateral enough. Like I just scrounged up money, and I just and then they let you defer half of it, whether or not you get a job, you have to pay it back in six months after the program. And so I really just went all in. And I just like had to make it work. You know, I picked the hardest one. And that may have helped like the fact that Yeah, put myself in the corner like that. That’s interesting. I mean, cuz that’s a big part, a big theme of my podcast here is just taking risks, whether it be around like investments or finances. But Originally, I thought this is really gonna be more about finances, because I want to learn more about investing and growing wealth. But it’s really become more about just like taking risks in your career and doing things that you’re afraid of doing, whether it be a new skill, or any kind of goal. And you took a big risk in for you kind of having those high stakes is what made you say I gotta take this seriously, this isn’t just for fun. You’ve already decided it seems like I’m going to be a software engineer. Now, what’s my best path? Right? You’ve already made that decision. It wasn’t like, hey, maybe I’ll be a software engineer to see how this is? Well,
Brian Schermerhorn 13:36 I mean, like, I kind of had a very zigzaggy college experience where I had no idea. I was trying to find what I wanted to do. Like, originally, I was interested in like foreign languages. And I, I thought like, Oh, I’m a people person. I’m this abstract people person, like, maybe I’ll do international business that sounds like it’s a good mix. And then I was talking to people who are getting business degrees, and they were like working as a bank teller. And they’re like, well, the best job I can get is the one I have with this business degree, you know, and I’m like, Okay, well, this sucks. Like, this doesn’t sound worth it. And I tried other avenues. And it just felt like things were not great. And the software engineering one really made sense. I did try the four year thing, and it just or I was trying, I was starting to go down and it just didn’t feel like it was really lining up with what I wanted. And it was gonna be a lot more time I was already in like, a lot of student debt. And it did it felt like a really big risk going into it. But it also felt like this sort of, you know, these events, you know, like in these action movies, they’re like the only way out is in or something like that. Like I really related to that where I’m like, Okay, this seems like a legit thing. There’s a lot of data backing it. The only way out is in like I have to double Not to get out. And I was able to pay off my student loans. I mean, I was able to pay off everything very quickly. After that, I mean, I was, I was just imagining myself, like finishing college and getting some business degree or something, and just making $10 an hour and just already having all these student loans, and I’m like, I’m just gonna be suffocating. So that that didn’t feel good. And so I kind of thought, like, Okay, this is data backfat, I’m gonna have to take out a bunch of loans, but like, let’s roll the dice. I mean, I was even willing. At the time, when I was first looking at Hack Reactor, his thing is actually even a little more potentially dire in the sense that, like, they only had an onsite course in San Francisco. And we were living in Utah, in a basement apartment, and I hadn’t we had an infant. And, like, I mean, we’re barely living off anything. And and like, I’m like, okay, honey. So I’m thinking of going to San Francisco to live there for a three month course, when the live out of the car, because there’s no way that I can I can pay San Francisco rent off of even off of loans, because I also take out loans just for like living while I’m not working. Right? Yeah, whatever.
Phil Salter 16:22 So it’s like a full time thing. It wasn’t like, a evenings, it was 12 hours a day. 60 Wow. Yeah. I’m sure there’s some value a lot of value to that. thought to what just being fully immersed in it?
Brian Schermerhorn 16:36 Oh, yeah. It was, I think that’s good. So I was willing to do that. Like, that’s how, that’s how much I wanted it. You know, I was like, I will do whatever it takes. And she’s like, I don’t know, but I’m not gonna feel safe. And I’m like, let’s try to be creative here, please, this feels like the only path to like the make it. And like, very Luckily, I guess. I was just kind of browsing on their site, because I was just constantly checking and just like looking at it, like marveling at this thing in the store, kind of a thing. And, and then I saw they had like a remote program that was in a beta version. And I was like, remote. And then I was really skeptical, it was gonna be the same or not, because I had done online, everyone’s done like online college classes. And they’re like, this is not, it doesn’t feel the same. So I was pretty skeptical at first. But they were they were convinced that it would be the same thing. And I was like, Okay, my wife will back to this one. And I’m just going to give it my all. So like I would have, I’m convinced I would have gone to San Francisco and lived out of a car because I had a gym membership to 24 Hour Fitness and they had one nearby like I did, I did the logistics, I was like figuring out where I would park the car, you know, I would shower at the gym. But like, she would have been by herself and she wasn’t gonna let it fly. So luckily, the remote badewanne kind of lined up. And then I was able to do that. And then our apartment flooded twice, for a total of two months while I was in the program. So that was also fun. My grandparents likely lived nearby and they let us like live there for a bit.
Phil Salter 18:14 But this Wow, I imagine if you would have been God, when that happened. They would have been like I told you, you shouldn’t have left. Yeah, I’ve heard it, I believe that you would have you would have done it because you’re that ready to go. You’re dedicated. That’s I think that’s like I said, that’s really impressive to me to take those risks. And obviously, you didn’t do that before you did homework, and you made a decision. Obviously, this applies to any part of our lives. Like at a certain point, you have to actually pull the trigger get started. And that’s when like the work really begins, right? It’s like, Oh, now I started now it’s all downhill that’s when you really had to. That’s when it was like three months of hell, I’ll bet in a lot of ways because it was just so much hard work. And you know, a lot, not much sleep is my guess. But
Brian Schermerhorn 19:02 I was up later. I mean, I was up past I was frequently I mean, even though the course was nine to nine, I was frequently up later. And I was frequently on earlier just because like I had to make it work like I put unintentionally. It’s not like I wished to be in debt more. Like it just sort of happened that like I had to make it work or be in a ton of debt. And there was just that drive like I mean, I would stay up review everything we went over the day, like if we did a project during the day, I would redo it by myself after reports just to like refresh it because you could do it much faster the second time because you kind of figured the things out so it was kind of just going through the motions. So it wasn’t like doing double the work but like frequently would stay up after. I mean it’s not like a healthy pattern, you know to do long term, but I look back fondly on experience as like, I kind of gained the confidence in myself that like, Oh, I can, I can work pretty dang hard if I need to like, yeah, I didn’t really believe that of myself before, you know. So it was kind of nice in that sense. But I mean, I’m definitely not doing that pattern now. But it was
Phil Salter 20:21 for a short period of time, if we have like, it’s good to have these kind of lofty, short term goals where we say, Hey, we need to do something extra for a period of time. But yeah, I agree. Like it’s not necessarily sustainable for years and years. But that’s awesome that it paid off for you. I guess, during this whole process of like, getting different jobs. And have you found that there were mentors that that really helped you? And did you find it helpful? What those other I guess mentors said, and did along the way, even if it was opposite of what you decided to do, like? Did you? I guess, what kind of mentors have you had? And have you been able to mentor others? I guess?
Brian Schermerhorn 20:59 Yeah, um, this again, is, it’s hard to know who to listen to. I think that I did get more consistently good advice, though. Like, after I got into it. I feel like the most important thing is to just first seek out like smart people like you will get if you can find smart people that you just like respect the kind of person you’re like, man, I learned when I’m around this person. Yes. Like, you know, him or her whatever. Like, I learned it. Those are the people that you want to like, be around. And I’m trying to remember your your exact question. Oh,
Phil Salter 21:41 it was great. Question. I was just like it. Did you want mentors that you have? And like, did you mentor other people, but something that you said, though, by the way, just really smart people? Because I have I work with incredibly smart people. And it’s such a wonderful thing, because you learn from them. But I think something is super important is to be able to have trust with these people to be able to turn to them and say, Hey, I don’t understand this, or I’m, I don’t get this because like, if you’re too scared to admit you don’t know something, then you’re just gonna stay in ignorance. I don’t know if you found that as well.
Brian Schermerhorn 22:14 Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, you. I mean, that’s just part of being an engineer is constantly acknowledging when you’re done, you know, like, you’re always, you’re always gonna have to do new stuff. Yeah.
Phil Salter 22:30 And having that thought, like, I should already know this. I can’t act, you know, like, I have to push that away sometimes, like, whether or not I should know this. I don’t know this. I need some help. You know, that’s just the reality, right? Sometimes.
Brian Schermerhorn 22:43 Yeah, the one thing that I would say that is that I think through about mentors that I’ve had is like, I mean, it’s now that I’m kind of on the end of some people will ask me for stuff. And I’ll ask you for stuff. Like, it’s helpful to think through and it’s hard to not kind of, I guess you can’t know it unless you’ve done it. as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized so much of life is just about like being in someone’s shoes. And then you really understand something like being being someone who’s a mentor to something like it’s that it’s not the most selfless thing in the world, actually, because there is sort of like, there are things about it that give you joy, and there are things about it, where you’re like, Okay, well, I don’t want to mentor this person, the things that give you joy are and this helps you to be a better mentee, and mentor ship. The things that give a mentor, a joy of being a mentor is like there’s a satisfaction in feeling like you had a part in someone’s success. Right? Seeing someone go off and grow and getting like a piece of the credit for it. I mean, you’re not getting real, like financial credit, but just like seeing someone grow. I imagine it’s similar to like, I don’t know, seeing kids grow or something. But just seeing them go off and succeed. And then and then to get gratitude from them. And usually the effort to give them help is usually like really low. But the benefit they get from it is usually like highly leveraged because like it’s I don’t know, insightful, and then it really helped them make a decision or something like, yeah, they are usually really grateful to the good mentees anyway. And it just kind of feels nice for someone to follow your advice as well, like all of these things kind of play into it. Like if you can feel all those things from a mentee, then you will keep getting them out. The people that suck as mentees are the people that you give them advice, and then they don’t follow it. And then it’s kind of annoying because it feels like well, why did I even put all this work into telling you you went off and just didn’t do it? Yeah, I’ve been a mentee who’s been like that, actually. Partly how I know that. It originally would piss people off and then I’ve had mentees do it to me. Where he would frustrate me. And I’m like, you asked me my advice. And then I told you how terrible of a thing he would be. And then you’re still doing it. Like, it just makes you feel like why do I even bother, you know, and then getting out and then having someone be grateful. And then also having someone be very, like, proactive and respectful of your time and assertive. Like, it may seem to the inexperienced mentee that it’s nicer to just be like, hey, I want to respect your time, like, how long should it be just just be like, straight up, like, hey, I’d love 10 minutes of your time to talk. Yeah, the less you can make me think. And the easier it is that I just say, okay, and all details are figured out by you, like, I am more likely to say, okay, you know, like, you actually did this, when you asked me to do this, you were like, hey, it would take this long, it would be this. All I had to do is like, Sure, okay, and you know,
Phil Salter 25:58 kind of all I need to do, you’re learning there that when you go to somebody being prepared is really important. Because if someone comes to you with a problem, let’s say with software engineering, or otherwise, and they are just like, here’s a blank canvas, I don’t know what to do. But they say, hey, I’ve gone down path A, B, and C, I feel like this might be something that I’m stuck here. Either they can kind of walk you through this have a more specific question than just like, it’s not working. You know, I mean, I’m sure that helps, too. Yeah,
Brian Schermerhorn 26:24 that’s a great example. Yeah. I mean, like, when I was at Facebook, I would have people say like, Hey, what’s it like at Facebook? They’ve just messaged me that and I’m like, Yeah, I don’t, you’re gonna make me send you back. Like, what do you mean? Or like, it’s just, it’s just not like, I actually think of it like UX, right? Like, when you’re building products for cut for users, you’re always thinking about, like, how do I make it the best experience for them? It’s like, how do you make this communication? The best experience for me? How can you make it so I don’t have to think more. If you can think of the thing, like a specific question, then please do it. Otherwise, I’m going to be over here thinking, Okay, well, what’s he, what’s he most likely going to want to know? But maybe I’m not even going to get it right. And then I just wasted everyone’s time. Like, you know, I? It’s just Yeah, don’t make me think. Think of it like UX. And do that with mentors. Be specific? And if you’re not gonna follow their advice, I would say, explain why. Yeah. And a couple things may happen. Like they may go, Okay, that makes sense. Or, Oh, I didn’t understand that you had that situation. But what happens is, they won’t end up feeling like, Dude, this guy asked for advice, and then doesn’t even do it. Like, it feels like a time waste. And it feels somewhat like, it feels a little bit slap in the face. But if you, if you kind of be upfront about like, maybe why you don’t follow it, then they won’t get that. And one of the things I learned at Facebook, where they have a culture of it’s called fast feedback. And they believe in like, very open, being very open, and like giving feedback quickly. And when I first like learned about this, I was kind of like a hyper feedback giver, where I would give people feedback all the time, like constructive feedback. And, you know, people would say, Thank you, like, everyone was very welcoming of it. But I realized that like, there is a point at which you feel drained from feedback, like it does come with a cost, no matter how accurate the feedback is, and how much the person could benefit from it. There is like, a sort of absolute, at least a minimum absolute cost. And you have to really like that do the calculations, which are you know, if you can do but there’s a calculation that needs to go into, like, Is it worth giving this feedback, even if it’s true, even if it would benefit the person? Like, is it a really big thing? Is it like a high priority? Is this person doing damage? Unless I give this constructive feedback? I’ve turned down a lot, how much feedback I get, and I kind of weigh like, Is it worth this? Because it’s going to deem the relationship a little bit. We’re human, you know, objectively, we’re at work and we say, Oh, of course, I want feedback. Of course, I want to be better, but like, it does hurt you a little bit, even if it’s true. So now I, every time I have feedback to give someone I’m like, do I really want to give this? Is it really worth it? Like? Is it really gonna benefit them?
It’s a good question to ask, I think because I think you’re right. I’m sure there’s times where I’ve done things at work where it’s like, well, yeah, obviously, that’s not ideal. But if someone with everyone’s always point everything is wrong, you’d be very, like self conscious and like cautious about what you’re doing. It could get in the way. And also, I think a good question to ask yourself is, like you’re saying here is why am I giving this feedback? Is it to make myself feel better is it really to help them if it’s really gonna help them would be the result of me telling them this, would they actually be better off? Right? There’s, there’s also a question of like, how often are you giving this person feedback constructively, because there’s a point where like, if you keep getting it too consistently, constructive feedback, like, just bam, bam, bam, you’re just getting constructive feedback all the time, you eventually start to feel like paralyzed, you eventually start to feel like I can’t, I can’t, I can’t trust myself to make a decision. You know, like, I’m just doing everything wrong. And yeah, I remember, I remember a manager that I respect to a fellow team member, I gave feedback to him about this team member, I was like, Hey, I saw this thing, like, do you want to call this out? Right? very open feedback culture. And he goes, No, I don’t. What this person did is not perfect. And normally, it would be good to give this person feedback. But it’s more important that they just have confidence and execute. And it kind of opened my eyes. And it’s like, you know, not all truth needs to always be spoken. Like sometimes there’s sort of like a greater good that you that you’re aiming for of like, sometimes it’s better for the person to have confidence because they’ll kind of push through. And, and it’s better that they did the thing. It’s better that they moved in the right direction, then that, then that they do it perfectly, especially in today’s culture of like, everyone having an opinion on social media, like, you know, if you make a post, and it’s like, 95%, correct? Yeah. People are gonna be chimed in about that. 5% No matter how much benefit, the 95% of the post just gave you, Oh, you missed this one thing. And it’s like, yeah, I didn’t see you post about this. I didn’t see you benefit people with this, like, you know, sound like some of the articles I write where I’m like, Hey, man, like, I didn’t have to write this. Yeah, it’s not perfect. But no one I’m not even getting a bad bit to write this, like, go ahead and nitpick it. But how about you go write one that? Yeah. Like? So feedbacks? feedbacks interesting. Yeah. Well, it’s interesting. You think there’s also a risk of if someone is constantly getting feedback on everything, then they might even not they won’t have their own compass as to what is good and bad anymore? Because they’re waiting for someone to tell them maybe that isn’t is a risk of that at all.
Yeah, like you. I mean, I personally, I prefer in a lot of situations to learn the hard way. I actually prefer to, like, do the wrong thing and mess up, feel the pain of it. And I like the pain. I’m not a masochist. But I like the pain to be sort of the teacher. I mean, I’ve been trying to, like, teach my kids in the same way of like, letting them learn lessons, you know, like thinking, Okay, how bad is this? If they mess up? Yeah. Not too bad. Like, like my kid. He’ll be he’ll like, have like a cup filled up to the very top. So you know, it’s gonna spill if he carries somewhere. So I go, I go, okay, your job is to get that to the table, any mess you clean up. So if he can figure out a way to carry it from one spot to the other without making a mess, I guess I just learned trick. But, you know, another, like, a maybe more controlling parent might be like, Oh, go empty that out a little bit. It’s like not letting him or her like, just figure it out. Like, Hmm, I kind of look at kids as like, in people, as in myself as like a machine learning algorithm where we learn from past experiences you have, like machine learning models have to experience the wrong things too. So that they can know like, okay, no, that’s wrong.
Phil Salter 33:53 It’s, it’s funny, because I had a similar thing happened. My son was one to make pancakes. And we have it’s kind of like a mix where you just add milk and you can add an egg if you wanted, and you mix it up, and he knows what temperature He’s like, seven at the time. He’s eight now, you know, he’s gonna put the griddle on, like, I was gonna get in the shower, and I was like, he’s seen me do this. And I was like, Alright, this is what you need to grab a cup of this, a cup of that. And then I was like, nervous, and I was like, he’s gonna make a mess. I know. He’s just gonna spill it everywhere. And I was like, Yeah, but like, if I waited till he didn’t make a mess to make pancakes, like, I’ve called him so much. He’d never made a mess and like, I did him a great disservice. Right? He did make a mess, you know, but I had to remind myself like, okay, what’s the worst thing? There’s powder on the floor? Maybe Yeah, your son your daughter spills milk on the carpet. It’s not the end of the world, you know, but it’s like you’re robbing them of a learning opportunity. Otherwise,
Brian Schermerhorn 34:46 right? Yeah, there there are times. I love that you did that. There are times where like to help reinforce to them. That it’s okay to make mistakes. I’ve literally like taken stuff and just dump it on the floor. It’s awesome. I like syrup. Oh, hey, look, nothing’s Oh, everything’s okay. Yeah, like I just spelled my name on before with syrup. I have, like, we got to clean it up now. But like,
Phil Salter 35:12 it’s okay. Especially with the low stakes stuff, man, because the high stuff stick stuff will come. And if we intervene too much on the low stakes stuff, then like, they’re not going to be ready for the world. So you know. So that’s our job as parents. And also, as you know, let’s say you’re also a mentor to someone who’s new, you know, coming up in that you can, they can learn from you. It’s the same thing. You can’t over coddle them, but you need to be there for them to teach them those lessons at the same time, too. But I’ve just really appreciated your perspective. And you’ve been awesome. And I just wondering, is there anything that you want to like plug? Do you have like a website or something that you post your stuff on? Or? I don’t know. And we could cut this out? If you don’t? I didn’t really ask you at a time.
Brian Schermerhorn 35:56 Now it’s fine. And we can we can talk more like I enjoyed doing this. Like To me, it’s just fun to talk. My wife says I should get a job just talking. She says you’d be good at that. So I mean, I have I have a website that I sometimes post up to I haven’t recently I has, I has code comm with an S not have I has code. But yeah, like I post stuff on there. Sometimes, like whenever I feel like I learned a lesson, then that’s when I’ll post something or I feel like something clicked like, that’s when I’ll write one of those, quote unquote, epiphanies. I haven’t had an epiphany recently, but if I do, I’ll post it there. But
Phil Salter 36:43 yeah, awesome. Yeah, definitely. People could check that out. And just, I’ll just keep kind of following the things you say because I’ve always just seen them to be wise. So if anybody wants to add to the conversation, if they have thoughts, if you have questions for Brian, whether it be about software engineering, or just taking risks, you can email me at contact at no better time calm. Actually, No Better Time Podcast calm. And in from there. You can also find me on all the major platforms for for podcasts. Also, I post videos would be both in this video of this interview on YouTube. So you can search no better podcast there. So you’ll be able to see Brian’s face. But yeah, I just want to get people engaged. So if people have something to say, I want to hear it. And I’ll pass it on to Brian. If you do have questions for him, then I’ll I’ll see if I get his response. So thanks again, Brian. You have a good one. Yeah, enjoyed it. Thanks.
Does the idea of crypto currency freak you out or completely confuse you? My guests today are deep into the crypto world and do a deep dive with me. I a really appreciated DefiFry and Cryptopher Robin from SharedStake (sharedstake.org) for joining me in this episode! Don’t worry, I do my best to ask the questions you may have thought of yourself if you were having this explained to you, but they understand this on such a deep level they are able to step back and speak to these complex concepts in very digestible language and use really great examples and metaphors.
You can find their video podcast “DeFi Expectations” by goin to: youtube.com/channel/UCCIuLoNAKW0QOmLho1d1HOg
You can follow them on twitter at the following handles:
Phil Salter 0:01 All right. Welcome to no better time. I’m Phil Salter, and I’m here with defi. Fry. And Christopher Robin. They say it right. Yep. Yeah. All right. And we were just kind of talking about who you are. And I was like, let’s just get recording, right? So Introduce yourself, you don’t mind, that might be the easiest way. Friday, you want to start off? Or do you want me to? I’ll go ahead and start I suppose. So. sci fi fry.
DefyFri 0:29 Recently, since about August, just taken an interest in the world of defy or decentralized finance. And I’ve had a background in marketing for the past 10 years. But after the pandemic, and everything, which of course, we’re still deep in the middle of
realize that I was really interested in trying something new, you know. And what I was doing before wasn’t working the same. I was trying to basically build a business around regenerative medicine and regenerative therapy and doing marketing for that. And basically, it just got killed post pandemic. So I was just like, do I want to keep going for that? Or do I want to try something new and actually go for something I’m passionate about, as a lot of other people had a lot of time on their hands, you know, not going to work? To sing back what I really want to start looking into and my interest ended up being you know, what’s going on with crypto. And I started watching this token called yearn finance Wi Fi. And I was like, What is this token? It’s like higher than Bitcoin, you know, at one point. And looking into it, it turned out that it was part of a decentralized finance protocol. And just from learning about that project, I ended up finding myself knee deep and marketing for and working with decentralized finance protocols.
Phil Salter 1:51 Wow, that’s my intro. So that’s like your job is marketing. And in doing this, it sounds like and being involved in cryptocurrency and marketing specific cryptocurrencies, I’m terrible with the terminologies to be honest with you.
DefyFri 2:07 Yes, kryptos, and more specifically defined protocols and what they can do, which is essentially replicating things you’ve treated, you’d find in traditional finance, it could be lending and borrowing, you know, trading with leverage, all kinds of different things are being recreated more efficiently and more efficiently with the Fae. And that’s basically what brought me to it is just seeing how much more efficient it is and our current financial system here in America, how much more sense it makes the roles that it plays by and how much more fair it is, than a bunch of old men sitting in a room deciding what the dollar is worth, or how the inflation is going to be, so on and so forth. Frankly, I just trust computers to do that better. And that’s what gives me the interest in it.
Phil Salter 2:53 Interesting. And what was d phi? That’s for what again, decentralized, finance, decentralized, Okay, very good. Now, it’s funny, because I was telling you guys earlier, I’m a software engineer, but I’m surrounded by all these software engineers. nirs is really into and understand crypto. And I’ve just never taken the time to like, dig into it. And I thought was really exciting to like, talk with you guys to as someone who’s essentially like learning with whoever might be listening right about what this is all about. So I’m an anomaly. I also don’t even I’m not even a gamer, right? So it’s like, I’m the I’m different than a lot of people that I work with now, and then you have crypto crypto for Robin. Yep. Like what’s, so what? How does? What’s your kind of background? And then I’m curious how you guys kind of got connected to each other. I don’t know if it goes way back. Or if it’s a newer thing,
Cryptopher Robin 3:42 it does go pretty far back, actually. So my, my history is business management and marketing. I am still I’m doing the crypto stuff and the defy stuff. I’d say about like 75%. In at this point, I still have all of my regular clients that you know, help out with normal funds and stuff like that. But basically, I had heard about Bitcoin back in early 2012. Right before I was going to buy my house and decided I’m not going to do it.
Yeah, definitely regret that one.
You know, sat on the sidelines for five more years after that kind of just wishing I had gotten in but never doing it. And then I got in in like mid 2017 just in time to get up to a decent little earning and then the crash of 2018 at the very, very start happened. And that pretty much put a halt to the market for quite a while and it went out of fashion for again, you know, another two years or so. But during that time, is when the entire d fi system was actually starting to be built up. I had stopped paying attention to it for a little while. And then once for I had gotten back into it He kept like encouraging me to get into it. And so back in January of 2021, is when I started jumping back in more on a full time basis. And at first, it was just kind of starting to experiment with everything, because there’s a lot of weird, strange, confusing things that go into this. And the more you do it, it’s like, it’s second nature. But it’s so weird at first, it’s extremely confusing. And a lot of it it’s like, you know, being on a skateboard and trying to drop in, it’s like really counterintuitive to lean in forward. And that’s gonna, like, make sure you don’t fall on your face. So it’s like, it’s kind of like that with with crypto and especially defy.
Phil Salter 5:42 Oh, that’s a that’s a really interesting analogy. I love that. Because it’s like, yeah, so you’re saying, because I haven’t followed it, something you hear about? And it seems like there was a time when he was just like a joke, right? And now it’s like, people are taking it seriously. But there was a big crash, or it really dropped in like 2018. You said,
Cryptopher Robin 6:00 VR very early 2018. And there’s there’s always, you know, there was a pretty big crash, what, like five days ago now fries? That sound about right?
DefyFri 6:10 Yeah, and I mean, the markets will do what they do. And I thought the two like had something kind of interesting. He said about these, the Ethereum founder of the veto, like theater, and I might not I might be butchering his name. But, but he had something really interesting. He said about the markets, he said that the markets will, you know, basically, that they’ll do what they’ll do if the technology isn’t there yet. You know, and when you look back at 2018, I think the problem was, there was all these speculators coming in, they didn’t have a clue what they were investing in, right? Just Oh, it’s Bitcoin, it’s whatever, and it’s gonna be the new thing, right? And so of course, once they earned a certain amount of profit, they’re going to just dump it because what do you do with it at that point, Flash forward to today, d fi is the reason that people are staying in, it’s the fact that you can, you could literally take your Bitcoin, right, and let’s say you want to borrow $20,000 against it, but you don’t want to sell any of your Bitcoin because you think it will continue to go up, you have maybe 50 grand in Bitcoin, you could stake it on compound and borrow usdc coin against it, to pay yourself alone, and you could take a loan out and buy a car with it, and you can do that with with Bitcoin and usdc is in compound. I mean, that’s, that’s fascinating, and you get a better interest rate on it, then you would get to working with a bank, you know, and that’s just, that’s just one thing that you can do. Meanwhile, your Bitcoin continues to ACU crew value. And later on, you can pay off that loan, and you’ll have way more money in value in Bitcoin, you know, these are things that you used to not be able to do.
Phil Salter 7:42 Alright, if I can follow what you’re saying. And I know you’re and you’re very, like, articulate and I say, You’re not just like me, like absorbing this, right? You’re saying that like, you can leverage the Bitcoin, you have to get actual US dollars to like, buy something, but you still, you’re saying you’re giving them you’re giving a certain worth of it, but you’re saying you can still let it grow in? It could?
DefyFri 8:06 Yes, that’s leveraging, you can use it almost for leverage trading, too. I mean, what you’re doing is you’re staking it in a protocol, like a bank, that’s the whole idea of defy, it’s decentralized. So there’s no central authority. And no, it’s like a bank with the with with no, no operators you go in, it’s an empty bank, it’s just a machine basically. And it’s scary working with that in the first place, because it doesn’t have the same interface as what you’d expect from a checking account. But you know, what’s, what’s great is you have proof protocols now that are coming out like zapper, which do give you that checking account, feeling, you know, I can look at a single screen right and the user experience for me is it looks like a checking account, I can see how much money I have in uniswap if I have money staked to there, I can see how much money I have in compound I can see how much money I have in any of these one protocols that I’m using for any purpose, right? So let’s say I have 50 grand that I’ve put into compound so that means that I’ve sent my Bitcoin into a smart contract. Basically, what I can do now with the compound protocol is I have $50,000 in collateral I could maybe borrow $20,000 in a different token usdc I’ll have an interest rate that I owe back against that of course, but I can now use that usdc in real life to do whatever I want. I can’t get my Bitcoin back though until I pay off the loan that’s of course you know the rub about it, but that’s how it works.
Phil Salter 9:36 But is it like because a Bitcoin is like a unique right like it’s obviously people have mined this Bitcoin it’s you saying this is a unique Bitcoin that I own, you’re giving it to them for a certain value as at the time you pay back that value gave it to him for but in the meantime that Bitcoin could have been raising in value, right? Once you buy Correct, yeah, correct. So you’re paying the interest of what you’re that’s the cost You’re paying them interest for this loan, right? On your bitcoins, like value, I guess, if I’m saying that right? And it could be like, blowing up and say, Okay, let me pay back the $50,000. But the what I just got back $50,000 should be worth $200,000 at this point, right? Exactly. Okay, basically,
DefyFri 10:17 you have like you have one bitcoin that’s in there and that one bitcoin could be worth 50,000. When you pay off your loan, you still have one bitcoin, but one day might be worth 100,000. And instead of having to sell, you know, at that time, what your 20,000 of Bitcoin would be just a better way they leverage your your Bitcoin for real value. And it’s once you know how to do it. Like I said, you can use it to get an auto loan, you can use it to get a mortgage mortgage, theoretically, and I’m sure in the near future, they will find ways to make it even more direct than that, and ways that it’ll finally be recognized as the same as a financial instrument like a loan.
Phil Salter 10:56 It’s really cool. Thank you. I’ve never had it like explained to me that well. So I appreciate.
Cryptopher Robin 11:02 I think about it kind of the same way like you could you could pull like money out of your, your house. That’s more
Phil Salter 11:08 I’ve done that I have it’s funny, because well, not to cut you off. But I will. I actually got this he lock all in place, because I was thinking about maybe investing in like a rental property. And I decided now I’m not going to do it. But I have this HELOC sitting there that I could potentially use if I found the reason. I don’t know if I will. But you don’t mean like, yeah, so I understand that concept. You can say, hey, my house is theoretically worth this much. And so I can serve as soon as I can get in the loan. Right? That’s kind of what you’re getting at. It’s very similar. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like, I mean, yeah, like one.
DefyFri 11:40 Go ahead. Oh, I was just gonna say like one example of what you could do if you wanted to do the ultra DGN thing, which isn’t something I would do. But if you just want to just go for it, right? Take all the risks possible. You could say like, Oh, you know, right now, I know I have $30,000 of equity in my house, right? You could take that $30,000 out, you can invest it and in aetherium, right. Ethereum could go up to double that maybe six months a year from now, who knows? Right? But then you take that money, borrow the amount to pay back the loan, and yet use now have $60,000 Well, $30,000 less the debt and collateral, you know, there’s all these these different ways you can do it.
Phil Salter 12:20 Like use different avenues like so you’re saying let’s say it’s raised a certain value, so like, hey, if I can get a hold of like, $30,000 any way to get this Bitcoin back? It’s a no brainer, because it’s worth whatever amount, right? Is that you combine the dip with it? Yeah. Interesting. Okay, well, what were you saying for me? Sorry, cryptographer. Sorry. I feel bad now, I was trying to be funny, like, Oh, well interrupt you. Go ahead.
Cryptopher Robin 12:47 Yes, all I was saying was, you know, it’s kind of like, if I was to borrow money against my house, you know, during just in the last like, when I checked like a week ago, my house price had gone up almost $30,000 so it’s like, if I took a loan out I’d still own my house, but I can take that and invest it and then in the meantime, I pay back that loan and you know, by the time I do my house has increased $100,000 in value. So it’s similar like with different defy tokens and things like that.
Phil Salter 13:17 That’s a really good comparison I like at least for me like feels like a tangible thing to connect it to
Cryptopher Robin 13:23 I try to do that as much as possible with people who don’t understand like crypto and defy because I know when Frye was trying to talk to me about it I was just like what like what are you talking about?
DefyFri 13:37 Anything like you can do you can even do leveraged trading with that I won’t go too into the weeds about that I was just gonna say like that’s only one particular use case that right i mean people are doing pretty much everything yeah seen with stocks or other types of trading they’re doing with defy now.
Phil Salter 13:56 Yeah, it sounds like it’s being realized that this well what is this it’s just a concept it’s it’s people are accepting it just like There used to be a different a lot of different types of currency right in the United States or in particular, like different states or different towns and eventually did something came more centralized I guess, as you’d call it, right? And it’s like that became accepted as this is like has value and as this is it has accepted value then it’s that’s how it’s kind of spreading pretty rapidly, right? This acceptance is kind of blowing up is as far as I can tell. It isn’t that that brings up
Cryptopher Robin 14:29 a good point two, it probably be a good idea to talk about the difference between something like Bitcoin and the difference between something like aetherium because that delves into the difference between coin Oh, yeah.
Phil Salter 14:41 But basically the point,
Cryptopher Robin 14:44 the way that I like to describe the difference is, Bitcoin is a store of value. It doesn’t have a huge amount of use case right now. And that’s why I mean there’s there’s more coming up more frequently. But as of right now, the best way to consider Bitcoin is like a digital store of value like gold. It’s like digital gold. So just the same way where you couldn’t take a gold bar into the supermarket and try and you know, pay for your groceries that everyone realizes and understands it has value, but there’s not a good mechanism of exchange in the general community.
Phil Salter 15:21 It’s like a more of a raw form is kind of what you’re saying. Pretty much. Yeah. But like
Cryptopher Robin 15:25 when you get to something like aetherium. The way I like to describe aetherium is each blockchain. Ethereum is a blockchain. There’s other ones that are like coming up like salona by Nance, smart chain, these are all specific block chains. And on these block chains, people are building other applications. So a lot of the stuff that fry was just listing off previously, those are applications that are actually built on the Ethereum network. And when I’m talking about aetherium, and the other blockchains, I kind of like to think of them as come like a country. So right now, when it comes to it, a theory is like the United States of the crypto world. All of the biggest, hugest, most powerful protocols are being built on the Ethereum network, kind of the same way that Amazon is built in the United States, or Walmart was built in the United States. The same thing is happening with a theory and basically all these projects are being built with inside that ecosystem. And then the same thing is also happening with the up and comers, like salona and binance. Smart chain, which is now the number of essentially the number two spot when it comes to blockchains.
Phil Salter 16:41 Yeah, framework, in a way is what you’re saying. Right? Exactly.
Cryptopher Robin 16:45 Yeah. And then like the currency itself, just like we use the United States dollar in this country, when you are operating in the Ethereum country, you’re going to be using eath or ether.
Phil Salter 16:58 Okay. I’m curious, when you say blockchain, can you kind of just like, is there a way to quickly kind of explain what that means? You want to take that fry?
DefyFri 17:08 Yeah. So I think it’s kind of easier to kind of think of them like networks and the way the different ones operate. So for me, like the difference between Bitcoin and aetherium is Bitcoin is on the old proof of work system. So basically, what that means is, every time a transaction happens, it’ll compute whether it’s valid and whether it needs to be added to the blockchain, based on the amount of work that’s been done on it. So you can imagine the more transactions that are being added to this public ledger that makes up Bitcoin, right? The more inefficient it’s going to become in terms of energy use, because the blockchain, the ledger is getting longer and longer, and it takes more and more work to generate more Bitcoin on the blockchain. But that’s why you have the argument. Like Ilan musk recently said, oh, we’re not taking Bitcoin for Tesla anymore. It’s not energy efficient, even though I think Musk is blowing a lot of hot air just to move his own agenda, I think. But still, that is a valid thing that he’s recently brought up. And really the smart resolution to that as aetherium, which is actually moving to a proof of stake. So similar to Bitcoin aetherium had the old proof of work system, but what’s what’s happening with the might with aetherium 2.0 is the move to proof of stake. Now, the best way I can explain proof of stake is rather than more and more transactions being added in this proof of work old system. It’s basically there’s a set of validators. Right? So imagine 100 people are staking their aetherium. And a smart contract, right? That staking Ethereum is being used to validate transactions on the network. And because it’s a smaller subset, rather than, you know, all the transactions that have ever been done in the history of time, it’s less, it’s less energy consumption doesn’t consume as much energy, it’s more efficient. So that’s basically why these other kryptos are coming out. They have different use cases. Maybe they are governance tokens, which you could kind of think of like stock almost options for a company. They have all these different use cases, but essentially, they’re built on the same kind of technology of blockchain technology, I guess.
Okay. Yeah, and the best I can speak to it.
Cryptopher Robin 19:25 The governance tokens that for I just mentioned, that’s a big part of defy, and a big part of basically what drives a lot of the value and profit potential. So basically, what the governance tokens are, depending on the protocol, it’s like giving you actual voting power, depending on how much of them you control. And depending on where you’re staking or earning, you’ll earn additional tokens usually on top of like the interest rate that you’re being paid. And then with that, you actually have the voting power because this is a decent To realize thing, this is about basically taking the power away from large scale institutions like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, you know, the large scale stock trading and things like that. And it’s about putting that power back in the hands of the people. So basically any good protocol, which a lot of the time is going to be referred to a Dao, which stands for a decentralized autonomous organization, you’re going to be using those governance tokens to actually basically decide you know, how much interest you’re going to be paying people, what kind of direction the project is going to be going in, in the future. So there’ll be proposals, sometimes from the community, sometimes from the developers, and you know, various things like that. And then those are written up and voted on by the community who owns a stake in the organization.
DefyFri 20:52 Okay, of course, you know, every project is different, and some are better than others. But what’s really unique about the culture that’s surrounding this, this this type of D, centralized, living, breathing thing is, you know, these projects will come right, like, badger was one example right now, shared stake is another right, and they’ll have an initiative that may centralize around one idea, you know, for shared stake, it’s making eath 2.0, staking, you know, easier and more profitable for people who want to participate in it. You know, these group, these organizations will pop up, they’ll have a couple of lead developers that are behind the project, people start using the project, they gain trust, and with it over time, they’ll have proposals come out to make audits, you know, for instance, to prove that the smart contract is safe, because people are putting their money into these, like their banks, right. So they want to know that the protocols are safe. So any serious project will usually at some point or another, have the community vote on a proposal to do some kind of audit of the code, but that manages the protocol. That’s one way that the community gets involved. Another way is the community members who have previous experience in banking and finance or whatever, they will emerge and help decide governance actions, right, they’ll say, I wrote this proposal, you know, they’ll write it all professionally, like a finance major would, you know, we want to do admissions this way. And this pool for this reason, you know, and they’ll spell out all that stuff. And everyone does. It’s just all these roles come into play of like a marketing manager of an operations person of a developer of someone in support, these roles kind of spontaneously come from nowhere, people are just participating in the community and becoming, becoming a part of it, you know, so it truly does belong to them. It’s bizarre watching it happen. And it’s definitely uncomfortable at times, because it’s a very new thing. But it’s amazing to watch it happen because people are incentivized, and it’s very different way than they wouldn’t be from traditional business.
Phil Salter 23:03 Yeah, if I’m following, like, these communities, you’re talking about, kind of like, looking at, like, it’s a bank, right. So like, if the theory, right is, is the the currency or working with this is like, a way to access purchase and invest in it is going through one of these communities. Is that what uh, is that correct?
DefyFri 23:24 Correct. And they have different value that’s provided, for instance, they might have a pool that facilitates trades between Bitcoin and aetherium. Right, like uniswap protocol.
Phil Salter 23:36 Yeah, like a banker let you like, you know, I need some yen. Let me trade this out. Right. Right. It’s working with the currency. There’s different banks. Yeah. Okay.
DefyFri 23:46 Yes. Just like just like a bank. How do you think they’re able to facilitate those trades when you wire money or do transfers it’s based on the liquidity that they have within the bank, it’s it’s very similar to how these protocols work. It’s just okay. It’s not a bunch of greedy bankers putting their hands all over it. That’s the main difference. It’s these people who are geniuses and code development, but don’t get me wrong, you have to do your own research you have to dive in to every project you have to know what you’re looking for, for sure to make sure you don’t just send your money to someone who’s going to run off with it. But if you know what to look for, I mean, this is something me and Robin do 24 seven basically now it’s it’s one of the most exciting it is in my opinion, the biggest opportunity that’s happening right now in America at least
Phil Salter 24:30 Wow, that’s amazing. So it’s like even if like you said Do your research and who your what your were dealing with. Because even let’s say they even have good intentions. You just want to you want to be based on solid. Everything right? development and yeah, bed management, right. Like if it’s even if someone if they don’t, if you’re with a committee doesn’t know what they’re doing, then like you can hurt you. It sounds like
DefyFri 24:53 correct. There has to be really real utility to the project and also the right team members to make could happen. And I’ve talked a lot about compound. But probably the best protocol to mention that’s made so many things easier, is uniswap. It used to be really difficult to try to buy bitcoin. And it used to be even harder to try to trade it. But now you can easily switch swap between aetherium Bitcoin and all these other tokens using the uniswap protocol, it’s able to do that because of those liquidity pools I was talking to you about before, those same liquidity pools that can be used for leverage trading for borrowing, lending, whatever you want, could be you just go into a website and saying, okay, I bought some mysterium on Coinbase. I’ve sent that Ethereum to my private wallet. Now, without me going back to Coinbase. Without the US government knowing about it, about everybody happened to see you know, I what I’m going to do is I’m going to go on uniswap, I’m going to take from my private wallet, and I’m going to trade this aetherium for usdc for Bitcoin for whatever I want, or maybe I want to invest in a D five protocol. And all of this is tracked through, you know, your private wallet and your contributions to that blockchain.
Phil Salter 26:09 Well, you’re saying us, you’re you’re referring to like, like, you like dollar bills like US dollars when you say that correct? That’s how I’m understanding it. Like trading?
DefyFri 26:20 Can you see me? Well, they have a token that’s called usdc. Which Okay, stable coin that’s pegged to the US dollar. So okay,
Phil Salter 26:28 I didn’t know that. Yeah,
Cryptopher Robin 26:29 there’s a few of them. Now, actually,
Phil Salter 26:32 I see you’re talking about actual, like, cash money, but you’re saying essentially is tied to it. But it’s still like a digital kind of currency in a way.
DefyFri 26:41 Yeah, like it’s kind of swap. Like if you’re on Coinbase, like, for example, and you try to swap between Ethereum and usdc, you’re going to pay a huge premium on it. Because for one, you don’t really own the currency while you’re on Coinbase. It’s basically like you have a ticket for it. And you own that you have a registered ticket for that amount of aetherium on their network that they hold for you. So if you try to trade between tokens, you pay a high fee. But let’s say you just say, Okay, I’ve got 5000 aetherium. From Coinbase, you can send that to a private wallet, which is just basically like a, an account that you manage, it’s only has an address tied to it. Nobody knows that it exists, it’s purely yours, you created it on meta mask or some other wallet provider, right, you can send that $5,000. And you can trade it through other tokens and pay a lower fee. And also, every time you trade, it isn’t getting reported through the coin base app, because the coin base app is a centralized exchange, versus you having your own private wallet, which is private, and you’re working through a decentralized exchange, like Yoona swap that isn’t reporting your trades. So it’s basically a privacy means. And that’s like another use case. I mean, we just interviewed somebody last week, that was for a secret network. And what they do is, you know, of course, all this stuff is private, you don’t know who I am, except by my wallet address, right? You just see that money was sent to this wallet address. To figure out who I am, then you can figure out though how much money I have, because you look up my address, and you can see exactly what I have. Because the blockchain is public, right. But they have this organization that’s around now called secret network that you can actually put your money into some type of protocol with secret network, and it’s private. Now you can do trades on their network pay less and gas. And it’s not reported. It’s not visible to anyone else. You know, this is just another use case from a different protocol that exists. Did I say that? Okay, Robin, do you think you could add any clarity to anything etc? That are
Cryptopher Robin 28:45 basically Yeah, basically secret just, they they add an extra layer of privacy, just because the blockchain itself, even though like I was saying, it’s it’s a private thing, you only see a wallet address. But the thing is, you can track whenever anything is changing hands. There’s actually something that I follow on Twitter, that’s called whale alert. And it basically is hooked up to let everyone know on Twitter whenever people are trading large amounts of cryptocurrency. So you can see when people are like playing with $100 million worth of crypto transferring from one place to the other. So it’s like, if you figure out who owns that, there’s not really that much privacy, you can even keep track of specific wallets on a regular basis. So there’s like, there’s the layer of privacy of not really knowing who it belongs to, but at the same time, still being able to keep track of their wallet.
Phil Salter 29:39 Interesting. There’s a layer of accountability, but there’s still this privacy like you. You can tie it to that wallet, but you don’t really know say you don’t know who that actually is.
Cryptopher Robin 29:49 Yeah, but then of course, you know, if you were to ever pinpoint who that is, there’s no this is one of the reasons why a lot of people in the defy space are anonymous. Because you get like some of the developers who, you know, if somebody found out, you know that they have a large amount of money, they could easily be, you know, somebody could try and like, kidnap their family, somebody could try and like, you know, like, there’s there’s people who’ve gotten death threats, because you know, the token price goes up a little bit or goes down a little bit, you know, wow.
DefyFri 30:23 So they want to be anonymous to keep it simpler, basically, you know, so it’s tough, because when you you see some of these project projects, they are led by anonymous communities, you know, by anonymous developers, and you think to yourself, well, should I trust the protocol? And I don’t even know who’s managing it? Well, you know, maybe, depending on if you read other information about it. But a lot of these developers are choosing to go that way, just because who knows what’ll happen with their taxes? Who knows what will happen with the legalities of what we’re even doing right now, it could change in a number of years, and people who directly participate in building these protocols, you know, you know, they don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. So it’s just a way of covering themselves, basically.
Phil Salter 31:06 Yeah. And it’s like you said, this is very exciting space. It’s almost like the Wild West in a way, right? Like, it’s just kind of, it’s evolving before your eyes. Like, you don’t know where it’s gonna go. But it is, yeah,
Cryptopher Robin 31:17 it really, you know, think of it the same way that like, we would have looked at the Internet 25 years ago, where it’s like, it’s still even though, you know, Bitcoin was created in 2009. So the whole time that I was on the sidelines, I’m always like, well, bitcoins $100 now, it’s too late bitcoins, you know, 150 Well, it’s 300 it’s way too late now. And it’s kind of the same thing. It’s like, you know, I came in full time, basically, in 2021. So, I’m like, 12 years late,
Phil Salter 31:50 but you still don’t think like, you haven’t missed the boat. Right? So I was gonna say, like, if you don’t make sense,
Cryptopher Robin 31:56 yeah. It’s like, if you look at the Internet, 12 years into it existing, and you say, at that point, oh, I’m too late to get involved. How would you look now? is a good this interesting point. Yeah. And it’s it really is like that this is this is completely going to change everything. And not just crypto. But like blockchain in general, the technology is basically going to revolutionize the entire world, just the same way the internet, did.
Phil Salter 32:23 I cuz that’s, you bring up an interesting point I was thinking of is, like someone’s listening to this. And they have, they have never even like considered actually being in a I’m in cryptocurrency. Or maybe they have, but they’re just like, oh, like it’s too late. Or it’s just way too expensive or whatever. Like, how does someone gets started? Or what should they do? And like? And what’s the motivation to do it? Like, what’s the benefits they’ll see are in your opinion,
DefyFri 32:50 earning better interest than a bank is a good starting one.
Cryptopher Robin 32:54 Yeah. And that’s a really, really easy one. I mean, like the the types of interest rates that you can
DefyFri 33:00 make, what are we talking? Like psych? 100 300%?
Cryptopher Robin 33:05 Yeah. So like, here’s a crappy return in crypto is if you were to take like your USD and just convert it to a stable coin. And then you could earn like, 4% on that. Just sitting there. And like with that alone, that’s like, like I said, the crap like
DefyFri 33:22 100 times what a bank offers. Exactly, yeah.
Cryptopher Robin 33:25 So right off the bat, you’re making like way more than a bank would ever offer you. And you’re actually hedging against inflation as well. Because you’re pulling your money out of the actual money supply, where they’re going to continuously keep printing more all the time, you’re gonna, you’re gonna keep deflating the value of your dollar, if you just let it sit there. I’ve got money sitting in a safe right now. And every day, I’m like, I feel like it’s just go grab the shit and toss it into crypto. And of course, it’s nice to have some Fiat sitting around. But at the same time, like, the longer that sits there, especially with how much money they’ve essentially technically printed, during COVID, you know, the the supply has been horribly inflated.
Phil Salter 34:06 It’s a it’s honestly, like losing value sitting there. Exactly.
Cryptopher Robin 34:10 So you’re actually you’re actually making money in two ways right off the bat, just by taking your Fiat and swapping it out for a stable coin. And that doesn’t even include actually trying to earn anything with a coin that has the potential to be in a speculator market, which would be you know, basically anything besides a stable coin.
Phil Salter 34:32 So you’re saying like the most safe option is in itself, like a 4%. return? I just sitting there. Yeah, they’re saying, well, that’s
Cryptopher Robin 34:39 like a garbage return. That’s the absolute crap in this market. On average, like with with shared stake, for instance, right now, if you were to just like if you were to get some of their token and just stake that the interest rate on that is 80% right now.
Phil Salter 34:58 I mean, obviously this this is is a variable thing. It’s not like a set thing. It’s like It’s like investing in the stock market, you can, there’s no guaranteed return, right? But it’s like,
DefyFri 35:06 that’s where the whys can vary as other people enter the pools because basically like this is one of the reasons governance happens. And people need to make ongoing changes to the protocol, they might have a missions that have a certain pool paying at, you know, 40%, but after several millions, billions, whatever goes into it, probably millions, but at some point, the return is going to diminish, right? And it’s going to go down to 3020, whatever, because there’s more people in the pool, sucking up those rewards. So, you know, there are things like that to take account of what I’d say the like anybody trying to get in, is first really just find a use case around one of the blue chips, either Bitcoin or aetherium. In my view, Ethereum has more upside all the defy protocols being built on it. The use cases demonstrated with those I’m a big aetherium believer, but you know, invest in one of the blue chips and then get to a protocol like shared stake that allows you to stake your aetherium in a contract, even if he can earn four or 567 percent on it. But you can earn definitely more than that with staking with shared stake, like why not do that versus just having the Ethereum sit in your wallet and gain nothing? Or have your cash sitting in your bank earning you nothing. Yeah, cerium has outperformed Bitcoin this past Bull Run, and I think it will continue to so if you can find a good dip to buy in. And I guess that would be in my opinion, a reasonable starting point for somebody but not financial advice, of course.
Phil Salter 36:39 Oh, yeah. So I was about to say like, just I like, yeah, we’re not financial advisors. These I’m not, I’m assuming you guys aren’t Right. Yeah. This is radically new. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So this is all just theoretical stuff. But it sounds like you need to get a hold of some aetherium. first before you went to shared steak. Yes.
Cryptopher Robin 37:00 Yeah. The thing to remember too, when it kind of comes back to what I was talking about, about having the currency to operate in that country, you know, what I was saying? You You can’t operate on anything that was built on the Ethereum network without having some of the currency to pay your bills, essentially, just the same? Yeah. I yeah. And I, you know, just like I couldn’t go to the grocery store and have no money to buy my groceries, I’d have to have somebody that used
Phil Salter 37:30 I guess I was thinking of is like maybe shirts. Take it. First of all, I think you guys have a stake in shirt steak. Or you’re a sir. That’s something you guys also are promoting? Correct. So I want to like, just make that clear. This is something you guys yeah, I have invest it interest in doesn’t mean it’s not good. I towns, I’ve actually been following you guys on like, discord, and you have a lot of great information. And you’re very open. And there’s a lot of communication. And it seems like there’s a lot of like, democracy around it as far as like people’s, the people involved and, and their feedback, correct?
Cryptopher Robin 38:02 Yeah, we really try our best. And like I said that that kind of comes back around to keeping this in a decentralized fashion, which all the people from the Dallas, we really try our very best to keep open communication. You know, I always tell everyone in there, I’m like, if you have anything to say, Please, you know, send me a message. I’m open to it. Like, I’m here for you guys. We want to hear your voices, we want to know what’s important to you. So we can shape the project around what everyone wants it to be.
DefyFri 38:31 And we don’t I guess, acts to Yeah, just the other thing I was gonna say to the note about what what we do with defy expectations. It’s very fact based, you know, so I could sit here and I could tell you, I’m super excited about aetherium and what I’m doing or what would make sense to me. But at the end of the day, like we don’t come on with a video about any project, even if we love them. And we’re not just like, Oh, this is great. This is gonna go to 100 tomorrow, like oh, bye, bye bye. Like that’s not who we are. We look at a project and we want to intellectually understand what it’s contributing to the community. What’s the value? Who’s behind it? What have they demonstrated in terms of trust in the defy space. And I think that gives us a very an authenticity to our brand, like we covered shared steak before we started working with them. And they were actually our first episode, our very first podcast, we wanted to learn more about them. We did our first episode with them, and then we got hired after the fact. So yeah, of course, we’re biased, you know, everybody, we tend to follow our passions and we feel like that comes through in our channel our passion for what we do.
Phil Salter 39:34 Yeah, I mean, you guys interview interviewed people, even just like an artist like the the protest. He did artwork as a protest and it was a yes, Naft kind of thing he was doing right. Yeah, the nF nF T. I was like, didn’t feel right. We got to know which is really cool. So again, But I guess my question is this. Let’s say I’m someone who says, You know what, I want to dip my toes. I have, let’s say $30 a week, you know, that I want to put towards, you know, let’s say, getting some Ethereum and potentially using shared steak for instance, to you know, really the grow, right? What would someone like would I do?
DefyFri 40:28 I really do is can you do anything is that is that even worth doing on Ethereum? On Ethereum not so much, okay, because sometimes your transaction fees will be that much. So for really, for you to put some money on a on a chain into it to be worthwhile, usually you want $1,000 or more, at least,
Cryptopher Robin 40:46 the abs, I usually tell people, if you don’t have at least 1000, don’t even bother trying to come into the Ethereum defy space. that’s gotten a little better recently. But basically, the reason that they’re creating v2 right now, is because of the fact that so many people are using this network that wasn’t really meant to scale the way it needed to. Right, you’re basically trying to like, take a city’s sewer system water and put it through a hose. So like, there’s way too much trying to go through this network at once, just because of how much it’s grown. And so right now, you’re going to be paying a huge amount of a premium to do anything. And this was one of the things that was very hard for me when I was getting in is, you know, when you look at something like Venmo, or PayPal, or you know, Zell, those are all free to use, or very inexpensive, for the most part. And yet, when I came in, it was somewhere between like 40 to $60, every time you wanted to move something around. Now in doing that, it doesn’t matter if you’re moving $30 or $30 million, you’re still making the same ledger mark, essentially. So that’s why I always tell people, I’m like realistically, even coming in with $1,000, unless you’re going to do one thing, like, you know, you’re going to buy your aetherium, you’re going to come over to like uniswap, or something like that, trade it for Sgt, which is the name of shared stakes token, and then stake that that’s still a couple processes right there, you’re going to have to do the trade for the swapping. So you’re gonna have to pay for the staking. So they eat gas. Yeah. And like, so every time you do that you’re spending your aetherium as well.
Unknown Speaker 42:34 Yeah.
Phil Salter 42:36 To your potential growth, right, exactly.
Cryptopher Robin 42:39 Like, you got to make sure that like the return that you’re looking at, like, you know, if you’re going to be making 80% return, and you put in, you know, $1,000, it’ll probably be worth it over time. But you know, a couple of weeks ago, or a week ago, like when the crash had happened, the gas prices were up to like 400 a way, which is the measurement of eath, basically. And that basically means that like, people were spending probably upwards of $200 or more just to sell their stuff at a huge loss. When everyone was panicking, and there’s, the only reason you’re going to be panicking is because you put in more than you can afford to lose. Yeah, and that you are in this for the long term.
Phil Salter 43:24 It’s like the stock market, right? Like, that’s the worst time to sell. You don’t sell when it’s like, you know, plummeting, unless you really don’t have a she completely have lost faith. And you think it’s only getting right here, you know?
Cryptopher Robin 43:35 Yeah, that’s, that’s exactly when you should be buying, you know, yeah. And the prices dropped so low. I was just like, telling everyone I’m like right now, right now is that time, if you haven’t gotten in yet, the prices are reasonable. Right now, the gas isn’t reasonable. But just to purchase, it was very reasonable. And that turned around within about two days. Meanwhile, the prices of some stuff had dropped like 75 or 90%. During that time, and now they’re back up again, not all the way we know this is a very recent thing. But if you’re in this for the long term, the trajectory is upward. And the same way that you know, investing in companies like that do online sales, when that was first a thing. The trajectory is upward no matter how, you know how many times like things fluctuate, the trajectory is going up. And this is a you know, it’s a world changing technology. So doing the research and investing in the right products, it’s gonna it’s going to work out well. Because these are only growing things are only getting better. And the cool thing about d phi as well, most of the time, everyone is working together. It’d be like if you know if Bank of America and Wells Fargo and you know US Bank, we’re all collectively working together to make things better for everyone who uses them,
Phil Salter 44:56 not just for themselves, right? Yeah, if there’s another people
Cryptopher Robin 45:04 problem that’s noticed, or, you know, two things don’t operate well together, the development teams will usually come together and be like, okay, we should do this. So we can make these operate well together. So it’s a very new space. And you’ll, you’ll see a lot of stuff that like, is counter intuitive a lot of the time, like I was saying earlier, but everyone’s working together collectively to make it better.
Phil Salter 45:29 Yeah, that’s interesting. I, I. So it sounds like First of all, you really need like a chunk of cash, if you really want to, like do this right, and make it something that makes sense. Like at least $1,000. It’s not something like for me, I’ve been doing this thing where I just put in our No, maybe I’m curious, we think about this, I, I use Robin Hood to buy stocks, maybe you think that’s insane. I have some people I work with who are really on, I was sort of looking for on a principal level, like our kids, Robin, because of what happened with GameStop. And then not letting people either buy or sell, I can’t remember. But, um, I use that I put $30 in there a week just to kind of like learn and kind of see what I can do with it. Yeah, that’s why I brought the $30 marks, it’s like, it’s not that much, right. But you know, it’s still something that you can kind of play with and see what kind of growth you get. I’m really playing with the percentages, because I figure $1 in a stock, whatever percentage, I get that if I was a million dollars, like, hey, it’s still the same. It’s still the same risk. Maybe like you have more at stake. You don’t I mean, I but um,
DefyFri 46:35 because the fees, even on Coinbase, I think you’d probably want to do your buys bigger than $30. Realistically,
Phil Salter 46:40 like that’s what it sounds like.
DefyFri 46:42 Yeah, but even if it was like $100, you did want monthly or every couple months or something that would probably make sense. But like actual investment in d phi, which is like basically requiring gas and locking your crypto into contracts. That’s really not possible on the Ethereum blockchain, with a small budget now, but it is getting better. Like there is of course, the coming of eath 2.0, which is going to make things a lot faster, as opposed to, but there’s also other chains as well. I know Solana is one that a lot of NFT projects are choosing just because the energy consumption is it’s a lot more efficient and less expensive to for them to do the drop because of that efficiency. So but there’s, there’s lots of that, like, like, Robin was saying, if there’s a need, there’s people coming to fill the void. But the space is so positive. I mean, one of the other things we haven’t even talked about this yet, that benefits participating in defy over traditional corporations, I guess, you know, the traditional environment you might be used to, and working in corporate America is people share everything, you know, it’s not like, it’s not like we have trade secrets, you know, we have our code is is available, it’s on a GitHub, you can go look at it, right and take through it, you can actually, and in fact, the code is open to the communities, oftentimes, because it comes from anonymous developer, and they’ll say, judge me by the quality of my code, you know, not who I am. But like, thing apart my code. And there are people who have propped up just to do code audits, you know what I mean? And they’ll do them for free. Sometimes it’s crazy, like, just the the, the mentality of the people participating in this. It’s very much like an idea of like, if you’re familiar with the secret, it’s very much like a method of thought of abundance. You don’t any Yes, yes, yes, me and competitiveness, it’s very different.
Phil Salter 48:44 I just have very positive. I just recorded something this morning. I kind of sometimes I want to legally record just some thoughts like not interviewing someone. I talked about this concept of abundance and scarcity today. So yeah, totally.
Cryptopher Robin 48:57 Real, real quick to get back to your question, if somebody did want to invest a small amount, you could still just buy into a token or a coin, like buying some aetherium or buying some binance. And then just letting it sit there, you’re not going to earn like anything, or depending on the exchange that you did purchase it from, you might earn a small amount. But you could still do that. And then you’re not trying to like actually go and spend it, you’re not going to be doing anything like crazy, but you can still, you know, put in a small amount, because over time that will most likely result in some kind of net positivity.
Phil Salter 49:37 Yeah, I mean, honestly, it sounds like I use Robin Hood, right? Because it’s just the barrier of entry is very low, right? I can deposit money I even have access to up to $1,000 a day instantly to then like invest. It sounds like the barrier of entry is higher right now. But it sounds like there’s things in place to make that lower as far as not as expensive as far as transactions potentially is what I’m kind of thinking. From this, but also, yeah, just accessibility 2.0 Yeah. So that’s, that’s exciting for me to hear. As far as like a way to kind of get in that barrier of entry, not that it’s not worth it at the higher level, but it’s, uh, I think it will more people will get involved, especially in the beginning, I think once you really prove the concept to yourself, you have more faith and confidence, you can really start maybe going more aggressively with the numbers, right? Yeah,
DefyFri 50:27 well, when you, when you take money off Coinbase I was just gonna say like, that’s a whole different experience to like when you’re working with a centralized exchange, like Coinbase. And even if you finally said, I’m going to pay $1,000, to buy this aetherium. I mean, that’s a certain point of unbelief and say, you know, but when you first send your money off the exchange to a private wallet, you just set up with meta mask, that doesn’t look like a banking account that didn’t ask you who you were when you signed it up. You’re not going to feel right about sending that money there the first time.
Phil Salter 50:58 But that’s a counterintuitive thing, right?
DefyFri 51:01 Yes. And then you lean into it, and you do it. And then next thing, you know, you’re staking with a protocol and you’ve sent your aetherium to a smart contract. It’s like okay, now you’re generating a return here. It’s just it’s something you got to step slowly into, I think is whatever. Yeah.
Phil Salter 51:14 do with it. That makes sense. I mean, honestly, though, I asked you this. So in Robin Hood, I bought, like, some weeks back like $100 with a Dogecoin. What are your thoughts on that coin? You haven’t brought that up? I must say, I’m curious what you think? Oh, I guess for me, that says enough, right there.
Cryptopher Robin 51:33 here’s, here’s the weird thing about decentralized financing crypto. And, you know, we’re I feel like I’m learning stuff every single day. And I feel like I will be forever. But it’s like, it’s a meme coin. So yeah, we know use case, it’s just it’s a joke, it literally was created as a joke. And yet, it has billions of dollars in value locked at this point. So no matter how stupid it was, when it came out, am I stupid for thinking that it’s completely worthless at this point and brushing it off? And that maybe you don’t know until late? I would say that it would be ridiculous for me to not take it seriously at this point. And what that proves to me is that this world of decentralized finance is weird. And it doesn’t make sense. A lot of the time, it doesn’t make sense that a joke project that’s a meme would suddenly be like, you know, in the top four or five valuations of all of these projects when it has essentially no use case. But yeah, I mean, what’s the problem?
DefyFri 52:36 I think you’ve got a couple issues there. I mean, you know, what bugs me about Dogecoin or whatever? Is that I think it takes a kind of take some of the credibility away a little bit. It’s my only that’s your right, is you have people who want to come in for something serious, it’s going to really transform like our financial landscape because it needs it. It really does. You know, I’m not afraid to say that needs to change like it doesn’t make sense. And we have, you know, Ilan musk goofing around acting like, okay, Tesla’s gonna accept Bitcoin. Oh, now, he’s not gonna accept Bitcoin, because it’s not energy efficient enough. And oh, Dogecoin you know what I’m saying? Like, he hasn’t done like, come on, really to jump from Bitcoin to Dogecoin. The reasonable jump would be, okay. Bitcoin might be might have some issues with energy consumption. But let’s take a look at aetherium which is moving to a proof of stake. You know what I mean? That would have been a serious reason for him to make that change, but just come in and be like, Oh, yeah. Dogecoin Yeah, that’s, that’s the people’s currency. It’s just a joke to him. And he’s using bull and financial markets to change and people to lose money and gain money. Like, it’s a really bizarre level of power for a person to have. And it’s problematic. And when it’s used to promote something with a dog’s face on it, it just pisses me off. That’s my,
Phil Salter 53:57 yeah, I see what you’re saying. It’s something you take very seriously and to see kind of be made a joke of where it’s like, and I can see that point, I can also see the other side where it’s like, hey, people thought like, Bitcoin was just a joke. Obviously, it wasn’t really based on a joke specifically, right? That’s the difference, I think. But I saw you’re saying like, this is something you you like you really care about, and you take seriously and for this to be kind of, but it did kind of it that was really interesting. Elon Musk goes on to Saturday Night Live. And there was always talk about how that’s really gonna make like, Dogecoin like, you know, go to the moon, break $1 whatever, you know, and I’m like, that’s insane, that like this guy, who just like kind of, like, likes Dogecoin right. He’s like, you know, smart and he has a company but he’s not really it’s not he’s not connected to it other than just kind of like he’s just interested in it right as my understanding and that that could potentially affect its price and affect all this stuff. But is that really that different than any other random thing people hear rumors about companies and then all sudden it gets more value or drops value is all based on like feelings. Isn’t that just what all this stuff is? Anyways?
DefyFri 55:04 It is it’s just disappointing when people don’t use their influence to actually start a real dialogue. That’s Yeah, issue with it. And he has the power to do that. And yeah, he, he has done so a little bit with Bitcoin and I just hope he goes more that route than being like, Oh, I’m going to support Dogecoin. Now because I don’t think it’s serious to him. I mean, but the issue is, like, at its core, it still is the right technology. I mean, I’m sure Dogecoin is a fork of the same type of block, basically a copy of some other type of code that’s been used in other blockchains. So I mean, it sound in a way it could be used in occur as a currency. And it might be more efficient in certain ways than Bitcoin. But was it ever developed with that purpose? as it does it have other people building networks on top of it with the use cases that are seen by aetherium? No, do I think Musk is too dumb to know that? No. So he’s basically taking this opportunity has been making a mockery of it. That’s, that’s my opinion. So
Phil Salter 56:01 very much just like a grab for attention. Like he wants to be a rock star. And it’s just a way to kind of Yeah, and he already knows. So what does he need? Yeah. Yes. That’s interesting. I just curious cuz you guys hadn’t brought it up. But I was like, that’s, and I kind of figured something like this. Yeah. But I mean, honestly, like, my whole plan was, I put $100 into this thing. And literally, I’m not gonna buy or sell any more of it for two or three years, and just see where it’s at. It’s more of more of an experiment than anything. You know, I mean, who knows? But, yeah, we’re
Cryptopher Robin 56:36 gonna say, Sorry, timing is a big thing here. But what I was gonna say is, you know, in relation to Elan Musk, like the reason that the the crash happened recently, is in kind of relation. There’s a couple reasons. But when Ilan musk announced that Tesla had purchased $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin that began the Bull Run hardcore, of, you know, the last couple months. So then, a little bit after that after you know, because whatever happens with Bitcoin will pretty much drive the rest of the market. If something’s going wrong with Bitcoin, basically, the rest of the market will probably suffer as well, because it’s the granddaddy. And whatever’s going on with that it’s going to trickle down. So then when he came back out, and announced that Tesla was no longer going to be accepting it, that also dropped the price heavily. And on the same exact day, I believe vitalik had been air dropped a couple of weeks before, I believe something called Sheba. He knew I’ve not heard if you sure if you’d heard about that. It’s, there’s a lot of dog coins now. Because of Doge being popular, and especially on binance. There’s like, there’s dog coins and meme coins popping up by the hundreds now. So she but he knew had been gaining a lot of notoriety. And apparently, the creators of that had air dropped half of the value to metallic. So they essentially gave him about $8 billion.
Phil Salter 58:06 That sounds kind of vaguely familiar. Yeah,
Cryptopher Robin 58:08 yeah. So on the same day that Ilan musk announced that Tesla is no longer going to be doing this, the talent pulled out $1 billion worth of liquidity and donated it, which is great. But those are two big huge things to the market. That happened on the exact same day. And I believe it was two or three days later, that China announced that they were going to be cracking down on cryptocurrencies for like the fifth time. And various countries will always make these announcements and crash the market. And then it never really follows through. And then the market recovers, because everyone’s not in panic mode again. But that’s something that happened within about a three or four day span. So huge announcements like that. And the market fell by like 75%. I mean, like, the the total value locked in the market was probably like $2.7 trillion, or something like that. And easily a trillion dollars was lost from the market within like, a day and a half. Wow. Yeah.
Phil Salter 59:08 That’s amazing. That’s crazy. I mean, it’s funny, because it’s, I don’t know, it’s funny, but it’s interesting. It’s interesting that what we’re looking at here is if enough time passes, was that I said, That’s some funny shit. No, but I mean, we’re talking about if enough time passes, this continues to prove itself as a concept, you know, cryptocurrencies in this like decentralized finances and stuff like that. It’s just like the stock market. It’s been around for Serbia time, it has not been a thing forever, right. It’s what like, early 1900s I don’t even know when this thing started. This is, I don’t know the history, but it’s not like it’s been around for even hundreds of years, right, let alone
Cryptopher Robin 59:50 through New York Stock Exchange, probably like late 1800s, early 19. Okay, something
Phil Salter 59:56 like that. Like it’s only so old. But
Cryptopher Robin 59:59 let’s talk about ownership is, you know, many, many hundreds of years old for sure. Okay.
Phil Salter 1:00:04 I’ll give you that. I don’t know. But that makes sense. You know what I mean? But I’m saying like, let’s say, for instance, the New York Stock Exchange, you know, that’s, that’s where we’re commonly trading on correct. That’s a, that’s something that people just have, you know, for, generally speaking, just say, Hey, I have faith in this thing. This is proven itself. There’ll be dips, right? There’ll be drops, there’s, like, you know, recessions. And that’s that, like you said earlier, like, it’s time to buy, especially if you believe in the long term trajectory, you know, that for, you know, past performance is not proof of any future thing, but you can kind of have a surmount of faith. And so you’re saying when this happened with cryptocurrency, I’m sure a lot of people that really have bought in really, like capitalized on that is my guess.
DefyFri 1:00:48 super interesting is, like the philosophy of how people can be as traders, for example, like you could tell somebody about aetherium for a straight year, right? You could start telling them about it when it was $300. And you could tell them that it’s 500 600,000. And now it’s up to like, what? 20 $600? Right? But what they’ll say is, you’ll talk to them when it’s that or they’ll say, what is that? 3000? They’ll see a dip down to 26. It’ll have a sharp correction, right? We’ll be like, Oh, yeah. See, that’s why I didn’t invest in that. See that volatile cryptocurrency you can’t trust that it’s like, but man, I told you to buy it when it was $300. Like, yeah, lost anything. You know, it’s Yeah, people are, and it’s a confirmation bias for what you believe you want, you’re looking for things to confirm that belief. Exactly. And it’s like that you but like you say, you know, Robin was saying it’s counterintuitive, sometimes you see a dip and you do get scared, am I losing all my money? Well, if you took some profits, on a Green Day, when things are up, you might have some more money to put back in on a down day, knowing that it will go back up from there, you know, it’s just you have to create your own strategy that makes sense. And you have to stick with it against your own feelings sometimes, because sometimes your feelings can be very wrong and can make you do silly things in your trading. Yeah, I
Phil Salter 1:02:04 did it. So I think we’re logical, but honestly, that so often daily, we’re making illogical choices against like facts and information, it’s really hard not to get emotions involved, especially when it comes to your money and investing. And you can, like you said, you have a strategy, and I can just go out the window, you know, if you don’t, right. And if you haven’t really, you know, thought hard and like, put pour some discipline behind it.
Cryptopher Robin 1:02:27 That’s something that you know, someone who’s a little newer to this still, like actually dipping their toes fully in at this point, I’m still learning new things about how I want my, you know, how I want to be as a trader and a buyer and an investor. So like, for instance, when we’re talking about, you know, aetherium if it’s going to cost me $60, to try and sell, you know, $300 worth of Bitcoin, so I can take a $20 profit,
Phil Salter 1:02:56 it’s not worth it, you know, yeah, that’s a lot of work for very little pay,
Cryptopher Robin 1:02:59 right. And so like, it’s, it’s worth it to do the day trading type stuff if you’re playing with huge amounts of money, because if you, you know, if the price fluctuates by a couple dollars, but you own, you know, $20 million worth, well, you can flip that real quick. And then you know, make a couple grand very easily or a couple 100 grand, depending on like how big the dip is. But with someone who has like a small amount, and it really is only worth playing the speculator market and just hoping that it kind of goes up. In the same way, like, I have some different things that I’ve bought in where I’m like, Okay, I’ve got enough of it, where now it’s like if I was to watch and the price does go up to a high amount, where I feel like you know, it’s a psychologically satisfying number, like let’s say, something’s been hovering at like seven cents, but now it hits like 25 cents. To me, those are that’s like a 10 is a psychologically satisfying number. things with zeros and fives are psychologically satisfying. So you figure if something hits an all time high, with a psychologically satisfying number, there’s a good chance it could go up a little more, but there’s a good chance, especially when something shoots up three or four times. There’s a good correction probably coming back into that and you’re probably gonna find like something a little more stable, maybe around 1314 cents or something. But had you sold one it was 25. Now you have that to put back in, when it dips and buy more. If you don’t ever watch the market like that, then you’re never gonna have a chance to buy the dip.
Phil Salter 1:04:31 Yeah, I think that’s the thing. I’m realizing it just takes so much time and energy and knowledge and research all these things. If you really want to, like whether you’re dealing with like, you know, a theory or if you’re dealing with just like stocks, you know, it’s just it’s it’s a lot you know, and it’s not if you can’t really do it right like you probably should just buy things that you feel like are long term and they kind of look away for a while
Cryptopher Robin 1:04:56 you don’t I mean, in that really is the best way to go for anyone. Who’s not willing to get really deep into this? Because if you’re if you’re worried about it, and you’re watching it all the time, and you’re also not playing with enough of it, you’re gonna be obsessing over like 20 bucks. Yeah, exactly. Oh, my God, you know, my $300 is worth $280. Now, you know,
Phil Salter 1:05:18 I mean, that’s kind of where I’m at. But I’m getting out of that, like more obsessive part of over a very little amount of money and like, what it’s doing, because I very new to like, even like buying individual stocks in the past I, you know, I’ve like a 401k. And that goes into like an index fund, I have some stuff I do like, and I don’t know if you know, have heard of betterment, where you can, like, put money in like index funds and things like that. But I was like, I want to try some of this stock, you know, individual stock stuff. I don’t care if some people say it’s too risky. I’m gonna just see what I can learn, you know, and I started with, hey, I’m gonna do $100 and just say, and just see what I could do with that for two months. And if I lose it all, hey, it’s $100 little course, Crash Course and intro to investing. Of course, that grew within a week to $1,000 I have in there and I’m just like, I didn’t like the whole thing of emotions and like, not sticking to your script or your plan. But I was looking at it constantly watching, like what was happening, and it was just, like, exhausting. At first. It was exciting. And they got very exhausting. Yeah, yeah. So it’s killing. Yeah. So
Cryptopher Robin 1:06:17 yeah. leverage the value of your time.
Phil Salter 1:06:21 It’s not worth the time.
Cryptopher Robin 1:06:22 Yeah, it’s like, especially, you know, someone who makes like a decent amount of money is it worth like, sitting around like, watching, you know, that your your value has increased by $100 that day? And like, you could have worked for two or three hours? And you know, made more than that?
Phil Salter 1:06:36 So yeah, for sure. So I mean, it’s, it’s been a learning process. And it’s been interesting. And that’s the point of my podcast is learning about finances and, and taking it head on and not being intimidated or afraid by it, you know, so good. Very, and I honestly, cryptocurrency is something I’ve just avoided, because it’s just like, oh, seems like too much. But that’s why I was so excited. When we got connected through that that Facebook group ran is a podcasting Facebook group and you’re looking to talk about cryptocurrency? I was like, dude, that’s a lot on the line with all the things I’m about learning about financial principles, and taking on things that intimidate me, you know, so
DefyFri 1:07:14 I wondered about other projects, you’re just gonna say, you could always have us on again, and we’d be happy to do deep dives into like, one specific example of crypto or defy so Oh, yeah, for sure. You start learning and Want to learn more?
Phil Salter 1:07:27 A lot of stuff. Awesome. I appreciate that. I mean, is there anything you guys want to plug? Like as far as your YouTube and like, I believe your podcast is at this point, a YouTube channel? Correct?
Cryptopher Robin 1:07:39 As of right now, yes. And I’m gonna I’m gonna be working on like, it’s pretty hard right now. Like, I think on my on my schedule, right now, I have about 290 hours of work for the month. So I’m trying really hard to like leverage my time with the podcast, because it’s something that I’m very dedicated to now, but it also doesn’t pay anything.
Phil Salter 1:08:01 Well, that makes me feel even better. You took the time to be on this with me. So thank you.
Cryptopher Robin 1:08:05 It’s, you know, I really am I’m really enjoying it. I’m actually like turning one of the rooms in my house into a podcast studio. That’s awesome.
Phil Salter 1:08:14 Yes, fantastic. Yeah,
Cryptopher Robin 1:08:16 join it. But you know, it’s like really about leveraging your time right now. But at the same time, it’s like, this is something that we want to do. So I do plan on either getting it on to anchor or you know, buzzsprout or something like that soon. We do have 11 episodes as of about an hour ago. I’m talking with you got the last episode edited, and just got that up on YouTube. So I feel like we have a decent little like, grouping of shows where we can actually stick something up there. We’ll have enough for people to actually go through and check out if they like, you know if it piques their interest. So I feel like we’re kind of at that point now. are now only on YouTube right now. And that’s d phi.
DefyFri 1:08:59 Yes, d phi expectations on YouTube. I’m the phi fry on Twitter and Robin what’s your handle
Cryptopher Robin 1:09:07 crypto crypto for Robin, but it’s it’s spelled ROB en on my handle just because some other poser used to be Christopher Robin and got the URL
Phil Salter 1:09:23 it’s even badly said
Cryptopher Robin 1:09:27 yeah, they apparently they suspended that account who whoever that used to be? No, wow. That’s
Phil Salter 1:09:33 That’s crazy. And then if somewhat people want to check out shared steak, as well, right is a way to kind of like leverage their Ethereum correct.
DefyFri 1:09:44 Yes, shared steak.org. We are they should be back on Twitter soon, but their handle would be shared stake on Twitter as well. But yeah, feel free to check out shared state.org there’s lots of really good content and if you want to be a part of governance Go to forum dot shared stake.org
Phil Salter 1:10:03 awesome. And I’ll put these links in the show notes. And I’ll also be uploading a video version of this to YouTube on my channel there. And I’ll put that in the description as well, you know, your handles and where they can find you the your podcasts on YouTube as well, as you know, the other things you just mentioned with shared stake. You guys are awesome, it’s really cool to just kind of expand the network of people in the connections. That’s what I love about doing a podcast is just, it’s getting me to kind of go outside my comfort zone, learn things, and meet people, everyone is amazing that you meet in this world, if you give them enough time to get to give people time to, you know, to really get to know them and hear what they’re about. And you guys are incredibly interesting. And I really appreciate your time.
Cryptopher Robin 1:10:48 Yeah, I definitely like feel the same way about it too. Like everyone we interview, it’s always like such a different experience. And it’s you know, we all learn from each other, which is, this is our first time actually guests on a podcast. So it’s nice to not have to be in control of any
edit this after.
Phil Salter 1:11:09 I mean, honestly, I do it pretty minimal editing. So we’ll see it pretty gonna be pretty raw, you know. And it’s a question of just kind of being being raw, but also being lazy. So. But honestly, you guys are awesome. Thanks so much for your time. Yeah, it’s authentic is what it is. It’s raw. Very good. So if anybody wants to, if anyone has questions, I could really see people coming up with questions. As you listen to this, you can email me at No Better Time podcast@gmail.com. If you go to anchor.fm slash no better time, you can even leave a voice memo, which I can respond to. And if you have questions for fryer Robin, you can ask them and I can forward on to them. And hey, who knows? If there’s a good question, good enough, maybe I can get them back on, you know, to answer it directly. We’ll never you never know. But you know,
Cryptopher Robin 1:11:59 definitely feel like if they if anyone wants to tweet at us as well. Those handles in the video as well. So feel free to do that we’re pretty open. The good thing about defy again, is that it’s a pretty open community. I mean, this, this is one of the interesting things about it to a lot of the people that you would think would not be at arm’s length are at arm’s length. You know? And When’s the last time you were able to talk to the CEO of Bank of America? You can do that in defy?
Phil Salter 1:12:28 Wow. Yeah. That’s amazing. It’s interesting. It’s a combination of just like, kind of like privacy, but also just like openness and like community. It’s really cool. Yeah, it is. It’s a very neat experience. Awesome. Yeah. So and honestly, if people if you Thank you for listening, if anyone is listening, I know there’s some. There’s a few. And I think please keep doing that. I would love ratings and reviews on Apple podcasts. Subscribe, wherever podcasts are available wherever you listen. And thanks again guys. You guys have a great night. Yeah, you too. Thanks again.
Some more updates on outsourcing my photo editing in the effort to make my photography business more passive. In the process of learning about this and reaching out for help, I have realized how generous people can be with information and help. This is a great example of abundance. If we feel scarcity we might feel that helping others may give them an advantage that takes away from your own opportunities. The truth is there is more than enough to go around! I learned this when someone that could be considered my competition for real estate photography in my area went out of his way to reach out to me and help me improve my business. I discuss that experience in this episode where Ron Aguilar from Utah Valley Videos (UtahValleyVideos.com) helped me greatly and proactively called me and took time to allow me to pick his brain and further improve my process. I also had someone from my neighborhood reach out to me – Jason Baller co-host of the “Sprinkled with Hope” podcast (podpage.com/sprinkled-with-hope/) to give me positive feedback and encouragement on my own podcast and send some great guest options my way! Abundance is all around us people!
The episode of Sprinkled with Hope that I reference can be found here:
Phil Salter 0:01 All right, two things before we jump into this episode, I recorded this before I drove to work. I’ll probably be posting this probably late tonight because I won’t be able to even throw this together and edit it until tonight. But I mentioned someone who was helping me who was a photographer that’s local. And I didn’t say his name. For some reason. I was like, I should ask him first. But now I’m just gonna say his name and what his company is. His name is Ron Aguilar. And his company is Utah Valley videos. And I’m 99% sure the website is Utah Valley videos.com. And I started like, and I in the, in the episode as you listen to it, it sounds like I’m talking about the same person called me again. But I’m talking about two different people who reached out to me to help me unsolicited Lee. So the first is Rona healer. And the second was Jason baller, who has a podcast called sprinkle with hope I was listening to it on the way in today to work. It’s like a 30 minute drive.
Or 25, give or take. And it’s amazing.
His most recent episode is with someone who is I think it’s Melissa Pei. Whoo, I really it’s hard when I’m recording on my phone because I can’t. I think if I pull up, pull it up, it’ll stop the recording. But yeah, listen to this podcast. It’s amazing. It’s so legit. And like, oh, man, I need better audio. I need better intros, I need to do better. But also, I’m just gonna be me. I realize like, I’m just doing my thing. Anyways, enjoy the episode.
All right, welcome to no better time. I’m Phil Salter. And I’ve just been thinking a lot. I want to talk about this concept, a concept of abundance. And scarcity, this is not a new thing. It’s something I’ve come across, it’s you know, was new to me at one point, but it’s something that it’s interesting, once you kind of get aware of a certain concept, you start to see it around you, you start to notice it being referenced. It’s just like when you buy a certain car, you start to see that same car on the road a lot doesn’t mean there’s more of that concept or thing in the world, you’re just now become aware of it. Excuse me. And that’s why it’s really cool to learn new things, because then you’ll be able to notice it in the world and
learn more. And to solidify those concepts can also be a bad thing. I guess, if you think about it. Confirmation bias is a really real thing. Where once you’ve come to a conclusion, you just look for more proof to validate what you believe or think. So you need to be careful of that. But I was listening to this, it was driving me nuts. I was listening to a podcast, and I could have sworn it was armchair expert. This is a podcast I love. And he was talking to someone and somehow the concept of abundance came up. And there’s so much to go around. And they were talking about like, someone doesn’t have to fail in order for you to win. We can all win together, there’s so much out there. And this has come up in my life so much this last week, I had an update last week about
my passive income and how I realized with my photography business, I can outsource my editing, and how I had reached out to a specific real estate photography group that I’m in Facebook, and I just said, Hey, I’m thinking this is what I need. I need photos. And I needed delivered within a certain timeframe. I don’t know if that’s even a realistic expectation is that possible, and people started speaking up, and then someone who lives in my neighborhood, who does real estate photography and video, and other types of photography, but he’s like this really successful. This is his like, full time gig. He’s like, the cream of the crop when it comes to this kind of photography. And he speaks up in this Facebook post and says, Hey, actually, I have a couple people that I’ve used, but like if you start to do this, and you figure this out, it’s gonna change, like your business is gonna like, you’ll never go back, you know. And I was like, That’s amazing. I was like, if you don’t mind, if you don’t mind, like messaging me like some of the people you’ve used for this service. And he’s like, Hey, I’ll give you a call. And I was like, Oh, yeah, sure, he’ll call me. But guess what, two days later, I get a phone call from him.
This is after the previous update, randomly, like in the afternoon. And he I’m like, Whoa, he’s calling me. And of course I get this like anxiety around like phone calls. And sometimes I just don’t want to answer. But I was like, No, this he’s calling me I’m going to answer this call. And he is just like, Hey, man, he’s just jumped right into it. He’s just like, hey,
like the editing services. He started giving me advice and feedback, and what to look for and what kind of pricing is reasonable. And, and in basically the guy Hi, the source I found was the one he’s actually used. And he’s like, yeah, they’re good. And it was amazing. He started giving me we started talking about the photography. And he should I talked about like my process, how I do the photos and how I do my lighting and he’s sure he talked to me about ways that he had learned
And how to do it faster and get the same like great results. And I’m like, Whoa, that blew my mind to things you told me that I could immediately start implementing to save time while I’m shooting. So now I’m saving time while I’m shooting. And I’m saving time by not editing the photos myself. And we talked about how do I make sure I get the right amount of photos because every photo I take if I outsource it to be edited, it cost money. So it’s like, how do I make sure I’m really getting the what I need? Without like, spending more money than I need to? It’s given me all this great advice. And I’m like, I realized in this moment, like, Dude, this guy’s my competition, or I’m at least his competition, right?
And he’s helping me. And I said to him, like, it sounds like you’re not really afraid of me. I was like, technically, someone could consider me your competition. And he’s like, dude, there’s so much to go around. And it like blew my mind that he was so generous, that he’s given me the things that he spent blood, sweat, and tears to learn. And he’s like, handing this information off to me. And I was so grateful. And it was amazing. And he’s right, there’s so much to go around.
That it’s not like me succeeding means he needs to fail. There’s very few situations where it’s like, Hey, man, got to be cutthroat, right? Like, I’m not saying there’s not a place for that necessarily. I’m not a cutthroat kind of person. But I am not saying that, like, you always have to help your competition. But I’m just saying this idea that there’s abundance in the world. And holding back information is a scarcity mindset in the same photography group I’m in, people were asking questions about photography. And this guy speaks up and says,
I’m so sick of people coming here and want to get get quick answers.
I spent four years in school, I apprenticed with photographers, I spent all this time learning this stuff, and you just want to come here and get answers. And I’m like, of course, these people are looking for quick answers. They’re looking for answers. That’s two different things. They’re not looking for like a quick get rich scheme. They’re saying, I want to learn about photography. This is a photography Facebook group,
with this, this and that. They’re asking questions, and this guy’s annoyed that this person is just kind of getting to the chase, and then can do as well as him or bordering, you know, in his region, compete with him, and be able to potentially take his big competition him even though this is a Facebook group from all over the country in worlds, you know what I mean? But I just thought, what a backwards mentality. It’s like, maybe you wasted your time and money spending that much time learning this? Well, not necessarily, but maybe you did. Or at least he feels like he might have like if I spend all this time and money.
And this person can just come here and learn this and like in a couple months, be doing what I’m doing. Like, that’s the wrong attitude. Like if he didn’t, he needs to look and say, What did I gain from this? I have this core understanding. I gained relationships, you know, but the scarcity mindset was right there. And I just like, wow, I wanted to say something. But I stopped myself because it’s like, what good is that? Right?
And then this guy
in my neighborhood, again, just yesterday, reaches out to me. He has a podcast, his name is Jason baller. And it’s a podcast called sprinkled with hope. And he’s like, Hey, man, I listened to some of your podcast.
I have some potential guests that you could have on your podcast. And I was like, That’s amazing. I’m gonna listen, I, I’m in listening. I want to listen to your podcast, I told them, and I want you to be on my podcasting is a great, it just is like, generosity of like, there’s abundance is out there. Because I mean,
there’s a lot of podcasts in the world. And you could say, one more podcast and listen to his competition for me. You know, I mean, obviously, he’s not gonna see it that way. And he’s here to help other people, and just people being willing to be guests on my podcast. They’re giving their time. It’s just amazing. And I just think that this is a concept we need to learn and recognize there’s abundance in the world. And that if we have a scarcity mindset, and we hold back helping others, or have that attitude, in general, we’re going to be more guarded, we’re going to be closed, open yourself to opportunity. put yourself out there. And don’t be afraid of the time, and the energy and the resources that you need to be sharing with other people.
And things will come to you doing this podcast,
obviously, is only has so many people listen to every episode. But I have gained so much from putting myself out there and trying to I mean, ultimately try to put them out that someone could benefit from but obviously I’m benefiting the most. It’s making me think differently. I’ve done I’ve implemented changes that have already benefiting me. It was my time and my money. And I’ve started making new contacts and friends. And it’s changing my life in the short time I’ve been doing this. So go about the world.
with that attitude, it’s gonna change your life, man. And it’s gonna change your life quickly. And I’m gonna continue to do this. I’m going to continue to keep you updated. I have had so many interviews and I have more scheduled. I have. I have like weeks and weeks and weeks with interviews coming in. I’m releasing one interview per week. And I’ve been doing one like of these like quick dives. But I’m curious to know if anyone does give me feedback. You can you can email me at No Better Time. podcast@gmail.com. If Is it better that I do two episodes a week like this? One shorter one interview? I try to keep them all around 30 minutes or less? Sometimes it goes a little over.
Is it better that I would incorporate these all into one episode? Let’s say I do like an intro, like a kind of an update in my thoughts. And then I lead into the interview and make that all one episode per week, like on a Monday or Wednesday? Or is it better to separate them like this? I’m curious what people think. Because Jason said he learned he used to do two episodes a week that he learned from his listeners, because he has great listeners that hey, it’s kind of overwhelming. I love your podcast, but it’s a lot to consume. And I think that makes sense. So I don’t know. That’s something I’d love, get feedback. I want feedback in general, you can email me at, like I said, No Better Time. podcast@gmail.com you can please rate and review me on Apple podcast, please subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you go to anchor.fm slash no better time, you can leave me a voice memo that I can listen to, if you don’t like messaging, and this and that, or I mean as far as emails.
And I will play that message on the podcast. And I will respond to you for sure. And I have received I’d have had some reviews of my podcast. And I did receive an email. But I need to it’s fun. I need to come up with a system. My mom emailed me right so but it was really nice. And I will read it. And I have received a couple podcast reviews on pot on Apple podcast. I need to read those as well. But now that I’m recording like this, I need to do it when I’m not like using my phone like this. But anyways, I will respond to you. And also if you go to my website, No Better Time Podcast comm you can even like reach out to me there. There’s ways to contact me there. There’s a link how you can support the podcast if you feel like, you know helping financially would help as well. No Obligation, obviously. But I just love doing this and I want to interact with you. I want to hear from you. And I want to know what things you want to talk about what you want to hear about. And if you want to be a guest, I will put you on my podcast. I want to talk to anybody I want to hear your story. But just have a great day. open yourself up to the concept of abundance around you. If you find yourself contracting in fear on this idea of like there’s not enough scarcity in any way. There’s abundance all around us. Alright, have a great day.
This is Phil Salter, with no better time. And I’m here with Kevin Anderson, my good friend. And I guess fellow entrepreneur, you may be wondering if you’re watching this what I am doing in a tub. I’m actually at my parents house, because my dad had saw deliver today. And I took some time off to go help install it in their in his new house. And of course, they only delivered half the sod. I need all these people here to help. And they’re like, oh, oops, sorry. And it’s like, okay, people took time off. Like, I’m like, you need to get them to give you a refund or a discount or something. But anyways, so I’m here in the tub, because of the lighting seemed pretty decent. And also seems pretty funny. But I’m here with Kevin, like I said, How you doing, Kevin? I’m doing great. Thanks for having me. Now, thanks for coming on. Kevin is someone that actually lives near me. And we became friends. Like it’s been a few years now. Right? At least three years or more, right? Not long after you moved in? Yeah, it is all started with three years for you to have. Yes, I’m like that I’ve been living here about four and a half years. So maybe. I think I’d been here about a year though, before we really became friends. Like we knew each other. And we’ve seen each other at church and things like that. But we have a mutual friend, Todd barley, who I’m trying to get on this podcast as well. He’s like a career and life coach. But he’s very busy, very successful, busy guy.
But, uh, we start I started doing movie nights with him. And then you started joining us? Yeah, I remember that. It’s,
Kevin Anderson 1:33 it’s been a while. COVID kind of messes with that kind of stuff, right? Yes. Yes. And then once you get out of the habit of doing things with your friends, easy to like, stay in the habit of not doing things, unfortunately. Unfortunately. Yeah. But I guess the thing about you that I’ve always been really impressed about, it’s like, how you’re always looking for opportunities to learn new things, try new concepts for side, side, gigs, side hustles, but also really doing awesome things with your like career as well on top of that, and I just wanted to kind of talk about, if you tell your story of kind of when you’ve known when to pivot when you how you recognize opportunities, and people can kind of learn from that into to recognize opportunities, and also know when maybe to pivot and change what you’re going for, as well. Yeah, you know, it’s always been interesting, because growing up, it was just kind of something that I did, my brothers always would say that I could probably sell ice to an Eskimo or, you know, bad breath to dog or something like that.
It was just, like, for me, I’m a little different than all the rest of my brothers, my, my brothers are very, you know, academic type people. I wasn’t as much. I mean, I enjoyed school and things like that. But really, when it came down to it, people were the things that I loved. And so I don’t know, I, I started there as pretty young kid. In fact, when I got home for my LDS Church mission,
I started my own landscaping business, for instance, you know, I was kind of waiting, it’d be to go to school, and whether or not I was going to get accepted and things like that. And so just starting, you know, business just to kind of keep me busy. And that was, that was kind of, really the start of the entrepreneurial mindset for me. I really enjoyed it. In fact, I wish that that was one regret that I probably had is that I didn’t push a little harder to continue to do that business.
But you know, how parents are sometimes and don’t get me wrong, I love my parents, and I love the guidance that they give. But in this particular case, like, it could have opened up a lot, but they, they really wanted me to go back to school. And I did do and I thought at the time school was probably the right thing for me. But I found out after I left that, you know, that there was a potential job that was like a $7,000 a month contract, you know, that I could have could have probably captured and, and,
and so going into school, though, you know, I mean, even there, you know, I went through the whole first year of school
went knock doors during the summer selling pest control. Right there at the end of this first school year there though, I torn up my knee pretty bad and had to have surgery at playing basketball. And and so when I came back to school, I was really hoping to go and, and kind of further maybe, maybe try out for some, you know, web school or something, you know, some community college basketball team or something like that. And so I was making tape and everything like that, and the year before and cut to the point where
we were taking a big I was taking the beginning basketball class to kind of get my feet back and went up four rebounds, took my legs out, again, took money
Just like when you landed it now I just when I went up we were doing, like when we were just doing a simple three man weave drill and, and I returned money. And so that pretty much ended any dreams of playing basketball, and college. I had no aspirations to play in the NBA or anything, but it would have been fun to play a community level program. So, so what was really interesting though, at the school at the time, there’s no jobs. It’s a really small town, right? Rick’s college or BYU Idaho is what it was. And we’re up in Rexburg, Idaho. And there’s all these students and all the jobs get taken really quick. And so
I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay there. I was dropping out of school, though. Because I couldn’t get up and down the hill to get to school. And one day, and I’ll credit this guy here. One day, I’m just making homemade bread. Right. And this is just the continued journey of this entrepreneurial thoughts, right. So I’m making bread here in this guy. His name’s Gary Cox. He lives in the apartment just right across the way. He comes in to see one of my roommates and he comes in and he goes, Whoa, what’s that smell?
Tell me. And so I gave him a slice, you know, it just literally come out of the oven. And you know, slathered on some butter and cinnamon and sugar. And he’s like, oh, man, I pay money for this. So like, Ding ding. Yeah. So that night, I sacrificed the bread that I’ve just had made. I cut all of it up. And I walked around to all the apartments in my apartment complex. And I took orders. And I think I took 80 orders that night. Wow. of homemade bread, you know, and it was fun. It was a, it was quite the experience, because I was doing this all inside of my apartment. And I had no hands. I did everything by hand. I did not have a mixer. So I did everything by hand. You know. And so
it ended up being that I just went, you know, usually from about seven, eight o’clock at night until about six, seven o’clock in the morning. In making bread. He said at the time you weren’t in school, though, right? So you had.
Phil Salter 7:16 And it was hard to find a job because it was like limited opportunities and students would just snatch him up. Okay.
Kevin Anderson 7:23 Three weeks into school, right? And so all gone. Yeah.
Phil Salter 7:28 So you needed an opportunity, right? So would you say because of a need, you were more likely to notice, like the opportunity, or you think it’s hard to say maybe it’s hard to say in that particular instance? Yeah. But it’s pretty in your face, like I would pay for this, oh, wait a minute, you know.
Kevin Anderson 7:46 But what was really interesting, and this is something that some people need to realize when when they are going down the road of a business, whether it be a side hustle, like making bread or something like that.
I saw my order start to drop. But I started to look at it, I saw I was noticing that it was the girls that were stopping, they weren’t really ordering bread anymore. And so then, you know, of course, for me, I’ve got to understand why, you know, because they had been ordering like two or three loaves at a time. And like each girl, like, I mean, we were we were pushing out a lot of bread. And we probably were cranking out upwards around 120 to 150 loaves at night. And
so I walked over and I started asking all the girls, why they weren’t ordering. And they were like, Well, Kevin, it’s white bread. And I’m like, Okay, I’m a guy, right? So I’m like, What does that even mean? You know? And so, Kevin, you know, it’s we just got to be able to have something more like a wheat bread or, or something like that. And so immediately I just said, Oh, well, I need to pivot. So then the next thing I did is I went home and I called my mom, right? What does anybody do when they’re when they’re trying to figure something out? They call mom or dad. And so mom says, Oh yeah, I’ve got a recipe for that. So then I drive down to Idaho Falls and I pick up all the supplies I need for wheat bread. And then I make a bunch of the wheat bread, bring it over and give you know some of the bread away to the girls and and all of a sudden my my sales go up right back up. Right? Well, so then even even then, like I started to pivot again. I said, Oh, okay, well, that’s white and wheat. Well, what else could I make? So I’m gonna cinnamon bread, cinnamon raisin bread, dark rye bread, you know, the Russia, Russia experiences for me, you know, on my church mission. Black bread was just that was the that was the stuff man. It was so good.
So so then we’ll fast forward here. And I kind of got back into it where I just needed to work for somebody. And I felt comfortable, right and it got to the point where
You know, you get that itch again, going down the road, but he started second guessing yourself sometimes, you know, maybe a venture doesn’t work out just right. And that part’s that part’s kind of frustrating sometimes in the journey.
But, you know, I moved down to Arizona, I was working for University of Phoenix and
I had a buddy of mine that convinced me to do like a, an MLM company and
in the finance industry, and so then I moved up to here to Utah. And, of course, starting a finance business is incredibly difficult as it is and takes time, and to start really seeing money. So of course, I’m trying to find a job and delivering newspapers hating every aspect of this. And that’s when I found the company that I started working for. It was a technology company software company that does document management.
And they were a great company.
I got in pretty, pretty early into the the company, they were probably around for a few years beforehand, and started out in tech support and started to climb the ladder, you know, and it was a lot of fun experience. And, in fact, now I mean, I’ve been in the document management industry now for 16 years now. Oh, wow. It’s been you tell for 16 years or so? Yeah, it was 2005. So yeah, 1616 years now. Right. So if I’m following what you’re saying you, you’re saying you did this kind of bread thing, which obviously had a certain lifespan, then you moved on and got like, kind of your normal job working for someone else, you know, and you felt comfortable on that you said, and maybe there’s a certain, like maybe vicious perceived security around that, right? Yeah. And here you are in your story, where now you’re working for this company, for at least a certain period of time. Okay. Yeah. And I was at this company, the company’s name is E file cabinet. I was at that company for eight and a half years, almost. Okay. And had gotten to the point where I was in a management position and, and really loving it.
But there was a lot of things that were changing at that company, decisions are being being made and things like that, that I didn’t necessarily agree with.
And it just happened to be like, I got to a point where I was actually starting to look at, okay, well, how do I jump ship from here, I really believe in the product that they have, you know, the document software, I was very, very passionate about it. And, but I didn’t want to work for them anymore. But this is their software that they had developed as a company that you really liked. It wasn’t a software they were using. Okay, this is a software that they had developed. And, you know, I went from support to sales to channel management, business development, and then client relations, where I was really managing all the training and support teams and stuff like that.
And, you know, and I just looked at it, and I said, I really want to keep continue to do this, I just don’t necessarily want to work for these guys anymore. So I started looking at the possibility of starting my own company, a consulting company. And then
I just happen to have said something that must have sparked some trigger for them.
They had hired some more salespeople. And I thought that we needed to hire more support people. And I had been talking about it amongst my peers, of the directors. And I, apparently, and no one’s really, truly told me the reason why they let me go. But it was, I heard the rumor was because I disagreed with them. And that the CEO had overheard me talking about how we needed to stop the bleeding of support, you know, support was losing a lot of ground with support or customer base, because they just couldn’t get to them fast enough. And it was just because we were short handed.
Oh, here, right.
Phil Salter 14:10 Yeah, good to say anything you feel like you’ve learned from that experience? That not saying you did something wrong, but that you would have done differently? Or is it just No, no,
Kevin Anderson 14:21 not necessarily. In that case? You know, I, I didn’t feel like I had done anything wrong. I was talking to directors, you know, it was people on the same level was me.
And I just thought, Hey, why don’t we try and convince them to, to do something a little different? What instead of hiring more salespeople, let’s hire a couple more support people and maybe that’ll help out and then when we do bring on more salespeople, then we can help just better support our customer base. Maybe what to learn from that is just if you’re in a position at a higher level, and people want to talk about improving, you can’t be too precious about your little ideas, and not be willing to listen to
constructive feedback, you know, because that’s a failure, because even if you were wrong, let’s talk about it and tell me why I’m wrong. Don’t just let me go. But yeah, and I would say the one thing, I mean, I did learn, obviously, something from that is, you know, as I continue to go down, and in my own experiences, now, it’s, it is that it is to listen, because there was a period of time that we would we would meet as directors, and it was great. Like the the CEO would listen, like, he really wanted us to talk and share our ideas. Because we were the boots on the ground, right? We were in touch with the customers. And so getting feedback from us was really helpful. Because we listened to them and and take that to developers and say, hey, these are the features that we need, or we need to beef this up a little bit, you know, and, and we would bring that and for a long time, they would he would listen. But then he got to where he just didn’t, he just stopped. Yeah, can I share something really quick story, the disturbing thing of this barely happened. I’ve mentioned, you know, I have a real estate photography business. I do on the side. I was talking with my workout buddy, like this past week, we’re driving, we go really early in the morning. It’s like 5am, we’re driving to the gym. And I’m just talking about like, man, some of the things that come with the podcast is I need to scale my business so that I’m not doing everything myself, I can maybe get some people help me edit photos, or photographers. And I was one of things that I think the place to start is maybe like outsourcing editing of my photos, potentially, I don’t know. Because it takes so much time. And on some of the software users I really like. But it seems like I set things up and I processes the photos, but it takes so long. It’s kind of a bottleneck. And he’s just started asking me questions about like, Well, do you do this? And he’s like, Why is it taking so long? It’s like, that seems weird. And I had this moment of like, I felt defensive. Like, no, man I haven’t automated and I know that like, to me, it’s like, I know what I’m doing. I’ve been doing this for four years. And like, you know what I mean? But then I had to like, stop that. You have to fight that because you can like, get into that mindset of like defensiveness, and I know what I’m doing. I’ve been doing this, but then I like, step back. And that night, I actually had a photo shoot. And I was like, What if I tried a different way of editing the photos, something that came up in the conversation with him once I kind of like, pushed away that defensiveness, I was like, Well, I guess I could try this other thing, but I don’t think of the photos look as good. I didn’t know that it will save time, I need to doing this other way of processing the photos that took literally at least twice as fast. And the pictures ended up looking even better. Because I because I let myself step back and not be so precious about the process that I held so dear. You know, so anyways, Teresa you work out with? No, it’s got a max of zero if you’ve met max Jorgensen. He’s like a neighbor.
Yeah, no, but yeah, well, that’s always well, it’s great. I mean, you know, sometimes it takes a little bit of time to sink back. In, you know, it’s really interesting. I just went through this training. It’s called bu training, like b e. And then why are you? Oh, and I’ll tell you one of the things there was in there, and I’m not gonna share a ton of detail. But there was one thing that was in there, that’s called feedback. And the guy running the program, he just basically said, hey, look, this feedback is just informational. Right? You can take it if you want to, you don’t have to, if you don’t, you know, these are people that hadn’t really even known you for very long, right? Maybe a day. And, but then he said, Now sometimes, though, somebody’s gonna say something that’s gonna hurt, it’s gonna hurt down.
And you have to understand that if that’s the situation, there is something there, right, there is something that you need to pay attention to. Because it hurts for a reason. You know, that’s what you’re talking about it kind of you kind of got defensive, right?
It was really just interesting to me. You know, there were these people were saying things to me. And every single part of it, it was just striking me to the core. And I’m like, Yes. How in the heck do the these people even know this? Like, they’ve known me for like, maybe 10 hours. Right? And, and they’re just, it’s just sitting there and it sunk in. And even to the point where these past three weeks have been incredible. of of transitioning and saying, like, one of the things is
the one guy he told me, Kevin, you, you have a hard time saying no, you want to please everybody.
Because you say no. The problem that you have is that then you you you either sacrifice a lot of different things, you don’t get things done, and then you fail and then you think to yourself, I’m a failure, because I couldn’t get things done right. And yes, can relate to that. isn’t like it’s pretty easy right? in it but it’s kind of like your people pleaser. You might be a self sabotage. You’re right. And in fact,
I’ll
Just kind of jump into that here, self sabotaging. It’s such a common thing that we’re, we’re afraid of failure, we have fear of failure, or maybe even fear of success.
I worthy to have the success.
You know, and for the last maybe six or seven months or so, that’s been how I’ve been feeling is, I feel, hey, am I really worthy to be able to do this next thing? You know, I, I’ve got this business idea, and I’m really wanting to execute on it, it really leverages a lot of my skill sets that I already have. And it goes along with my passion of document management and, and helping other businesses be more efficient. But then I’m like, Okay, well, okay, there’s, there’s, there’s a lot of stuff that needs to get done, you know, and a lot of times, what we do is we sit there and we look at, here’s where we start, here’s our starting point, here’s our ending point. And then there’s all these steps in between, right? But it’s the first step that we put in place there. That always gets us to stop.
Phil Salter 21:11 Stop makes a stop, before we even get started. What do you mean, by the first step? You mean? Like, it could be like, I need to do XYZ, right? I need to get my business actually set up with the city in the state or whatever, right? And you’re like, I really don’t, I really don’t know how to do that. So that’s going to be my first step. And so I can’t do any of these other steps until I get that done. Right? And so then we just stopped before we even start.
So you think the answer is just do this step.
Or don’t let it stop you, like, do other things that you can do in the meantime? or?
Kevin Anderson 21:49 Yeah, you can do other things. In the meantime, like, if you really don’t understand how you’re doing that, or something like that, number one, you can find somebody that does and have them help you walk through it. For me, it was it was a matter of the technology that I wanted to use, because I’m going to be doing a lot of video and a lot of instructional side of things. It’s a course, right, I’ve had things and, or to buy the settings that I can put together and then they they can go in and download them and do the work and make them their business more efficient, right. And it’s just a matter of what you’re letting get in the way. It whether it’s getting started with, you know how to set up a business, an actual entity, or if the technology is getting in the way. It was really funny. You talked about this the other day with me, right? I told you that I’ve actually been considering doing a bot podcast and you were like, you know, I found that the best thing to do is just get started. Just do it. Just start, right. And that’s the big thing is you just have to get out of your own way. There’s a YouTube guy, his name’s Sean Cannell. And he does his channels, think media. And in his intro is you just got a, what is it? It’s, you just got to push record. Right? If you’re starting a YouTube channel, you just have to push record. He even talks about like, Hey, man, you’re your first like, 20, maybe 50 videos are gonna suck. You know? Yeah, you just got a quick record and get going. And all that technology will come in. When you’re ready, and you can start implementing certain things, and making your audio and your video better than then it comes right. But don’t just don’t stop, just keep going and starting record. Right. If there was any bit of advice that I would give anyone looking to start a business, if you’ve got a business idea, just get started. I think that that again, it’s the the thing that stops people the fastest is the start.
Phil Salter 23:57 Yes. Is that in that blank canvas feeling where it’s like, but then once you get that first stroke on there, you start to like, okay, add upon that. And then when you get to a certain stage, you’d like full confidence and a familiarity with the canvas. And you’re like, and you’ve even if you don’t know yet how it’s going to end, you feel like okay, I feel like I have some momentum here. I can build upon this and make a painting, if you will, you know. So but getting started
Kevin Anderson 24:26 with the imposter syndrome to that doll has
Phil Salter 24:28 Yes. Right?
Kevin Anderson 24:30 Because you might not feel like you’re the expert. But obviously, if you’re thinking that this is an idea that you want to do, you already have some kind of skill set. And there’s always people that have less skill set towards that thing that you’re trying to do than you. And so that might be your market, right? And that’s something to look at and consider is that you don’t have to be, you know, the best person at doing XYZ. Because there’s always somebody that’s there, they’re worse than you are
Phil Salter 25:00 Right, yeah. And there’s any challenge you can learn and you can figure it out. And that’s something I’ve learned, as I’ve changed career paths as I’ve tried to do new things even out on my own. Stop being intimidated by the fear of like, overwhelm, and like, Oh, I’m not technical enough, well, then you can become technical enough. You I mean, you can do anything. If you put your mind to it, and you put in the time and put in the sweat, but it ends up being not as sweaty as you expect, most of the time. You’re like, Okay, this wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. You know, that’s a beautiful part. Yeah. You always hear about people saying, like, grind, grind, grind, grind. It’s like, Yeah, that’s true. But like, once you get going, sometimes it’s not as much of a grant as you thought it was gonna be. Not that it’s easy, but you don’t I mean, like, it’s so things are so doable.
Kevin Anderson 25:47 Yeah, it there’s always work to do. Yeah, like, yeah, to make yourself get better at different things. But here’s the best part, you don’t even have to be an expert at everything about your business,
Phil Salter 25:57 either. There’s resources out there.
Kevin Anderson 26:01 There’s other resources, like, yeah, you might have to manage your books for the first little bit. But then you go out and you find a bookkeeper that’s going to help you manage, right? Yeah, you have to bring on somebody that’s going to help you support your customer base, because you just can’t do it. Otherwise, you’re you’re self out, then what? Yeah, but it, you know, I don’t know, it’s not all fun and games, either. Um, you know, when when we first met, the business that I had been doing was actually credit repair. And that, that was a really satisfying job, for me, satisfying business, I should say. I had repaired my own credit, and, and worked really hard at it. And then I just thought to myself, man, there are so many people out in the world today that they can use this. And that that imposter syndrome and the delay start that it took me about two years to actually start that business. And when I did it, it was very gratifying. But there were some things that went on to like things that in the day job that started to get in the way of my scanning, or my, my credit repair business, because of the fact that I was doing some projects that I had to work on at night where I couldn’t work during the day during the actual job, so that I had other responsibilities I had to do. And so I was making all these training videos and, and ended up spending most of the nights, you know, doing that, and that just took forever. And eventually, the business just kind of shriveled up all the clients that I had, just, you know, we were we finished everything up. And then we were just done. And the problem that I had is I wasn’t continuing doing any kind of marketing to bring on new customers. Hmm. You know, I had one one particular reefer, he was in the mortgage industry, and he was actually in Florida. And he was having, he would send me leads constantly. And he was really great. And it just, all of a sudden, he even dropped off, you know, and I found out later he he’d gotten cancer. And, you know, and, and so he just wasn’t in the business as much anymore, because he’s trying to get himself healthy again. And so but there was a point of time, where I didn’t know when to quit. You know, there was all these expenses coming in, that I was constantly dealing with. And at some point, you have to look at it and say, Man, is this the time to pull the plug? is, you know, are we flatlined here? Yeah. Or do we keep going. And, you know, it took a lot of effort to do marketing and get clients. For me, it was pretty tough at the time for me to do, and, you know, trying to talk to people when they wanted to talk to you during the day, but you have a day job, and you just can’t. And so I just decided, you know what, I need to go talk with somebody. And there was a guy that is friends with my parents, and he’s a big finance, you know, he’s, in my opinion, he’s, he’s a wizard with that kind of stuff. He’s, he’s, he’s been really successful in life. And so I just said, Hey, Don, can I come up and ask you some questions about business? And so, yeah, come on up, you know, and so we met and we talked about it and and I said, So when do you know? And he’s like, oh, Kevin, you just know, when you when you look at the finances, and you see what, what is it going to take to keep going? Well, you’ll know you’ll know when the time is. And I literally went back, came back home, sat down, kind of just looked at the numbers. And I said, You know what? This is, does it. We’re done. Yeah. And so pull the plug cancelled all the subscriptions of the software that we’re Using and things like that. And it just, it just got to that point where we were just done. And then, you know, of course, he came back into the rhythm of, I’ve got the security of a paycheck. And you know, and I love my job, really. But I’ve got to the point again, and here, this is kind of where we are currently, we got to the point, again, where I’ve got, you know, the entrepreneurial itch that, yeah, I want, I gotta scratch it, right. And so, I’ve got two businesses that I’m right at the ground floor, getting ready to launch have really good conversation with a mentor, just this week, on Monday, I want to talk to him about other things too, about my current job and,
and opportunities there for his business and stuff like that. And, and then the book came away learning a bunch of stuff that I could do to help my business grow here. And that that’s been really incredible. And one of the things is talking about the numbers, you know, looking at the numbers and deciding when certain things are gonna happen, right? When are you going to go in and make it so that you’re, you know, you’re speeding the things up to make more profit? are you raising prices? When do you raise prices, and you know, when to see the vision. And, and those were all big things for me to take away.
Phil Salter 31:34 Okay, like a roadmap or like, benchmarks that you can shoot for. And it also could be something to gauge like, Okay, this is working, is this hit, you know, successful? Am I able to hit these marks? You know,
Kevin Anderson 31:46 yes. Yeah, I mean, that was that was part of it, right? is you got to kind of lay out the numbers, and then you start backing into it. And then you say, okay, so for the first so many customers, this is we’re gonna charge this much. And then but once once we get to that customer number, and it’s like, once we get to 10, that’s when we’re gonna raise the price. In if you don’t determine that beforehand, he says, It’s so hard to just be like,
well wait a little bit longer.
But he’s like, No, no, you set the benchmark, you say it’s 10, or 20, or whatever your number is gonna be, whatever you decide, you put that number in place, and then you stick to it. And then you might say, and then six months down the road, we’re raising it again, and then another six months down the road or raising again. And he says he, the example that he used, that I really liked is you’re on a bus and you’re driving the bus. And there’s so many seats on a bus that your customers considered. But if you if the value of your product or your offering that you’re you’re offering there is, is there and they see value in it, by raising the price, it’s just going to keep them on the bus, they have that value. If they don’t think that the value is there, they’re going to get off the bus. And guess what that does, it opens up another seat for somebody to come in on the bus. The price that you’re asking for, for the value, they obviously see that they’re gonna
Phil Salter 33:10 come on. Yeah, and that that is hard. That’s a hard one. In fact, with my photography business, I raised a gotten better equipment and improve my quality, and I raised my prices. But I’ve just kind of been slowly like, with certain customers saying, Hey, this is my new price. But I’ve some that I haven’t done that with. And that’s hard, you know, to like, make that call. But that’s something that’s pertinent or relevant, I guess. But it sounds like, honestly, it’s really cool to see like looking to mentors, and like this, obviously can be applied to any plan financially, whether it’s starting a business, or like an investing plan, like, decide ahead of time, what’s my goal? What are my benchmarks? What am I trying to accomplish, and sticking to it. So it’s not just like, on a whim, flip flopping around what you’re doing. And that’s one thing I’m working on as well. But currently, you have these businesses are kind of launching to you, or the point that you could say what they are the name.
Kevin Anderson 34:06 So one of them is a scanning Bureau. So we’re, I’m, I’m going out and looking for clients that, you know, they may. So for instance, my big target is any business that maybe is going to be still working from home during COVID. And the thing about that, right is that as a business, if everybody’s working from home, we’ve got all these files that are at the office. So every now and again, somebody’s still having to drive into the office to access the files. And so, to me, if if I can help any business go in capture and digitize those documents, put them into a an environment like Microsoft SharePoint or something like that, to then be able to give access to all their customers, all their their employees to be able to access those files. now all the sudden, you can keep people working from home and Creating, you know, a better culture maybe, obviously, not everybody works great at home. But the fact is, is that if you give them the tools at their fingertips, then they can be more successful in the job, right? Yeah, yeah. So for me that that’s a big aspect of it. So, you know, I go in, I grab the boxes of documents, and I bring them in and scan everything. And I’ve got a nice big scanner that sits right here on my optimize shoulder here. And you just, I just go in, and I convert everything to digital formats, index everything and things like that. And then I deliver it back via SharePoint. And then if they want the documents back, then we give him the documents back or we shred them, you know, whatever, whatever their decision is.
Phil Salter 35:44 So that’s one more pivoting, right, you have these skill sets this knowledge, you see the need, because you understand document management, and the needs, and you can use that your skills and pivot and say, This isn’t completely different, what you’ve done, but you’ve kind of built and kind of didn’t move at all right? You know,
Kevin Anderson 36:01 if you really look like I still work for file center, you know, is the word for now, and they have an amazing software that helps people do this. But then you get people again, they get in their own way, and they don’t get everything digitized, and they don’t have everything organized the way that they need to get it organized, or something like that. And so that’s what you know, file center will focus on but then, you know, we have lots of times where customers call up and say, Hey, do you do you know, anybody that scan for documents, you know, could come in and scan for us? And I just kept saying no. And it just happened to be that. I was working with one of the clients that needed some training. And I just said, Hey, you know, what, what? Like, what if I scan those documents for you? And he’s like, do you do that? And I was like, well, I’ve done it before. And and I just, I just said, Yeah, let’s let’s do it, let’s have a conversation, at least. And so I drove to salt on one of the days there, took a day off of work and drove up there and had a conversation with them. And it was it was something that was really interesting to me. I tried starting a scanning bureau before. And I’ve even for years now, like for the last, I don’t know, probably three or four years, my friend Derek Turner would probably attest to this that. But I’ve been talking about it for a long time, but just never executed. And then just that one day, like I was just sitting there and it was just that start. It was that pivot moment, right. It was like,
Unknown Speaker 37:31 Huh, let’s,
Kevin Anderson 37:32 let’s stop getting in the way of yourself. And let’s go look at what we can do. And if it pans out great. If it doesn’t, then oh, whoa. So that’s just another thing that we maybe had failed on. But learn from, you know, if if you look at the most successful person, well, we always look at them at their this top of this mountain, right? And then we look at them and they’re like, man, they’re so successful. I wish I could be like them, you know, and you don’t see any of the things that they failed at or anything. But if you really think about it, that mountain their own. It’s a mountain of failures. Yeah. And they just kept climbing. They were they learned from what they failed at. And then they just kept climbing. And now they’re, they’re at the top. And then we think it was all easy for him. But really, really tough work in there. They just didn’t come overnight.
Phil Salter 38:25 Yes. So that just so I thought earlier, when you’re talking is like, we always hear the success stories of like the business and how it just like, I grew, I kept grinding and it’s just boom, boom. But yeah, but what about all the things leading up to that? Sometimes you do hear those stories, because they are interesting, but you’re right. It’s a mountain of learning and failures. And every failure is better than having not tried. Because the things you learn like it’s, it’s so valuable. I think it’s
Kevin Anderson 38:50 choice. It’s your choice, you can you can choose to shrink back away, or choose to move forward. And exactly. There’s a book by a guy named David Williams, he was he had been the CEO of a company called fishbowl inventory. And he wrote this book, and it’s called failing forward or I think is what he said is the name of the book. And I just kept thinking about that, like, Oh, yeah, you can, you can fail and you can shrink back. Or you can say, Okay, what, what was the mistake here? What did I learn? And then
Phil Salter 39:24 yeah, it’s it’s a skill. Bad Kevin, it’s your story is really interesting. And I just appreciate so much who’s sharing it? And I think it’s real takeaway here is, I mean, my original thought was like, Hey, man, I know you’ve pivoted a lot, but it’s also like a story about getting started, you know, pulling the trigger and taking that first step. And I almost feel like that’s the name of this episode is probably taking the first step right with Kevin Anderson. So I just appreciate so much your time dude and your and your expertise and, and your story. So what’s the name of your company man to sleep people can find you.
Kevin Anderson 40:01 So the name of the company is Rocky Mountain scanning. Find it by going to rmscanning.com don’t judge the website yet, because I didn’t. I didn’t know where to go yet. And so I just kind of threw something out. I had to get something out. I wasn’t gonna let it stopped me. And and right now we’re in the develop of development of a new website. So don’t don’t Yeah,
Phil Salter 40:24 but it’s live. Someone could find you.
Kevin Anderson 40:26 on it. Live I started. And that’s the key factor.
Phil Salter 40:29 Yes, you started. It’s exactly right. You build upon that. And maybe the website isn’t where you want to be. But I know that your process is there for for scanning, and you and you can do it and you do a great job. And you’re getting more clients because of that. So good for you, man. Thanks again. So if anybody has any questions, either for Kevin that I can pass along, get his answer. For me. topic ideas, you can email me at No Better Time. podcast@gmail.com. But also now you can reach me at contact at No Better Time. podcast.com either one will work. And I’d love to hear from you. But please, please rate and review the podcast on Apple that really helps people find the podcast. And just if nothing else, please listen, because I love that. That really helps, too. Thanks so much, Kevin again. And today you guys just take that first step. If you’re thinking about something, whether it be learning a new skill, starting a business, preparing for retirement, saving anything, take that first step even if it’s $10 a month to put towards something, do something. Like I say something is always better than nothing. All right, man. You guys have a great day and Thanks, Kevin. Have a good one. But bye
My brother Matt returns to further discuss the concept of passive income. I also have some very specific updates on how I was able to make my photography business more passive in a way that will free up literally hours of my time per shoot, and essentially doubling what I make for each hour I put towards my photoshoots. You may ask, “how does that math even work?”. Listen and find out!
This is Phil Salter, with no better time. And I’m here with Kevin Anderson, my good friend. And I guess fellow entrepreneur, you may be wondering if you’re watching this what I am doing in a tub. I’m actually at my parents house, because my dad had saw deliver today. And I took some time off to go help install it in their in his new house. And of course, they only delivered half the sod. I need all these people here to help. And they’re like, oh, oops, sorry. And it’s like, okay, people took time off. Like, I’m like, you need to get them to give you a refund or a discount or something. But anyways, so I’m here in the tub, because of the lighting seemed pretty decent. And also seems pretty funny. But I’m here with Kevin, like I said, How you doing, Kevin? I’m doing great. Thanks for having me. Now, thanks for coming on. Kevin is someone that actually lives near me. And we became friends. Like it’s been a few years now. Right? At least three years or more, right? Not long after you moved in? Yeah, it is all started with three years for you to have. Yes, I’m like that I’ve been living here about four and a half years. So maybe. I think I’d been here about a year though, before we really became friends. Like we knew each other. And we’ve seen each other at church and things like that. But we have a mutual friend, Todd barley, who I’m trying to get on this podcast as well. He’s like a career and life coach. But he’s very busy, very successful, busy guy.
But, uh, we start I started doing movie nights with him. And then you started joining us? Yeah, I remember that. It’s,
Kevin Anderson 1:33 it’s been a while. COVID kind of messes with that kind of stuff, right? Yes. Yes. And then once you get out of the habit of doing things with your friends, easy to like, stay in the habit of not doing things, unfortunately. Unfortunately. Yeah. But I guess the thing about you that I’ve always been really impressed about, it’s like, how you’re always looking for opportunities to learn new things, try new concepts for side, side, gigs, side hustles, but also really doing awesome things with your like career as well on top of that, and I just wanted to kind of talk about, if you tell your story of kind of when you’ve known when to pivot when you how you recognize opportunities, and people can kind of learn from that into to recognize opportunities, and also know when maybe to pivot and change what you’re going for, as well. Yeah, you know, it’s always been interesting, because growing up, it was just kind of something that I did, my brothers always would say that I could probably sell ice to an Eskimo or, you know, bad breath to dog or something like that.
It was just, like, for me, I’m a little different than all the rest of my brothers, my, my brothers are very, you know, academic type people. I wasn’t as much. I mean, I enjoyed school and things like that. But really, when it came down to it, people were the things that I loved. And so I don’t know, I, I started there as pretty young kid. In fact, when I got home for my LDS Church mission,
I started my own landscaping business, for instance, you know, I was kind of waiting, it’d be to go to school, and whether or not I was going to get accepted and things like that. And so just starting, you know, business just to kind of keep me busy. And that was, that was kind of, really the start of the entrepreneurial mindset for me. I really enjoyed it. In fact, I wish that that was one regret that I probably had is that I didn’t push a little harder to continue to do that business.
But you know, how parents are sometimes and don’t get me wrong, I love my parents, and I love the guidance that they give. But in this particular case, like, it could have opened up a lot, but they, they really wanted me to go back to school. And I did do and I thought at the time school was probably the right thing for me. But I found out after I left that, you know, that there was a potential job that was like a $7,000 a month contract, you know, that I could have could have probably captured and, and,
and so going into school, though, you know, I mean, even there, you know, I went through the whole first year of school
went knock doors during the summer selling pest control. Right there at the end of this first school year there though, I torn up my knee pretty bad and had to have surgery at playing basketball. And and so when I came back to school, I was really hoping to go and, and kind of further maybe, maybe try out for some, you know, web school or something, you know, some community college basketball team or something like that. And so I was making tape and everything like that, and the year before and cut to the point where
we were taking a big I was taking the beginning basketball class to kind of get my feet back and went up four rebounds, took my legs out, again, took money
Just like when you landed it now I just when I went up we were doing, like when we were just doing a simple three man weave drill and, and I returned money. And so that pretty much ended any dreams of playing basketball, and college. I had no aspirations to play in the NBA or anything, but it would have been fun to play a community level program. So, so what was really interesting though, at the school at the time, there’s no jobs. It’s a really small town, right? Rick’s college or BYU Idaho is what it was. And we’re up in Rexburg, Idaho. And there’s all these students and all the jobs get taken really quick. And so
I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay there. I was dropping out of school, though. Because I couldn’t get up and down the hill to get to school. And one day, and I’ll credit this guy here. One day, I’m just making homemade bread. Right. And this is just the continued journey of this entrepreneurial thoughts, right. So I’m making bread here in this guy. His name’s Gary Cox. He lives in the apartment just right across the way. He comes in to see one of my roommates and he comes in and he goes, Whoa, what’s that smell?
Tell me. And so I gave him a slice, you know, it just literally come out of the oven. And you know, slathered on some butter and cinnamon and sugar. And he’s like, oh, man, I pay money for this. So like, Ding ding. Yeah. So that night, I sacrificed the bread that I’ve just had made. I cut all of it up. And I walked around to all the apartments in my apartment complex. And I took orders. And I think I took 80 orders that night. Wow. of homemade bread, you know, and it was fun. It was a, it was quite the experience, because I was doing this all inside of my apartment. And I had no hands. I did everything by hand. I did not have a mixer. So I did everything by hand. You know. And so
it ended up being that I just went, you know, usually from about seven, eight o’clock at night until about six, seven o’clock in the morning. In making bread. He said at the time you weren’t in school, though, right? So you had.
Phil Salter 7:16 And it was hard to find a job because it was like limited opportunities and students would just snatch him up. Okay.
Kevin Anderson 7:23 Three weeks into school, right? And so all gone. Yeah.
Phil Salter 7:28 So you needed an opportunity, right? So would you say because of a need, you were more likely to notice, like the opportunity, or you think it’s hard to say maybe it’s hard to say in that particular instance? Yeah. But it’s pretty in your face, like I would pay for this, oh, wait a minute, you know.
Kevin Anderson 7:46 But what was really interesting, and this is something that some people need to realize when when they are going down the road of a business, whether it be a side hustle, like making bread or something like that.
I saw my order start to drop. But I started to look at it, I saw I was noticing that it was the girls that were stopping, they weren’t really ordering bread anymore. And so then, you know, of course, for me, I’ve got to understand why, you know, because they had been ordering like two or three loaves at a time. And like each girl, like, I mean, we were we were pushing out a lot of bread. And we probably were cranking out upwards around 120 to 150 loaves at night. And
so I walked over and I started asking all the girls, why they weren’t ordering. And they were like, Well, Kevin, it’s white bread. And I’m like, Okay, I’m a guy, right? So I’m like, What does that even mean? You know? And so, Kevin, you know, it’s we just got to be able to have something more like a wheat bread or, or something like that. And so immediately I just said, Oh, well, I need to pivot. So then the next thing I did is I went home and I called my mom, right? What does anybody do when they’re when they’re trying to figure something out? They call mom or dad. And so mom says, Oh yeah, I’ve got a recipe for that. So then I drive down to Idaho Falls and I pick up all the supplies I need for wheat bread. And then I make a bunch of the wheat bread, bring it over and give you know some of the bread away to the girls and and all of a sudden my my sales go up right back up. Right? Well, so then even even then, like I started to pivot again. I said, Oh, okay, well, that’s white and wheat. Well, what else could I make? So I’m gonna cinnamon bread, cinnamon raisin bread, dark rye bread, you know, the Russia, Russia experiences for me, you know, on my church mission. Black bread was just that was the that was the stuff man. It was so good.
So so then we’ll fast forward here. And I kind of got back into it where I just needed to work for somebody. And I felt comfortable, right and it got to the point where
You know, you get that itch again, going down the road, but he started second guessing yourself sometimes, you know, maybe a venture doesn’t work out just right. And that part’s that part’s kind of frustrating sometimes in the journey.
But, you know, I moved down to Arizona, I was working for University of Phoenix and
I had a buddy of mine that convinced me to do like a, an MLM company and
in the finance industry, and so then I moved up to here to Utah. And, of course, starting a finance business is incredibly difficult as it is and takes time, and to start really seeing money. So of course, I’m trying to find a job and delivering newspapers hating every aspect of this. And that’s when I found the company that I started working for. It was a technology company software company that does document management.
And they were a great company.
I got in pretty, pretty early into the the company, they were probably around for a few years beforehand, and started out in tech support and started to climb the ladder, you know, and it was a lot of fun experience. And, in fact, now I mean, I’ve been in the document management industry now for 16 years now. Oh, wow. It’s been you tell for 16 years or so? Yeah, it was 2005. So yeah, 1616 years now. Right. So if I’m following what you’re saying you, you’re saying you did this kind of bread thing, which obviously had a certain lifespan, then you moved on and got like, kind of your normal job working for someone else, you know, and you felt comfortable on that you said, and maybe there’s a certain, like maybe vicious perceived security around that, right? Yeah. And here you are in your story, where now you’re working for this company, for at least a certain period of time. Okay. Yeah. And I was at this company, the company’s name is E file cabinet. I was at that company for eight and a half years, almost. Okay. And had gotten to the point where I was in a management position and, and really loving it.
But there was a lot of things that were changing at that company, decisions are being being made and things like that, that I didn’t necessarily agree with.
And it just happened to be like, I got to a point where I was actually starting to look at, okay, well, how do I jump ship from here, I really believe in the product that they have, you know, the document software, I was very, very passionate about it. And, but I didn’t want to work for them anymore. But this is their software that they had developed as a company that you really liked. It wasn’t a software they were using. Okay, this is a software that they had developed. And, you know, I went from support to sales to channel management, business development, and then client relations, where I was really managing all the training and support teams and stuff like that.
And, you know, and I just looked at it, and I said, I really want to keep continue to do this, I just don’t necessarily want to work for these guys anymore. So I started looking at the possibility of starting my own company, a consulting company. And then
I just happen to have said something that must have sparked some trigger for them.
They had hired some more salespeople. And I thought that we needed to hire more support people. And I had been talking about it amongst my peers, of the directors. And I, apparently, and no one’s really, truly told me the reason why they let me go. But it was, I heard the rumor was because I disagreed with them. And that the CEO had overheard me talking about how we needed to stop the bleeding of support, you know, support was losing a lot of ground with support or customer base, because they just couldn’t get to them fast enough. And it was just because we were short handed.
Oh, here, right.
Phil Salter 14:10 Yeah, good to say anything you feel like you’ve learned from that experience? That not saying you did something wrong, but that you would have done differently? Or is it just No, no,
Kevin Anderson 14:21 not necessarily. In that case? You know, I, I didn’t feel like I had done anything wrong. I was talking to directors, you know, it was people on the same level was me.
And I just thought, Hey, why don’t we try and convince them to, to do something a little different? What instead of hiring more salespeople, let’s hire a couple more support people and maybe that’ll help out and then when we do bring on more salespeople, then we can help just better support our customer base. Maybe what to learn from that is just if you’re in a position at a higher level, and people want to talk about improving, you can’t be too precious about your little ideas, and not be willing to listen to
constructive feedback, you know, because that’s a failure, because even if you were wrong, let’s talk about it and tell me why I’m wrong. Don’t just let me go. But yeah, and I would say the one thing, I mean, I did learn, obviously, something from that is, you know, as I continue to go down, and in my own experiences, now, it’s, it is that it is to listen, because there was a period of time that we would we would meet as directors, and it was great. Like the the CEO would listen, like, he really wanted us to talk and share our ideas. Because we were the boots on the ground, right? We were in touch with the customers. And so getting feedback from us was really helpful. Because we listened to them and and take that to developers and say, hey, these are the features that we need, or we need to beef this up a little bit, you know, and, and we would bring that and for a long time, they would he would listen. But then he got to where he just didn’t, he just stopped. Yeah, can I share something really quick story, the disturbing thing of this barely happened. I’ve mentioned, you know, I have a real estate photography business. I do on the side. I was talking with my workout buddy, like this past week, we’re driving, we go really early in the morning. It’s like 5am, we’re driving to the gym. And I’m just talking about like, man, some of the things that come with the podcast is I need to scale my business so that I’m not doing everything myself, I can maybe get some people help me edit photos, or photographers. And I was one of things that I think the place to start is maybe like outsourcing editing of my photos, potentially, I don’t know. Because it takes so much time. And on some of the software users I really like. But it seems like I set things up and I processes the photos, but it takes so long. It’s kind of a bottleneck. And he’s just started asking me questions about like, Well, do you do this? And he’s like, Why is it taking so long? It’s like, that seems weird. And I had this moment of like, I felt defensive. Like, no, man I haven’t automated and I know that like, to me, it’s like, I know what I’m doing. I’ve been doing this for four years. And like, you know what I mean? But then I had to like, stop that. You have to fight that because you can like, get into that mindset of like defensiveness, and I know what I’m doing. I’ve been doing this, but then I like, step back. And that night, I actually had a photo shoot. And I was like, What if I tried a different way of editing the photos, something that came up in the conversation with him once I kind of like, pushed away that defensiveness, I was like, Well, I guess I could try this other thing, but I don’t think of the photos look as good. I didn’t know that it will save time, I need to doing this other way of processing the photos that took literally at least twice as fast. And the pictures ended up looking even better. Because I because I let myself step back and not be so precious about the process that I held so dear. You know, so anyways, Teresa you work out with? No, it’s got a max of zero if you’ve met max Jorgensen. He’s like a neighbor.
Yeah, no, but yeah, well, that’s always well, it’s great. I mean, you know, sometimes it takes a little bit of time to sink back. In, you know, it’s really interesting. I just went through this training. It’s called bu training, like b e. And then why are you? Oh, and I’ll tell you one of the things there was in there, and I’m not gonna share a ton of detail. But there was one thing that was in there, that’s called feedback. And the guy running the program, he just basically said, hey, look, this feedback is just informational. Right? You can take it if you want to, you don’t have to, if you don’t, you know, these are people that hadn’t really even known you for very long, right? Maybe a day. And, but then he said, Now sometimes, though, somebody’s gonna say something that’s gonna hurt, it’s gonna hurt down.
And you have to understand that if that’s the situation, there is something there, right, there is something that you need to pay attention to. Because it hurts for a reason. You know, that’s what you’re talking about it kind of you kind of got defensive, right?
It was really just interesting to me. You know, there were these people were saying things to me. And every single part of it, it was just striking me to the core. And I’m like, Yes. How in the heck do the these people even know this? Like, they’ve known me for like, maybe 10 hours. Right? And, and they’re just, it’s just sitting there and it sunk in. And even to the point where these past three weeks have been incredible. of of transitioning and saying, like, one of the things is
the one guy he told me, Kevin, you, you have a hard time saying no, you want to please everybody.
Because you say no. The problem that you have is that then you you you either sacrifice a lot of different things, you don’t get things done, and then you fail and then you think to yourself, I’m a failure, because I couldn’t get things done right. And yes, can relate to that. isn’t like it’s pretty easy right? in it but it’s kind of like your people pleaser. You might be a self sabotage. You’re right. And in fact,
I’ll
Just kind of jump into that here, self sabotaging. It’s such a common thing that we’re, we’re afraid of failure, we have fear of failure, or maybe even fear of success.
I worthy to have the success.
You know, and for the last maybe six or seven months or so, that’s been how I’ve been feeling is, I feel, hey, am I really worthy to be able to do this next thing? You know, I, I’ve got this business idea, and I’m really wanting to execute on it, it really leverages a lot of my skill sets that I already have. And it goes along with my passion of document management and, and helping other businesses be more efficient. But then I’m like, Okay, well, okay, there’s, there’s, there’s a lot of stuff that needs to get done, you know, and a lot of times, what we do is we sit there and we look at, here’s where we start, here’s our starting point, here’s our ending point. And then there’s all these steps in between, right? But it’s the first step that we put in place there. That always gets us to stop.
Phil Salter 21:11 Stop makes a stop, before we even get started. What do you mean, by the first step? You mean? Like, it could be like, I need to do XYZ, right? I need to get my business actually set up with the city in the state or whatever, right? And you’re like, I really don’t, I really don’t know how to do that. So that’s going to be my first step. And so I can’t do any of these other steps until I get that done. Right? And so then we just stopped before we even start.
So you think the answer is just do this step.
Or don’t let it stop you, like, do other things that you can do in the meantime? or?
Kevin Anderson 21:49 Yeah, you can do other things. In the meantime, like, if you really don’t understand how you’re doing that, or something like that, number one, you can find somebody that does and have them help you walk through it. For me, it was it was a matter of the technology that I wanted to use, because I’m going to be doing a lot of video and a lot of instructional side of things. It’s a course, right, I’ve had things and, or to buy the settings that I can put together and then they they can go in and download them and do the work and make them their business more efficient, right. And it’s just a matter of what you’re letting get in the way. It whether it’s getting started with, you know how to set up a business, an actual entity, or if the technology is getting in the way. It was really funny. You talked about this the other day with me, right? I told you that I’ve actually been considering doing a bot podcast and you were like, you know, I found that the best thing to do is just get started. Just do it. Just start, right. And that’s the big thing is you just have to get out of your own way. There’s a YouTube guy, his name’s Sean Cannell. And he does his channels, think media. And in his intro is you just got a, what is it? It’s, you just got to push record. Right? If you’re starting a YouTube channel, you just have to push record. He even talks about like, Hey, man, you’re your first like, 20, maybe 50 videos are gonna suck. You know? Yeah, you just got a quick record and get going. And all that technology will come in. When you’re ready, and you can start implementing certain things, and making your audio and your video better than then it comes right. But don’t just don’t stop, just keep going and starting record. Right. If there was any bit of advice that I would give anyone looking to start a business, if you’ve got a business idea, just get started. I think that that again, it’s the the thing that stops people the fastest is the start.
Phil Salter 23:57 Yes. Is that in that blank canvas feeling where it’s like, but then once you get that first stroke on there, you start to like, okay, add upon that. And then when you get to a certain stage, you’d like full confidence and a familiarity with the canvas. And you’re like, and you’ve even if you don’t know yet how it’s going to end, you feel like okay, I feel like I have some momentum here. I can build upon this and make a painting, if you will, you know. So but getting started
Kevin Anderson 24:26 with the imposter syndrome to that doll has
Phil Salter 24:28 Yes. Right?
Kevin Anderson 24:30 Because you might not feel like you’re the expert. But obviously, if you’re thinking that this is an idea that you want to do, you already have some kind of skill set. And there’s always people that have less skill set towards that thing that you’re trying to do than you. And so that might be your market, right? And that’s something to look at and consider is that you don’t have to be, you know, the best person at doing XYZ. Because there’s always somebody that’s there, they’re worse than you are
Phil Salter 25:00 Right, yeah. And there’s any challenge you can learn and you can figure it out. And that’s something I’ve learned, as I’ve changed career paths as I’ve tried to do new things even out on my own. Stop being intimidated by the fear of like, overwhelm, and like, Oh, I’m not technical enough, well, then you can become technical enough. You I mean, you can do anything. If you put your mind to it, and you put in the time and put in the sweat, but it ends up being not as sweaty as you expect, most of the time. You’re like, Okay, this wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. You know, that’s a beautiful part. Yeah. You always hear about people saying, like, grind, grind, grind, grind. It’s like, Yeah, that’s true. But like, once you get going, sometimes it’s not as much of a grant as you thought it was gonna be. Not that it’s easy, but you don’t I mean, like, it’s so things are so doable.
Kevin Anderson 25:47 Yeah, it there’s always work to do. Yeah, like, yeah, to make yourself get better at different things. But here’s the best part, you don’t even have to be an expert at everything about your business,
Phil Salter 25:57 either. There’s resources out there.
Kevin Anderson 26:01 There’s other resources, like, yeah, you might have to manage your books for the first little bit. But then you go out and you find a bookkeeper that’s going to help you manage, right? Yeah, you have to bring on somebody that’s going to help you support your customer base, because you just can’t do it. Otherwise, you’re you’re self out, then what? Yeah, but it, you know, I don’t know, it’s not all fun and games, either. Um, you know, when when we first met, the business that I had been doing was actually credit repair. And that, that was a really satisfying job, for me, satisfying business, I should say. I had repaired my own credit, and, and worked really hard at it. And then I just thought to myself, man, there are so many people out in the world today that they can use this. And that that imposter syndrome and the delay start that it took me about two years to actually start that business. And when I did it, it was very gratifying. But there were some things that went on to like things that in the day job that started to get in the way of my scanning, or my, my credit repair business, because of the fact that I was doing some projects that I had to work on at night where I couldn’t work during the day during the actual job, so that I had other responsibilities I had to do. And so I was making all these training videos and, and ended up spending most of the nights, you know, doing that, and that just took forever. And eventually, the business just kind of shriveled up all the clients that I had, just, you know, we were we finished everything up. And then we were just done. And the problem that I had is I wasn’t continuing doing any kind of marketing to bring on new customers. Hmm. You know, I had one one particular reefer, he was in the mortgage industry, and he was actually in Florida. And he was having, he would send me leads constantly. And he was really great. And it just, all of a sudden, he even dropped off, you know, and I found out later he he’d gotten cancer. And, you know, and, and so he just wasn’t in the business as much anymore, because he’s trying to get himself healthy again. And so but there was a point of time, where I didn’t know when to quit. You know, there was all these expenses coming in, that I was constantly dealing with. And at some point, you have to look at it and say, Man, is this the time to pull the plug? is, you know, are we flatlined here? Yeah. Or do we keep going. And, you know, it took a lot of effort to do marketing and get clients. For me, it was pretty tough at the time for me to do, and, you know, trying to talk to people when they wanted to talk to you during the day, but you have a day job, and you just can’t. And so I just decided, you know what, I need to go talk with somebody. And there was a guy that is friends with my parents, and he’s a big finance, you know, he’s, in my opinion, he’s, he’s a wizard with that kind of stuff. He’s, he’s, he’s been really successful in life. And so I just said, Hey, Don, can I come up and ask you some questions about business? And so, yeah, come on up, you know, and so we met and we talked about it and and I said, So when do you know? And he’s like, oh, Kevin, you just know, when you when you look at the finances, and you see what, what is it going to take to keep going? Well, you’ll know you’ll know when the time is. And I literally went back, came back home, sat down, kind of just looked at the numbers. And I said, You know what? This is, does it. We’re done. Yeah. And so pull the plug cancelled all the subscriptions of the software that we’re Using and things like that. And it just, it just got to that point where we were just done. And then, you know, of course, he came back into the rhythm of, I’ve got the security of a paycheck. And you know, and I love my job, really. But I’ve got to the point again, and here, this is kind of where we are currently, we got to the point, again, where I’ve got, you know, the entrepreneurial itch that, yeah, I want, I gotta scratch it, right. And so, I’ve got two businesses that I’m right at the ground floor, getting ready to launch have really good conversation with a mentor, just this week, on Monday, I want to talk to him about other things too, about my current job and,
and opportunities there for his business and stuff like that. And, and then the book came away learning a bunch of stuff that I could do to help my business grow here. And that that’s been really incredible. And one of the things is talking about the numbers, you know, looking at the numbers and deciding when certain things are gonna happen, right? When are you going to go in and make it so that you’re, you know, you’re speeding the things up to make more profit? are you raising prices? When do you raise prices, and you know, when to see the vision. And, and those were all big things for me to take away.
Phil Salter 31:34 Okay, like a roadmap or like, benchmarks that you can shoot for. And it also could be something to gauge like, Okay, this is working, is this hit, you know, successful? Am I able to hit these marks? You know,
Kevin Anderson 31:46 yes. Yeah, I mean, that was that was part of it, right? is you got to kind of lay out the numbers, and then you start backing into it. And then you say, okay, so for the first so many customers, this is we’re gonna charge this much. And then but once once we get to that customer number, and it’s like, once we get to 10, that’s when we’re gonna raise the price. In if you don’t determine that beforehand, he says, It’s so hard to just be like,
well wait a little bit longer.
But he’s like, No, no, you set the benchmark, you say it’s 10, or 20, or whatever your number is gonna be, whatever you decide, you put that number in place, and then you stick to it. And then you might say, and then six months down the road, we’re raising it again, and then another six months down the road or raising again. And he says he, the example that he used, that I really liked is you’re on a bus and you’re driving the bus. And there’s so many seats on a bus that your customers considered. But if you if the value of your product or your offering that you’re you’re offering there is, is there and they see value in it, by raising the price, it’s just going to keep them on the bus, they have that value. If they don’t think that the value is there, they’re going to get off the bus. And guess what that does, it opens up another seat for somebody to come in on the bus. The price that you’re asking for, for the value, they obviously see that they’re gonna
Phil Salter 33:10 come on. Yeah, and that that is hard. That’s a hard one. In fact, with my photography business, I raised a gotten better equipment and improve my quality, and I raised my prices. But I’ve just kind of been slowly like, with certain customers saying, Hey, this is my new price. But I’ve some that I haven’t done that with. And that’s hard, you know, to like, make that call. But that’s something that’s pertinent or relevant, I guess. But it sounds like, honestly, it’s really cool to see like looking to mentors, and like this, obviously can be applied to any plan financially, whether it’s starting a business, or like an investing plan, like, decide ahead of time, what’s my goal? What are my benchmarks? What am I trying to accomplish, and sticking to it. So it’s not just like, on a whim, flip flopping around what you’re doing. And that’s one thing I’m working on as well. But currently, you have these businesses are kind of launching to you, or the point that you could say what they are the name.
Kevin Anderson 34:06 So one of them is a scanning Bureau. So we’re, I’m, I’m going out and looking for clients that, you know, they may. So for instance, my big target is any business that maybe is going to be still working from home during COVID. And the thing about that, right is that as a business, if everybody’s working from home, we’ve got all these files that are at the office. So every now and again, somebody’s still having to drive into the office to access the files. And so, to me, if if I can help any business go in capture and digitize those documents, put them into a an environment like Microsoft SharePoint or something like that, to then be able to give access to all their customers, all their their employees to be able to access those files. now all the sudden, you can keep people working from home and Creating, you know, a better culture maybe, obviously, not everybody works great at home. But the fact is, is that if you give them the tools at their fingertips, then they can be more successful in the job, right? Yeah, yeah. So for me that that’s a big aspect of it. So, you know, I go in, I grab the boxes of documents, and I bring them in and scan everything. And I’ve got a nice big scanner that sits right here on my optimize shoulder here. And you just, I just go in, and I convert everything to digital formats, index everything and things like that. And then I deliver it back via SharePoint. And then if they want the documents back, then we give him the documents back or we shred them, you know, whatever, whatever their decision is.
Phil Salter 35:44 So that’s one more pivoting, right, you have these skill sets this knowledge, you see the need, because you understand document management, and the needs, and you can use that your skills and pivot and say, This isn’t completely different, what you’ve done, but you’ve kind of built and kind of didn’t move at all right? You know,
Kevin Anderson 36:01 if you really look like I still work for file center, you know, is the word for now, and they have an amazing software that helps people do this. But then you get people again, they get in their own way, and they don’t get everything digitized, and they don’t have everything organized the way that they need to get it organized, or something like that. And so that’s what you know, file center will focus on but then, you know, we have lots of times where customers call up and say, Hey, do you do you know, anybody that scan for documents, you know, could come in and scan for us? And I just kept saying no. And it just happened to be that. I was working with one of the clients that needed some training. And I just said, Hey, you know, what, what? Like, what if I scan those documents for you? And he’s like, do you do that? And I was like, well, I’ve done it before. And and I just, I just said, Yeah, let’s let’s do it, let’s have a conversation, at least. And so I drove to salt on one of the days there, took a day off of work and drove up there and had a conversation with them. And it was it was something that was really interesting to me. I tried starting a scanning bureau before. And I’ve even for years now, like for the last, I don’t know, probably three or four years, my friend Derek Turner would probably attest to this that. But I’ve been talking about it for a long time, but just never executed. And then just that one day, like I was just sitting there and it was just that start. It was that pivot moment, right. It was like,
Unknown Speaker 37:31 Huh, let’s,
Kevin Anderson 37:32 let’s stop getting in the way of yourself. And let’s go look at what we can do. And if it pans out great. If it doesn’t, then oh, whoa. So that’s just another thing that we maybe had failed on. But learn from, you know, if if you look at the most successful person, well, we always look at them at their this top of this mountain, right? And then we look at them and they’re like, man, they’re so successful. I wish I could be like them, you know, and you don’t see any of the things that they failed at or anything. But if you really think about it, that mountain their own. It’s a mountain of failures. Yeah. And they just kept climbing. They were they learned from what they failed at. And then they just kept climbing. And now they’re, they’re at the top. And then we think it was all easy for him. But really, really tough work in there. They just didn’t come overnight.
Phil Salter 38:25 Yes. So that just so I thought earlier, when you’re talking is like, we always hear the success stories of like the business and how it just like, I grew, I kept grinding and it’s just boom, boom. But yeah, but what about all the things leading up to that? Sometimes you do hear those stories, because they are interesting, but you’re right. It’s a mountain of learning and failures. And every failure is better than having not tried. Because the things you learn like it’s, it’s so valuable. I think it’s
Kevin Anderson 38:50 choice. It’s your choice, you can you can choose to shrink back away, or choose to move forward. And exactly. There’s a book by a guy named David Williams, he was he had been the CEO of a company called fishbowl inventory. And he wrote this book, and it’s called failing forward or I think is what he said is the name of the book. And I just kept thinking about that, like, Oh, yeah, you can, you can fail and you can shrink back. Or you can say, Okay, what, what was the mistake here? What did I learn? And then
Phil Salter 39:24 yeah, it’s it’s a skill. Bad Kevin, it’s your story is really interesting. And I just appreciate so much who’s sharing it? And I think it’s real takeaway here is, I mean, my original thought was like, Hey, man, I know you’ve pivoted a lot, but it’s also like a story about getting started, you know, pulling the trigger and taking that first step. And I almost feel like that’s the name of this episode is probably taking the first step right with Kevin Anderson. So I just appreciate so much your time dude and your and your expertise and, and your story. So what’s the name of your company man to sleep people can find you.
Kevin Anderson 40:01 So the name of the company is Rocky Mountain scanning. Find it by going to rmscanning.com don’t judge the website yet, because I didn’t. I didn’t know where to go yet. And so I just kind of threw something out. I had to get something out. I wasn’t gonna let it stopped me. And and right now we’re in the develop of development of a new website. So don’t don’t Yeah,
Phil Salter 40:24 but it’s live. Someone could find you.
Kevin Anderson 40:26 on it. Live I started. And that’s the key factor.
Phil Salter 40:29 Yes, you started. It’s exactly right. You build upon that. And maybe the website isn’t where you want to be. But I know that your process is there for for scanning, and you and you can do it and you do a great job. And you’re getting more clients because of that. So good for you, man. Thanks again. So if anybody has any questions, either for Kevin that I can pass along, get his answer. For me. topic ideas, you can email me at No Better Time. podcast@gmail.com. But also now you can reach me at contact at No Better Time. podcast.com either one will work. And I’d love to hear from you. But please, please rate and review the podcast on Apple that really helps people find the podcast. And just if nothing else, please listen, because I love that. That really helps, too. Thanks so much, Kevin again. And today you guys just take that first step. If you’re thinking about something, whether it be learning a new skill, starting a business, preparing for retirement, saving anything, take that first step even if it’s $10 a month to put towards something, do something. Like I say something is always better than nothing. All right, man. You guys have a great day and Thanks, Kevin. Have a good one. But bye
My good friend and mentor Hammer is back! I thought it would be good to get a different perspective on real estate as an investment, and some other ways to invest in real estate than I had personally ever considered or even known about. This is a good one!
Phil Salter 0:00 All right, welcome. This is no better time. I’m Phil Salter, and today I have with me hammer once again. So thanks for joining me again, hammer. Yes, sir, I was always looking forward to an opportunity to talk about something else with you because I know there’s so much knowledge in there and you’re fun to talk to. So I was like, we were actually talking yesterday. And I was telling you about a conversation I just had with my brother who’s a real estate agent about real estate as an investment. And it sounds like you might have different a different opinion than him. And you don’t even really know his opinion. But you can probably guess he’s in a real estate agent. So of course, he’s pro real estate, in many forms as an investment, particularly. So tell me what your first what comes to your mind.
Austin Hammer 0:49 So yeah, this is this is a debate I’ve had for years and years, years off and on with people. And it’s interesting, I was reading some quick articles, and a significant portion of the surveys show up, like, you know, six 7% of respondents or 60% response all feel that real estate has been investment. So it makes sense, like, keep having these conversations. That’d be sad. Also, full disclosure. twice in my life, I’ve I’ve owned rental properties, and so I’ve had to deal with him and familiar from that side. But in general, investing real estate is a losing proposition, compared to investing in the stock market.
Phil Salter 1:27 So you’re saying you’ve actually had rental properties? Right. So I think almost like more legitimizes your, your position. And you know, from your experience, so I want to hear this, because this is so opposite of how my brother feels.
Austin Hammer 1:44 Yeah, so let’s get into it. It’s not the property reveal? Yeah. I mean, just, we just want, I’ll start by talking about my own experience, some things I’ve learned from it one, you know, time is money, right. And what I think the mistake so many people make when they look at real estate as an investment, say, they look at just managing cash flow to skip positive cash flow, positive cash flow, that’s all we care about, while ignoring all the different expenses that go into it. Now, you can save some money by by taking over more of the management and maintenance yourself, right. But my argument, there is time is money, you know, you can hand off more or less stuff, but that increases your expenses, you have your taxes, you have your, you know, your your your garbage, sewage, utilities, all that stuff. And sometimes you put that on on the tenant, if you can, but there’s also additional risk, frankly, like, just just generally, when you’re investing, you have to require a higher return for more risk, right? Can you look at real estate, if you’re doing private real estate, you’re relying upon yourself to be able to make a proper place proper value on the property, right, along with the property projected its value growth in the future, along with what you can charge to try to get a positive cash flow. That all takes time that there’s additional risks there long with, you know, what your tenant doesn’t pay? You know, what if your tenant moves out, there’s all these different things, you know, there’s just so many things you have to do, you know, from from just your time from from expense, that all adds up. We’re, you know, looking at past studies, like, if you take all the expenses into account, actually, for the amount of risk you take out with legal rescue, we’re seeing that right now, with with a pandemic, you’re also subject to regulatory risk, you know, moratorium on on evictions.
Phil Salter 3:44 Yeah,
Austin Hammer 3:45 you’d be stuck, you know, think of all the people who have, you know, rental properties, not getting payment, and they can do nothing about right. That can happen. And so for that level of risk, you can be subject to regulatory risk and legal risk long with capital loss possibility, you should really require a much higher level of return than when you get typically for real estate investments. Homes appreciate on an average, over you look over decades, you know, take different chunks, whatever, really about the amount of inflation. And so, in order to succeed, a real estate investing, you really have to be able to spot the properties that are that are mispriced, right. Constant cash flow. So that also like, if you go a couple months without income, you have all these expenses that you you incur yearly anyways. You’re destroying like years worth of returns right there, you know. Additionally, it’s very illiquid. Right. And whereas you look at stocks, yeah, you know, you I think a lot of times people are scared off by stocks because of the volatility. But things are the real estate You don’t see the volatility that is there, you know, because you sell only every once in a while, not like this constant update every day of what your property’s worth. Whereas in stocks, you see it every single day, which is a benefit, because because you have so much information about how to value your investment, compared to real estate.
Phil Salter 5:22 And so you feel like and also, it being much more liquid to write, maybe to your point, because you could say, I could sell this right now, there’s very few situations where you can’t sell stocks, like, in the moment, right, maybe outside of ours maybe are, yeah, some really weird things that happened recently with some stocks that had things held on them. But those were very kind of anomalous, I think, I don’t know much about this. But it’s, you know, it’s very unusual. Like talking about like, GameStop. It’s not like that, but let me tell you, we prevent it from selling for an hour. Yeah, it’s not like, yeah, so it’s a very interesting point, you’re saying, if you actually saw like, the value of your home going up and down in real time, you might be like, well, this is way more volatile than I realized. And I’m realizing also, as you’re talking that my brother, when we had this conversation, he was really more going at the angle of as a homebuyer not as like investing in rental properties. And I think he has opinions about that. And it makes me realize I want to have him on, again, to talk about the idea of buying properties as rental properties, which is more of what you’re talking about. So I’m curious about your perspective, I’m assuming you aren’t renting your home, right, that you’re living in. So what’s your perspective on the value of a, buying a home for yourself as far as like an investment or as a way to, you know, grow as value or, as well? Who was the thing I was gonna say? And like, how could you leverage the money the bank will give you versus how much you put down on it, I guess.
Austin Hammer 6:50 Yeah. No, that’s that’s one thing. No, I’ll say two things real quickly now. Like most answers that, you know, you’ll have more of these conversations with me my answer always be It depends, right? Yeah. So I don’t want to also get an impression that investing in real estate directly is a bad idea, period. Yeah. It depends. Because one, it could work as a diversification strategy. You know, you have other options, like, depending if you’re a high earner, a lot of tax advantage options are not available to real estate, and you’d be one of the only ones
Phil Salter 7:21 I
Austin Hammer 7:24 know, but now back again. Yeah, knowing the long term, you know, appreciation of homes, it is appreciating asset in general, however, it’s still you look over over long term, like it basically tracks inflation. We are seeing a hot hot housing market now. And mortgage rates are really low. And so it’s actually in the sorts of situations where you could kind of beat the game a little bit, you know, but then again, you really should not look at your home as kind of investment vehicle, you know, because you live in it is illiquid, you know, and there are expenses, has, you know, as a homeowner, there are many, many expenses that you never take into account. And that’s reflected in the fact that, you know, you look a lot of different websites and advise, okay, how do you really determine how much you can afford, you know, when buying home? A lot of them say, well, we’ll take take your, your, your mortgage amount, and and add another 20%, add another 30%, you know, add another 25%, you’ll see that to accurately reflect the true cost of Oh,
Phil Salter 8:33 I see. Right.
Austin Hammer 8:35 And so that, that applies both for looking at real estate investment as rentals and as your own home, right? Because there’s all these expenses that you have to take into account. You’re looking at
Phil Salter 8:46 work. When you’re saying expenses, you’re referring to things like things breaking or even talking as far as like paying water bills every month. Is that part of that equation? Or? Okay? Yeah, like all the expenses that you wouldn’t deal with if you were not a homeowner?
Austin Hammer 8:58 Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Okay, you know,
Phil Salter 9:01 so you’re saying, like, you’re saying, it’s not like you’re saying, Oh, this is an absolute never do thing across the board? It depends, like you said, and honestly, it sounds like if you were someone who had a lot of income, and you’re looking for diverse ways to use that income, it can be a way to, like I’ve already maxed out Roth, IRAs, all these other things, maxed out all these other things, what’s another way I can use my money to work for me? So you wouldn’t say that’d be someone who’s like, maybe in my position, you might might not advise someone like me going and buying a rental property if I have all these other things I haven’t been doing yet.
Austin Hammer 9:34 Exactly. Okay. Exactly. That would be my advice.
Phil Salter 9:37 Okay. Make sense? Simply,
Austin Hammer 9:39 as you get, you know, higher incomes. So many options just aren’t even available to you. Real Estate becomes almost the only option.
Phil Salter 9:48 So that’s why you hear about such rich people with real estate, but it’s like it’s kind of chicken, the egg maybe, in some ways, some people,
Austin Hammer 9:56 some people can do it. That’s the thing. Like the people that do and are successful and get known as, because it’s an unusual thing. It’s extremely difficult to do. And so, you know, the way that I invest in real estate is I invest in in REITs Rei T’s. So I put my money in stocks that trade liquidity that very, you know, Tom stocks are changing. So it’s very liquid, they are subject to all kinds of rules and disclosures because they’re on publicly traded exchanges. So you get tons of information, you know, and you’re paying for the ability of these professionals who do it as a full time job. And they have teams, entire companies that do the valuation, the upkeep the maintenance of these properties.
Phil Salter 10:41 Wait, so you’re investing in a company that buys rental properties, and you’re investing in that? So you’re like, you’re not necessarily on the ground? doing that, obviously, because the company’s doing it. It’s like another type of company to invest in. But what’s the vantage of, or what’s different about that, versus just some other company like apple, like investing in Apple versus when these companies it’s kind of the same ultimately, right?
Austin Hammer 11:03 Yeah, because I mean, honestly, in general, like if you look at also data REITs outperform the broad market by quite a bit. Really?
Phil Salter 11:10 I haven’t ever heard of REITs I want to look into this.
Austin Hammer 11:13 Are I literally how many people have it like they are a fantastic investment Really?
Phil Salter 11:17 Are i t and these are like publicly,
Austin Hammer 11:20 aren’t he? It? s
Phil Salter 11:22 Oh, I told you before our e i t s rights.
Austin Hammer 11:27 Right. Okay, so, a REIT is a real estate investment trust, okay, there are corporations that they they buy real estate, they manage them, and they get a return off of them. And they are required by law to pay out at least 80% of their income as dividend payment.
Phil Salter 11:51 Wow. So the dividends are high.
Austin Hammer 11:53 Dividends are always much higher on these because
Phil Salter 11:54 with dividends, you’re getting these payouts, which my understanding is aren’t guaranteed, but you can kind of look at history to say, what’s the average dividend payout per year percentage wise? Right. Exactly. And then, but you’re also potentially hoping to get growth on the actual stock itself that you have in it on you as well as that. So it’s kind of interesting. So, okay, how would I find a REIT? Would I just can I search REITs? Like, like Robin Hood or something? Are it Yes. Just Google it and find out different companies and I could get their like, name and then look them up, I guess. Okay. Yeah, no, I’m definitely gonna look at that. Thank you.
Austin Hammer 12:35 That’s the thing like, so like, if you are doing directly yourself, you have to be able to figure out, Okay, what is what does my net asset value of the properties I own? What was the possible net asset value of that net asset value, right, the value of that asset minus the debt, right? You have to do those calculations to figure it out yourself. And the other thing that’s become really popular people talk to me about is these crowd. Crowd funding, private real estate meant real real estate, investment groups where you basically get on the sides, you, you lend out your own money through these basically exchanges, I guess, for people who want to, it’s basically like a REIT. But But private. That’s the thing. There’s so much less disclosure, like, what really is the value of that property? How good is this person? What was the track record? You really have? No clue, really. Where if you do it through the stock exchanges through these REITs, they are subject to so many regulations in constant disclosures. And you can look it up you can look up, okay, what is the net net asset value of all the properties?
Phil Salter 13:42 Boom, there you have it open book, right. By nature,
Austin Hammer 13:45 people are public, you can say, Okay, this, this is trading at a discount to their net by 20%. I think that’s a good investment. So you put money in, that’s what I’ve done. And frankly, like REITs, huge portion of my success of my portfolios have been investing in REITs, when they’ve been undervalued. And the cool thing is, because they’re less known, because they are subject to interest rate risk, they’ve been beat up and they have a lot of them still have not fully recovered from the pandemic. So there’s still a lot of good values out there. For rice right
Phil Salter 14:17 now. I’m a big believer. Oh, no, I’m really glad you brought that up to me. Like you said, it sounds like a lot of people don’t know about that. So I’m glad to have that brought up. I have a few quick questions. So I think we want to kind of keep this to another six minutes or less. So really quickly, something that I realized pretty quickly as I’ve been kind of diving into, but investing in the market more and actually buying individual stocks is I did notice that pretty quickly, like oh, this is actually because I was really considering the idea of getting a rental property. Um, and I kind of found determined some reasons why I didn’t want to do that yet. And if I did do it, it’d be later on. I’m not against idea, but this has been kind of enlightening to think of not just the positives, like what are the pros pitfalls and, and risks. But I realized pretty quickly, like, wow, it’s pretty cool, I can actually like with just a few dollars, I can do something in the stock market versus I had to have a lot of money and go through a lot of process to get water into real estate, you know what I mean, it’s a whole lot more, it’s much more of a higher level of barrier of entry, whatever. So that’s really cool about the stock market, I’m realizing is I can do something today, even if I had $30, I can do something today with it, I can go buy $30 worth of a rental property, and I can’t do that today. But unless I guess I get an A right. But, and
Austin Hammer 15:35 that’s why some people get interested in jumping on these sites and doing this private crowdfunding because I can just put in what what money they have. Okay, but see Brister has been higher, because like, you don’t really, there’s no requirements around disclosure, the people that are gonna take your money, you can kind of set the rates and those those rates are pretty high, because like, double digit percentage, you know, aprs, or whatever that that you’re supposedly going to get, but like the default risk is so high, because you really don’t have a clue about this person that you’re like money to, nor do you have really a good good idea about really the value of the underlying asset. But everything is disclosed. Yeah, you know, on the stock market.
Phil Salter 16:15 Interesting. And I guess my next question for you is, you’re aware of my plan, right? I want to upgrade, buy home and get a nicer home and it with a certain timeline? What are your What are your thoughts on that? Like? should someone be buying a home? Should they be upgrading their home?
Austin Hammer 16:31 Again, it depends. That’s a good point. In general, homeownership tends to be a good thing. The data shows, you know how much it is correlation versus causation. It’s hard to really know but, but generally, there’s a wealth building effect from home ownership. That being said, it does depend because you can end up upside down and we’ve seen that you can get you’re in trouble of risk of foreclosure default, which can have more effects than just your living situation. Right? Yes. Credit can affect you for a long, long time. That being said, in general, homeownership is a wealth building activity.
Phil Salter 17:17 Yeah, I mean, that’s been my experience, it’s the one thing I’ve done, that’s been them made the most difference for dollar to dollar, what I put into something, what I’ve seen is like actual return, and obviously a lot of that has to do with just timing that I couldn’t have predicted just luck, really. I bought it about four years ago, and it’s just in the last recent, it’s really gone up. But that doesn’t mean that will stay. It could go down. Right? I recognize that for sure.
Austin Hammer 17:43 But still you live in it. You live in an area that is experiencing influx of population. Yeah. And economic growth.
Phil Salter 17:51 So you could take that and say, Oh, yeah, well, then that just tells me that’s real estate’s always a winner. It’s like, well, not necessarily, right. So you can always base everything off of very limited exposure and a positive experience. It’s like me, I’m going to go buy some risky stock. Whoa, it just gave me a 50% return in two days. I’m going to do more of that. It’s not like that’s going to happen every time. But yeah, I anyways, I really appreciate the conversation. Really good. I this is what I love about these is just always thinking differently about my assumptions and my thoughts. And I’m really getting to the point now where I’m trying to decide, what’s my goal? What’s my motivation? Because part of me feel I’m realizing that with time, my goal of having a certain amount of money will just kind of happen. So I think I’m being too conservative, and what I want to do with my next two or three years, like I don’t think saving up $40,000 is, is enough, I need to think bigger. So that’s what I’m trying to decide now. And because I realized, my house is worth more than I thought when I made these calculations, I’m like, oh, if I sold this today, I’d actually almost be where I was already planning hoping to be. Now the question is, where am I beyond that? You know, so, yeah, what’s my overall wealth, and, you know, money that I have, you know, anything. So that’s,
Austin Hammer 19:06 that’s one of the also problems with, you know, your home as investments, because unless it’s your last home that you’re selling, to put that money into another one. That’s also appreciated. Yes. Right.
Phil Salter 19:19 Yes. So yeah, that’s the thing. But I will say a good once again, thank you. Hopefully, I’m sure we can find another another thing we’re talking about for 1520 minutes sometime soon. If anyone has any questions or wants to add to the conversation, if you think Hamer is just off his rocker, or if you think he’s, he’s freaking brilliant. We want to hear about it. If you want to add the conversation, if you want a different topic, anything you could email me at No Better Time. podcast@gmail.com and at least for now, if anybody emails me, I will read it on the podcast, at least part of the email, and go from there until it gets too much which I would dream that’d be amazing. If I had to emails to read it. I’d like to get that first one though that’d be kind of cool. So thanks for listening and have a great day and just never stop learning. Turning to those around you that have experience, remove the pride and stubbornness and just learn and you’ll be way better for it. Alright, have a great day.
No Better Time 