Freedom in Five Minutes

Don't judge a book by its cover. Everyone knows this saying but we simply ignore it. Whether it is a person, a hobby or even in business, whatever you learn when you go deep is way more valuable than what you see at the surface level. And why is that?

To know more, let's join Dean in this podcast episode as he teaches us why it is important to go deep.

----- Automated Transcript Below:

Dean Soto 0:00 Hey, this is Dean Soto, founder of freedom in five minutes.com. And we're here again, with another freedom in five minutes podcast. Today's topic is this.

You don't know something until you look underneath it all that and more coming up.

All right, there was a slight little pause there because I had a certain title of my mind. And that was not the actual titles, but we don't ever restart this podcast, just the way it works. So it was the title it was, it's the same topic, but it's not the same title. Anyway, all that being said.

So, over the last few weeks, there has been some trees planted on our property over here.

Beautiful Central California.

Oh man. So we went to the went to the nursery, went to the nursery and got a whole bunch of trees that were on sale for 50% off. And I've never planted a tree in my life.

But we got me count on real quick 1-234-567-8910 1112 1314 trees, 14 amazing trees and these things home man.

Very surprising, very surprising. So, the here's, here's how it generally worked. So we brought the trees. For one we brought the trees in our van because we don't have a truck or anything like that. I need to get a truck because our van from there was completely soiled with soil. Yes, soiled with soil. That was wonderful and

Blue soil, the soil when we got got here, pull out the trees and we literally didn't know where, where the heck, we wanted to put these trees in the first place. And the reason being is we have so we have a lot of land we have about 2020 acres, but obviously we wanted to put these trees close to where we were. And we have a lot of rocks where we're at. It's a very hilly, there's a lot of granite, a lot of granite all over the place. Okay. And because there's a lot of granite

you can't take for granted. Can't take for granted where you're going to plan yet that was a pun.

But you can't take for granted we're going to actually

granted where you're going to go and plant

because it's interesting because you so we have this path where we go down to our chicken coop and it's so we call it animal alley, have a whole bunch of different places where we're going to put

bunch of stuff. It's down past our house and below our house. And it just looks really cool. We're going to put little signs and things make it look really cute eventually, but along that path he wanted have some shade. So we started planting these trees on both sides of this path. And these trees are they're called

z Lu or Lu Zhi or something like that. Juju bees there, Juju bees, if you've ever had a ggV, very, very interesting, very interesting of ggV

when it is ripe, when it's so it's actually right into circumstances. It is when it's ripe, in the beginning. You can eat it and it tastes like a very sweet, dry Apple like it has a very dry taste to it. There's not much moisture in it. It's extremely interesting. I've never had it. It's such a weird texture because you expect to bite into it and have a

juices flow and and everything like that, but it's but it really is just as dry texture that really takes a little bit of getting used to. But once you do get used to it, you start seeing all this. It's pretty dang good, this is really good.

And the second thing you can do with it is you can actually let it dry out on the vine or pull it off and let it dry out. And when you do that, it turns into a

basically a date it tastes like it just almost exactly like a date.

So it has that kind of chewy Karmali very flavorful type of type of taste to it. And so it's it's a it's a really interesting type of tree and fruit and stuff. So when we got these things, we started planting them and

I had to take them. I had to take my pickaxe and get a whole bunch of rocks out of the way. I mean huge rocks. We have decomposing granite we have actual granite we have whole bunch of things and so I

think I hear my baby crying

I do hear a baby. Who's this baby? Who's this baby that's coming out? Is that an ami Lee baby

Oh I love you guys okay I'm doing a podcast okay all right here but you guys can play you guys can do whatever you like. yeah

hmm I have no I don't need any help working go upstairs and play have fun. He doesn't play Roblox if you want it. We're going to be going to church in at before six. Okay.

Okay, love you. Close the door.

All right.

So that was my wonderful kids wanting to play some games.

So anyway, um,

all that being said, the so here's the interesting thing about it. Here's the thing is that, that everything looked good on the surface, everything looked like it was going to be awesome. Everything look like yeah, if you looked, and you didn't see, if you just were like planning, I'm going to put these things right here. It's going to be great, awesome. But as soon as we started mining, as soon as we started digging, we were hitting rock after rock after rock, so we had to change plans two or three times. And so while it looked good on the surface, it was all the nasty, nasty, nasty underneath. So it's very hard to decide where, how to put these in a way that was, that was

where to put these in a way where they are going to survive, right? That they're gonna they're, they're going to do well in the weather and so on. And so especially with

transplant shock and all sorts of stuff that plants go through. So it was just very unique and very interesting experience but it's something that's another it's it's akin to another experience that happened which was my my buddy Paul, my, one of my partners and one of one of the businesses.

He he and I spoke at we work down in two of the we works, we got invited to speak at them down in the was called the

Southern California in Costa Mesa. And it was really interesting because they loved us. They loved us as speakers and we got lots of awesome comments and everything like that. But right afterward, we were expecting you know, people come up and be and say hey, you know, we'd like to have you consult with us and we'd like to have a virtual systems architect and all this other stuff and, and that really didn't happen. We got we got we had a lot of people stop and say

stop and say, Hey, you know, we love what you did. It was awesome. It was super fun, great job, and so on and so forth. But didn't really get that, that the business end of it. And so I'm thinking like, what did what did we do wrong? And it's so weird. Like, you know, I'm so used to with some of the other businesses that I have, where it's immediately you're going to have people buying you have people interested, and so on and so forth. Right. Well,

here's the thing with that, is that

one, so we had a questionnaire that we had made up right beforehand. And in this questionnaire, we asked several questions, obviously in a question here to ask questions. But we have several questions about the everybody's busy business. And it was from the questionnaires that they submitted at the very end. There's from the questionnaires that

starting to see that they were very, very interested, that they wanted us to contact them wanted us to set up a time to, to talk to do to do to meet with them to possibly consult with them, and, and so on and so forth. Completely took us by surprise because we're thinking, that was great. It must have been a very informative talk. But

we didn't get any business from it. It was fun. We love love giving so much value and everything like that and it's fun, but it was kind of like well, what did we do wrong from the business and other things right? Well, just turns out that people, those that we work audience,

they are very tight community. They we work is awesome. If you ever get a chance to see if you go ever get a chance to actually go and check out a we work and spend time with the community managers there. And with that,

community in general, there are a wide range of people but but one thing is that they're very, very tight.

All of everybody there and these are hundreds of hundreds of businesses, hundreds of people. But it's a very tight group. And because it's a very tight group, nobody wants to, you don't want to, they didn't want to just come out and say, hey, yeah, we'd love for you to do this for that for this and that, for whatever reason. I don't know why, but it's that that's just that's just the vibe. That's just the way it is. Right?

And so

so on the surface, it looked like possibly it was just a, you know, inner informative talk and no one was really interested but but deep underneath, once we got the questionnaires back and email people talk with people, we saw that Oh, wow, we did provide a ton of value and we provided enough

value to wear. They, they, they wanted more they wanted, they wanted to work with us they wanted more contact, right? So, here's the thing is

why is this important? It's important because a lot of the times, you're going to do things where you just have to go that extra level if we didn't have the questionnaire, we didn't have the questionnaire we wouldn't have found out

the some of the some of the reasons why we wouldn't have known that they actually wanted us to, to, to consult with them, right. And if if we didn't know our train at our home, if we didn't know and we didn't dig around and mess around and see and really check things out and know what we're getting into when we bought our plants are new plants, we would have immediately ran into we

We wouldn't have known, we would have started grabbing plants, trying to plant getting frustrated and stopping, right. With the without the questionnaire, we would have gotten frustrated and said, you know, hey, we were you know, this is not worth it. This is a, I mean, we love doing the doing the talks, but obviously I have to travel down as time away from my family. It's super, super fun. I love giving value to people. But at the same time, I had to feed my family, you know? And so, like, it is great, it's a great community. And I get actually would that would, that would have made me extremely sad.

If I wasn't able to actually spend time with the community and grow and you know, help help them in any way we can because we have we actually it's cool because we had and we have several different types of system ization and automation talks lined up.

system. So this was a kind of a overall freedom in five minutes talk from with a company, we run a company called Legion, which is predominantly for lead generation. And that's who this was. But given kind of the, the freedom in five minutes concept at this talk, we wanted to get into the next go rounds into lead generation and sales and marketing and, and all of these other things that you can apply systems and automation to. And so it was just a great, great, great thing to see that they that they actually weren't not just interested from an informative thing, but actually wanted to work with us so we can help them with their business and so on and so forth. So, what's one thing where, you know, you might have gotten just on the surface, maybe you wrote a book or you're writing a book, or maybe you you talk to somebody who you thought was going to be able to help you in some way with your

business, and you just talked on the phone, but you didn't let them actually do a proposal or something like that. Or maybe, maybe it's something like, like you, maybe even in a relationship where you met with a guy or met with a girl. And you know, you went on one date is super quick and you didn't do that second date, for whatever reason, maybe too busy or whatever, and you didn't get a chance to go below the surface or you just went and went on a date and just talked about surface level things.

You never know what you're going to get until you go deeper. never know what you're going to get until you have two or three levels of depth to an individual to situation and so on and so forth. So where right now, in your body, in your maybe in your body and your spirituality, in your business, or in your family. Are you kind of just staying surface level

And I just challenge you to look at at least one thing and go deeper into that one thing. Because you're going to find that that's where the treasure is. That's where the good stuff is. And the more that you can get deep like that, the more happy more fulfilled, the more benefits you're going to see in the long run. Alright, says Dean Soto freedom in five minutes. I will catch you guys later

on the freedom in five minutes podcast

Don’t judge a book by its cover. Everyone knows this saying but we simply ignore it. Whether it is a person, a hobby or even in business, whatever you learn when you go deep is way more valuable than what you see at the surface level. And why is that?

To know more, let's join Dean in this podcast episode as he teaches us why it is important to go deep.

-----
Automated Transcript Below:

Dean Soto 0:00
Hey, this is Dean Soto, founder of freedom in five minutes.com. And we're here again, with another freedom in five minutes podcast. Today's topic is this.

You don't know something until you look underneath it all that and more coming up.

All right, there was a slight little pause there because I had a certain title of my mind. And that was not the actual titles, but we don't ever restart this podcast, just the way it works. So it was the title it was, it's the same topic, but it's not the same title. Anyway, all that being said.

So, over the last few weeks, there has been some trees planted on our property over here.

Beautiful Central California.

Oh man. So we went to the went to the nursery, went to the nursery and got a whole bunch of trees that were on sale for 50% off. And I've never planted a tree in my life.

But we got me count on real quick 1-234-567-8910 1112 1314 trees, 14 amazing trees and these things home man.

Very surprising, very surprising. So, the here's, here's how it generally worked. So we brought the trees. For one we brought the trees in our van because we don't have a truck or anything like that. I need to get a truck because our van from there was completely soiled with soil. Yes, soiled with soil. That was wonderful and

Blue soil, the soil when we got got here, pull out the trees and we literally didn't know where, where the heck, we wanted to put these trees in the first place. And the reason being is we have so we have a lot of land we have about 2020 acres, but obviously we wanted to put these trees close to where we were. And we have a lot of rocks where we're at. It's a very hilly, there's a lot of granite, a lot of granite all over the place. Okay. And because there's a lot of granite

you can't take for granted. Can't take for granted where you're going to plan yet that was a pun.

But you can't take for granted we're going to actually

granted where you're going to go and plant

because it's interesting because you so we have this path where we go down to our chicken coop and it's so we call it animal alley, have a whole bunch of different places where we're going to put

bunch of stuff. It's down past our house and below our house. And it just looks really cool. We're going to put little signs and things make it look really cute eventually, but along that path he wanted have some shade. So we started planting these trees on both sides of this path. And these trees are they're called

z Lu or Lu Zhi or something like that. Juju bees there, Juju bees, if you've ever had a ggV, very, very interesting, very interesting of ggV

when it is ripe, when it's so it's actually right into circumstances. It is when it's ripe, in the beginning. You can eat it and it tastes like a very sweet, dry Apple like it has a very dry taste to it. There's not much moisture in it. It's extremely interesting. I've never had it. It's such a weird texture because you expect to bite into it and have a

juices flow and and everything like that, but it's but it really is just as dry texture that really takes a little bit of getting used to. But once you do get used to it, you start seeing all this. It's pretty dang good, this is really good.

And the second thing you can do with it is you can actually let it dry out on the vine or pull it off and let it dry out. And when you do that, it turns into a

basically a date it tastes like it just almost exactly like a date.

So it has that kind of chewy Karmali very flavorful type of type of taste to it. And so it's it's a it's a really interesting type of tree and fruit and stuff. So when we got these things, we started planting them and

I had to take them. I had to take my pickaxe and get a whole bunch of rocks out of the way. I mean huge rocks. We have decomposing granite we have actual granite we have whole bunch of things and so I

think I hear my baby crying

I do hear a baby. Who's this baby? Who's this baby that's coming out? Is that an ami Lee baby

Oh I love you guys okay I'm doing a podcast okay all right here but you guys can play you guys can do whatever you like. yeah

hmm I have no I don't need any help working go upstairs and play have fun. He doesn't play Roblox if you want it. We're going to be going to church in at before six. Okay.

Okay, love you. Close the door.

All right.

So that was my wonderful kids wanting to play some games.

So anyway, um,

all that being said, the so here's the interesting thing about it. Here's the thing is that, that everything looked good on the surface, everything looked like it was going to be awesome. Everything look like yeah, if you looked, and you didn't see, if you just were like planning, I'm going to put these things right here. It's going to be great, awesome. But as soon as we started mining, as soon as we started digging, we were hitting rock after rock after rock, so we had to change plans two or three times. And so while it looked good on the surface, it was all the nasty, nasty, nasty underneath. So it's very hard to decide where, how to put these in a way that was, that was

where to put these in a way where they are going to survive, right? That they're gonna they're, they're going to do well in the weather and so on. And so especially with

transplant shock and all sorts of stuff that plants go through. So it was just very unique and very interesting experience but it's something that's another it's it's akin to another experience that happened which was my my buddy Paul, my, one of my partners and one of one of the businesses.

He he and I spoke at we work down in two of the we works, we got invited to speak at them down in the was called the

Southern California in Costa Mesa. And it was really interesting because they loved us. They loved us as speakers and we got lots of awesome comments and everything like that. But right afterward, we were expecting you know, people come up and be and say hey, you know, we'd like to have you consult with us and we'd like to have a virtual systems architect and all this other stuff and, and that really didn't happen. We got we got we had a lot of people stop and say

stop and say, Hey, you know, we love what you did. It was awesome. It was super fun, great job, and so on and so forth. But didn't really get that, that the business end of it. And so I'm thinking like, what did what did we do wrong? And it's so weird. Like, you know, I'm so used to with some of the other businesses that I have, where it's immediately you're going to have people buying you have people interested, and so on and so forth. Right. Well,

here's the thing with that, is that

one, so we had a questionnaire that we had made up right beforehand. And in this questionnaire, we asked several questions, obviously in a question here to ask questions. But we have several questions about the everybody's busy business. And it was from the questionnaires that they submitted at the very end. There's from the questionnaires that

starting to see that they were very, very interested, that they wanted us to contact them wanted us to set up a time to, to talk to do to do to meet with them to possibly consult with them, and, and so on and so forth. Completely took us by surprise because we're thinking, that was great. It must have been a very informative talk. But

we didn't get any business from it. It was fun. We love love giving so much value and everything like that and it's fun, but it was kind of like well, what did we do wrong from the business and other things right? Well, just turns out that people, those that we work audience,

they are very tight community. They we work is awesome. If you ever get a chance to see if you go ever get a chance to actually go and check out a we work and spend time with the community managers there. And with that,

community in general, there are a wide range of people but but one thing is that they're very, very tight.

All of everybody there and these are hundreds of hundreds of businesses, hundreds of people. But it's a very tight group. And because it's a very tight group, nobody wants to, you don't want to, they didn't want to just come out and say, hey, yeah, we'd love for you to do this for that for this and that, for whatever reason. I don't know why, but it's that that's just that's just the vibe. That's just the way it is. Right?

And so

so on the surface, it looked like possibly it was just a, you know, inner informative talk and no one was really interested but but deep underneath, once we got the questionnaires back and email people talk with people, we saw that Oh, wow, we did provide a ton of value and we provided enough

value to wear. They, they, they wanted more they wanted, they wanted to work with us they wanted more contact, right? So, here's the thing is

why is this important? It's important because a lot of the times, you're going to do things where you just have to go that extra level if we didn't have the questionnaire, we didn't have the questionnaire we wouldn't have found out

the some of the some of the reasons why we wouldn't have known that they actually wanted us to, to, to consult with them, right. And if if we didn't know our train at our home, if we didn't know and we didn't dig around and mess around and see and really check things out and know what we're getting into when we bought our plants are new plants, we would have immediately ran into we

We wouldn't have known, we would have started grabbing plants, trying to plant getting frustrated and stopping, right. With the without the questionnaire, we would have gotten frustrated and said, you know, hey, we were you know, this is not worth it. This is a, I mean, we love doing the doing the talks, but obviously I have to travel down as time away from my family. It's super, super fun. I love giving value to people. But at the same time, I had to feed my family, you know? And so, like, it is great, it's a great community. And I get actually would that would, that would have made me extremely sad.

If I wasn't able to actually spend time with the community and grow and you know, help help them in any way we can because we have we actually it's cool because we had and we have several different types of system ization and automation talks lined up.

system. So this was a kind of a overall freedom in five minutes talk from with a company, we run a company called Legion, which is predominantly for lead generation. And that's who this was. But given kind of the, the freedom in five minutes concept at this talk, we wanted to get into the next go rounds into lead generation and sales and marketing and, and all of these other things that you can apply systems and automation to. And so it was just a great, great, great thing to see that they that they actually weren't not just interested from an informative thing, but actually wanted to work with us so we can help them with their business and so on and so forth. So, what's one thing where, you know, you might have gotten just on the surface, maybe you wrote a book or you're writing a book, or maybe you you talk to somebody who you thought was going to be able to help you in some way with your

business, and you just talked on the phone, but you didn't let them actually do a proposal or something like that. Or maybe, maybe it's something like, like you, maybe even in a relationship where you met with a guy or met with a girl. And you know, you went on one date is super quick and you didn't do that second date, for whatever reason, maybe too busy or whatever, and you didn't get a chance to go below the surface or you just went and went on a date and just talked about surface level things.

You never know what you're going to get until you go deeper. never know what you're going to get until you have two or three levels of depth to an individual to situation and so on and so forth. So where right now, in your body, in your maybe in your body and your spirituality, in your business, or in your family. Are you kind of just staying surface level

And I just challenge you to look at at least one thing and go deeper into that one thing. Because you're going to find that that's where the treasure is. That's where the good stuff is. And the more that you can get deep like that, the more happy more fulfilled, the more benefits you're going to see in the long run. Alright, says Dean Soto freedom in five minutes. I will catch you guys later

on the freedom in five minutes podcast

When you're working in the financial industry, most approaches are very cookie cutter. But if you want to be your own person, how do you really break out of the mold? How do you start your own practice to emphasize where your passion in finance is really at, and do so successfully?

In this episode, Aaron Hattenbach, founder of Rapport Financial shares his journey from working for bigger financial service firms to having his independent service firm which to date has now managed over 500 million in client assets.

Schedule a Meeting with Aaron: https://rapportfinancial.com/

------

Automated Transcript Below:

Dean Soto 0:00 Hey, this is Dean Soto, founder of freedom in five minutes.com. And we're here again with another freedom in five minutes podcast episode. Today's topic, is this going independent as a financial advisor. That and more coming up. Alright, cool. So we have a really cool show we had we actually been talking right before this a lot. And I'm like, oh, man, we gotta we gotta save this content for the actual show. But I'm here with Aaron Hattenbach, man, is this gonna be awesome. So Aaron, he is the founder and managing member of Rapport Financial. It's a boutique independent advisory firm, with a decade of experience in wealth management in the wealth management industry, having managed over 500 million in client assets. That's crazy man. Aaron works with young tech professionals in the early stages of wealth accumulation, as well as high net worth clients, with a particular focus on physicians and business owners. So without further ado, man, I'm so glad you're here with us, Aaron, how's it going?

Aaron Hattenbach 1:17 Happy to be here. It's going well, for a Monday.

Dean Soto 1:22 Well, it's cool. So one of the things that piqued my interest about you so so obviously, I have my claws out there trying to find really interesting podcast guests. I've reached out to several, you know, CFPB, sort certified financial planners, financial advisors, things like people like that. And there's one thing that is very different about you, when it comes to financial services in general. And that is, right off the bat, you you can tell that you are you, you have your own way of doing things, you you, you kind of have broken the mold. And we can go into this a little bit. But it seems to me in when you're doing any type of financial advising any securities, anything's like that. It's very cookie cutter people are very much on the defensive, because there's so many regulations and so on. And so when I saw you, I was like, Oh, my gosh, this guy's doing content this guy's doing like, just, he's teaching other people how to run their firms and things like that, I need to have this guy on this on the show, because that is one of the hardest things to do in your industry. So all that being said, I want to get your entire background, you used to work for these big Merrill Lynch, bigger financial services firms. And now you are your own person, and it was not an easy ride. How did that happen? Give us a little bit of background on your entire story.

Aaron Hattenbach 2:54 Yeah, so Dean, I started working right after the financial crisis graduated from from Brandeis in 2009. And really, this all came from an experience working at the attorney general's office on a case against some of the largest financial institutions and lenders that essentially contributed to the major mortgage meltdown that we saw, and I felt a passionate need to work on the side of the consumer and financial services, not on the side of the sales side, selling the institutions, and creating products, I really wanted to help shelter individuals, families, high net worth individuals across the gamut, and educate them really. So my passion is financial education. And I felt that I needed to start my own practice in order to emphasize that without limitations. So to backtrack to that to 2010. I started with Alliance Bernstein, they're very large, firm publicly traded, it worked for a couple of independent firms, one of which is hopefully going to go public, and I can cash out my stock at some point. And then found myself at Merrill Lynch and the advisor training program, built up a decent practice for myself. But I continue to find the same issues where I wanted to really be a holistic financial planner, cover everything that's beyond investing, because quite frankly, I think there's this misconception that, that building a portfolio is what an advisor gets paid for. I think in order to earn 1%, on a portfolio, you have to be doing full financial planning, and that, that covers retirement planning, tax planning, estate planning, stock options, planning, looking at an employer benefits package. So what I did was I saw this trend at the large institutions that were focused primarily on portfolio management, and recognize that the future of financial planning and wealth advisory for that matter, is helping people with everything personal finance related, and if you're not doing that, you're going to lose clients, or you're going to have clients that are going to question what you're charging them. So I created Rapport Financial back in early 2017, with only a few clients and with a vision that I was going to go well beyond the investing in helping my clients, but specifically focusing on young tech professionals that were from age 22 to 23, to 35, in the accumulation phase of life, trying to accumulate for a home purchase to start a family for a number of goals that quite frankly, in in this economy where the price of goods are going up, wages are staying stagnant, was becoming I think, less and less of it over reality. And so I wanted to show people that through a full financial planning process that I created, that they can attain these goals and a time window that is feasible, and not have to be waiting decades to to eventually, you know, be a homeowner. Yeah, it's, it's worked out really well. I really love my client base, I pick who I want to work with. And, you know, I cover everything from my clients even as far as if a client is going off on their own and creating a marketing consulting business, how to negotiate compensation, how to, you know, position themselves, with with the with, with, with strength, so they're, they're going in there and saying, you know, what, I don't need this opportunity. I like it. But here's what I'm worth. And so, there's so much more than just the investments, and that's what I get excited about is, I can actually make an impact on people's lives beyond picking ETFs and funds.

Dean Soto 6:52 I love that man. It's it's, it's definitely something that is different, because I've had a couple of clients in the financial services realm. And, you know, it's, it is a very, like, we like I said before, it's very, it's a very defensive industry, they that you you can, that you had your you have your standard cookie cutter, typically focused toward like what we talked about prior to the podcast toward baby boomer type, folks, and anytime you wanted to go any do anything that was outside of the box, you have to go and get it through compliance, right? content, it can be a whatever structure, you want to do it just tons of having to go through compliance when you're working with a big business. So like, so I can see how easily that can be frustrating if you're working for a bigger company like that. What were some of the pitfalls, that or it's not pitfalls, but like what is something that you just did not expect once you left? The big companies that that you feel what it that pretty much every single financial advisor is going to run into?

Aaron Hattenbach 8:10 Yeah, so I think advisors are trained on how to advise, right? Very, very plain and simple. I'm not going to get into the nuances of what a financial advisor does, I think, you know, it's very, very well publicized. But we're not taught how to own and run a business. We're not told how to hire employees, how to select vendors, how to really create a business from scratch. And I think that is the challenge for any entrepreneur is you might have an area of expertise, and a knowledge base. But if you haven't started a business before, you're in for quite the experience. And I know that you know this Dean. So when I started this business, I had done months of preparation. And in fact, probably about five or six years of preparation in my head. And in collecting documentation that I thought would be used fault. I created a dropbox folder that I knew at some point I was going to tap it when I was writing. And and it really token a conversation with a client of mine who was working with me since 2010. I'm only 32 years old now. So that's that's saying a lot that he stuck with me for 10 years, and hopefully, many, many years to come. But he said to me, I'm not moving my account and the relationship, you must be starting your own practice. And so that gave me the confidence that I don't think I don't think anybody is ready necessarily to start a business. Yeah, but there's no perfect time, you're not going to have everything mapped out. It's not all going to line up like a puzzle. But I think what I found in running a business for the past two and a half years, and even going back to Day One is you need to be willing to adapt, you need to be willing to constantly put time and resources into learning. And and I quite frankly, I'm constantly looking at my business and poking holes in it and saying, Where can I improve the client experience? How can I improve the infrastructure of technology? What can I outsource on a day to day basis, that is not my core competency. And quite frankly, also is compliant. Because I it's I you know, as much as compliance is talked about working at Maryland, Morgan Stanley, I still have a compliance department that I outsource. And I'm still subject to the same regulations, it's just a very different experience in terms of, you know, day to day, if I send a client an email or a personal note, I don't have to run it by someone to, you know, in order to get this to the client, I can, I am my own compliance officer, in fact, but I do still have to be subject to the same regulations. But I would say, you know, in a nutshell, being your own boss, setting up the infrastructure, really making a lot of decisions in a short time window and saying, Okay, well, you know, I'm going to do the best that I can do. And then the other thing to do is, is I kept all my contracts very short in nature, because I realized that if I made a mistake and selected a vendor that that wasn't appropriate for the business I was creating, if I did a month to month model, where I may be paid a little bit more instead of an annual contract and that I was locked into, at the very least I could get out of that and select a different vendor that made more sense for my business. So there are a number of things that I did and including, I would say, reading a lot of kids this articles, you know, I given back to that that blog, in recent years, because ultimately, I relied almost exclusively on kids, this is content. And I feel like there's there's enough content out there that if you're an advisor, and you're saying, You know what, I feel stuck, I'm not Merrill Lynch, or Morgan Stanley, I'm never leaving the sandbox, or I'm going to move from Merrill the Morgan because I don't want to go independent, I would challenge them and say, there's so many resources out there on the internet, and so many people that are willing to help that all of those pain points and all those reasons to not go independent. I can respond with here, here's what I think and give them the tools and show them how they can empower themselves. It's really, really neat. And this didn't exist, you know, 10, 15 years ago. Now, there are technology providers, we're talking dozens for every category that are that are built for the independent advisory channel. I mean, I can build a better tech stack than Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley has internally that is cool, and do so cheaper, and have and have the ability to say, you know, what, if I don't like what they're doing anymore, there are 10 more competitors that I can go to.

Dean Soto 12:51 Oh yeah, I love I love that. Because like, because it's, it's, it's it's riding the wave of well not really the wave, but actually, you know, like, breaking the mold, and then just riding the wave of, of the fact that things are changing. I mean, you could have just sat there and complained and just been like, well, I'm just this is what I do. I you know, I was trained as an advisor, and I'm just going to, but you took on the entire the entire business, which involves marketing, involves bookkeeping involves it involves, like you said, still involves compliance. But how can I do compliance where I'm still flexible in in various ways? And how can I give? How can I, with where I, where you're at right now? How could you do what Merrill Lynch does, but do it faster? Do it more in with with a more caring touch with your clients? Because that's one of the things about you is you actually go after you you are I shouldn't say go after but you are, you will definitely take on different type of client than your traditional advisor. Traditional advisors go after boomers who

Aaron Hattenbach 14:07 Yeah, boomers is an older and younger, that are that are retiring or nearing retirement, and have accumulated enough and assets to work with, quote unquote, a traditional financial advisor. Yep. What's interesting is, I noticed, in my time working at Merrill working in Hightower, working at concentric, that a lot of my peers were looking for financial advice. They didn't trust automating all of their finances. So you've got a lot of these robo advisors, which I think provide a great product, but they're not in comprehensive planning service. Yeah, um, you know, they're not going to tell you how to max out your employee benefits package. Yeah, they're not going to tell you to fund an HSA, when you have a high deductible health care plan. They're just there. They're intended to fill a gap. But they're not necessarily there to cover everything personal finance related. Yeah. So I saw a gap in a really in need in my field where advisors were not gearing their practices towards young professionals that are high income earners, what I call Henry's high earners, not rich yet. Yeah, I didn't come up with that term. But as an -

Dean Soto 15:20 That's an awesome term.

Aaron Hattenbach 15:21 Yeah. But being here in the Bay Area, you know, incomes are, are substantially higher than the median income in the country. And people here have to face high cost of living. But what I've noticed is with with some simple tweaks, and putting them through my five step process, I can get them from a point where they feel like they're not saving anything to where they're maxing out their retirement accounts, they have monthly ACH is going into their investment accounts. And they feel like they're in a position now, where they financially have a understanding of what the future looks like and why they work. Yeah, like, I challenge my clients. Why? Why are you working? Like, what is it that you're working for? Is it the money? Is it the passion? Is it a combination of the two, but at the end of the day, if we plan ahead, and we we build a full plan for their finances, which I do for them using incredible technology, that, quite frankly, I think, is on par if not better than some of these larger institutions. Um, I think I can provide the same level if not more, of a of a comprehensive planning service at a lower cost, too. So that's the other thing is that I think financial planning in general, comes with a high ticket cost, right at a high, high price. How can we lower the costs so that people that aren't high income earners, but really need my services, I can sit down with them, build them plan in a couple hours of time. And now they can sit down and every year and say, Okay, here's our plan of action, here the things I can do to improve the efficiency of my overall financial livelihood. And then at the end of the day, they start making better decisions totally.

Dean Soto 17:11 And what what better way to what better way to keep clients and to grow with them? Because I know, in I mean, in my industry, when people when people work with me, like, my goal is to make them more money or save more time. But usually, the making them more money is is the one that people they they're like, Oh crap, why would I not keep on going?

Aaron Hattenbach 17:38 Right? That takes a precedent.

Dean Soto 17:39 Yeah. And so like, for you, your immediate, you know, if even if they're not making a lot right now, every little time they're making more than they would have, they're like, why would I not keep on working with Aaron, like, I'm just gonna continue as they start becoming rich, because they're Henry's, as they start becoming much more it building different egg, acquiring different assets becoming their portfolio actually growing, getting better jobs, or building bigger businesses, whatever it is, you're the first person they're going to go to, because you've already proven with these small things, as it keeps growing, that you are that you know what you're doing, and you're you're always building their best interest.

Aaron Hattenbach 18:25 Right. And the whole thing is the trusted advisor capacity where I think I go beyond the traditional financial advisor. And there are there are many advisors, I know that do this, it does follow the same kind of narrative, which is, you know, they get invited to their clients, weddings, they become kind of a pseudo member of the family. But really, what it comes down to is like, I think you can't have three 400 clients and do this, you just can't, because clients are going to move to new cities, they're going to start families, you know, they move to a new city, you've got to make sure that they buy renter's insurance, and they're renting, or they buy homeowners insurance, that they're purchasing, helping them getting a mortgage and pre qualified. I mean, there are so many touch points in my clients lives where I want them calling me and I've essentially built this practice. And I've, I've trained them, in essence to call me anytime they have a major life event. Okay. So if you have a kid, we need to look into life insurance, right? So there's just so many ways I can help the client and this is my passion is the educational component. And then, as one of my clients put it recently, a hand holding, like knowing that you're not going into this experience, and and going on one website and doing some research and questioning the decision you made, because you were short on time, or you didn't have a second opinion from someone who does this full time. Yeah, right. And at the end of the day, it's like, I look at myself, as a general practitioner, physician in finance, Oh, I love that. That's where my job is if my job is really to diagnose, and then if I I'm not the expert on that subject matter whether it's insurance, mortgage, I have resources, I have people I can that I trust that I would go to for insurance and a mortgage myself. And I can connect them with my client. And I can also be involved in the process and make sure that my client is aware of everything, right from that financial standpoint. And it's really, I think it's one of those business models that it doesn't pay as much as advising two or 300 clients and putting them into mutual funds and meeting with them once a year to check in on them. But I do think that this is the future for my generation, they're going to want this hand holding Yeah, they're going to be willing to pay a premium for it. And I really firmly believe that if you don't migrate your business towards this, this more white glove level of service, you're going to get caught with your pants down. And I certainly would rather be ahead of the curve, make a little bit less, but know that I'm a fiduciary. And that I'm building a sustainable long term business that I can bring other advisors into, and feel good about what we're doing. Right like and make a good living eventually.

Dean Soto 21:10 Yeah, I love it. So so with with all of this, it kind of leads into the fact that not only are you helping your clients, but you're actually helping other advisors, do what you're doing and and start, because really, this is the way that you're doing this is a is a new model,

Aaron Hattenbach 21:31 a new blueprint,

Dean Soto 21:32 it's totally a new blueprint. And you're spot on with that with the hand holding. I mean, my father in law doesn't want any hand holding, you just like, take my money, give me return. And back for me. I'm like, and everyone that I know, that's of my age, or younger, is there like, you know, I want someone that's a little bit of a mentor, and a little bit of have some coach? Yeah, Coach were great making decisions. They're also saying, you know, you should do this as well, because, like, it's just because it's I don't, I don't you know, for me, I like that hand holding so. So how are you training other people? How are you? How are you building up these other advisors, like advisors who are really given their new different type of client, right?

Aaron Hattenbach 22:25 Sure. So advisors come to me at different stages of their careers, I'm finding most of the advisors that want to work with me, on an ongoing basis are advisors that have worked in the industry for a decade or two, they've primarily worked at at large institutions like Merrill Lynch, Morgan, Stanley, UBS, and plenty of other firms for that matter, and they have a large client base, but they are now realizing that, you know, for a number of reasons, it could be headline risk, you know, a major financial firm has a huge lawsuit, or, or a, you know, you can even point to the Wells Fargo opening up of fraudulent accounts are opening up of accounts that clients had not, you know, had not approved. So, I think a lot of advisors are finding that the institutions that they've relied on for name brand, and and and that power has kind of dissipated post 2008 2009. And I think, you know, it rightly so, right. Yeah, these institutions lost our trust, and got bailed out by by the government. And so, you know, it's really interesting, the ones that come from these institutions, what I have to do is, is basically overcome their obstacles and fears of growing independent, yeah. teach them about the infrastructure that's available to them. And what I'll do is, after this podcast, I'm happy to provide you with a couple of links for your listeners, for various, you know, whether it's finance, tech solutions for CRM, and billing and all that. I think it's an educational process. And if the advisors is experiencing so much pain at Morgan, or Merrill, or UBS or Raymond James, whatever, they're going to want the education. Yeah. And if they want the education I have, and I can teach them, why it makes sense for them to go independent. You know, what, it's going to end up costing them annually to run their practice based on what they're looking for, because no advisory practice is the same. Yeah, this is what I found. And I'm not going to say, hey, my model, and the way I work is the right one for every single advisor that I consult with. Now, of course, now I get to know them understand what they're looking for, what are they specializing in? where their clients, what services they provide? What do they charge? You know, I have a whole list of profiling questions that I have to rely on in order to get a comprehensive intake of who that advisor is, and what they're looking to do with their business. And ultimately, at the end of the day, it's educating and it's basically telling them here are the different vendors that I think makes sense. And then also coaching them on how to negotiate because they've been a big enterprises that have done the negotiating for them. So, you know, say Salesforce is offering you this financial services cloud for two grand here. Well, you know, you should know that they have sales people that have quarterly goals do. So if you can get them at the end of the quarter and say, hey, look, you know, $2,000 will read for me, but I can I can do 1400, well, a lot of this stuff is negotiable. And so I think you have to be your own advocate, you have to not just accept the answer as is. And it's ultimately it's like going back to school, again, you've got to go and you've got to embrace it, and realize that you're making an investment in not just your business, but your clients futures. And yeah, for me, this is, this has been really exciting. It's something that I added to my practice after doing this for two and a half years. But in addition, what I've done is I've taken the best of Maryland's the best of Hightower, the best of Bernstein, the best of like working in these different models within wealth management, and said, okay, because I've been exposed to all these different technology vendors, now I do have the ability to say to you, okay, well, your reporting needs are more extensive than mine, here are the reporting platforms that work. So that's been in essence, what I am, is I'm, I'm an advisor consultant on the side, and I do this not because it's going to make me a ton of money, but because I want to pay it forward. And I do feel like there are so many advisors that are capable of doing this, and just with a little more education and knowledge, they can, they can go off on their own, and they can not just build a practice that they're proud of, but a practice that they can eventually, you know, give to the next generation. Yeah. And, and set up and set up a practice that, that is sustainable, long term, and isn't reliant on an institution, it's, you know, it's, it's cool, you're setting up a legacy for yourself.

Dean Soto 27:12 I love that it's instead of instead of, you know, working and building somebody else's legacy, which was like a big, you know, the big Merrill Lynch or whatever you're, you're spot on like, you can, you can totally give that to the next generation. Now that it's now that it's becoming possible. And you're showing that this is actually becoming possible to be to that it's much, much easier now than it was 10 years ago, to become an independent financial advisor.

Aaron Hattenbach 27:41 There's just so much I think, because of the growth and if you look in financial services, right now, across the map, outside of wealth management, you know, most areas of financial services are experiencing a slowdown, because of technology out there, the fees are going down your tech companies doing direct listings and avoiding an investment bank. But what's really interesting is the one area that is expanding and expanding at an amazing clip, is this rush to independence. And you're seeing, I get emails every day about, you know, firms that are leaving a big, or teams that are leaving a big, firm and going independent. And it's like this has been going on the past 10 years, you're seeing the RIA channel, the registered investment advisory channel, grow double to double digits, and you're seeing the Merrill Lynch's Morgan Stanley wire house model, really just trying to hold on for dear life. And and they're also I think, really, I think, not geared towards the next generation. And the advisors are in their 50s and 60s, the average age of an advisor in those models. And ultimately, what they're doing is they're not setting up the next generation of their client tells kids and grandkids with a service model that's going to run with them. And so for me, it was okay, I can't be at a firm that is not going to really embrace the fact that a the next generation of wealth is looking for a different experience, different fee structure. And they're just holding on for dear life and trying to just keep keep the boat, you know, sailing, right, I'm for lack of a better analogy, I wanted to be ahead of the curve and recognize that the next gen of wealth is coming to me with with a different, a different service need. And if those big firms were not going to embrace it, I was going to create it. But what's interesting is Merrill Lynch and Schwab have created digital monthly subscription models in the last couple months, which I did two and a half years ago. Yeah. And it just it boggles my mind that they're now rushing into this. And, you know, who knows how their how that how that, you know, how the actual service model works? But it's just like, too little too late.

Dean Soto 30:03 Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, and and the Met, it would be hard to get a resonating message from one of those big firms to the younger generation?

Aaron Hattenbach 30:17 Well, I mean, I'll give you an example. I use Google Apps for a lot of a lot of my client intake. And it just feels like there's so many cool free ish, bringing tools available to advisors. And because those firms, unfortunately, for them, they they have to go through their public companies. Their their approval process is lengthy. Yeah, it all has to be built internally, you know, they're not able to use the best of, of technology tools that someone like me or another advisor has available

Dean Soto 30:51 and and

Aaron Hattenbach 30:53 open architecture model. It's Yeah, we I compared as it's like, you know, Apple and Android, right. So but, you know, in many cases, people love Apple, it's a closed architecture system is it's great, it's safe. But there are people that prefer more customization. And, you know, I would say, my model makes a lot of sense. And a lot of independent firms models make a lot of sense for people that are not looking for that very, like simple, I would say, archaic way of managing wealth, which is charge a person on a whim, and and set up a quarterly meeting, it's purely based on the portfolio returns.

Dean Soto 31:36 Yeah, no, I love that, man. I love it. I love it. And it definitely is. Even with, with utilizing those apps and the free the freemium type apps like that, it's what it's what my generation and and younger generation are used to. Right, and you're speaking the language, just even in something like that. So. So that's, I mean, I love it and actually kind of corresponds with so I always ask the five minute mindset shift question like the five minute like, strategic business decision that people can make that you that, that that you made, that changed the trajectory of your business? And and so in your five minute one, because you're so thorough, and you actually do the questionnaire, when I said to podcast, get you talk about your five minute mindset shift question is, it is based actually on questions, and asking your client questions, whether it be someone who's your financial advising or somebody, you're trying to help become an independent advisor. Can you talk more about that?

Aaron Hattenbach 32:50 Sure. So I don't go into any meetings without an agenda in advance. For my existing clients, and then for prospective clients, they book a time with me on my calendar, a tool, countless booking appointments. But I send them this financial planning checklist that I'm happy to offer to your listeners as well. And the checklist is really meant to gear the client for a conversation that is going to expand upon the investments. And so this checklist has a series of items that think of it as you know, an intake form when you go and see a doctor like. So in this case, you'll have your previous three years of tax returns, disability benefits, coverage, 401k, and other retirement accounts. And it goes on and on. So really the point of that being I want the prospective clients and know that like this call is going to go beyond just talking about my investment philosophy, or what you're looking for in a portfolio. Yeah, that's secondary. Primary to me, is the number one question I ask is, what are you looking for in a relationship with a financial advisor? Yeah, advisor, financial planner, investment advisor, there's so many monitors and names for what we do. But at the end of the day, it's not about me, right? When I am sitting down or having a zoom call with a prospective client, I need to know what they're looking for. If I can provide a service that matches what they're looking for, then let's move forward in the process. Let's, let's have you contact a few of my clients and ask about their client experience for reference checking, and then continue through my five step process. But if they're looking for something where they're like, hey, I want to be hands off entirely, I don't want to participate in this. I just want my portfolio manage, then I'm out there advisor. Yeah. And I have to recognize that and see that for what it is. Yeah. So I started off every call with that question. And I I completely shut up. Like I asked them this question. And I hope bit before the call, they've reviewed the checklist and the questions, and they've given it some thought, as far as what they're looking for.

Dean Soto 35:09 I love that.

Aaron Hattenbach 35:10 Right? Because in essence, it's like any other service that you that you look for out there. You're the consumer, you're empowered. Yeah. And you have so many different options. Well, why should I work with this service professionals? Yep. Because I like trust, and feel that their service model resonates and speaks to me, right? Yeah. So if they're looking for a comprehensive financial planner, that is going to help with budgeting that's going to help with with selecting of health insurance policies, and then their employer plan, then my firm is going to be the right service provider. But again, that they're looking for just a portfolio manager to babysit their money. Don't get me wrong, I can do that. But I get so much more satisfaction out of really building a full financial puzzle for my clients, and putting the pieces together. And also, what I what what I found is my clients need to be participants in this process. Yeah. And they're unwilling to complete intake forms, and complete some of the homework that I asked them in order for me to give them the best advice, then it's going to be more of a hassle for me, if I have to chase them down and remind them to do something that is actually going to benefit them. But at the end of the day, at the end of the day, some people quite frankly, don't want to put in the time. And kind of where I go back to the advisor, consultant practice. If I see that the advisor wants to independent, but they're unwilling to put in the time, then it's like, Is that going to make for good consulting client? For me? Probably not, yeah, I would rather make less money and have an advisor. That is that is a go getter that is committed to this, that is saying, I've got both feet out the door. I'm not dipping my toes in the water, I am convinced that this is the model I need to pursue. That's a good client, someone that is just looking for an answer to one or two questions is probably not ready to go independent. And I seen that so much. I know. It frustrates me because it's like these people are like, being successful at a wire houses is hard. I mean, one out of 100 advisors eventually becomes a million dollar producer. Yeah. So it is not for the faint of heart and the success percentages at these firms. We're talking in the the low single digits. Okay. So the fact the matter is, these are these are talented people that have the ability to both build trust, and they understand capital markets, and clearly have been able to build rapport with their client base. Yeah, yeah. But but the final step of the process is, you know, building a product of building a practice that you're proud of, but also that you feel you're giving your clients the best possible service offering. Yeah. And I just firmly don't believe that cross selling my clients, and making commissions on a variety of products is in my clients best interest? I just I don't I don't subscribe to that model. And I think, probably 80 to 90%, if not more of advisors don't as well.

Dean Soto 38:32 Yeah. But but but to have to actually build something around that belief. You have to be able to put in the work.

Aaron Hattenbach 38:44 It's what what it comes down to is your any life transition, whether you're taking a new job moving to a new city, getting married and starting a family. None of this stuff is easy. Like you can you can read books and and arm yourself with a ton of knowledge. But at the end of the day, it's Do you feel confident enough to be able to know that you can make a mistake or two, and it's not going to be Armageddon? Yeah. And what I realized is, when I took my clients and set up my own firm, sure, they had to be very patient, there were documentation issues, there were process issues, but they knew that they were getting somebody that was going to always look out for their best interest. And they were willing to be an early adopter, like the by the first year model of a car. Yeah, right. It's like the people are buying Tesla's right, you have to be a believer in the product and be willing to put up with some of the potential mishaps. But the service the offering is, is so much better, that it makes up for some of the small hiccups along the way. And that's what I would say to most advisors considering independence is you got to be okay with the fact that is not going to be perfect. On day one, certainly not perfect on day 365. That you're you're going to become a better advisor, by owning your own business. I really think I firmly believe that. And for me, it, it was probably the best decision I made in my life was finally going off on my own. And I think that there are too many advisors out there that don't buy into the process. And I would suggest the following. Had I not had all those experiences at those other firms, I wouldn't have been equipped with the knowledge, I would have been going in dark, I would have been just as scared and concerned about compliance, and an operational infrastructure and, and and all the things I don't know, that I'm not aware of right, like the fear of the unknown. And so what I've said to advisors is sure, you can read my 26 steps article, you can read a ton of stuff on the internet. But at the end of the day, when you're making a decision about probably the most important asset, your business. It pays to actually work with someone, it's a knock, but this one, for sure. And so I'm not trying to like be an advocate, you can go to another advisor consultant know who does the same thing that I do, it's just a matter of I don't think this is something that you go out alone.

Dean Soto 41:19 Yeah, no, it's it's, it's totally, I mean, you don't you don't go to school, you know, you don't you don't, you don't try and become an advisor in general without actually being mentored in some way, you know, and just any business, I was, gosh, this even just this year, I spent a lot of money, on advice on mentors for my business for people who, who guide me into places that I just don't know. Because, you know, if I looked at my time, I'd be spending a lot more in opportunity cost than spending the money that the capital that I'm spending that I'm giving to my advisor, mentor [lus, you by even just by doing that you get not only gain all the knowledge, but you have somebody who's going to watch your back. And then at the same time, you are also now part of their network. So if something does come up, that you need something, now they're the ones who are that who can introduce you to a whole bunch of people or if they have, if you I'm sure if at some point in time, you're going to end up mentoring and a financial advisor that sets up their own practice that specializes in something that you don't, and you go up well, here's some clients that I think would be better for you.

Aaron Hattenbach 42:40 Absolutely, absolutely. I think I think it's like the benefit doesn't just end with the consultation. It extends and had a number of advisors reach out that were even at smaller firms that were like, Hey, I'm gonna rip off the band aid, like, well, you don't have to rip off the band aid. And my suggestion is you don't, you don't wait until you leave the firm to start your own firm. Yeah, for for compliance purposes, you can't go and register your license, and set up your own RIA while you're working for another company. But you can certainly educate yourself on all the infrastructure, think about the business you want to build, build a business plan, marketing plan, value proposition and start really compiling all of your, your template form documentation. And that will take time. And so what I tell advisors who are like, well, I'm about to leave, I'm going to spend another month there, but I'm committed to leaving, and, and then I'll get started with you, I say to them, that's going to be too late. Like I hate to be the bearer of bad news. But when you leave, you know, you want to provide the best possible transition for your for the clients that are entrusting you with their money. Yep. And that are committed to you as a client. That's that speaks volumes, right? So you better put in the time, while you haven't yet. Really setting everything up for success. Because like I said earlier on the podcast, they're going to be things you're not aware of, they're gonna be mistakes that you make that are inevitable to being a business owner. Yep. But if you convince yourself that you have to wait until you have a clean break to get started with at least some of the educational process, yeah,you're going to be too late.

Dean Soto 44:29 Well, and you were like, even with, like the template forms, I mean, their systems, their systems that we're in a large organizations that you don't, you don't even you take, you take for granted. Exactly, you don't realize how many things, different template forms different, different little processes that are there, that if you, if you took the time to set up while you were at the firm, they if you would be you that would cause tremendous chaos, if you're if you had no income coming in, or if you had clients who were like, okay, now I'm

Aaron Hattenbach 45:03 ready, I'm ready. Me, it's embarrassing. If If you go to a client who is committed to working with you and moving their, their business, they're moving their their, their, their accounts, or their relationship to you. And you show to a meeting without the right documentation. Yep, that's amateurish. And so what I tell advisors is, you know, get started with learning about what the process looks like, it may take several months for you to get approval from the state regulators, which you know, that's three months, four months of potential downtime with no income, no clients, and by the way, the longer those clients stay at your predecessor firm, the more likely they're not going to move with you. Because they're going to say, like, what's been going on the past few months, like, you know, you can't, you cannot legally work with a client, unless you are registered with with the firm, right? As a independent advisor, investment advisor representative affiliate with an RA, or if you're, you know, registered as a, you know, working for a broker, dealer, whatever you may be doing, but the point being like, downtime and silence and not advising your clients, because you're legally not allowed to is a tremendous risk to your your enterprise. And so what I say to them is spend a few months, I spent five or six years compiling documentation, thinking about like, about my process, like obsessively thinking about the client experience standard that I wanted to create. And even then, two and a half years later, my practice looks a lot different than it did when I started. It's just it to me, it's like you've got it, you've got to embrace it, and you've got to fail fast. And you have to be willing to put out the resources, ultimately, say you're spending a few thousand dollars working with someone, well, they're going to save you thousands of dollars in negotiation, negotiating contracts. And in time, in so many ways that it's like, you're going to get multiples of what you spend. So I can't emphasize this enough, I just feel like advisors just need to be more open minded and less concerned about, you know, the fears that they've created the narrative they've created in their head that going off on their own is going to expose them to so many risks. And and these ultimately these firms are, they're lowering payouts. They are are telling advisors if you don't sell four or five different services, we're cutting your payout? Yep. And so it's about selling the enterprise. Yeah. And what happens is when you sell the enterprise, your client associates you, as a relationship manager at Merrill Lynch, or Morgan Stanley, and not as their advisor. And so then the clients never going to leave that institution. Yep. And good luck setting up your own practice, once you've sold your clients, a mortgage credit cards line of credit securities based loan, your clients are going to be like, Well, you've talked, you've talked about the institution for the past 10 years.

Dean Soto 48:13 And I now leave, why would I? Why would I leave?

Aaron Hattenbach 48:16 Right? And then advisors come to me saying like, what's the narrative that I can create, to get my client to move their assets? And it's like, well, if you've sold your clients on the enterprise, and your clients have four or five different service offerings, you the institution can be very hard. Yeah. And I'm not I'm not a magician, I can't wave a wand.

Dean Soto 48:35 Yeah, I mean, in just in, in moving things. It's hard even if the client loves you, and is willing, it's like, man, I have, I'm tied up in all of that.

Aaron Hattenbach 48:46 All of that. And I'm getting discounts on my mortgage, because I've got five different services. Yeah, you can't compete with that on the independent side. What I can do on the independent side is say, hey, look, I'm not captive having to provide your mortgage from the event, because I'm at Merrill, we can go shop around and hire a mortgage broker to go shop around for the best rates. Yeah. And ultimately, you know, that alone, I think, is worthwhile in terms of giving the client access to the the, you know, services of other institutions that may be better equipped, that maybe providing a better price, you know, so yeah, I would just say, like, for advisors that have sold their clients in the enterprise, it's, it's very hard for them to ever go independent. And if they do, it's, it's a one time thing. And you better put in the hours, you better hire someone to really help you navigate the complexities. But for an advisor that has worked at one of these firms, and is looking to go independent, don't go at this alone. Yeah, right. Go to go to kids to start calm. I don't get paid anything from kid says, I think he's his blog is the best in the industry, it's won many awards. It's ultimately actually was ranked higher than the Wall Street Journal in terms of influence on financial advisors, which is saying a lot. Yeah. And if you want to get free education, go there. But at the end of the day, you know, don't go out this process alone. It is, you know, you're risking your business.

Dean Soto 50:21 Yeah. But the best option is going with you. So how can people actually work specifically with you?

Aaron Hattenbach 50:31 Well, Dean, you're far too kind I, you know, I'm learning every day. So you know, I'm not the best for everyone. But my suggestion is if advisors interested in working with me, they go to my website, rapportfinancial.com, there is a button to contact me and they can actually access my calendar. And I would encourage them to go to the prospective client meeting and select 30 minutes time where we can learn more about their practice what they're looking to accomplish. They can ask me any questions as far as you know, my service model for advising advisors, financial advisors, and you know, I do offer to a limited amount of advisors, the ability to retain me for a certain amount of hours. You know, this isn't my core business, it's just something I love to do in helping other advisors accomplish what I was able to do two and a half years ago. And so if they're looking for help on the tech marketing, business strategy, compliance, operations, practice management, really it covers the gamut and they're going to get 10 years of experience running businesses for within multiple advisory models. So you know, I think they're going to get a good mentor that is going to help them select the right vendors and and build a practice they're proud of all while saving some tone in the in the process and not hitting their head against the wall trying to figure all this out. It's it's a lot putting an entire business together I wrote this in my 26 steps article and quite frankly 26 steps was probably only half of what it took to create this business so um, I wish I hadn't gone at it alone I would have hired someone with the experience and would have prevented some money lost some mistakes and you know, what if i think i think we're shorten up my ramp up period to getting my clients on board and and operating so they can contact me they can go to my website and schedule 30 minutes of time they can also go to my homepage and there's an intake form where they can send me an email goes to the info that gets forwarded to my my email address but yeah, I'm would recommend going to my website, that would be the first step.

Dean Soto 53:03 I love it man so yeah, so go check out if you want to connect with Aaron and if you want to have that mentorship or if you just want to you if you even just want to see if that if Aaron would be right for you with you know 30 minute call go check out rapportfinancial.com so report as in building rapport RAPPORTfinancial.com and head down to the opt in form and connect with their and he is if you can't tell he is one a wealth of knowledge and he freely gives out a lot of value and actually cares cares about the people that he works with if you can tell just through what he's been sharing right now so just go check that out once again it's rapportfinancial RAPPORTfinancial.com and go connect with Aaron. Also have that in the show notes as well as in the blog posts and and other places where we syndicate the actual publishing of this podcast episode so but all that being said, dude, Aaron, thank you so much for being on man. This has been this has been pretty awesome.

Aaron Hattenbach 54:17 Yeah, this is a pleasure. I really enjoyed it and you know have to do some more podcasting I guess right? Yeah.

Dean Soto 54:24 Yeah, for sure. That's I mean, that's one thing that that you have you have you're definitely a wealth of knowledge and and can bring so much value to everybody in the financial advising financial services industry. So that would be that'd be awesome. So

Aaron Hattenbach 54:42 well, really appreciate it was it was enjoyable and we'll be in touch.Thanks, Dean.

Dean Soto 54:46 Yeah, no problem. So go check out Aaron last time at rapportfinancial.com or RAPPORTfinancial.com. This is Dean Soto with the freedom in five minutes podcast. This this is the end of the episode but it is not the end of the podcast because we will see you in the next freedom in five minutes podcast episode.

When you're working in the financial industry, most approaches are very cookie cutter. But if you want to be your own person, how do you really break out of the mold? How do you start your own practice to emphasize where your passion in finance is really at, and do so successfully?

In this episode, Aaron Hattenbach, founder of Rapport Financial shares his journey from working for bigger financial service firms to having his independent service firm which to date has now managed over 500 million in client assets.

Schedule a Meeting with Aaron: https://rapportfinancial.com/

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Automated Transcript Below:

Dean Soto 0:00
Hey, this is Dean Soto, founder of freedom in five minutes.com. And we're here again with another freedom in five minutes podcast episode. Today's topic, is this going independent as a financial advisor. That and more coming up. Alright, cool. So we have a really cool show we had we actually been talking right before this a lot. And I'm like, oh, man, we gotta we gotta save this content for the actual show. But I'm here with Aaron Hattenbach, man, is this gonna be awesome. So Aaron, he is the founder and managing member of Rapport Financial. It's a boutique independent advisory firm, with a decade of experience in wealth management in the wealth management industry, having managed over 500 million in client assets. That's crazy man. Aaron works with young tech professionals in the early stages of wealth accumulation, as well as high net worth clients, with a particular focus on physicians and business owners. So without further ado, man, I'm so glad you're here with us, Aaron, how's it going?

Aaron Hattenbach 1:17
Happy to be here. It's going well, for a Monday.

Dean Soto 1:22
Well, it's cool. So one of the things that piqued my interest about you so so obviously, I have my claws out there trying to find really interesting podcast guests. I've reached out to several, you know, CFPB, sort certified financial planners, financial advisors, things like people like that. And there's one thing that is very different about you, when it comes to financial services in general. And that is, right off the bat, you you can tell that you are you, you have your own way of doing things, you you, you kind of have broken the mold. And we can go into this a little bit. But it seems to me in when you're doing any type of financial advising any securities, anything's like that. It's very cookie cutter people are very much on the defensive, because there's so many regulations and so on. And so when I saw you, I was like, Oh, my gosh, this guy's doing content this guy's doing like, just, he's teaching other people how to run their firms and things like that, I need to have this guy on this on the show, because that is one of the hardest things to do in your industry. So all that being said, I want to get your entire background, you used to work for these big Merrill Lynch, bigger financial services firms. And now you are your own person, and it was not an easy ride. How did that happen? Give us a little bit of background on your entire story.

Aaron Hattenbach 2:54
Yeah, so Dean, I started working right after the financial crisis graduated from from Brandeis in 2009. And really, this all came from an experience working at the attorney general's office on a case against some of the largest financial institutions and lenders that essentially contributed to the major mortgage meltdown that we saw, and I felt a passionate need to work on the side of the consumer and financial services, not on the side of the sales side, selling the institutions, and creating products, I really wanted to help shelter individuals, families, high net worth individuals across the gamut, and educate them really. So my passion is financial education. And I felt that I needed to start my own practice in order to emphasize that without limitations. So to backtrack to that to 2010. I started with Alliance Bernstein, they're very large, firm publicly traded, it worked for a couple of independent firms, one of which is hopefully going to go public, and I can cash out my stock at some point. And then found myself at Merrill Lynch and the advisor training program, built up a decent practice for myself. But I continue to find the same issues where I wanted to really be a holistic financial planner, cover everything that's beyond investing, because quite frankly, I think there's this misconception that, that building a portfolio is what an advisor gets paid for. I think in order to earn 1%, on a portfolio, you have to be doing full financial planning, and that, that covers retirement planning, tax planning, estate planning, stock options, planning, looking at an employer benefits package. So what I did was I saw this trend at the large institutions that were focused primarily on portfolio management, and recognize that the future of financial planning and wealth advisory for that matter, is helping people with everything personal finance related, and if you're not doing that, you're going to lose clients, or you're going to have clients that are going to question what you're charging them. So I created Rapport Financial back in early 2017, with only a few clients and with a vision that I was going to go well beyond the investing in helping my clients, but specifically focusing on young tech professionals that were from age 22 to 23, to 35, in the accumulation phase of life, trying to accumulate for a home purchase to start a family for a number of goals that quite frankly, in in this economy where the price of goods are going up, wages are staying stagnant, was becoming I think, less and less of it over reality. And so I wanted to show people that through a full financial planning process that I created, that they can attain these goals and a time window that is feasible, and not have to be waiting decades to to eventually, you know, be a homeowner. Yeah, it's, it's worked out really well. I really love my client base, I pick who I want to work with. And, you know, I cover everything from my clients even as far as if a client is going off on their own and creating a marketing consulting business, how to negotiate compensation, how to, you know, position themselves, with with the with, with, with strength, so they're, they're going in there and saying, you know, what, I don't need this opportunity. I like it. But here's what I'm worth. And so, there's so much more than just the investments, and that's what I get excited about is, I can actually make an impact on people's lives beyond picking ETFs and funds.

Dean Soto 6:52
I love that man. It's it's, it's definitely something that is different, because I've had a couple of clients in the financial services realm. And, you know, it's, it is a very, like, we like I said before, it's very, it's a very defensive industry, they that you you can, that you had your you have your standard cookie cutter, typically focused toward like what we talked about prior to the podcast toward baby boomer type, folks, and anytime you wanted to go any do anything that was outside of the box, you have to go and get it through compliance, right? content, it can be a whatever structure, you want to do it just tons of having to go through compliance when you're working with a big business. So like, so I can see how easily that can be frustrating if you're working for a bigger company like that. What were some of the pitfalls, that or it's not pitfalls, but like what is something that you just did not expect once you left? The big companies that that you feel what it that pretty much every single financial advisor is going to run into?

Aaron Hattenbach 8:10
Yeah, so I think advisors are trained on how to advise, right? Very, very plain and simple. I'm not going to get into the nuances of what a financial advisor does, I think, you know, it's very, very well publicized. But we're not taught how to own and run a business. We're not told how to hire employees, how to select vendors, how to really create a business from scratch. And I think that is the challenge for any entrepreneur is you might have an area of expertise, and a knowledge base. But if you haven't started a business before, you're in for quite the experience. And I know that you know this Dean. So when I started this business, I had done months of preparation. And in fact, probably about five or six years of preparation in my head. And in collecting documentation that I thought would be used fault. I created a dropbox folder that I knew at some point I was going to tap it when I was writing. And and it really token a conversation with a client of mine who was working with me since 2010. I'm only 32 years old now. So that's that's saying a lot that he stuck with me for 10 years, and hopefully, many, many years to come. But he said to me, I'm not moving my account and the relationship, you must be starting your own practice. And so that gave me the confidence that I don't think I don't think anybody is ready necessarily to start a business. Yeah, but there's no perfect time, you're not going to have everything mapped out. It's not all going to line up like a puzzle. But I think what I found in running a business for the past two and a half years, and even going back to Day One is you need to be willing to adapt, you need to be willing to constantly put time and resources into learning. And and I quite frankly, I'm constantly looking at my business and poking holes in it and saying, Where can I improve the client experience? How can I improve the infrastructure of technology? What can I outsource on a day to day basis, that is not my core competency. And quite frankly, also is compliant. Because I it's I you know, as much as compliance is talked about working at Maryland, Morgan Stanley, I still have a compliance department that I outsource. And I'm still subject to the same regulations, it's just a very different experience in terms of, you know, day to day, if I send a client an email or a personal note, I don't have to run it by someone to, you know, in order to get this to the client, I can, I am my own compliance officer, in fact, but I do still have to be subject to the same regulations. But I would say, you know, in a nutshell, being your own boss, setting up the infrastructure, really making a lot of decisions in a short time window and saying, Okay, well, you know, I'm going to do the best that I can do. And then the other thing to do is, is I kept all my contracts very short in nature, because I realized that if I made a mistake and selected a vendor that that wasn't appropriate for the business I was creating, if I did a month to month model, where I may be paid a little bit more instead of an annual contract and that I was locked into, at the very least I could get out of that and select a different vendor that made more sense for my business. So there are a number of things that I did and including, I would say, reading a lot of kids this articles, you know, I given back to that that blog, in recent years, because ultimately, I relied almost exclusively on kids, this is content. And I feel like there's there's enough content out there that if you're an advisor, and you're saying, You know what, I feel stuck, I'm not Merrill Lynch, or Morgan Stanley, I'm never leaving the sandbox, or I'm going to move from Merrill the Morgan because I don't want to go independent, I would challenge them and say, there's so many resources out there on the internet, and so many people that are willing to help that all of those pain points and all those reasons to not go independent. I can respond with here, here's what I think and give them the tools and show them how they can empower themselves. It's really, really neat. And this didn't exist, you know, 10, 15 years ago. Now, there are technology providers, we're talking dozens for every category that are that are built for the independent advisory channel. I mean, I can build a better tech stack than Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley has internally that is cool, and do so cheaper, and have and have the ability to say, you know, what, if I don't like what they're doing anymore, there are 10 more competitors that I can go to.

Dean Soto 12:51
Oh yeah, I love I love that. Because like, because it's, it's, it's it's riding the wave of well not really the wave, but actually, you know, like, breaking the mold, and then just riding the wave of, of the fact that things are changing. I mean, you could have just sat there and complained and just been like, well, I'm just this is what I do. I you know, I was trained as an advisor, and I'm just going to, but you took on the entire the entire business, which involves marketing, involves bookkeeping involves it involves, like you said, still involves compliance. But how can I do compliance where I'm still flexible in in various ways? And how can I give? How can I, with where I, where you're at right now? How could you do what Merrill Lynch does, but do it faster? Do it more in with with a more caring touch with your clients? Because that's one of the things about you is you actually go after you you are I shouldn't say go after but you are, you will definitely take on different type of client than your traditional advisor. Traditional advisors go after boomers who

Aaron Hattenbach 14:07
Yeah, boomers is an older and younger, that are that are retiring or nearing retirement, and have accumulated enough and assets to work with, quote unquote, a traditional financial advisor. Yep. What's interesting is, I noticed, in my time working at Merrill working in Hightower, working at concentric, that a lot of my peers were looking for financial advice. They didn't trust automating all of their finances. So you've got a lot of these robo advisors, which I think provide a great product, but they're not in comprehensive planning service. Yeah, um, you know, they're not going to tell you how to max out your employee benefits package. Yeah, they're not going to tell you to fund an HSA, when you have a high deductible health care plan. They're just there. They're intended to fill a gap. But they're not necessarily there to cover everything personal finance related. Yeah. So I saw a gap in a really in need in my field where advisors were not gearing their practices towards young professionals that are high income earners, what I call Henry's high earners, not rich yet. Yeah, I didn't come up with that term. But as an -

Dean Soto 15:20
That's an awesome term.

Aaron Hattenbach 15:21
Yeah. But being here in the Bay Area, you know, incomes are, are substantially higher than the median income in the country. And people here have to face high cost of living. But what I've noticed is with with some simple tweaks, and putting them through my five step process, I can get them from a point where they feel like they're not saving anything to where they're maxing out their retirement accounts, they have monthly ACH is going into their investment accounts. And they feel like they're in a position now, where they financially have a understanding of what the future looks like and why they work. Yeah, like, I challenge my clients. Why? Why are you working? Like, what is it that you're working for? Is it the money? Is it the passion? Is it a combination of the two, but at the end of the day, if we plan ahead, and we we build a full plan for their finances, which I do for them using incredible technology, that, quite frankly, I think, is on par if not better than some of these larger institutions. Um, I think I can provide the same level if not more, of a of a comprehensive planning service at a lower cost, too. So that's the other thing is that I think financial planning in general, comes with a high ticket cost, right at a high, high price. How can we lower the costs so that people that aren't high income earners, but really need my services, I can sit down with them, build them plan in a couple hours of time. And now they can sit down and every year and say, Okay, here's our plan of action, here the things I can do to improve the efficiency of my overall financial livelihood. And then at the end of the day, they start making better decisions totally.

Dean Soto 17:11
And what what better way to what better way to keep clients and to grow with them? Because I know, in I mean, in my industry, when people when people work with me, like, my goal is to make them more money or save more time. But usually, the making them more money is is the one that people they they're like, Oh crap, why would I not keep on going?

Aaron Hattenbach 17:38
Right? That takes a precedent.

Dean Soto 17:39
Yeah. And so like, for you, your immediate, you know, if even if they're not making a lot right now, every little time they're making more than they would have, they're like, why would I not keep on working with Aaron, like, I'm just gonna continue as they start becoming rich, because they're Henry's, as they start becoming much more it building different egg, acquiring different assets becoming their portfolio actually growing, getting better jobs, or building bigger businesses, whatever it is, you're the first person they're going to go to, because you've already proven with these small things, as it keeps growing, that you are that you know what you're doing, and you're you're always building their best interest.

Aaron Hattenbach 18:25
Right. And the whole thing is the trusted advisor capacity where I think I go beyond the traditional financial advisor. And there are there are many advisors, I know that do this, it does follow the same kind of narrative, which is, you know, they get invited to their clients, weddings, they become kind of a pseudo member of the family. But really, what it comes down to is like, I think you can't have three 400 clients and do this, you just can't, because clients are going to move to new cities, they're going to start families, you know, they move to a new city, you've got to make sure that they buy renter's insurance, and they're renting, or they buy homeowners insurance, that they're purchasing, helping them getting a mortgage and pre qualified. I mean, there are so many touch points in my clients lives where I want them calling me and I've essentially built this practice. And I've, I've trained them, in essence to call me anytime they have a major life event. Okay. So if you have a kid, we need to look into life insurance, right? So there's just so many ways I can help the client and this is my passion is the educational component. And then, as one of my clients put it recently, a hand holding, like knowing that you're not going into this experience, and and going on one website and doing some research and questioning the decision you made, because you were short on time, or you didn't have a second opinion from someone who does this full time. Yeah, right. And at the end of the day, it's like, I look at myself, as a general practitioner, physician in finance, Oh, I love that. That's where my job is if my job is really to diagnose, and then if I I'm not the expert on that subject matter whether it's insurance, mortgage, I have resources, I have people I can that I trust that I would go to for insurance and a mortgage myself. And I can connect them with my client. And I can also be involved in the process and make sure that my client is aware of everything, right from that financial standpoint. And it's really, I think it's one of those business models that it doesn't pay as much as advising two or 300 clients and putting them into mutual funds and meeting with them once a year to check in on them. But I do think that this is the future for my generation, they're going to want this hand holding Yeah, they're going to be willing to pay a premium for it. And I really firmly believe that if you don't migrate your business towards this, this more white glove level of service, you're going to get caught with your pants down. And I certainly would rather be ahead of the curve, make a little bit less, but know that I'm a fiduciary. And that I'm building a sustainable long term business that I can bring other advisors into, and feel good about what we're doing. Right like and make a good living eventually.

Dean Soto 21:10
Yeah, I love it. So so with with all of this, it kind of leads into the fact that not only are you helping your clients, but you're actually helping other advisors, do what you're doing and and start, because really, this is the way that you're doing this is a is a new model,

Aaron Hattenbach 21:31
a new blueprint,

Dean Soto 21:32
it's totally a new blueprint. And you're spot on with that with the hand holding. I mean, my father in law doesn't want any hand holding, you just like, take my money, give me return. And back for me. I'm like, and everyone that I know, that's of my age, or younger, is there like, you know, I want someone that's a little bit of a mentor, and a little bit of have some coach? Yeah, Coach were great making decisions. They're also saying, you know, you should do this as well, because, like, it's just because it's I don't, I don't you know, for me, I like that hand holding so. So how are you training other people? How are you? How are you building up these other advisors, like advisors who are really given their new different type of client, right?

Aaron Hattenbach 22:25
Sure. So advisors come to me at different stages of their careers, I'm finding most of the advisors that want to work with me, on an ongoing basis are advisors that have worked in the industry for a decade or two, they've primarily worked at at large institutions like Merrill Lynch, Morgan, Stanley, UBS, and plenty of other firms for that matter, and they have a large client base, but they are now realizing that, you know, for a number of reasons, it could be headline risk, you know, a major financial firm has a huge lawsuit, or, or a, you know, you can even point to the Wells Fargo opening up of fraudulent accounts are opening up of accounts that clients had not, you know, had not approved. So, I think a lot of advisors are finding that the institutions that they've relied on for name brand, and and and that power has kind of dissipated post 2008 2009. And I think, you know, it rightly so, right. Yeah, these institutions lost our trust, and got bailed out by by the government. And so, you know, it's really interesting, the ones that come from these institutions, what I have to do is, is basically overcome their obstacles and fears of growing independent, yeah. teach them about the infrastructure that's available to them. And what I'll do is, after this podcast, I'm happy to provide you with a couple of links for your listeners, for various, you know, whether it's finance, tech solutions for CRM, and billing and all that. I think it's an educational process. And if the advisors is experiencing so much pain at Morgan, or Merrill, or UBS or Raymond James, whatever, they're going to want the education. Yeah. And if they want the education I have, and I can teach them, why it makes sense for them to go independent. You know, what, it's going to end up costing them annually to run their practice based on what they're looking for, because no advisory practice is the same. Yeah, this is what I found. And I'm not going to say, hey, my model, and the way I work is the right one for every single advisor that I consult with. Now, of course, now I get to know them understand what they're looking for, what are they specializing in? where their clients, what services they provide? What do they charge? You know, I have a whole list of profiling questions that I have to rely on in order to get a comprehensive intake of who that advisor is, and what they're looking to do with their business. And ultimately, at the end of the day, it's educating and it's basically telling them here are the different vendors that I think makes sense. And then also coaching them on how to negotiate because they've been a big enterprises that have done the negotiating for them. So, you know, say Salesforce is offering you this financial services cloud for two grand here. Well, you know, you should know that they have sales people that have quarterly goals do. So if you can get them at the end of the quarter and say, hey, look, you know, $2,000 will read for me, but I can I can do 1400, well, a lot of this stuff is negotiable. And so I think you have to be your own advocate, you have to not just accept the answer as is. And it's ultimately it's like going back to school, again, you've got to go and you've got to embrace it, and realize that you're making an investment in not just your business, but your clients futures. And yeah, for me, this is, this has been really exciting. It's something that I added to my practice after doing this for two and a half years. But in addition, what I've done is I've taken the best of Maryland's the best of Hightower, the best of Bernstein, the best of like working in these different models within wealth management, and said, okay, because I've been exposed to all these different technology vendors, now I do have the ability to say to you, okay, well, your reporting needs are more extensive than mine, here are the reporting platforms that work. So that's been in essence, what I am, is I'm, I'm an advisor consultant on the side, and I do this not because it's going to make me a ton of money, but because I want to pay it forward. And I do feel like there are so many advisors that are capable of doing this, and just with a little more education and knowledge, they can, they can go off on their own, and they can not just build a practice that they're proud of, but a practice that they can eventually, you know, give to the next generation. Yeah. And, and set up and set up a practice that, that is sustainable, long term, and isn't reliant on an institution, it's, you know, it's, it's cool, you're setting up a legacy for yourself.

Dean Soto 27:12
I love that it's instead of instead of, you know, working and building somebody else's legacy, which was like a big, you know, the big Merrill Lynch or whatever you're, you're spot on like, you can, you can totally give that to the next generation. Now that it's now that it's becoming possible. And you're showing that this is actually becoming possible to be to that it's much, much easier now than it was 10 years ago, to become an independent financial advisor.

Aaron Hattenbach 27:41
There's just so much I think, because of the growth and if you look in financial services, right now, across the map, outside of wealth management, you know, most areas of financial services are experiencing a slowdown, because of technology out there, the fees are going down your tech companies doing direct listings and avoiding an investment bank. But what's really interesting is the one area that is expanding and expanding at an amazing clip, is this rush to independence. And you're seeing, I get emails every day about, you know, firms that are leaving a big, or teams that are leaving a big, firm and going independent. And it's like this has been going on the past 10 years, you're seeing the RIA channel, the registered investment advisory channel, grow double to double digits, and you're seeing the Merrill Lynch's Morgan Stanley wire house model, really just trying to hold on for dear life. And and they're also I think, really, I think, not geared towards the next generation. And the advisors are in their 50s and 60s, the average age of an advisor in those models. And ultimately, what they're doing is they're not setting up the next generation of their client tells kids and grandkids with a service model that's going to run with them. And so for me, it was okay, I can't be at a firm that is not going to really embrace the fact that a the next generation of wealth is looking for a different experience, different fee structure. And they're just holding on for dear life and trying to just keep keep the boat, you know, sailing, right, I'm for lack of a better analogy, I wanted to be ahead of the curve and recognize that the next gen of wealth is coming to me with with a different, a different service need. And if those big firms were not going to embrace it, I was going to create it. But what's interesting is Merrill Lynch and Schwab have created digital monthly subscription models in the last couple months, which I did two and a half years ago. Yeah. And it just it boggles my mind that they're now rushing into this. And, you know, who knows how their how that how that, you know, how the actual service model works? But it's just like, too little too late.

Dean Soto 30:03
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, and and the Met, it would be hard to get a resonating message from one of those big firms to the younger generation?

Aaron Hattenbach 30:17
Well, I mean, I'll give you an example. I use Google Apps for a lot of a lot of my client intake. And it just feels like there's so many cool free ish, bringing tools available to advisors. And because those firms, unfortunately, for them, they they have to go through their public companies. Their their approval process is lengthy. Yeah, it all has to be built internally, you know, they're not able to use the best of, of technology tools that someone like me or another advisor has available

Dean Soto 30:51
and and

Aaron Hattenbach 30:53
open architecture model. It's Yeah, we I compared as it's like, you know, Apple and Android, right. So but, you know, in many cases, people love Apple, it's a closed architecture system is it's great, it's safe. But there are people that prefer more customization. And, you know, I would say, my model makes a lot of sense. And a lot of independent firms models make a lot of sense for people that are not looking for that very, like simple, I would say, archaic way of managing wealth, which is charge a person on a whim, and and set up a quarterly meeting, it's purely based on the portfolio returns.

Dean Soto 31:36
Yeah, no, I love that, man. I love it. I love it. And it definitely is. Even with, with utilizing those apps and the free the freemium type apps like that, it's what it's what my generation and and younger generation are used to. Right, and you're speaking the language, just even in something like that. So. So that's, I mean, I love it and actually kind of corresponds with so I always ask the five minute mindset shift question like the five minute like, strategic business decision that people can make that you that, that that you made, that changed the trajectory of your business? And and so in your five minute one, because you're so thorough, and you actually do the questionnaire, when I said to podcast, get you talk about your five minute mindset shift question is, it is based actually on questions, and asking your client questions, whether it be someone who's your financial advising or somebody, you're trying to help become an independent advisor. Can you talk more about that?

Aaron Hattenbach 32:50
Sure. So I don't go into any meetings without an agenda in advance. For my existing clients, and then for prospective clients, they book a time with me on my calendar, a tool, countless booking appointments. But I send them this financial planning checklist that I'm happy to offer to your listeners as well. And the checklist is really meant to gear the client for a conversation that is going to expand upon the investments. And so this checklist has a series of items that think of it as you know, an intake form when you go and see a doctor like. So in this case, you'll have your previous three years of tax returns, disability benefits, coverage, 401k, and other retirement accounts. And it goes on and on. So really the point of that being I want the prospective clients and know that like this call is going to go beyond just talking about my investment philosophy, or what you're looking for in a portfolio. Yeah, that's secondary. Primary to me, is the number one question I ask is, what are you looking for in a relationship with a financial advisor? Yeah, advisor, financial planner, investment advisor, there's so many monitors and names for what we do. But at the end of the day, it's not about me, right? When I am sitting down or having a zoom call with a prospective client, I need to know what they're looking for. If I can provide a service that matches what they're looking for, then let's move forward in the process. Let's, let's have you contact a few of my clients and ask about their client experience for reference checking, and then continue through my five step process. But if they're looking for something where they're like, hey, I want to be hands off entirely, I don't want to participate in this. I just want my portfolio manage, then I'm out there advisor. Yeah. And I have to recognize that and see that for what it is. Yeah. So I started off every call with that question. And I I completely shut up. Like I asked them this question. And I hope bit before the call, they've reviewed the checklist and the questions, and they've given it some thought, as far as what they're looking for.

Dean Soto 35:09
I love that.

Aaron Hattenbach 35:10
Right? Because in essence, it's like any other service that you that you look for out there. You're the consumer, you're empowered. Yeah. And you have so many different options. Well, why should I work with this service professionals? Yep. Because I like trust, and feel that their service model resonates and speaks to me, right? Yeah. So if they're looking for a comprehensive financial planner, that is going to help with budgeting that's going to help with with selecting of health insurance policies, and then their employer plan, then my firm is going to be the right service provider. But again, that they're looking for just a portfolio manager to babysit their money. Don't get me wrong, I can do that. But I get so much more satisfaction out of really building a full financial puzzle for my clients, and putting the pieces together. And also, what I what what I found is my clients need to be participants in this process. Yeah. And they're unwilling to complete intake forms, and complete some of the homework that I asked them in order for me to give them the best advice, then it's going to be more of a hassle for me, if I have to chase them down and remind them to do something that is actually going to benefit them. But at the end of the day, at the end of the day, some people quite frankly, don't want to put in the time. And kind of where I go back to the advisor, consultant practice. If I see that the advisor wants to independent, but they're unwilling to put in the time, then it's like, Is that going to make for good consulting client? For me? Probably not, yeah, I would rather make less money and have an advisor. That is that is a go getter that is committed to this, that is saying, I've got both feet out the door. I'm not dipping my toes in the water, I am convinced that this is the model I need to pursue. That's a good client, someone that is just looking for an answer to one or two questions is probably not ready to go independent. And I seen that so much. I know. It frustrates me because it's like these people are like, being successful at a wire houses is hard. I mean, one out of 100 advisors eventually becomes a million dollar producer. Yeah. So it is not for the faint of heart and the success percentages at these firms. We're talking in the the low single digits. Okay. So the fact the matter is, these are these are talented people that have the ability to both build trust, and they understand capital markets, and clearly have been able to build rapport with their client base. Yeah, yeah. But but the final step of the process is, you know, building a product of building a practice that you're proud of, but also that you feel you're giving your clients the best possible service offering. Yeah. And I just firmly don't believe that cross selling my clients, and making commissions on a variety of products is in my clients best interest? I just I don't I don't subscribe to that model. And I think, probably 80 to 90%, if not more of advisors don't as well.

Dean Soto 38:32
Yeah. But but but to have to actually build something around that belief. You have to be able to put in the work.

Aaron Hattenbach 38:44
It's what what it comes down to is your any life transition, whether you're taking a new job moving to a new city, getting married and starting a family. None of this stuff is easy. Like you can you can read books and and arm yourself with a ton of knowledge. But at the end of the day, it's Do you feel confident enough to be able to know that you can make a mistake or two, and it's not going to be Armageddon? Yeah. And what I realized is, when I took my clients and set up my own firm, sure, they had to be very patient, there were documentation issues, there were process issues, but they knew that they were getting somebody that was going to always look out for their best interest. And they were willing to be an early adopter, like the by the first year model of a car. Yeah, right. It's like the people are buying Tesla's right, you have to be a believer in the product and be willing to put up with some of the potential mishaps. But the service the offering is, is so much better, that it makes up for some of the small hiccups along the way. And that's what I would say to most advisors considering independence is you got to be okay with the fact that is not going to be perfect. On day one, certainly not perfect on day 365. That you're you're going to become a better advisor, by owning your own business. I really think I firmly believe that. And for me, it, it was probably the best decision I made in my life was finally going off on my own. And I think that there are too many advisors out there that don't buy into the process. And I would suggest the following. Had I not had all those experiences at those other firms, I wouldn't have been equipped with the knowledge, I would have been going in dark, I would have been just as scared and concerned about compliance, and an operational infrastructure and, and and all the things I don't know, that I'm not aware of right, like the fear of the unknown. And so what I've said to advisors is sure, you can read my 26 steps article, you can read a ton of stuff on the internet. But at the end of the day, when you're making a decision about probably the most important asset, your business. It pays to actually work with someone, it's a knock, but this one, for sure. And so I'm not trying to like be an advocate, you can go to another advisor consultant know who does the same thing that I do, it's just a matter of I don't think this is something that you go out alone.

Dean Soto 41:19
Yeah, no, it's it's, it's totally, I mean, you don't you don't go to school, you know, you don't you don't, you don't try and become an advisor in general without actually being mentored in some way, you know, and just any business, I was, gosh, this even just this year, I spent a lot of money, on advice on mentors for my business for people who, who guide me into places that I just don't know. Because, you know, if I looked at my time, I'd be spending a lot more in opportunity cost than spending the money that the capital that I'm spending that I'm giving to my advisor, mentor [lus, you by even just by doing that you get not only gain all the knowledge, but you have somebody who's going to watch your back. And then at the same time, you are also now part of their network. So if something does come up, that you need something, now they're the ones who are that who can introduce you to a whole bunch of people or if they have, if you I'm sure if at some point in time, you're going to end up mentoring and a financial advisor that sets up their own practice that specializes in something that you don't, and you go up well, here's some clients that I think would be better for you.

Aaron Hattenbach 42:40
Absolutely, absolutely. I think I think it's like the benefit doesn't just end with the consultation. It extends and had a number of advisors reach out that were even at smaller firms that were like, Hey, I'm gonna rip off the band aid, like, well, you don't have to rip off the band aid. And my suggestion is you don't, you don't wait until you leave the firm to start your own firm. Yeah, for for compliance purposes, you can't go and register your license, and set up your own RIA while you're working for another company. But you can certainly educate yourself on all the infrastructure, think about the business you want to build, build a business plan, marketing plan, value proposition and start really compiling all of your, your template form documentation. And that will take time. And so what I tell advisors who are like, well, I'm about to leave, I'm going to spend another month there, but I'm committed to leaving, and, and then I'll get started with you, I say to them, that's going to be too late. Like I hate to be the bearer of bad news. But when you leave, you know, you want to provide the best possible transition for your for the clients that are entrusting you with their money. Yep. And that are committed to you as a client. That's that speaks volumes, right? So you better put in the time, while you haven't yet. Really setting everything up for success. Because like I said earlier on the podcast, they're going to be things you're not aware of, they're gonna be mistakes that you make that are inevitable to being a business owner. Yep. But if you convince yourself that you have to wait until you have a clean break to get started with at least some of the educational process, yeah,you're going to be too late.

Dean Soto 44:29
Well, and you were like, even with, like the template forms, I mean, their systems, their systems that we're in a large organizations that you don't, you don't even you take, you take for granted. Exactly, you don't realize how many things, different template forms different, different little processes that are there, that if you, if you took the time to set up while you were at the firm, they if you would be you that would cause tremendous chaos, if you're if you had no income coming in, or if you had clients who were like, okay, now I'm

Aaron Hattenbach 45:03
ready, I'm ready. Me, it's embarrassing. If If you go to a client who is committed to working with you and moving their, their business, they're moving their their, their, their accounts, or their relationship to you. And you show to a meeting without the right documentation. Yep, that's amateurish. And so what I tell advisors is, you know, get started with learning about what the process looks like, it may take several months for you to get approval from the state regulators, which you know, that's three months, four months of potential downtime with no income, no clients, and by the way, the longer those clients stay at your predecessor firm, the more likely they're not going to move with you. Because they're going to say, like, what's been going on the past few months, like, you know, you can't, you cannot legally work with a client, unless you are registered with with the firm, right? As a independent advisor, investment advisor representative affiliate with an RA, or if you're, you know, registered as a, you know, working for a broker, dealer, whatever you may be doing, but the point being like, downtime and silence and not advising your clients, because you're legally not allowed to is a tremendous risk to your your enterprise. And so what I say to them is spend a few months, I spent five or six years compiling documentation, thinking about like, about my process, like obsessively thinking about the client experience standard that I wanted to create. And even then, two and a half years later, my practice looks a lot different than it did when I started. It's just it to me, it's like you've got it, you've got to embrace it, and you've got to fail fast. And you have to be willing to put out the resources, ultimately, say you're spending a few thousand dollars working with someone, well, they're going to save you thousands of dollars in negotiation, negotiating contracts. And in time, in so many ways that it's like, you're going to get multiples of what you spend. So I can't emphasize this enough, I just feel like advisors just need to be more open minded and less concerned about, you know, the fears that they've created the narrative they've created in their head that going off on their own is going to expose them to so many risks. And and these ultimately these firms are, they're lowering payouts. They are are telling advisors if you don't sell four or five different services, we're cutting your payout? Yep. And so it's about selling the enterprise. Yeah. And what happens is when you sell the enterprise, your client associates you, as a relationship manager at Merrill Lynch, or Morgan Stanley, and not as their advisor. And so then the clients never going to leave that institution. Yep. And good luck setting up your own practice, once you've sold your clients, a mortgage credit cards line of credit securities based loan, your clients are going to be like, Well, you've talked, you've talked about the institution for the past 10 years.

Dean Soto 48:13
And I now leave, why would I? Why would I leave?

Aaron Hattenbach 48:16
Right? And then advisors come to me saying like, what's the narrative that I can create, to get my client to move their assets? And it's like, well, if you've sold your clients on the enterprise, and your clients have four or five different service offerings, you the institution can be very hard. Yeah. And I'm not I'm not a magician, I can't wave a wand.

Dean Soto 48:35
Yeah, I mean, in just in, in moving things. It's hard even if the client loves you, and is willing, it's like, man, I have, I'm tied up in all of that.

Aaron Hattenbach 48:46
All of that. And I'm getting discounts on my mortgage, because I've got five different services. Yeah, you can't compete with that on the independent side. What I can do on the independent side is say, hey, look, I'm not captive having to provide your mortgage from the event, because I'm at Merrill, we can go shop around and hire a mortgage broker to go shop around for the best rates. Yeah. And ultimately, you know, that alone, I think, is worthwhile in terms of giving the client access to the the, you know, services of other institutions that may be better equipped, that maybe providing a better price, you know, so yeah, I would just say, like, for advisors that have sold their clients in the enterprise, it's, it's very hard for them to ever go independent. And if they do, it's, it's a one time thing. And you better put in the hours, you better hire someone to really help you navigate the complexities. But for an advisor that has worked at one of these firms, and is looking to go independent, don't go at this alone. Yeah, right. Go to go to kids to start calm. I don't get paid anything from kid says, I think he's his blog is the best in the industry, it's won many awards. It's ultimately actually was ranked higher than the Wall Street Journal in terms of influence on financial advisors, which is saying a lot. Yeah. And if you want to get free education, go there. But at the end of the day, you know, don't go out this process alone. It is, you know, you're risking your business.

Dean Soto 50:21
Yeah. But the best option is going with you. So how can people actually work specifically with you?

Aaron Hattenbach 50:31
Well, Dean, you're far too kind I, you know, I'm learning every day. So you know, I'm not the best for everyone. But my suggestion is if advisors interested in working with me, they go to my website, rapportfinancial.com, there is a button to contact me and they can actually access my calendar. And I would encourage them to go to the prospective client meeting and select 30 minutes time where we can learn more about their practice what they're looking to accomplish. They can ask me any questions as far as you know, my service model for advising advisors, financial advisors, and you know, I do offer to a limited amount of advisors, the ability to retain me for a certain amount of hours. You know, this isn't my core business, it's just something I love to do in helping other advisors accomplish what I was able to do two and a half years ago. And so if they're looking for help on the tech marketing, business strategy, compliance, operations, practice management, really it covers the gamut and they're going to get 10 years of experience running businesses for within multiple advisory models. So you know, I think they're going to get a good mentor that is going to help them select the right vendors and and build a practice they're proud of all while saving some tone in the in the process and not hitting their head against the wall trying to figure all this out. It's it's a lot putting an entire business together I wrote this in my 26 steps article and quite frankly 26 steps was probably only half of what it took to create this business so um, I wish I hadn't gone at it alone I would have hired someone with the experience and would have prevented some money lost some mistakes and you know, what if i think i think we're shorten up my ramp up period to getting my clients on board and and operating so they can contact me they can go to my website and schedule 30 minutes of time they can also go to my homepage and there's an intake form where they can send me an email goes to the info that gets forwarded to my my email address but yeah, I'm would recommend going to my website, that would be the first step.

Dean Soto 53:03
I love it man so yeah, so go check out if you want to connect with Aaron and if you want to have that mentorship or if you just want to you if you even just want to see if that if Aaron would be right for you with you know 30 minute call go check out rapportfinancial.com so report as in building rapport RAPPORTfinancial.com and head down to the opt in form and connect with their and he is if you can't tell he is one a wealth of knowledge and he freely gives out a lot of value and actually cares cares about the people that he works with if you can tell just through what he's been sharing right now so just go check that out once again it's rapportfinancial RAPPORTfinancial.com and go connect with Aaron. Also have that in the show notes as well as in the blog posts and and other places where we syndicate the actual publishing of this podcast episode so but all that being said, dude, Aaron, thank you so much for being on man. This has been this has been pretty awesome.

Aaron Hattenbach 54:17
Yeah, this is a pleasure. I really enjoyed it and you know have to do some more podcasting I guess right? Yeah.

Dean Soto 54:24
Yeah, for sure. That's I mean, that's one thing that that you have you have you're definitely a wealth of knowledge and and can bring so much value to everybody in the financial advising financial services industry. So that would be that'd be awesome. So

Aaron Hattenbach 54:42
well, really appreciate it was it was enjoyable and we'll be in touch.Thanks, Dean.

Dean Soto 54:46
Yeah, no problem. So go check out Aaron last time at rapportfinancial.com or RAPPORTfinancial.com. This is Dean Soto with the freedom in five minutes podcast. This this is the end of the episode but it is not the end of the podcast because we will see you in the next freedom in five minutes podcast episode.

Following your passion is a grind, and that goes with running a business too. But you just don't run a business based on gut feeling alone. You need to have a sort of feedback dashboard for your know if you're grinding it in the correct direction and doing it properly. In this interview, you'll hear from Parker Stevenson, a partner from Evolved Finance, the usual problems an entrepreneur has, and how having a specific niche and a specific target market can help you solve those problems and grow your business more efficiently. Whether you're a longtime online businessman or someone that's just starting, if you're having issues with bookkeeping, this is the podcast for you.

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Dean Soto 0:01 Hey, this is Dean Soto with FreedominFiveMinutes.com. And we're here again with another freedom in five minutes episode. Today's topic is this evolving your bookkeeping with evolved finance that and more coming up. Alright, cool. So today's podcast, I'm going to go nuts on this one just because this is something that I have needed for a long time and bookkeeping is not the most sexy, not the most exciting thing but but when you have an online business where you're using PayPal, you're paying affiliates and refers different types of commissions. I have a whole boatload of sales coming in from stripe and PayPal and all these different places, depending on where my customer wants to how they actually want to pay. And the big problem that comes up is pretty much every bookkeeper out there that I've ever met has no clue what to do with PayPal, how to reconcile PayPal, how to what to do with affiliate income, the revenue that's coming in, going out and all that other stuff. And oh my gosh, I was I was so happy to find Parker Stephenson from evolve finance because their platform their their service, their agency actually solves this very, very specific problem. So Parker, how's it going, man, I appreciate you coming on.

Parker Stevenson 1:39 Dean. It's my pleasure, man. That might be like one of the best intros we've ever had

some good bookkeeping.

Dean Soto 1:47 Well, it's crazy. It's crazy. You you solve a very specific niche that that literally nobody else business wise, what has this pain unless they already doing a couple of things. They're using PayPal? They're they're selling a service on it or something online. And they're trying they're having to pay pay affiliates. And it is it is crazy, that there's nobody else doing what you guys are doing. And and so, so I that intro is like I literally it's it's just me, like happy as a clam, because you saw me my pain, man.

Parker Stevenson 2:28 Well, I think that that's something we talk to our clients a lot about, because I think, especially with an agency business or a service based business, the more you can hone and focus it in the better. And I think with a lot of you know, I'd say financial, just financial professionals, financial businesses, whether it's accounting or bookkeeping, the business model has to be so broad, right? Like the bookkeeper you're working with could be working at on a dentist office could be working on a restaurant and they could be working on your business. There's just more knowledge than any one person could have and have expertise on. Yeah, that. I think it's just such a strength that may seem like it limits your market. And I would imagine for a lot of people in our industry, they go oh, but then I'm not going to have enough clients to work with. But the reality is, there's plenty of all I mean, the online business space is booming. We don't need to do bookkeeping, for any other types of businesses, because we're going to have more business than we can handle for a really long time. Just in this niche alone. So kudos to my business partner Corey for figuring this out back in 2010.

Dean Soto 3:33 Yeah, so cool event. it's it's a it's it's great, man. So you, you. So I want to talk a little bit about you. You actually hopped on this bandwagon with Corey, as you were working with a pretty pretty well known company. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Parker Stevenson 3:54 Yeah. So before I started working with Korea, double finance. I was working for Adidas golf here in San Diego. It's like the only part of Adidas like their big headquarters for the US is in Portland. And then the corporate headquarters is in Germany. And so I was actually musician back in the day thought I was gonna be a rock star. When I was living in LA and that didn't work out. I went, Okay, what's my other thing I really love and it's like, well, I love golf. I was been a golf addict my whole life. So I'm like, I'm from San Diego. I'm like, San Diego is essentially what Detroit was for the auto industry, San Diego is for the golf industry. So I was like, I'm going to go work for the best golf manufacturer I can find or I can get a job. And sure enough, I got it at Taylor. It was tailor made Adidas golf at the time, and had a really great five year experience there. Like I was saying, before we got started was kind of like my, I'd say like my master's degree and business like I just learned so so much from working there. And especially the position I was in as a merchandiser. And as kind of like a product category manager, I learned so much about how a business functions from all the different places with a lot of it being around numbers to like, there was definitely a lot of financial aspects to what I did that by the time I kind of realized the corporate environment wasn't really my bag, and some doing something more entrepreneurial, was more up my alley, that by the time Corey and I started having serious discussions around how I could get involved in the business, and we could start to become partners, I felt really prepared to be able to not just jump in and help him grow of all finance, but also be able to provide some insights for the clients we serve, that maybe other people who have only been in the online space wouldn't be able to provide. Yeah,

Dean Soto 5:40 yeah. See, that's cool that what a what a, what a neat experience, because you're you're literally getting a play with $50 million worth of product and figure out one learn how how to even merchandise and sell and position these things. And then, and it's not like you you're not even, it's not your money. And you you're you're essentially just just learning from literally the best. And taking that from from there. And then going and working with Corey over it evolved finance, how did that transition happen? Where, where? How did you even like, with Corey doing what he was doing? Like, have the aha moment of like, I really want to go and do this

Parker Stevenson 6:28 instead? I know, that's a great question too. Because sometimes I'm like, I don't even understand how I don't understand, like how we got to this place. But Corey and his wife, Anna, are actually really good friends with my wife like they grew up together. So I've known Corey Nana for a long time now ever since I met my wife, which was about 12 years ago. And so I knew they had this business. But it was just like, cool. You guys have a business. It seems like it's doing well. Good for you guys. But I was very much into my career. But once I kind of got was getting close to that five year mark at Adidas, I was starting to feel like there wasn't really a next step for me like I was, for my personality. I'm a generalist, I like to know about a lot of different things, which is why I like the merchandising position. But it was so straight. It was a very stressful, crazy job. Like a lot of people that had that role before me didn't stay in it very long. Like there was a lot of people I stayed in that position. And so I sort of realized, like, getting into an entrepreneurial position would allow me to kind of have my business add put to work, because, you know, obviously I'd have to learn bookkeeping. And I started at very humble beginnings with Corey. But the more Corey and I talked, the more we realized, all right, he can teach me the book eat, like the specific intricacies of the service we provide the client, but I'd be able to bring in a new perspective, like being more of a future thinking business development sort of mind, I think kind of felt like hey, like, I just don't, I just can't help but think we'd be able to like double, triple quadruple this business, just putting our strengths together. Yeah. And that was the really good thing that I think Corey, and I realized is that Korea is very different skills than I have. And so that's what's made our partnership so strong, and what's allowed us to work so well together. And so just kind of realizing our personalities match well, him and his wife kind of telling me like, hey, these are all the things we have going on. We have all these clients we can't support right now, if you come on and start supporting them, and then we'll start to hire a team. It just started, I think we just saw, you know, three, four years down the road, like we could build a real team. And I'm really like, he's already had so much demand just happening that I'm like, I don't have a business idea. I have no idea what kind of business I want to start. And I think what I've realized is I'm really good at taking so even being a creative person being a musician. Yeah. But I think I was really good at taking the initial vision they had and be able to add and build upon that because of my experience at Adidas. So it seems crazy. I took a massive pay cut. And you know, it took a couple years for us to really hit our stride. But it's been like so worth it. And the business is really thriving. Now that we have done a lot of the work to make the business more successful. Yeah,

Dean Soto 9:19 that is awesome. It is. Yeah. See, I love that. I love that story.

The so with. So once once, like, I want to talk. Okay, so there's two things we're going to kind of colliding in my head right now. One is I'm like, you know, what were some of the things that you guys had to do to actually start scaling this business. But before that, I kind of I think, I think I want to give the audience really, they hear why I'm so excited. But I kind of want you to give the description of that. What you guys the big problem you guys solve? Because I know my problems. And I'm sure you mean I'm I'm sure you have kind of a better way of putting out that that that message but yeah, so like, what makes you guys so different from every other bookkeeper that's out there?

Parker Stevenson 10:19 Well, that's what got me interested in the business to begin with is exactly what I'm about to explain. We were talking a little bit about it before. I I never thought I'd get involved in a bookkeeping business man, like I that just wasn't my Mo. Like, I've told our clients, I don't try to talk a whole lot about it. But I told her clients like I'm not a fine, I needed to get get a degree in finance. And the reality is bookkeeping isn't rocket science. Yeah, it's not. But just for me, having been a musician, like a guy that was going after my passions, I want to work in the golf industry, I want to work in the music industry, like I wanted to do this stuff that I thought was cool, but keeping the Nazi. But as I got older and more mature, I realized that stuff, you know, following your passion becomes a grind no matter what it is. And so what matters is working with people you like feeling fulfilled from the work, I know, for me feeling of service to other people, feeling like I can make an impact wherever I'm at, like that becomes really important. And so when Corey was kind of telling me about what they were doing it of all fit finance, even though I wasn't like a bookkeeping expert at that point. I was like, Is there anyone else doing what you're doing? And he's like, not really, like we were talking about, like, our niche is so specific, that we are solving a problem that we've seen repeatedly Now, over the years, because we've talked with I mean, I've been on so many calls since I started the business, hundreds of entrepreneurs. And that has taught us so much about what the struggles our clients have had before they start working with us. So over the years, we've just honed down our service more and more like when Corey got started, we kind of did all of the bookkeeping things. And now we're only focusing on the bookkeeping, things that we can be really, really, really good at and make the most impact on and we've built all our systems and processes around that. But this is kind of like if any, if the listeners can kind of take away something from this is that from working with such a specific niche, again, I hear the same problems over and over again, and we understand what our clients are going through number one, because we run an online business, as well. So that helps. But secondly, because we built a service that does fit in niche. So specifically in solves such a specific problem, it's easier to relate to your clients, and it's easier to wow them, and to reduce the stress and create excitement around solving that problem for them, especially because they haven't been able to find a solution anywhere else. So that alone is such a competitive advantage over the experience our clients have had working with other bookkeepers because it just it's it's nothing sexy, just understanding their problem having a service that addresses that problem, like dead on we don't, you know, I think sometimes some small businesses kind of skirt around with their messaging or don't get focused enough on what they're really trying to accomplish with their service or with their product. And that's just one thing that we're very lucky to have figured out a long time ago is this like, taking care of the books for an online business properly, and then helping our clients to understand what those numbers mean? It's simple when I say it like that. But the reality is, if you've worked with an accountant worked with the bookkeeper work with any financial professional, a lot of them just don't get that they don't understand that customer service is important. They don't understand that the relationship with their client is super important. And I'm not trying to like crap on anyone who has a accounting business or bookkeeping business, like, I'm sure there's other ones out there that have good customer service experiences. But our clients, when they come to us, they haven't. And so all those pieces of just no one else serving this niche, us being able to really hone in our service, because we know this niche so well. Like, that was the opportunity. And it's not it's not like we have a new app like this crazy new app, or like it's something super revolutionary. It's just innovating, what's been a very old, sort of unchanged service and catching it up to modern times, essentially. And that, for me was the reason why I was excited to jump in. Because it's like, we essentially have no competition. And we have a super specific target market. Like it doesn't get any better than that.

Dean Soto 14:29 Yeah, no, for sure. I love I love it. I still

remember, the first time I had so I went from from it was what was it called outright. And then it turned into GoDaddy bookkeeping. And then that was like when that was that was like when I was just starting out in my business. And it was I didn't need QuickBooks as soon as I went to QuickBooks because I had to do when I became a Subchapter S. LLC, and, and I was doing a lot more comments. It's stuff that that online entrepreneurs face. I was like, holy crap, I literally can, I don't even understand how to reconcile, at the end of the month, this doesn't make sense to me, and everything like that, I've hired a bookkeeper to just explain to me how to do all of this stuff for my for my thing, and she, she was literally like, Oh my gosh, like, you're all messed up like this, I'm not used to this. And I'm like, that doesn't help. Like, it doesn't help me at all. And so, so like, and that have almost happened pretty much over and over with people going, just not understanding a lot of the stuff like the affiliate commissions and, and, and PayPal reconciling and things like that. And so even just in your messaging, it's like, bam, like, that's, that's my problem, like, and it's cool how you guys have done that. And, and even though it might be a little scary to do that, you're really speaking to a lot of people just with that messaging and pitching down like that.

Parker Stevenson 16:10 Yeah, and that's a key to I think any really successful online business, I mean, there's more competition online than there's ever been. So the more you can find your specific people, like even if it seems like a really small audience, speak to them directly and clearly have the confidence to have your messaging, speak directly there because it's taken us a long, a long time to really build our copy on our website and our messaging, through our content and all that to just be so focused and direct to talk just to the people that need to hear it, right like not the people that are like and maybe take it or leave it, we're talking to people like your team that are like, oh, I've struggled with this, I'm not getting the support we need. And I think that's the one thing I want to explain because like your your situation, I'd like for you to be doing your books in the early stage of your business fine. Like it's an extra expense that if you're just getting started and just trying to make some money, manage it in a spreadsheet, like but we never recommend any like entrepreneur, try to learn how to use bookkeeping software, like you gotta go make money like make, you need to be spending all of your time and energy around finding clients, building your leads, like figuring out how to drive revenue, that keep your finances simple in the early stages. And once money starts coming in. That's when you hire someone else to do the books because that's, that's a skill set that for you, as a business owner to take the time to learn how to do properly, which again, even to find the resources to teach you the way we would want to do it for an online business, it's just the chances are slim, you're going to get the right tutorials. Anyways, it's a skill set that took me it took me a year to get really good at really doing the books for our clients. And that was after the support of you know, Corey and an employee, Susan, that we've had that who's been with the business for a really long time. And now I live and breathe this stuff, I can do it in my sleep. But no one running a business that's on a bookkeeping business should know how to do this stuff in their sleep, they should be outsourcing that to someone like us who actually knows how to do it, right. And the thing is, with bookkeeping, there's so much room for interpretation, like that's kind of the frustrating part is that every bookkeeper is going to do it differently, they're going to set up your chart of accounts differently and your profit and loss statements differently. Some of them are going to do cheats to kind of like sneak around having to do a lot of manual labor to do it raw, you know, like so that aspect of this industry to is difficult because it's hard to find someone that's going to, again, have the understanding of your business well enough to know what needs to be done right? And where can you be a little more efficient. And again, I it obviously works for our business, but anyone else who's listening, especially if you have an agency, a service or anything like that, like, Just don't be afraid to hone that service down to a specific specific problem, like you don't have all of the problems for every business, just have one target market, get in that niche and solve that problem really well. And, you know, we've had nothing but referrals, like we just started marketing, in the last six months really like really trying to push there. And we could still like we don't need it, we just want to grow faster. But when you do such a good job, and you are so good at solving that one problem, people are going to talk about it, people are going to want to share it and especially in the early stages of a new business. It's a damn great way to make sure you start getting you know, more clients down the road.

Unknown Speaker 19:36 Yeah, that is cool, man. I

Dean Soto 19:37 love it. I love the I love the fact that you went from being a musician, to working at Adidas and wanting to be wanting wanting to be like this. You know, rub shoulders with these really, you know, awesome celebrities and everything like that. And even through just from nicking down and doing what you're doing with the bookkeeping. You actually have literally, seriously like one of my don't tell my wife one of my crushes from from the 90s with the matrix, you as one of your customers, Carrie, boss. I know I as soon as I saw I saw her they're like, Oh my god, this is crazy. What? And so that's pretty. That's a cool little story. Yeah.

Parker Stevenson 20:24 Well, and that's the thing is like, I think the world is changing so much with technology and what the internet's allowing people to do and entertain me think about entertainment changing. I mean, she's obviously been extremely successful. But think about goop. You know, and what, what's her name? Who has a group, I'm terrible at names, but Gwyneth Paltrow, you know, she makes a great living as an actress and as a celebrity. And she starts this eat calm lifestyle website that's blown up. Like I think even people who are already in the spot, are looking for ways to connect with their audiences more looking for ways to share maybe knowledge I can carry Anne's situation. She's like this super highly trained meditation perfect professional, she's a badass yoga instructor like she she has this whole other aspect of her life that she's sort of kept out of the limelight that now she's like, starting a business around, right like and bringing in bringing interest in. And in all of our and and what's interesting is like in this industry, a lot of our clients are like little celebrities within their own right, right. Like they all, they all have their audiences that follow them and are looking to them for advice and guidance and buy their products. And that's like, I kind of look at the way our clients run their businesses now, kind of like back in the days of my space when I was in the band, where it's like, everyone's trying to, like, get as many people to like their MySpace page, and, you know, click, click on the page and listen to the songs and see the song count. And in a lot of ways, that's kind of what everyone's doing with the small businesses, because I think Adidas has the power of brand awareness, right, like everyone knows the three stripes and knows what a Adidas logo looks like, or knows what a coke logo is, right? They don't, they don't have to worry, those kinds of huge brands don't have to worry about awareness. But when you're running a small business, you might only have someone's attention for a short period of time. And so during that short period, you need to make sure you're making an impact with whatever content you have, whatever your website same. And inevitably, a lot of especially these business owners we have that have more personality type branded businesses, if they do a good job of that they kind of build fans, they build followers that start to trust them and want to follow them either for entertainment purposes, or educational purposes. So it's definitely been super interesting to see like these people we get to, we get to work with and all that. And it's definitely a huge it's one of the things that's super interesting about what we do and takes what's like, a normally boring subject and bookkeeping, and makes it like so intriguing and engaging, because we're really just looking at like, the core aspects of all these people's businesses and making sure they're running properly. So it's, I'm glad you appreciate it, because I think in some ways we get used to it. I think it's definitely not the way I thought I'd be making an impact on, you know, people's lives and people's businesses, let alone these really amazing entrepreneurs that, you know, in their own rights have amazing stories, amazing experiences, like I love talking with their clients, because they're truly fascinating and accomplished people

Unknown Speaker 23:30 now, I love that man.

Dean Soto 23:32 It's that is Yeah, it's it just cool. It's, it's just neat how, how, because of solving that that one problem ever. Anyone who is going to be the go from from, you know, being a celebrity or, or from anywhere. Soon as they get into the online space, where they're having these, you know, they're taking things from PayPal, they're doing these very specific things. Boom, now night, you solve that problem. And now you're literally being able to talk to people that are in it and and help them to grow new new things. These and these are people who are almost unreachable in other ways. And it just cool how, through having that very specific niche, you've been able to do that. Yeah, really amazing. The so I always ask this five minute mindset shifts question this five minute strategy, that if someone were to take it and use it, it would change the game for them, because it's changed the game for you. So what's you mentioned? That, that you like to have, like a feedback, like a feedback dashboard type thing? Can you explain that, in regards to how it's helped you to massively change the way your business and other people's businesses?

Parker Stevenson 24:59 Yeah, so that's, like, the reality of everyone's business here. Like if you're listening, and you have an online business or small business, the reality is, like, even if you have the most heart centered business, and you're naive, it's not about the money, it's about helping people or whatever your mindset around your businesses, you your business is still a cash machine is this this machine that sucking money in and spitting money out, hopefully keeping some for you, that's the reality of your business. Like that's what truly is going to make it successful or not successful. No matter how happy your clients are, no matter how good you are at whatever it is you do, how many how much volume you sell of your products, if the money side of things doesn't work, then you're not playing the game, right, you don't have your business model setup, and you're not properly you're not focusing on the right things. So the example I use a lot is that everyone needs to know, they need to get feedback on the decisions they're making in their business. And that feedback comes in the form of your financial data. And unfortunately, unless you have someone organizing that financial data for you, a lot of people just ignore it, they don't look at their financial data. And especially even if they're a newer, younger business, and they could be doing it in a spreadsheet themselves. They just I don't think people see enough value in that. And so what I like to kind of use as an analogy is, you know, if you were driving a car without a dashboard, like you just had no idea about the speedometer, you have check engine light, your oil gauge, all of that stuff is just not there, you can't see it, you can still drive the car without it. But you're guessing when you need to fill up on gas, you're guessing when you need to kind of you know, do your oil, change your guessing if like, there's an entity, you have to, you no longer have this direct input to see if your car's running properly. You know, and you know, the check engine light could be on and blinking. Yeah, and it's just you have it covered up and you can't see you have no idea there's this catastrophic problem that could be coming your way. And until your car just breaks down. And that car is symbolic of a lot of our clients, businesses in our own business. If you don't have this financial tracking, and some sort of feedback happening every month to see, hey, am I spending my money on the right things? Am I doing enough to drive revenue to cover the expenses? I have? Is my business profitable enough? Am I saving enough for taxes, there's all these aspects of running a business that I think you a lot of entrepreneurs don't realize they need to pay more attention to until the pain becomes so bad that they have no choice but to figure it out. Which is a lot of times we when we find them, or they just ignore it until they get a huge tax bill, or literally their business breaks down and then it's no longer profitable. And they can't and they have to shut the business down. Yeah. And so that's the power we've seen with our clients with what we do is that as soon as they start getting these hard numbers in front of them, and they're like, oh, like, I didn't realize I could understand this, I didn't realize how important this was, I didn't realize how important feedback was for me to get, they instantly changed the way they think about their business. Because in some ways it does become a game. How do I make sure these numbers stay healthy, and I make these numbers the way I want through the daily activity of myself and my team in the business. And that's something Corey and I have seen tremendously in our own business, we have our own, you know, financial tracking we do for ourselves, that allows us to plan for the future that allows us to make sure that what we're doing on a monthly basis is supporting our team supporting our clients, we're hitting our financial goals. And all of that is just getting comfortable with your financial data, getting that feedback on a monthly basis. So you can just actually know, is this business running well, or is it not? And you can't, you can only go off of a gut feeling for so long. So that's what I would challenge everyone here to do, whether it's going out and hiring a bookkeeper, or just taking managing your finances yourself, like in your spreadsheet, or wherever it is, yourself taking that really seriously and using that financial data to start shaping the future of your business.

Unknown Speaker 29:01 That's cool. And I, I

Dean Soto 29:05 I can totally so I, I've had situations where, where if I didn't know the numbers, I would have been in a world of hurt.

Parker Stevenson 29:13 Yeah, for sure. And

Dean Soto 29:15 in any way even like little things too, because if they, you know, I can imagine since I mean, depending on depending on the the tears and stuff that you guys offer. I know some of them, you actually talk with your clients on a regular basis. Once you get the report, sometimes it could be something like, you know, just me seeing Why am I spending so much on this type of software this or are in software in general? And do I have like things that are just that I'm not even using? Or why Why? You know, I don't have anything, like you said for taxes for payroll taxes for estimated taxes, things like that, if I don't have it, if I don't have awareness of how much am I going to actually have to pay? You know, there's a there's a lot of things that that have happened just from seeing the numbers. I mean, just recently I cut, cut a lot of software that I was like, for whatever reason, I was like, I'm going to use that someday we're going to use it someday. And it was like $400 or $500, or the software just sitting there doing it not doing anything for my business at all. And so I'm like, oh, cancel, cancel, cancel, cancel, cancel.

Parker Stevenson 30:33 But, but those audits are important that's important to keeping the business is profitable as possible, right?

Dean Soto 30:38 Yeah. And I would imagine to it has there ever been any situation where where a client was, say even giving too much like affiliate income or something like that, to where it was actually hurting their business or something like where it was actually hurting their business because they didn't realize too much is going out. And you're not even keeping any for your Have you ever had any.

Parker Stevenson 31:01 I mean, we've seen it all man, it's crazy Dean, we're just recently this year, we have this client, a newer client, who I just absolutely adore. He's such an amazing, amazing person, but he had a whole revenue stream that we were looking at going, you need to cut this revenue stream out, it's taking up all of your time. It's called stress and making your business less profitable. And we're not really making any money off of it. So why why do we have this, these two other offers you have are the ones that are easier to manage, provide more value, and we can grow, they still have tremendous potential for growth. So we get in a situation like that, especially on the revenue side, or sometimes clients are trying to sell too many offers, they have too many offers. And a small business just can't afford they know there's not enough time or enough marketing dollars to try to talk about and promote a ton of different things on a regular basis, we've seen quite realize oh, like because there's, there's all these balances, right? Like you're trying to find the balance of keeping the business healthy, while also making sure you're getting paid as an owner and making the money you need to make to support your family and your lifestyle. And then also, and and there's a lot of intricacies between the balance of those two things like building up savings within your business so that if you have a down month, we have cash to get us through that. And it's not a stressful situation. Or sometimes where someone is taking out too much money from the business, they don't realize how much they're taking out. Because they're looking at their business as still their own personal bank account. And then realize that even though the business is would be successful in the eyes of almost anyone probably listening right now, you'd be like, Oh, I'd love to have a business like this. But they're still in financial turmoil, because they're just not aware of how much they're paying themselves how much they're spending on different things. So the bottom line might look good on the p&l, but the reality is, they're still kind of cash poor, there's just not enough cash in the business that if they wanted to hire another person, if you wanted to start running Facebook ads, they have no flexibility to adapt or jump on opportunities in the future. So there's just it's such a delicate balance between being able to invest in the businesses future be able to protect the business in the long run, while also keeping the business super profitable. So you as a business owner can build your own wealth. And the only way you can figure out what that balance feels how that balance works best for you and for your situation is to have that monthly scorecard to have that monthly feedback. So you can make those decisions to give your business the best chance of sticking around for a really long time. And to give you the best chance as a business owner to have a business that will actually create personal wealth for you as well.

Dean Soto 33:44 Yeah, dude, I've never been so excited about bookkeeping.

It's crazy, man.

It's It's awesome. Like it's it's, it's, it's cool. They get you know, my wife is really good with numbers. And she that's all like, for me, I'm like I do it for me to be like, idealist. I can I can just go do my thing. Come back, see what the numbers are. Okay, things are good. Okay, go go do go do my thing. Come back, oh, things are not so good. Let me fix this. And to just like you said, be fully out there. And doing what I do best, rather than,

you know, crap. Now I have to spend six hours at the end of this month doing my bookkeeping, and I don't even know if I'm doing it right. And

I don't even you know, like it. It's a it's a very painful process in a one that I avoid if I have to do it myself, you know. And which then gives me no feedback,

Parker Stevenson 34:42 you know, it. And we don't expect any of our clients to be financial pros. We're not asking them to be a CFO. All we're asking them to do is to, like you just said, take a look at the numbers. See where you're at, realize where you need to make some adjustments, realize where you see your opportunities, or even just pat yourself on the back things are going well. Everything's going as planned. Great. And then you go back into business, we're talking about 30 minutes to an hour and a half a month. Yep, of looking at your numbers and taking that part of your business seriously. We're not running multinational corporations here. No one needs CFO, we don't need controllers or like full time financial reporting, we just need this part of our businesses organized cleanly like Marie Kondo. This stuff right here, you know, Marie Kondo your business and get the financial stuff organized. And so that way, you have a clean, well organized machine, that is giving you the feedback, you need to see, am I doing a good job as a business owner or not. And again, just those reports on their own, most people want to be able to just read a report and know and that's where the second part of our service comes in, which is the education part around understanding what those numbers are. And again, it's not rocket science here. But at the end of the day, if you've never worked in the financial situation, you know, so many of our clients never even worked in a big company before, right? Like they've only been entrepreneurs, or they were more creatives or doing something else that wasn't really business oriented. And now all of a sudden, they're in these businesses. And they're like, what, like, they don't know what they don't know, totally, totally. But they're still fully capable of learning this stuff. Because if you can add and subtract man,

defined as a business owner, we just need to step up and get the right information in front of you. I love it. I love it.

Dean Soto 36:30 So how can people reach you? How can people if they if they want to schedule a time with you, or just be to work with you? How can people actually get in contact with you and Corey?

Parker Stevenson 36:42 Yeah, so the best way is just go to our website of all finance calm, there's scheduled call buttons all over the website to have you set up a time. But I recommend taking a look at the website, because we definitely make it very clear what type of businesses we work with, and sort of where you need to be at to be a good fit for us. But I think I'd spend you a link for really great download as well. So we have a sales forecasting tool that I think is a much longer link than probably makes sense to say over. So look in the podcast details I imagine are on the on the blog page for this podcast upload. But it's the free Sales Forecast Tool that if you're like, new to the numbers side of things, and you want to see the power of taking some time to think about the financial side of your business and the power of using your numbers to shape what the future of your business can look like. And make sure that you're building a business that's going to be profitable, and healthy. Then the sales forecasting tools, just a spreadsheet that we've done all the work for you just plug some numbers in. And it also comes with a free to tour, a tutorial video tutorial that'll walk you through exactly how to use it. I honestly think it's like one of the best free things any business educator gives away, because I just, I would never start a business or get involved in a business. If I didn't have a budget and a forecast in place to see what's the the potential of this business and this tool will get you get you on your way to feeling like your numbers aren't so scary. Awesome.

Dean Soto 38:07 Yeah, I love that. I love that.

So yeah, we'll put those in that will put that in the show notes. But definitely go head over to evolved finance.com evolved finance, calm, ev OLVD finance.com just in case, just in case you didn't know how to spell that. Or if I'm slurring or whatever. But go check it out. I mean, they're, they're really awesome. If you're, if you're doing anything online, and you're you have affiliates or PayPal or anything like that, you know, do you have to definitely check them out because it is painful, especially as you start being getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and you're getting a lot more things that you're managing and a lot more different revenue streams, it becomes harder and harder and harder. So so all that being said, thanks so much for being on man. I appreciate you,

Parker Stevenson 39:02 Dean. I appreciate you having me. It was really fun talking with you.

Dean Soto 39:06 Yeah, it's is is awesome. Like I said, this is didn't expect to be so excited about bookkeeping man. So thanks, Parker. Yeah, thank you. So Alright, cool. So that is the end of this podcast episode. But of course, it's not the end of the podcast. If you want to get a virtual systems architect, go head over to freedom in five minutes calm. What they can do for you is you show them a video, five minutes a day, they're documented. They'll do it for you and you never have to do that thing ever again. So go check out freedom in five minutes calm, go check out evolved finance.com as well. And until next time, I will see you on the next freedom in five minutes podcast episode.

Following your passion is a grind, and that goes with running a business too. But you just don't run a business based on gut feeling alone. You need to have a sort of feedback dashboard for your know if you're grinding it in the correct direction and doing it properly.

In this interview, you'll hear from Parker Stevenson, a partner from Evolved Finance, the usual problems an entrepreneur has, and how having a specific niche and a specific target market can help you solve those problems and grow your business more efficiently.

Whether you're a longtime online businessman or someone that's just starting, if you're having issues with bookkeeping, this is the podcast for you.

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Automated Transcript Below:

Dean Soto 0:01
Hey, this is Dean Soto with FreedominFiveMinutes.com. And we're here again with another freedom in five minutes episode. Today's topic is this evolving your bookkeeping with evolved finance that and more coming up. Alright, cool. So today's podcast, I'm going to go nuts on this one just because this is something that I have needed for a long time and bookkeeping is not the most sexy, not the most exciting thing but but when you have an online business where you're using PayPal, you're paying affiliates and refers different types of commissions. I have a whole boatload of sales coming in from stripe and PayPal and all these different places, depending on where my customer wants to how they actually want to pay. And the big problem that comes up is pretty much every bookkeeper out there that I've ever met has no clue what to do with PayPal, how to reconcile PayPal, how to what to do with affiliate income, the revenue that's coming in, going out and all that other stuff. And oh my gosh, I was I was so happy to find Parker Stephenson from evolve finance because their platform their their service, their agency actually solves this very, very specific problem. So Parker, how's it going, man, I appreciate you coming on.

Parker Stevenson 1:39
Dean. It's my pleasure, man. That might be like one of the best intros we've ever had

some good bookkeeping.

Dean Soto 1:47
Well, it's crazy. It's crazy. You you solve a very specific niche that that literally nobody else business wise, what has this pain unless they already doing a couple of things. They're using PayPal? They're they're selling a service on it or something online. And they're trying they're having to pay pay affiliates. And it is it is crazy, that there's nobody else doing what you guys are doing. And and so, so I that intro is like I literally it's it's just me, like happy as a clam, because you saw me my pain, man.

Parker Stevenson 2:28
Well, I think that that's something we talk to our clients a lot about, because I think, especially with an agency business or a service based business, the more you can hone and focus it in the better. And I think with a lot of you know, I'd say financial, just financial professionals, financial businesses, whether it's accounting or bookkeeping, the business model has to be so broad, right? Like the bookkeeper you're working with could be working at on a dentist office could be working on a restaurant and they could be working on your business. There's just more knowledge than any one person could have and have expertise on. Yeah, that. I think it's just such a strength that may seem like it limits your market. And I would imagine for a lot of people in our industry, they go oh, but then I'm not going to have enough clients to work with. But the reality is, there's plenty of all I mean, the online business space is booming. We don't need to do bookkeeping, for any other types of businesses, because we're going to have more business than we can handle for a really long time. Just in this niche alone. So kudos to my business partner Corey for figuring this out back in 2010.

Dean Soto 3:33
Yeah, so cool event. it's it's a it's it's great, man. So you, you. So I want to talk a little bit about you. You actually hopped on this bandwagon with Corey, as you were working with a pretty pretty well known company. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Parker Stevenson 3:54
Yeah. So before I started working with Korea, double finance. I was working for Adidas golf here in San Diego. It's like the only part of Adidas like their big headquarters for the US is in Portland. And then the corporate headquarters is in Germany. And so I was actually musician back in the day thought I was gonna be a rock star. When I was living in LA and that didn't work out. I went, Okay, what's my other thing I really love and it's like, well, I love golf. I was been a golf addict my whole life. So I'm like, I'm from San Diego. I'm like, San Diego is essentially what Detroit was for the auto industry, San Diego is for the golf industry. So I was like, I'm going to go work for the best golf manufacturer I can find or I can get a job. And sure enough, I got it at Taylor. It was tailor made Adidas golf at the time, and had a really great five year experience there. Like I was saying, before we got started was kind of like my, I'd say like my master's degree and business like I just learned so so much from working there. And especially the position I was in as a merchandiser. And as kind of like a product category manager, I learned so much about how a business functions from all the different places with a lot of it being around numbers to like, there was definitely a lot of financial aspects to what I did that by the time I kind of realized the corporate environment wasn't really my bag, and some doing something more entrepreneurial, was more up my alley, that by the time Corey and I started having serious discussions around how I could get involved in the business, and we could start to become partners, I felt really prepared to be able to not just jump in and help him grow of all finance, but also be able to provide some insights for the clients we serve, that maybe other people who have only been in the online space wouldn't be able to provide. Yeah,

Dean Soto 5:40
yeah. See, that's cool that what a what a, what a neat experience, because you're you're literally getting a play with $50 million worth of product and figure out one learn how how to even merchandise and sell and position these things. And then, and it's not like you you're not even, it's not your money. And you you're you're essentially just just learning from literally the best. And taking that from from there. And then going and working with Corey over it evolved finance, how did that transition happen? Where, where? How did you even like, with Corey doing what he was doing? Like, have the aha moment of like, I really want to go and do this

Parker Stevenson 6:28
instead? I know, that's a great question too. Because sometimes I'm like, I don't even understand how I don't understand, like how we got to this place. But Corey and his wife, Anna, are actually really good friends with my wife like they grew up together. So I've known Corey Nana for a long time now ever since I met my wife, which was about 12 years ago. And so I knew they had this business. But it was just like, cool. You guys have a business. It seems like it's doing well. Good for you guys. But I was very much into my career. But once I kind of got was getting close to that five year mark at Adidas, I was starting to feel like there wasn't really a next step for me like I was, for my personality. I'm a generalist, I like to know about a lot of different things, which is why I like the merchandising position. But it was so straight. It was a very stressful, crazy job. Like a lot of people that had that role before me didn't stay in it very long. Like there was a lot of people I stayed in that position. And so I sort of realized, like, getting into an entrepreneurial position would allow me to kind of have my business add put to work, because, you know, obviously I'd have to learn bookkeeping. And I started at very humble beginnings with Corey. But the more Corey and I talked, the more we realized, all right, he can teach me the book eat, like the specific intricacies of the service we provide the client, but I'd be able to bring in a new perspective, like being more of a future thinking business development sort of mind, I think kind of felt like hey, like, I just don't, I just can't help but think we'd be able to like double, triple quadruple this business, just putting our strengths together. Yeah. And that was the really good thing that I think Corey, and I realized is that Korea is very different skills than I have. And so that's what's made our partnership so strong, and what's allowed us to work so well together. And so just kind of realizing our personalities match well, him and his wife kind of telling me like, hey, these are all the things we have going on. We have all these clients we can't support right now, if you come on and start supporting them, and then we'll start to hire a team. It just started, I think we just saw, you know, three, four years down the road, like we could build a real team. And I'm really like, he's already had so much demand just happening that I'm like, I don't have a business idea. I have no idea what kind of business I want to start. And I think what I've realized is I'm really good at taking so even being a creative person being a musician. Yeah. But I think I was really good at taking the initial vision they had and be able to add and build upon that because of my experience at Adidas. So it seems crazy. I took a massive pay cut. And you know, it took a couple years for us to really hit our stride. But it's been like so worth it. And the business is really thriving. Now that we have done a lot of the work to make the business more successful. Yeah,

Dean Soto 9:19
that is awesome. It is. Yeah. See, I love that. I love that story.

The so with. So once once, like, I want to talk. Okay, so there's two things we're going to kind of colliding in my head right now. One is I'm like, you know, what were some of the things that you guys had to do to actually start scaling this business. But before that, I kind of I think, I think I want to give the audience really, they hear why I'm so excited. But I kind of want you to give the description of that. What you guys the big problem you guys solve? Because I know my problems. And I'm sure you mean I'm I'm sure you have kind of a better way of putting out that that that message but yeah, so like, what makes you guys so different from every other bookkeeper that's out there?

Parker Stevenson 10:19
Well, that's what got me interested in the business to begin with is exactly what I'm about to explain. We were talking a little bit about it before. I I never thought I'd get involved in a bookkeeping business man, like I that just wasn't my Mo. Like, I've told our clients, I don't try to talk a whole lot about it. But I told her clients like I'm not a fine, I needed to get get a degree in finance. And the reality is bookkeeping isn't rocket science. Yeah, it's not. But just for me, having been a musician, like a guy that was going after my passions, I want to work in the golf industry, I want to work in the music industry, like I wanted to do this stuff that I thought was cool, but keeping the Nazi. But as I got older and more mature, I realized that stuff, you know, following your passion becomes a grind no matter what it is. And so what matters is working with people you like feeling fulfilled from the work, I know, for me feeling of service to other people, feeling like I can make an impact wherever I'm at, like that becomes really important. And so when Corey was kind of telling me about what they were doing it of all fit finance, even though I wasn't like a bookkeeping expert at that point. I was like, Is there anyone else doing what you're doing? And he's like, not really, like we were talking about, like, our niche is so specific, that we are solving a problem that we've seen repeatedly Now, over the years, because we've talked with I mean, I've been on so many calls since I started the business, hundreds of entrepreneurs. And that has taught us so much about what the struggles our clients have had before they start working with us. So over the years, we've just honed down our service more and more like when Corey got started, we kind of did all of the bookkeeping things. And now we're only focusing on the bookkeeping, things that we can be really, really, really good at and make the most impact on and we've built all our systems and processes around that. But this is kind of like if any, if the listeners can kind of take away something from this is that from working with such a specific niche, again, I hear the same problems over and over again, and we understand what our clients are going through number one, because we run an online business, as well. So that helps. But secondly, because we built a service that does fit in niche. So specifically in solves such a specific problem, it's easier to relate to your clients, and it's easier to wow them, and to reduce the stress and create excitement around solving that problem for them, especially because they haven't been able to find a solution anywhere else. So that alone is such a competitive advantage over the experience our clients have had working with other bookkeepers because it just it's it's nothing sexy, just understanding their problem having a service that addresses that problem, like dead on we don't, you know, I think sometimes some small businesses kind of skirt around with their messaging or don't get focused enough on what they're really trying to accomplish with their service or with their product. And that's just one thing that we're very lucky to have figured out a long time ago is this like, taking care of the books for an online business properly, and then helping our clients to understand what those numbers mean? It's simple when I say it like that. But the reality is, if you've worked with an accountant worked with the bookkeeper work with any financial professional, a lot of them just don't get that they don't understand that customer service is important. They don't understand that the relationship with their client is super important. And I'm not trying to like crap on anyone who has a accounting business or bookkeeping business, like, I'm sure there's other ones out there that have good customer service experiences. But our clients, when they come to us, they haven't. And so all those pieces of just no one else serving this niche, us being able to really hone in our service, because we know this niche so well. Like, that was the opportunity. And it's not it's not like we have a new app like this crazy new app, or like it's something super revolutionary. It's just innovating, what's been a very old, sort of unchanged service and catching it up to modern times, essentially. And that, for me was the reason why I was excited to jump in. Because it's like, we essentially have no competition. And we have a super specific target market. Like it doesn't get any better than that.

Dean Soto 14:29
Yeah, no, for sure. I love I love it. I still

remember, the first time I had so I went from from it was what was it called outright. And then it turned into GoDaddy bookkeeping. And then that was like when that was that was like when I was just starting out in my business. And it was I didn't need QuickBooks as soon as I went to QuickBooks because I had to do when I became a Subchapter S. LLC, and, and I was doing a lot more comments. It's stuff that that online entrepreneurs face. I was like, holy crap, I literally can, I don't even understand how to reconcile, at the end of the month, this doesn't make sense to me, and everything like that, I've hired a bookkeeper to just explain to me how to do all of this stuff for my for my thing, and she, she was literally like, Oh my gosh, like, you're all messed up like this, I'm not used to this. And I'm like, that doesn't help. Like, it doesn't help me at all. And so, so like, and that have almost happened pretty much over and over with people going, just not understanding a lot of the stuff like the affiliate commissions and, and, and PayPal reconciling and things like that. And so even just in your messaging, it's like, bam, like, that's, that's my problem, like, and it's cool how you guys have done that. And, and even though it might be a little scary to do that, you're really speaking to a lot of people just with that messaging and pitching down like that.

Parker Stevenson 16:10
Yeah, and that's a key to I think any really successful online business, I mean, there's more competition online than there's ever been. So the more you can find your specific people, like even if it seems like a really small audience, speak to them directly and clearly have the confidence to have your messaging, speak directly there because it's taken us a long, a long time to really build our copy on our website and our messaging, through our content and all that to just be so focused and direct to talk just to the people that need to hear it, right like not the people that are like and maybe take it or leave it, we're talking to people like your team that are like, oh, I've struggled with this, I'm not getting the support we need. And I think that's the one thing I want to explain because like your your situation, I'd like for you to be doing your books in the early stage of your business fine. Like it's an extra expense that if you're just getting started and just trying to make some money, manage it in a spreadsheet, like but we never recommend any like entrepreneur, try to learn how to use bookkeeping software, like you gotta go make money like make, you need to be spending all of your time and energy around finding clients, building your leads, like figuring out how to drive revenue, that keep your finances simple in the early stages. And once money starts coming in. That's when you hire someone else to do the books because that's, that's a skill set that for you, as a business owner to take the time to learn how to do properly, which again, even to find the resources to teach you the way we would want to do it for an online business, it's just the chances are slim, you're going to get the right tutorials. Anyways, it's a skill set that took me it took me a year to get really good at really doing the books for our clients. And that was after the support of you know, Corey and an employee, Susan, that we've had that who's been with the business for a really long time. And now I live and breathe this stuff, I can do it in my sleep. But no one running a business that's on a bookkeeping business should know how to do this stuff in their sleep, they should be outsourcing that to someone like us who actually knows how to do it, right. And the thing is, with bookkeeping, there's so much room for interpretation, like that's kind of the frustrating part is that every bookkeeper is going to do it differently, they're going to set up your chart of accounts differently and your profit and loss statements differently. Some of them are going to do cheats to kind of like sneak around having to do a lot of manual labor to do it raw, you know, like so that aspect of this industry to is difficult because it's hard to find someone that's going to, again, have the understanding of your business well enough to know what needs to be done right? And where can you be a little more efficient. And again, I it obviously works for our business, but anyone else who's listening, especially if you have an agency, a service or anything like that, like, Just don't be afraid to hone that service down to a specific specific problem, like you don't have all of the problems for every business, just have one target market, get in that niche and solve that problem really well. And, you know, we've had nothing but referrals, like we just started marketing, in the last six months really like really trying to push there. And we could still like we don't need it, we just want to grow faster. But when you do such a good job, and you are so good at solving that one problem, people are going to talk about it, people are going to want to share it and especially in the early stages of a new business. It's a damn great way to make sure you start getting you know, more clients down the road.

Unknown Speaker 19:36
Yeah, that is cool, man. I

Dean Soto 19:37
love it. I love the I love the fact that you went from being a musician, to working at Adidas and wanting to be wanting wanting to be like this. You know, rub shoulders with these really, you know, awesome celebrities and everything like that. And even through just from nicking down and doing what you're doing with the bookkeeping. You actually have literally, seriously like one of my don't tell my wife one of my crushes from from the 90s with the matrix, you as one of your customers, Carrie, boss. I know I as soon as I saw I saw her they're like, Oh my god, this is crazy. What? And so that's pretty. That's a cool little story. Yeah.

Parker Stevenson 20:24
Well, and that's the thing is like, I think the world is changing so much with technology and what the internet's allowing people to do and entertain me think about entertainment changing. I mean, she's obviously been extremely successful. But think about goop. You know, and what, what's her name? Who has a group, I'm terrible at names, but Gwyneth Paltrow, you know, she makes a great living as an actress and as a celebrity. And she starts this eat calm lifestyle website that's blown up. Like I think even people who are already in the spot, are looking for ways to connect with their audiences more looking for ways to share maybe knowledge I can carry Anne's situation. She's like this super highly trained meditation perfect professional, she's a badass yoga instructor like she she has this whole other aspect of her life that she's sort of kept out of the limelight that now she's like, starting a business around, right like and bringing in bringing interest in. And in all of our and and what's interesting is like in this industry, a lot of our clients are like little celebrities within their own right, right. Like they all, they all have their audiences that follow them and are looking to them for advice and guidance and buy their products. And that's like, I kind of look at the way our clients run their businesses now, kind of like back in the days of my space when I was in the band, where it's like, everyone's trying to, like, get as many people to like their MySpace page, and, you know, click, click on the page and listen to the songs and see the song count. And in a lot of ways, that's kind of what everyone's doing with the small businesses, because I think Adidas has the power of brand awareness, right, like everyone knows the three stripes and knows what a Adidas logo looks like, or knows what a coke logo is, right? They don't, they don't have to worry, those kinds of huge brands don't have to worry about awareness. But when you're running a small business, you might only have someone's attention for a short period of time. And so during that short period, you need to make sure you're making an impact with whatever content you have, whatever your website same. And inevitably, a lot of especially these business owners we have that have more personality type branded businesses, if they do a good job of that they kind of build fans, they build followers that start to trust them and want to follow them either for entertainment purposes, or educational purposes. So it's definitely been super interesting to see like these people we get to, we get to work with and all that. And it's definitely a huge it's one of the things that's super interesting about what we do and takes what's like, a normally boring subject and bookkeeping, and makes it like so intriguing and engaging, because we're really just looking at like, the core aspects of all these people's businesses and making sure they're running properly. So it's, I'm glad you appreciate it, because I think in some ways we get used to it. I think it's definitely not the way I thought I'd be making an impact on, you know, people's lives and people's businesses, let alone these really amazing entrepreneurs that, you know, in their own rights have amazing stories, amazing experiences, like I love talking with their clients, because they're truly fascinating and accomplished people

Unknown Speaker 23:30
now, I love that man.

Dean Soto 23:32
It's that is Yeah, it's it just cool. It's, it's just neat how, how, because of solving that that one problem ever. Anyone who is going to be the go from from, you know, being a celebrity or, or from anywhere. Soon as they get into the online space, where they're having these, you know, they're taking things from PayPal, they're doing these very specific things. Boom, now night, you solve that problem. And now you're literally being able to talk to people that are in it and and help them to grow new new things. These and these are people who are almost unreachable in other ways. And it just cool how, through having that very specific niche, you've been able to do that. Yeah, really amazing. The so I always ask this five minute mindset shifts question this five minute strategy, that if someone were to take it and use it, it would change the game for them, because it's changed the game for you. So what's you mentioned? That, that you like to have, like a feedback, like a feedback dashboard type thing? Can you explain that, in regards to how it's helped you to massively change the way your business and other people's businesses?

Parker Stevenson 24:59
Yeah, so that's, like, the reality of everyone's business here. Like if you're listening, and you have an online business or small business, the reality is, like, even if you have the most heart centered business, and you're naive, it's not about the money, it's about helping people or whatever your mindset around your businesses, you your business is still a cash machine is this this machine that sucking money in and spitting money out, hopefully keeping some for you, that's the reality of your business. Like that's what truly is going to make it successful or not successful. No matter how happy your clients are, no matter how good you are at whatever it is you do, how many how much volume you sell of your products, if the money side of things doesn't work, then you're not playing the game, right, you don't have your business model setup, and you're not properly you're not focusing on the right things. So the example I use a lot is that everyone needs to know, they need to get feedback on the decisions they're making in their business. And that feedback comes in the form of your financial data. And unfortunately, unless you have someone organizing that financial data for you, a lot of people just ignore it, they don't look at their financial data. And especially even if they're a newer, younger business, and they could be doing it in a spreadsheet themselves. They just I don't think people see enough value in that. And so what I like to kind of use as an analogy is, you know, if you were driving a car without a dashboard, like you just had no idea about the speedometer, you have check engine light, your oil gauge, all of that stuff is just not there, you can't see it, you can still drive the car without it. But you're guessing when you need to fill up on gas, you're guessing when you need to kind of you know, do your oil, change your guessing if like, there's an entity, you have to, you no longer have this direct input to see if your car's running properly. You know, and you know, the check engine light could be on and blinking. Yeah, and it's just you have it covered up and you can't see you have no idea there's this catastrophic problem that could be coming your way. And until your car just breaks down. And that car is symbolic of a lot of our clients, businesses in our own business. If you don't have this financial tracking, and some sort of feedback happening every month to see, hey, am I spending my money on the right things? Am I doing enough to drive revenue to cover the expenses? I have? Is my business profitable enough? Am I saving enough for taxes, there's all these aspects of running a business that I think you a lot of entrepreneurs don't realize they need to pay more attention to until the pain becomes so bad that they have no choice but to figure it out. Which is a lot of times we when we find them, or they just ignore it until they get a huge tax bill, or literally their business breaks down and then it's no longer profitable. And they can't and they have to shut the business down. Yeah. And so that's the power we've seen with our clients with what we do is that as soon as they start getting these hard numbers in front of them, and they're like, oh, like, I didn't realize I could understand this, I didn't realize how important this was, I didn't realize how important feedback was for me to get, they instantly changed the way they think about their business. Because in some ways it does become a game. How do I make sure these numbers stay healthy, and I make these numbers the way I want through the daily activity of myself and my team in the business. And that's something Corey and I have seen tremendously in our own business, we have our own, you know, financial tracking we do for ourselves, that allows us to plan for the future that allows us to make sure that what we're doing on a monthly basis is supporting our team supporting our clients, we're hitting our financial goals. And all of that is just getting comfortable with your financial data, getting that feedback on a monthly basis. So you can just actually know, is this business running well, or is it not? And you can't, you can only go off of a gut feeling for so long. So that's what I would challenge everyone here to do, whether it's going out and hiring a bookkeeper, or just taking managing your finances yourself, like in your spreadsheet, or wherever it is, yourself taking that really seriously and using that financial data to start shaping the future of your business.

Unknown Speaker 29:01
That's cool. And I, I

Dean Soto 29:05
I can totally so I, I've had situations where, where if I didn't know the numbers, I would have been in a world of hurt.

Parker Stevenson 29:13
Yeah, for sure. And

Dean Soto 29:15
in any way even like little things too, because if they, you know, I can imagine since I mean, depending on depending on the the tears and stuff that you guys offer. I know some of them, you actually talk with your clients on a regular basis. Once you get the report, sometimes it could be something like, you know, just me seeing Why am I spending so much on this type of software this or are in software in general? And do I have like things that are just that I'm not even using? Or why Why? You know, I don't have anything, like you said for taxes for payroll taxes for estimated taxes, things like that, if I don't have it, if I don't have awareness of how much am I going to actually have to pay? You know, there's a there's a lot of things that that have happened just from seeing the numbers. I mean, just recently I cut, cut a lot of software that I was like, for whatever reason, I was like, I'm going to use that someday we're going to use it someday. And it was like $400 or $500, or the software just sitting there doing it not doing anything for my business at all. And so I'm like, oh, cancel, cancel, cancel, cancel, cancel.

Parker Stevenson 30:33
But, but those audits are important that's important to keeping the business is profitable as possible, right?

Dean Soto 30:38
Yeah. And I would imagine to it has there ever been any situation where where a client was, say even giving too much like affiliate income or something like that, to where it was actually hurting their business or something like where it was actually hurting their business because they didn't realize too much is going out. And you're not even keeping any for your Have you ever had any.

Parker Stevenson 31:01
I mean, we've seen it all man, it's crazy Dean, we're just recently this year, we have this client, a newer client, who I just absolutely adore. He's such an amazing, amazing person, but he had a whole revenue stream that we were looking at going, you need to cut this revenue stream out, it's taking up all of your time. It's called stress and making your business less profitable. And we're not really making any money off of it. So why why do we have this, these two other offers you have are the ones that are easier to manage, provide more value, and we can grow, they still have tremendous potential for growth. So we get in a situation like that, especially on the revenue side, or sometimes clients are trying to sell too many offers, they have too many offers. And a small business just can't afford they know there's not enough time or enough marketing dollars to try to talk about and promote a ton of different things on a regular basis, we've seen quite realize oh, like because there's, there's all these balances, right? Like you're trying to find the balance of keeping the business healthy, while also making sure you're getting paid as an owner and making the money you need to make to support your family and your lifestyle. And then also, and and there's a lot of intricacies between the balance of those two things like building up savings within your business so that if you have a down month, we have cash to get us through that. And it's not a stressful situation. Or sometimes where someone is taking out too much money from the business, they don't realize how much they're taking out. Because they're looking at their business as still their own personal bank account. And then realize that even though the business is would be successful in the eyes of almost anyone probably listening right now, you'd be like, Oh, I'd love to have a business like this. But they're still in financial turmoil, because they're just not aware of how much they're paying themselves how much they're spending on different things. So the bottom line might look good on the p&l, but the reality is, they're still kind of cash poor, there's just not enough cash in the business that if they wanted to hire another person, if you wanted to start running Facebook ads, they have no flexibility to adapt or jump on opportunities in the future. So there's just it's such a delicate balance between being able to invest in the businesses future be able to protect the business in the long run, while also keeping the business super profitable. So you as a business owner can build your own wealth. And the only way you can figure out what that balance feels how that balance works best for you and for your situation is to have that monthly scorecard to have that monthly feedback. So you can make those decisions to give your business the best chance of sticking around for a really long time. And to give you the best chance as a business owner to have a business that will actually create personal wealth for you as well.

Dean Soto 33:44
Yeah, dude, I've never been so excited about bookkeeping.

It's crazy, man.

It's It's awesome. Like it's it's, it's, it's cool. They get you know, my wife is really good with numbers. And she that's all like, for me, I'm like I do it for me to be like, idealist. I can I can just go do my thing. Come back, see what the numbers are. Okay, things are good. Okay, go go do go do my thing. Come back, oh, things are not so good. Let me fix this. And to just like you said, be fully out there. And doing what I do best, rather than,

you know, crap. Now I have to spend six hours at the end of this month doing my bookkeeping, and I don't even know if I'm doing it right. And

I don't even you know, like it. It's a it's a very painful process in a one that I avoid if I have to do it myself, you know. And which then gives me no feedback,

Parker Stevenson 34:42
you know, it. And we don't expect any of our clients to be financial pros. We're not asking them to be a CFO. All we're asking them to do is to, like you just said, take a look at the numbers. See where you're at, realize where you need to make some adjustments, realize where you see your opportunities, or even just pat yourself on the back things are going well. Everything's going as planned. Great. And then you go back into business, we're talking about 30 minutes to an hour and a half a month. Yep, of looking at your numbers and taking that part of your business seriously. We're not running multinational corporations here. No one needs CFO, we don't need controllers or like full time financial reporting, we just need this part of our businesses organized cleanly like Marie Kondo. This stuff right here, you know, Marie Kondo your business and get the financial stuff organized. And so that way, you have a clean, well organized machine, that is giving you the feedback, you need to see, am I doing a good job as a business owner or not. And again, just those reports on their own, most people want to be able to just read a report and know and that's where the second part of our service comes in, which is the education part around understanding what those numbers are. And again, it's not rocket science here. But at the end of the day, if you've never worked in the financial situation, you know, so many of our clients never even worked in a big company before, right? Like they've only been entrepreneurs, or they were more creatives or doing something else that wasn't really business oriented. And now all of a sudden, they're in these businesses. And they're like, what, like, they don't know what they don't know, totally, totally. But they're still fully capable of learning this stuff. Because if you can add and subtract man,

defined as a business owner, we just need to step up and get the right information in front of you. I love it. I love it.

Dean Soto 36:30
So how can people reach you? How can people if they if they want to schedule a time with you, or just be to work with you? How can people actually get in contact with you and Corey?

Parker Stevenson 36:42
Yeah, so the best way is just go to our website of all finance calm, there's scheduled call buttons all over the website to have you set up a time. But I recommend taking a look at the website, because we definitely make it very clear what type of businesses we work with, and sort of where you need to be at to be a good fit for us. But I think I'd spend you a link for really great download as well. So we have a sales forecasting tool that I think is a much longer link than probably makes sense to say over. So look in the podcast details I imagine are on the on the blog page for this podcast upload. But it's the free Sales Forecast Tool that if you're like, new to the numbers side of things, and you want to see the power of taking some time to think about the financial side of your business and the power of using your numbers to shape what the future of your business can look like. And make sure that you're building a business that's going to be profitable, and healthy. Then the sales forecasting tools, just a spreadsheet that we've done all the work for you just plug some numbers in. And it also comes with a free to tour, a tutorial video tutorial that'll walk you through exactly how to use it. I honestly think it's like one of the best free things any business educator gives away, because I just, I would never start a business or get involved in a business. If I didn't have a budget and a forecast in place to see what's the the potential of this business and this tool will get you get you on your way to feeling like your numbers aren't so scary. Awesome.

Dean Soto 38:07
Yeah, I love that. I love that.

So yeah, we'll put those in that will put that in the show notes. But definitely go head over to evolved finance.com evolved finance, calm, ev OLVD finance.com just in case, just in case you didn't know how to spell that. Or if I'm slurring or whatever. But go check it out. I mean, they're, they're really awesome. If you're, if you're doing anything online, and you're you have affiliates or PayPal or anything like that, you know, do you have to definitely check them out because it is painful, especially as you start being getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and you're getting a lot more things that you're managing and a lot more different revenue streams, it becomes harder and harder and harder. So so all that being said, thanks so much for being on man. I appreciate you,

Parker Stevenson 39:02
Dean. I appreciate you having me. It was really fun talking with you.

Dean Soto 39:06
Yeah, it's is is awesome. Like I said, this is didn't expect to be so excited about bookkeeping man. So thanks, Parker. Yeah, thank you. So Alright, cool. So that is the end of this podcast episode. But of course, it's not the end of the podcast. If you want to get a virtual systems architect, go head over to freedom in five minutes calm. What they can do for you is you show them a video, five minutes a day, they're documented. They'll do it for you and you never have to do that thing ever again. So go check out freedom in five minutes calm, go check out evolved finance.com as well. And until next time, I will see you on the next freedom in five minutes podcast episode.

More short-term rentals are cropping up every day thanks to platforms like Airbnb. But how does one get started with this type of business? And how does one prepare themselves to build out the system that's required for short-term rental success?

In this episode, Brandon Telesmanic of BLT Enterprises shares his secrets on how he became successful with this short-term rental business and how he managed to scale it up.

Contact Brandon: https://www.marcusmillichap.com/about-us/agents/brandon-telesmanic-btelesmanic-1

---------- Automated Transcript Below:

Dean Soto 0:00 Hey, this is Dean Soto founder of freedom in five minutes and freedom than five minutes.com. And we're here again with another freedom in five minutes podcast episode. Today's topic is this building wealth with short term investment properties, that and more coming up. Oh, cool. So this is, this is gonna be a really cool episode because this is something that I've been extremely interested in, because I have several properties, but they're all long term leases. And it's interesting because while while it might be nice to get those long term leases, you there there with the revolution of short term investment property, there's so many more avenues to make more off of the assets that you acquire in the real estate space. And I'm excited about this, because I have Brandon Brandon talismanic, who is an expert in this he is He He is an expert in actually setting up people with with short term with short term property investments. And and I wanted to get him on here. He he he has a just a great amount of experience with this particular subject. And he is the owner of BLT Enterprises. And I just thought it'd be great to have him on right now. So all that being said, Brandon, how you doing my man?

Brandon Telesmanic 1:46 Doing well.

Dean Soto 1:47 Cool. So

Brandon Telesmanic 1:49 thanks for having me on here.

Dean Soto 1:50 Oh, no problem. No problem. It's, it's, it's my pleasure, for sure. Because this is a topic that is I think, is going to be extremely valuable to a lot of people. So first and foremost, give a little bit of background about yourself, and how you got into this particular industry that you're in right now with the short term rentals.

Brandon Telesmanic 2:13 Yeah, so.

So I am 34 years old right now, I, I graduated from physical therapy school when I was about 2025, I think and I was living down in Southern California, and was living actually right on the beach in Newport. Oh, fantastic. And that's Yeah, the

Unknown Speaker 2:37 gig there.

Brandon Telesmanic 2:39 Yeah, not a bad gig at all. And that was, I graduated, and I was working a few different jobs and hustling and making pretty good money. But after living there for a few years, it became very clear to me that I was not going to be able to ever afford one of these homes that I was running on the beach, with my current finances, and you know, what I was projected to make in the future. And so, you know, at that time, there was a few different life changes with me. And I made the decision to move back to the Central Valley where I'm originally from from Fresno. And I was motivated, because one I wanted to own a house and I wanted to start investing my money rather than, you know, putting it into rent. And my family owns a business in the Central Valley, a therapy business that I wanted to be part of. And everything just kind of, you know, worked itself out, I'd leave behind a lot of friends there. And that was definitely definitely the hardest part. But came back to Fresno was able to buy buy a single family home at a very good time, because it was just just at the end of when the market was crashing around 2011. And started working with family business, things were going pretty well, I was able to rent out the extra rooms in my house to pay off my mortgage, and did that for a few years. And you know, I was pretty happy with that. But as I started getting a little bit older roommates moved out, I had a very serious girlfriend who's now my wife, and I was not spending really much time at the house at all, maybe 10% of the time of the house. So either hanging out with other people or with my wife, and I just felt like man, I'm paying this mortgage for this house. And under utilizing it, this thing needs to be making money, I need to move out a year, you know, I can rent this thing out for 16 1700 dollars a month potentially, and, and be making money off of it. And at that time, you know, you there's a lot of a lot of news about Airbnb, people are talking about them, mainly in bigger cities, definitely not in Fresno. And so I did some research and talk to a few different people that I know, mainly, mainly in the Bay Area. And, you know, most of the people said, You know who the hell is going to come to Fresno, that doesn't really make much sense, you should just, you know, you should just maybe get an apartment and rent out the house and, and make a little bit of money that way.

Anyways, I decided that I was going to put it as a short term rental, regardless of what everyone else was saying. And I cleaned the house up really nice, got some furniture. And the goal originally was just to make, you know, five $600, because I was still going to be partially part time living in the house, and then renting it out. And so that would help me, you know, offset my mortgage payment. And so I got it all all set up and was seemingly pretty proud of what I had put on the market took some good pictures, or I thought were good pictures. And lo and behold, the play started getting booked up. And, and it wasn't just, you know, one or two bookings this was this is approximately six years ago. And, and so it started getting booked up. And there was it was just very evident that there was a demand for this. Because regardless of what people in Fresno thought about it, it wasn't people in president that were renting the home, it was people coming from LA or San Francisco or, you know, out of the state, or sometimes even out of the country that were running the running the home. And so because, you know, there was so much demand, I was able to put more money into the house, make it nicer respond to, you know, people's feedback. And that's kind of, that's the basis of the business. And so from there, I was able to just continue to reinvest the money that I was making from the short term rental, that one short term rental, and continue to buy them remodel the homes, and, and then continue to rent them out. And in that time, you know, I got married, and my wife was able to bring in a good income. She brought many valuable things to the table, organization. And yeah, just continued to scale up. And so now I'm at a point where five short term rentals and have a team that's helping me out, and it's going pretty well. Wow,

Dean Soto 7:46 I love that man. It's cool, because as you were, as you were actually saying, as you were saying that that the people here were in because I I get to be a part of this central valley crew now that now that I'm in pray there, California right next door to Fresno. When people were saying like there's nothing here in Fresno, why would anybody ever come here? One of the first times I ever used personally used Airbnb was when we were traveling from Southern California to Idaho, and we stopped in this literally like no name, town like nobody, I it just it was a small, small, small town. I did population was probably like 1000. But it was halfway to where we wanted to go. And it was perfect. Because we we we drove halfway to our final destination and stayed there. We actually stayed at that place for two nights, I think. And then because we wanted to go see Reno and a couple other places was it wasn't it was outside of Reno. And had had you listened to them? You wouldn't have got those people who are are traveling from Oregon down to Southern California or or whatever, you know.

Brandon Telesmanic 9:14 Yeah, yeah, that is a big misconception that no one comes to Fresno or that people only utilize short term rentals when they're going on vacation. So, you know, when people ask the question, well, who's coming to Fresno, you think, you know, President has a lot of hotels, you know, they're not the nicest hotels, but they're getting booked and they're doing business. So if a town has a hotel, and most likely, you know, a short term rental will work on some level, you know, people are coming to Fresno, oftentimes to visit family, for weddings, for birthdays, for any event that can take place anywhere. And large groups like to get together and stay together and it makes it more fun. And so you know, the the short term rental is far more desirable than you know, even renting a hotel out. And it's not like we really have sweets or anything like that, that you could rent out in Fresno. So it becomes a very, very good alternative. And then in addition to that, with, with the Central Valley, there's a fair amount of development going on. And you have workers that are regularly coming to the valley, and you know, need need places to stay. And so those are your, you know, Monday through Friday gap. Yeah, where if you if you go have a short term rental and in, say Lake Tahoe, you're going to get guests that are every weekend going to be booked. And you can probably put the rate insanely high on the weekend. Yeah, but who's going to be staying there Monday? through Thursday? Probably it's going to be a lot harder to fill, especially in the in the offseason. So yep, that's where, you know, places like Fresno, or Visalia, or said, you could make pretty good business out of it. Yeah, this is great, man. This is

Dean Soto 11:11 that that's all the stuff that that is. So traditionally, when you think of any type of rental, it's it's the it's, at least for me, it's the it's that the typical where it's a it's a lease, you have somebody in there, you get a turnkey, you get cash flow from it. All of those factors that you that you're talking about, right, there are things that with, you know, your typical long term lease one or two year lease, you're not going to have that as a those as an issue, or, or a factor. Which brings me to the question, like what, what are what? Are they comparing it to your typical long term, you're renting out your house to somebody for a year or two? what's what's the what are the big differences? And what are the pros and cons of each one? And why do you think? And do you think short term rentals beat out? Long Term rentals in in the long run? No pun intended?

Brandon Telesmanic 12:17 Yeah. So you really, to answer the question of do they beat them out? It really depends on what your specific goals are. If your goals are to maximize your profits, then the no question you can make a lot more money as a short term rental. But it's also the difference between a passive and active investment. And so a long term rental is going to be more passive. There's some work up front in finding the tenant preparing the home each time you have a turnover. And you know, then you just kind of sit back and probably either manage it yourself or have a management team, that really it shouldn't be too labor intensive. There's lots of, you know, potential issues with tenants that don't pay rent, and then you have they have their renters rights, and you know, evicting tenants and things like that can be a major major headache. Yep. So that's, you know, I, I don't have any of the homes as, as long term rentals, my dad has been around it, you know, my whole life. But with the short term rental, you you set up the even if it's longer than 30 days usually do the rentals in increments of 30 days. So and the reason for that is so that the renter, or you know, your tenant, whatever you want to call, it, doesn't have any rental rights, so you're not going to get a squatter in your property. They're throwing a loud party or they you know, damage your property, you can kick them out. And that's, that's within your rights as the owner of home if they're not abiding by your rules. Oh, I

Dean Soto 14:04 didn't, I didn't know that. So. So for those who are listening, basically, what you're saying is, if you if you say if, if you were to allow, like a duration longer than 30 days, and not like chunk it out, they would be able to you run the risk of them having certain rights as, as renters, as opposed to if you say, let them only do 30 days at a time, is that kind of what you're saying?

Brandon Telesmanic 14:32 Correct? Yeah, I mean, I've never had to go down that path. But that's pretty much the gist of it. Wow,

Dean Soto 14:39 that's great.

Brandon Telesmanic 14:40 So, so with, with the short term rentals, you have, you always have to remember that you're really in the customer service business, and a long term renter, your landlord, but a short term rental, you're more like, you know, more like a should be, in my opinion, like a luxury hotel. Yeah, where you have clients that are coming, and your goal is to make those clients happy with with their accommodations. And so, you know, that means different things for each person, but, you know, you have to put a lot of time and money and effort into it into setting up the property appropriately. And then regularly, maintaining it, cleaning it, you know, having a crew really because it's pretty hard to maintain, by yourself, if you're, if you're doing multiple homes, that that's going to help you run, run these, maintain these homes and run them efficiently. So that you know, you have you have happy customers that are going to leave positive reviews. And, and so where you know, as a, as a long term rental, you're not getting any reviews on your property, there's no site that I know of that's going to review you, you know, if you have a single family home, and you're running it out, they're not going to review the landlord, maybe on larger apartment complexes, there definitely is. But yeah, with with a short term rental business, you have to constantly make adjustments and and do everything you can to keep your customers happy. So that, that you keep your reviews up, because that's, that's how you're going to generate more businesses, people seeing those reviews and knowing that it's a quality place to stay at.

Dean Soto 16:29 That's interesting. That's so you're

Brandon Telesmanic 16:31 so there's a lot, a lot more time and effort, you know, you really have to be available 24. Seven, to deal with, you know, any potential issues that come up. So it's a very, very active, active investment. Well, the the

Dean Soto 16:48 Yeah, it seems it seems like you get it. So because it's more active, it really is the difference between like a cow flow and investment from from, you know, sit back and let the cash come in type thing. And actually creating a business a hospitality business.

Brandon Telesmanic 17:12 Where Absolutely, it's, you're creating a hospitality business,

Dean Soto 17:16 and is it and that's why and hence why you're actually able to make more in profit. If if you actually treat it like a business. Mm hmm. So that's really interesting.

Brandon Telesmanic 17:34 Yeah, and I'll say that there are people that, you know, do the minimum and provide the most basic accommodations. And, you know, there's, there's different ways to do it. I'm not saying what's right and what's wrong, but those people are still making money, and many of them are making very good money because they're capitalizing on opportunity out there. Yeah, it's been my approach to the do it the best I can and provide the best product I can because I believe if I do that, then I'm going to, you know, net, the most amount of, you know, returns profit. And I feel like that's what's happened. But, you know, there's other ways to do it as well. But yeah,

Dean Soto 18:17 cuz it's, I think if with that type of mindset, it's as as it becomes more and more and more popular. It people expect a lot more. Because I remember my first time with Airbnb, I was just like, I was just happy to get the house. But then I started seeing Yeah, yeah, you know, I started seeing different of different places I stayed at they would they would have the cure eggs and cure eggs all set up for you. They would all they have waters, they have coffee stations. Yeah, you know, all of that. And you start actually expecting more and expecting more and expecting more. The last place I stayed in Chula this stuff for was doing a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tournament. It was a duplex. And we we we paid $250 a night for this duplex, because there was because there was a lot of people staying for this tournament there. And, and we walk in, there is no waters in the fridge there was there was it was super small and cramped. There was no snacks and whatever. And I'm like, hey, this sucks. I was like, you know, I just paid 250 bucks. And like, I'm so used to getting all of what you would typically get at a hotel, you know?

Brandon Telesmanic 19:40 Yeah, yeah, yeah, the level of homes and the quality. On all the short term rental websites have gone up pretty dramatically over the past three to three years, I would say. And you know, Airbnb has different levels. Now, where there's Airbnb plus Airbnb, Lux. Lux, I think they called her luxury, which is the highest level. Yeah, and, you know, these homes are under a strict, you know, criteria of guidelines that they have to adhere to, to achieve that. That status before it was the host, you know, the highest level would be that your be like super hosts on Airbnb, or I forget what they call it on Dr. Bo, but that was just more more generated by your reviews, and less so you know, the criteria of your home. But now there's all these other ways to differentiate these homes. And, and people have a high expectation, they expect a very high level of cleanliness. And I think you have a lot of people that probably wouldn't have been open to the idea of a short term rental, three, four years ago that are, are coming over, you know, really want luxury accommodations. Yeah, and, and that's good. I mean, that means more business, those are probably the most difficult people to have as guests. But, you know, you gotta, you gotta do your best to accommodate everyone and, and do your best to, you know, have a high level across the board, whether you're having, you know, some some guys that are coming to, you know, work and do a plumbing job for five days, or a family of four that's coming for a swim tournament.

Dean Soto 21:30 Yeah. Man, I love this. I love this. So, so how how do how, like, what are some of the steps to even get started? in doing any of this type of short term rental stuff? Like what would you say like, so if someone, someone who had the capital to to actually invest in something like this, where where would they start? Like, what are some of the what is what are some of the kind of like the, I should say, like the, I don't know, roadblocks, or, or just like,

Brandon Telesmanic 22:07 yeah, yeah, I understand what you're saying. Yeah, yeah. So the first thing is, you know, you've got to make the commitment for the time and not only have the capital to be able to, you know, put a down payment on investment property, but probably put a significant amount of money into remodeling that property. And maybe you could buy a property that already has under, undergone some remodeling, or just looks nice to begin with. And then you've got to furnish it. And, you know, buy all the things that you need to run the Airbnb, all the linens and cleaning supplies, and, you know, all of that stuff. And, and so, so the biggest thing is finding the correct property. And right now the market is, is Hi. And it would be hard to find a property right now, that would make sense, under my criteria for something I would buy. And the Fresno market, and I would say it's fairly saturated. But if you look, and I'm talking, you know, just about the Central Valley area, you can apply this to, you know, anywhere wherever you're at. But, you know, look looking more in some of these other cities around Fresno, Visalia said, Bakersfield, that, that don't have a huge number of short term rentals. But you know, there is a most likely a need there, that would be that would be the market that I would be looking at. And, and so to share a little bit about how I purchased the homes, the the criteria that I was using, was that the purchase price of the home had to make sense. Basically, if I looked at it in, in three different ways needed to make sense, obviously, as a short term rental that I was going to be able to make, you know, very good profit on it, it needed to make sense, as a long term rental, where I would at least make, you know, $200 a month. And then thirdly, it needed to make sense as a flip. So if I wanted to completely get out of it all together, I could turn around and sell the house and make a profit off of it. And so, you know, it's hard, right now to hit those last two criteria. Yeah. So first one, you can you can make money as a short term rental. But if they change the laws in Fresno County, you know, then, well, I don't want to be stuck with this overpriced home and all this furniture that, you know, I've got to sell on Craigslist or something. Yeah. So yeah, so that's those, there's a three criteria. And that's the markets at a place right now where it's where it's tough, but there are unique properties, and you know, different ways to think about it, and different types of properties that you can bring on the market. But you've also got to think about your proximity to the property, and how time intensive it is, and how frequently you're going to need to be going there. And, and managing it. Whether it's, you know, doing it yourself or meeting with people that are going to, you know, do do the work for you. So, you know, those are the those are the big things, big things to consider.

Dean Soto 25:44 Yeah, man, I love I love that, though. Especially the three criteria, because, because, yeah, I've been in situations where I've had to offload real estate. And if if I was if I did you know, if I didn't have that criteria, and which I didn't at the time, I just got lucky, by the way.

Brandon Telesmanic 26:09 That's usually how it happens when you start

Dean Soto 26:11 Yeah.

Brandon Telesmanic 26:12 Put yourself in the right position.

Dean Soto 26:14 Yeah. And and man, but But yeah, like not being able to flip it and not, you know, offload it or be able to get the the minimum of cash flow from a long term lease. Those those are actually really, because I know my my, for me, I probably would have just looked at the profit from long term lease and from short term, but I didn't even consider, I didn't even consider you know, things can happen. laws can change, things, things, things can happen to where you they won't let you do a short term things. I have a friend in Hawaii, where they have to get like permits and stuff like that for it. They don't always hand them out, you know?

Brandon Telesmanic 27:03 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the laws, I mean, we really have no control over, you know, when they, when they change the laws, laws are different from county to county and from city to city. And they could be they could change them at any time. I mean, I keep up to date with, you know, what's coming down the pipeline. And in Fresno, I would say is better. Fresno County is, is more insulated than lots of these other big cities, like, you know, Santa Monica, or San Francisco, for example, where there's just such a huge rental shortage, that they don't want short term rentals, because those are eating up places that, you know, people could live in. Yeah, long term. Yep. So Fresno doesn't really have that problem. It's cool. Because like,

Dean Soto 27:51 yeah, I mean, it kind of it goes toward is actually kind of goes toward the, the five minute mindset shift, five minutes, strategic mindset shift, question that I always ask people, and, and now's the time to actually start doing it to at least trying to do the short term rental because, you know, ride the wave when you can, and one of the things that, because you actually filled out my questionnaire, so I knew what this was going to be, you mentioned that that your your five minute mindset shift is actually, you know, doing things as quickly as possible. Can you elaborate on that?

Brandon Telesmanic 28:37 Well, yeah, making the my five minute mindset mindset shift is more so than doing things as quickly as possible, it's more to believe in the product that you're putting out there. And, as opposed to trying to put a little money in something as possible and try to get as much out of it, and little effort, you know, trying to see if it works, well, that works to a certain degree, but at a certain point, you have to believe in your idea, and invest the capital, and time and be proud of what you put out there. I am saying. So rather than that, how you're going to have long term success, and be able to, you know, really have pride in the product that that you're putting out there,

Dean Soto 29:31 I see what you're saying, Okay, now I get I get the the language that you use to basically getting out of the mindset of trying to do something quickly and get paid quickly. But having much rather than that having the the long term in mind that, like, where where you might not see a CA, you know, get rich type quick thing happen. But in the long term, it did you build you build wealth and stability, overall, as that kind of a kind of,

Brandon Telesmanic 30:08 absolutely, right? That's absolutely right. I feel like when I was when I was working, you know, as a physical therapist, you're, you're just trying to work as many hours as you can, and try to make as big of a paycheck as you can. But the big shift, for me with this business was that I did not want the amount of hours I was working to be directly correlated to my income. And so you know, with this business, it's always been about doing things the right way, setting it up appropriately, and setting up the business so it can scale up. And once it scales up, then you're able to, you know, realize some of those larger profits. And, you know, I'm at the point now, which not it doesn't fantastic, but haven't been able to transition careers where I'm managing this business, and now involved in commercial real estate, and still do a little bit of physical therapy here and there. But I'm less tied to, you know, that hourly income.

Dean Soto 31:18 And that's what we like here on the on freedom in five minutes, all about scaling, yeah, being able to scale, automate, and so on, you know, because that's, yeah, that that is a big, big change. From that kind of small business mindset of, of, I'm going to work this many hours, I'm going to get this many clients, and, you know, I'm going to cap myself off rather than building out systems for your short term rentals, and then building even building, you know, sale systems and stuff for your, for the commercial real estate that you're you're into now. But so that so that you have the time to do that, in turn that active active income into a semi passive income, if not totally passive through through business system. So that's pretty, pretty awesome change.

Brandon Telesmanic 32:11 Yeah, yeah, it's been good.

Dean Soto 32:12 So how can people reach you because, you know, rather than trying to do it on their own, and, and basically fail, because that can happen? I've been in situations where if I did not have somebody who was a mentor, I would have crashed and burned very hard. In this in in any type of investment type stuff like this, you can really get burned? How can people reach you and actually work with you? who are interested in doing short term rental properties?

Brandon Telesmanic 32:53 Yeah, well, my link will, from my website, with Marcus and Millichap will be on. You're on your website, they can just access that, and then email me and I'll be happy to help them out.

Dean Soto 33:09 Awesome. Awesome. So yeah, though, that'll be that link will be in the show notes. So if you check out the show notes on your iPhone, that link will be on there. And, and you can go and work directly with Brandon and save yourself a lot of trouble, especially when it comes not just with getting the property itself, but actually building out the system that's required for for short term rental success. And there's not there's not a lot of people out there yet that offer this type of offer the the the ability to do this, I have a I have a few friends. I have a friend in Memphis that does it for a select few people, but it's something that I think is going to be the wave of the future. So you're like, on on top of it already. So it's it. I'm excited for anybody who starts working with you. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Awesome, man. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. This is this super exciting. And it I think it's, it's this is going to be one of seriously one of the best episodes that we had, because have because it really is we're only seeing the beginning of these types of short term rental opportunities. And I believe that within the next decade or two, it's going to be it's going to be very, very common place to and in your people are going to be essentially kicking themselves for not moving in this particular direction. So I really appreciate you sharing all the stuff that you know,

Brandon Telesmanic 34:47 well, I hope, I hope that some direction that it moves in.

Dean Soto 34:51 That's my prediction. That's my prediction. Hope. Alright, Brandon, thank you so much. And guys, if you want to work with Brandon, once again, that link is going to be in the show notes. And it'll also be on the blog post that we do over at freedom and five minutes calm forward slash blog. If you go and check out the actual blog posts that we do for this, it'll also be on there as well. So that is the end of this particular episode, but it's not the end of the podcast. So if you want to have more of these, make sure you subscribe on Apple Apple podcast, just search freedom in five minutes, freedom in five minutes and subscribe there and go to freedom in five minutes.com if you want a virtual systems architect that will take what you're doing right now in five minutes and start scaling your business every day, five minutes a day. All right. So we will see you in the next freedom in five minutes episode.

More short-term rentals are cropping up every day thanks to platforms like Airbnb. But how does one get started with this type of business? And how does one prepare themselves to build out the system that's required for short-term rental success?

In this episode, Brandon Telesmanic of BLT Enterprises shares his secrets on how he became successful with this short-term rental business and how he managed to scale it up.

Contact Brandon:
https://www.marcusmillichap.com/about-us/agents/brandon-telesmanic-btelesmanic-1

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Automated Transcript Below:

Dean Soto 0:00
Hey, this is Dean Soto founder of freedom in five minutes and freedom than five minutes.com. And we're here again with another freedom in five minutes podcast episode. Today's topic is this building wealth with short term investment properties, that and more coming up. Oh, cool. So this is, this is gonna be a really cool episode because this is something that I've been extremely interested in, because I have several properties, but they're all long term leases. And it's interesting because while while it might be nice to get those long term leases, you there there with the revolution of short term investment property, there's so many more avenues to make more off of the assets that you acquire in the real estate space. And I'm excited about this, because I have Brandon Brandon talismanic, who is an expert in this he is He He is an expert in actually setting up people with with short term with short term property investments. And and I wanted to get him on here. He he he has a just a great amount of experience with this particular subject. And he is the owner of BLT Enterprises. And I just thought it'd be great to have him on right now. So all that being said, Brandon, how you doing my man?

Brandon Telesmanic 1:46
Doing well.

Dean Soto 1:47
Cool. So

Brandon Telesmanic 1:49
thanks for having me on here.

Dean Soto 1:50
Oh, no problem. No problem. It's, it's, it's my pleasure, for sure. Because this is a topic that is I think, is going to be extremely valuable to a lot of people. So first and foremost, give a little bit of background about yourself, and how you got into this particular industry that you're in right now with the short term rentals.

Brandon Telesmanic 2:13
Yeah, so.

So I am 34 years old right now, I, I graduated from physical therapy school when I was about 2025, I think and I was living down in Southern California, and was living actually right on the beach in Newport. Oh, fantastic. And that's Yeah, the

Unknown Speaker 2:37
gig there.

Brandon Telesmanic 2:39
Yeah, not a bad gig at all. And that was, I graduated, and I was working a few different jobs and hustling and making pretty good money. But after living there for a few years, it became very clear to me that I was not going to be able to ever afford one of these homes that I was running on the beach, with my current finances, and you know, what I was projected to make in the future. And so, you know, at that time, there was a few different life changes with me. And I made the decision to move back to the Central Valley where I'm originally from from Fresno. And I was motivated, because one I wanted to own a house and I wanted to start investing my money rather than, you know, putting it into rent. And my family owns a business in the Central Valley, a therapy business that I wanted to be part of. And everything just kind of, you know, worked itself out, I'd leave behind a lot of friends there. And that was definitely definitely the hardest part. But came back to Fresno was able to buy buy a single family home at a very good time, because it was just just at the end of when the market was crashing around 2011. And started working with family business, things were going pretty well, I was able to rent out the extra rooms in my house to pay off my mortgage, and did that for a few years. And you know, I was pretty happy with that. But as I started getting a little bit older roommates moved out, I had a very serious girlfriend who's now my wife, and I was not spending really much time at the house at all, maybe 10% of the time of the house. So either hanging out with other people or with my wife, and I just felt like man, I'm paying this mortgage for this house. And under utilizing it, this thing needs to be making money, I need to move out a year, you know, I can rent this thing out for 16 1700 dollars a month potentially, and, and be making money off of it. And at that time, you know, you there's a lot of a lot of news about Airbnb, people are talking about them, mainly in bigger cities, definitely not in Fresno. And so I did some research and talk to a few different people that I know, mainly, mainly in the Bay Area. And, you know, most of the people said, You know who the hell is going to come to Fresno, that doesn't really make much sense, you should just, you know, you should just maybe get an apartment and rent out the house and, and make a little bit of money that way.

Anyways, I decided that I was going to put it as a short term rental, regardless of what everyone else was saying. And I cleaned the house up really nice, got some furniture. And the goal originally was just to make, you know, five $600, because I was still going to be partially part time living in the house, and then renting it out. And so that would help me, you know, offset my mortgage payment. And so I got it all all set up and was seemingly pretty proud of what I had put on the market took some good pictures, or I thought were good pictures. And lo and behold, the play started getting booked up. And, and it wasn't just, you know, one or two bookings this was this is approximately six years ago. And, and so it started getting booked up. And there was it was just very evident that there was a demand for this. Because regardless of what people in Fresno thought about it, it wasn't people in president that were renting the home, it was people coming from LA or San Francisco or, you know, out of the state, or sometimes even out of the country that were running the running the home. And so because, you know, there was so much demand, I was able to put more money into the house, make it nicer respond to, you know, people's feedback. And that's kind of, that's the basis of the business. And so from there, I was able to just continue to reinvest the money that I was making from the short term rental, that one short term rental, and continue to buy them remodel the homes, and, and then continue to rent them out. And in that time, you know, I got married, and my wife was able to bring in a good income. She brought many valuable things to the table, organization. And yeah, just continued to scale up. And so now I'm at a point where five short term rentals and have a team that's helping me out, and it's going pretty well. Wow,

Dean Soto 7:46
I love that man. It's cool, because as you were, as you were actually saying, as you were saying that that the people here were in because I I get to be a part of this central valley crew now that now that I'm in pray there, California right next door to Fresno. When people were saying like there's nothing here in Fresno, why would anybody ever come here? One of the first times I ever used personally used Airbnb was when we were traveling from Southern California to Idaho, and we stopped in this literally like no name, town like nobody, I it just it was a small, small, small town. I did population was probably like 1000. But it was halfway to where we wanted to go. And it was perfect. Because we we we drove halfway to our final destination and stayed there. We actually stayed at that place for two nights, I think. And then because we wanted to go see Reno and a couple other places was it wasn't it was outside of Reno. And had had you listened to them? You wouldn't have got those people who are are traveling from Oregon down to Southern California or or whatever, you know.

Brandon Telesmanic 9:14
Yeah, yeah, that is a big misconception that no one comes to Fresno or that people only utilize short term rentals when they're going on vacation. So, you know, when people ask the question, well, who's coming to Fresno, you think, you know, President has a lot of hotels, you know, they're not the nicest hotels, but they're getting booked and they're doing business. So if a town has a hotel, and most likely, you know, a short term rental will work on some level, you know, people are coming to Fresno, oftentimes to visit family, for weddings, for birthdays, for any event that can take place anywhere. And large groups like to get together and stay together and it makes it more fun. And so you know, the the short term rental is far more desirable than you know, even renting a hotel out. And it's not like we really have sweets or anything like that, that you could rent out in Fresno. So it becomes a very, very good alternative. And then in addition to that, with, with the Central Valley, there's a fair amount of development going on. And you have workers that are regularly coming to the valley, and you know, need need places to stay. And so those are your, you know, Monday through Friday gap. Yeah, where if you if you go have a short term rental and in, say Lake Tahoe, you're going to get guests that are every weekend going to be booked. And you can probably put the rate insanely high on the weekend. Yeah, but who's going to be staying there Monday? through Thursday? Probably it's going to be a lot harder to fill, especially in the in the offseason. So yep, that's where, you know, places like Fresno, or Visalia, or said, you could make pretty good business out of it. Yeah, this is great, man. This is

Dean Soto 11:11
that that's all the stuff that that is. So traditionally, when you think of any type of rental, it's it's the it's, at least for me, it's the it's that the typical where it's a it's a lease, you have somebody in there, you get a turnkey, you get cash flow from it. All of those factors that you that you're talking about, right, there are things that with, you know, your typical long term lease one or two year lease, you're not going to have that as a those as an issue, or, or a factor. Which brings me to the question, like what, what are what? Are they comparing it to your typical long term, you're renting out your house to somebody for a year or two? what's what's the what are the big differences? And what are the pros and cons of each one? And why do you think? And do you think short term rentals beat out? Long Term rentals in in the long run? No pun intended?

Brandon Telesmanic 12:17
Yeah. So you really, to answer the question of do they beat them out? It really depends on what your specific goals are. If your goals are to maximize your profits, then the no question you can make a lot more money as a short term rental. But it's also the difference between a passive and active investment. And so a long term rental is going to be more passive. There's some work up front in finding the tenant preparing the home each time you have a turnover. And you know, then you just kind of sit back and probably either manage it yourself or have a management team, that really it shouldn't be too labor intensive. There's lots of, you know, potential issues with tenants that don't pay rent, and then you have they have their renters rights, and you know, evicting tenants and things like that can be a major major headache. Yep. So that's, you know, I, I don't have any of the homes as, as long term rentals, my dad has been around it, you know, my whole life. But with the short term rental, you you set up the even if it's longer than 30 days usually do the rentals in increments of 30 days. So and the reason for that is so that the renter, or you know, your tenant, whatever you want to call, it, doesn't have any rental rights, so you're not going to get a squatter in your property. They're throwing a loud party or they you know, damage your property, you can kick them out. And that's, that's within your rights as the owner of home if they're not abiding by your rules. Oh, I

Dean Soto 14:04
didn't, I didn't know that. So. So for those who are listening, basically, what you're saying is, if you if you say if, if you were to allow, like a duration longer than 30 days, and not like chunk it out, they would be able to you run the risk of them having certain rights as, as renters, as opposed to if you say, let them only do 30 days at a time, is that kind of what you're saying?

Brandon Telesmanic 14:32
Correct? Yeah, I mean, I've never had to go down that path. But that's pretty much the gist of it. Wow,

Dean Soto 14:39
that's great.

Brandon Telesmanic 14:40
So, so with, with the short term rentals, you have, you always have to remember that you're really in the customer service business, and a long term renter, your landlord, but a short term rental, you're more like, you know, more like a should be, in my opinion, like a luxury hotel. Yeah, where you have clients that are coming, and your goal is to make those clients happy with with their accommodations. And so, you know, that means different things for each person, but, you know, you have to put a lot of time and money and effort into it into setting up the property appropriately. And then regularly, maintaining it, cleaning it, you know, having a crew really because it's pretty hard to maintain, by yourself, if you're, if you're doing multiple homes, that that's going to help you run, run these, maintain these homes and run them efficiently. So that you know, you have you have happy customers that are going to leave positive reviews. And, and so where you know, as a, as a long term rental, you're not getting any reviews on your property, there's no site that I know of that's going to review you, you know, if you have a single family home, and you're running it out, they're not going to review the landlord, maybe on larger apartment complexes, there definitely is. But yeah, with with a short term rental business, you have to constantly make adjustments and and do everything you can to keep your customers happy. So that, that you keep your reviews up, because that's, that's how you're going to generate more businesses, people seeing those reviews and knowing that it's a quality place to stay at.

Dean Soto 16:29
That's interesting. That's so you're

Brandon Telesmanic 16:31
so there's a lot, a lot more time and effort, you know, you really have to be available 24. Seven, to deal with, you know, any potential issues that come up. So it's a very, very active, active investment. Well, the the

Dean Soto 16:48
Yeah, it seems it seems like you get it. So because it's more active, it really is the difference between like a cow flow and investment from from, you know, sit back and let the cash come in type thing. And actually creating a business a hospitality business.

Brandon Telesmanic 17:12
Where Absolutely, it's, you're creating a hospitality business,

Dean Soto 17:16
and is it and that's why and hence why you're actually able to make more in profit. If if you actually treat it like a business. Mm hmm. So that's really interesting.

Brandon Telesmanic 17:34
Yeah, and I'll say that there are people that, you know, do the minimum and provide the most basic accommodations. And, you know, there's, there's different ways to do it. I'm not saying what's right and what's wrong, but those people are still making money, and many of them are making very good money because they're capitalizing on opportunity out there. Yeah, it's been my approach to the do it the best I can and provide the best product I can because I believe if I do that, then I'm going to, you know, net, the most amount of, you know, returns profit. And I feel like that's what's happened. But, you know, there's other ways to do it as well. But yeah,

Dean Soto 18:17
cuz it's, I think if with that type of mindset, it's as as it becomes more and more and more popular. It people expect a lot more. Because I remember my first time with Airbnb, I was just like, I was just happy to get the house. But then I started seeing Yeah, yeah, you know, I started seeing different of different places I stayed at they would they would have the cure eggs and cure eggs all set up for you. They would all they have waters, they have coffee stations. Yeah, you know, all of that. And you start actually expecting more and expecting more and expecting more. The last place I stayed in Chula this stuff for was doing a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tournament. It was a duplex. And we we we paid $250 a night for this duplex, because there was because there was a lot of people staying for this tournament there. And, and we walk in, there is no waters in the fridge there was there was it was super small and cramped. There was no snacks and whatever. And I'm like, hey, this sucks. I was like, you know, I just paid 250 bucks. And like, I'm so used to getting all of what you would typically get at a hotel, you know?

Brandon Telesmanic 19:40
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the level of homes and the quality. On all the short term rental websites have gone up pretty dramatically over the past three to three years, I would say. And you know, Airbnb has different levels. Now, where there's Airbnb plus Airbnb, Lux. Lux, I think they called her luxury, which is the highest level. Yeah, and, you know, these homes are under a strict, you know, criteria of guidelines that they have to adhere to, to achieve that. That status before it was the host, you know, the highest level would be that your be like super hosts on Airbnb, or I forget what they call it on Dr. Bo, but that was just more more generated by your reviews, and less so you know, the criteria of your home. But now there's all these other ways to differentiate these homes. And, and people have a high expectation, they expect a very high level of cleanliness. And I think you have a lot of people that probably wouldn't have been open to the idea of a short term rental, three, four years ago that are, are coming over, you know, really want luxury accommodations. Yeah, and, and that's good. I mean, that means more business, those are probably the most difficult people to have as guests. But, you know, you gotta, you gotta do your best to accommodate everyone and, and do your best to, you know, have a high level across the board, whether you're having, you know, some some guys that are coming to, you know, work and do a plumbing job for five days, or a family of four that's coming for a swim tournament.

Dean Soto 21:30
Yeah. Man, I love this. I love this. So, so how how do how, like, what are some of the steps to even get started? in doing any of this type of short term rental stuff? Like what would you say like, so if someone, someone who had the capital to to actually invest in something like this, where where would they start? Like, what are some of the what is what are some of the kind of like the, I should say, like the, I don't know, roadblocks, or, or just like,

Brandon Telesmanic 22:07
yeah, yeah, I understand what you're saying. Yeah, yeah. So the first thing is, you know, you've got to make the commitment for the time and not only have the capital to be able to, you know, put a down payment on investment property, but probably put a significant amount of money into remodeling that property. And maybe you could buy a property that already has under, undergone some remodeling, or just looks nice to begin with. And then you've got to furnish it. And, you know, buy all the things that you need to run the Airbnb, all the linens and cleaning supplies, and, you know, all of that stuff. And, and so, so the biggest thing is finding the correct property. And right now the market is, is Hi. And it would be hard to find a property right now, that would make sense, under my criteria for something I would buy. And the Fresno market, and I would say it's fairly saturated. But if you look, and I'm talking, you know, just about the Central Valley area, you can apply this to, you know, anywhere wherever you're at. But, you know, look looking more in some of these other cities around Fresno, Visalia said, Bakersfield, that, that don't have a huge number of short term rentals. But you know, there is a most likely a need there, that would be that would be the market that I would be looking at. And, and so to share a little bit about how I purchased the homes, the the criteria that I was using, was that the purchase price of the home had to make sense. Basically, if I looked at it in, in three different ways needed to make sense, obviously, as a short term rental that I was going to be able to make, you know, very good profit on it, it needed to make sense, as a long term rental, where I would at least make, you know, $200 a month. And then thirdly, it needed to make sense as a flip. So if I wanted to completely get out of it all together, I could turn around and sell the house and make a profit off of it. And so, you know, it's hard, right now to hit those last two criteria. Yeah. So first one, you can you can make money as a short term rental. But if they change the laws in Fresno County, you know, then, well, I don't want to be stuck with this overpriced home and all this furniture that, you know, I've got to sell on Craigslist or something. Yeah. So yeah, so that's those, there's a three criteria. And that's the markets at a place right now where it's where it's tough, but there are unique properties, and you know, different ways to think about it, and different types of properties that you can bring on the market. But you've also got to think about your proximity to the property, and how time intensive it is, and how frequently you're going to need to be going there. And, and managing it. Whether it's, you know, doing it yourself or meeting with people that are going to, you know, do do the work for you. So, you know, those are the those are the big things, big things to consider.

Dean Soto 25:44
Yeah, man, I love I love that, though. Especially the three criteria, because, because, yeah, I've been in situations where I've had to offload real estate. And if if I was if I did you know, if I didn't have that criteria, and which I didn't at the time, I just got lucky, by the way.

Brandon Telesmanic 26:09
That's usually how it happens when you start

Dean Soto 26:11
Yeah.

Brandon Telesmanic 26:12
Put yourself in the right position.

Dean Soto 26:14
Yeah. And and man, but But yeah, like not being able to flip it and not, you know, offload it or be able to get the the minimum of cash flow from a long term lease. Those those are actually really, because I know my my, for me, I probably would have just looked at the profit from long term lease and from short term, but I didn't even consider, I didn't even consider you know, things can happen. laws can change, things, things, things can happen to where you they won't let you do a short term things. I have a friend in Hawaii, where they have to get like permits and stuff like that for it. They don't always hand them out, you know?

Brandon Telesmanic 27:03
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the laws, I mean, we really have no control over, you know, when they, when they change the laws, laws are different from county to county and from city to city. And they could be they could change them at any time. I mean, I keep up to date with, you know, what's coming down the pipeline. And in Fresno, I would say is better. Fresno County is, is more insulated than lots of these other big cities, like, you know, Santa Monica, or San Francisco, for example, where there's just such a huge rental shortage, that they don't want short term rentals, because those are eating up places that, you know, people could live in. Yeah, long term. Yep. So Fresno doesn't really have that problem. It's cool. Because like,

Dean Soto 27:51
yeah, I mean, it kind of it goes toward is actually kind of goes toward the, the five minute mindset shift, five minutes, strategic mindset shift, question that I always ask people, and, and now's the time to actually start doing it to at least trying to do the short term rental because, you know, ride the wave when you can, and one of the things that, because you actually filled out my questionnaire, so I knew what this was going to be, you mentioned that that your your five minute mindset shift is actually, you know, doing things as quickly as possible. Can you elaborate on that?

Brandon Telesmanic 28:37
Well, yeah, making the my five minute mindset mindset shift is more so than doing things as quickly as possible, it's more to believe in the product that you're putting out there. And, as opposed to trying to put a little money in something as possible and try to get as much out of it, and little effort, you know, trying to see if it works, well, that works to a certain degree, but at a certain point, you have to believe in your idea, and invest the capital, and time and be proud of what you put out there. I am saying. So rather than that, how you're going to have long term success, and be able to, you know, really have pride in the product that that you're putting out there,

Dean Soto 29:31
I see what you're saying, Okay, now I get I get the the language that you use to basically getting out of the mindset of trying to do something quickly and get paid quickly. But having much rather than that having the the long term in mind that, like, where where you might not see a CA, you know, get rich type quick thing happen. But in the long term, it did you build you build wealth and stability, overall, as that kind of a kind of,

Brandon Telesmanic 30:08
absolutely, right? That's absolutely right. I feel like when I was when I was working, you know, as a physical therapist, you're, you're just trying to work as many hours as you can, and try to make as big of a paycheck as you can. But the big shift, for me with this business was that I did not want the amount of hours I was working to be directly correlated to my income. And so you know, with this business, it's always been about doing things the right way, setting it up appropriately, and setting up the business so it can scale up. And once it scales up, then you're able to, you know, realize some of those larger profits. And, you know, I'm at the point now, which not it doesn't fantastic, but haven't been able to transition careers where I'm managing this business, and now involved in commercial real estate, and still do a little bit of physical therapy here and there. But I'm less tied to, you know, that hourly income.

Dean Soto 31:18
And that's what we like here on the on freedom in five minutes, all about scaling, yeah, being able to scale, automate, and so on, you know, because that's, yeah, that that is a big, big change. From that kind of small business mindset of, of, I'm going to work this many hours, I'm going to get this many clients, and, you know, I'm going to cap myself off rather than building out systems for your short term rentals, and then building even building, you know, sale systems and stuff for your, for the commercial real estate that you're you're into now. But so that so that you have the time to do that, in turn that active active income into a semi passive income, if not totally passive through through business system. So that's pretty, pretty awesome change.

Brandon Telesmanic 32:11
Yeah, yeah, it's been good.

Dean Soto 32:12
So how can people reach you because, you know, rather than trying to do it on their own, and, and basically fail, because that can happen? I've been in situations where if I did not have somebody who was a mentor, I would have crashed and burned very hard. In this in in any type of investment type stuff like this, you can really get burned? How can people reach you and actually work with you? who are interested in doing short term rental properties?

Brandon Telesmanic 32:53
Yeah, well, my link will, from my website, with Marcus and Millichap will be on. You're on your website, they can just access that, and then email me and I'll be happy to help them out.

Dean Soto 33:09
Awesome. Awesome. So yeah, though, that'll be that link will be in the show notes. So if you check out the show notes on your iPhone, that link will be on there. And, and you can go and work directly with Brandon and save yourself a lot of trouble, especially when it comes not just with getting the property itself, but actually building out the system that's required for for short term rental success. And there's not there's not a lot of people out there yet that offer this type of offer the the the ability to do this, I have a I have a few friends. I have a friend in Memphis that does it for a select few people, but it's something that I think is going to be the wave of the future. So you're like, on on top of it already. So it's it. I'm excited for anybody who starts working with you. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Awesome, man. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. This is this super exciting. And it I think it's, it's this is going to be one of seriously one of the best episodes that we had, because have because it really is we're only seeing the beginning of these types of short term rental opportunities. And I believe that within the next decade or two, it's going to be it's going to be very, very common place to and in your people are going to be essentially kicking themselves for not moving in this particular direction. So I really appreciate you sharing all the stuff that you know,

Brandon Telesmanic 34:47
well, I hope, I hope that some direction that it moves in.

Dean Soto 34:51
That's my prediction. That's my prediction. Hope. Alright, Brandon, thank you so much. And guys, if you want to work with Brandon, once again, that link is going to be in the show notes. And it'll also be on the blog post that we do over at freedom and five minutes calm forward slash blog. If you go and check out the actual blog posts that we do for this, it'll also be on there as well. So that is the end of this particular episode, but it's not the end of the podcast. So if you want to have more of these, make sure you subscribe on Apple Apple podcast, just search freedom in five minutes, freedom in five minutes and subscribe there and go to freedom in five minutes.com if you want a virtual systems architect that will take what you're doing right now in five minutes and start scaling your business every day, five minutes a day. All right. So we will see you in the next freedom in five minutes episode.

How to avoid losing reliable supporters and donors? Is it possible to fundraise without fatigue? Join Huy Tran, Founder of Megadeeds (https://www.megadeeds.com/), as he cuts through the challenges of raising non-profit funds and the solution that will help make it easier for donors to keep on giving naturally. If your non-profit organization is running out of creative ideas to keep your donors coming back or you're a donor who's just about ready to stop supporting a charity because of donor fatigue, then you wouldn't want to miss this episode!

Link to the Megadeeds app on the Apple App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/megadeeds/id1382326748

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Dean Soto 0:00 Hey, this is Dean Soto, founder of freedom in five minutes.com. And we're here again with another freedom in five minutes. Episode. Today's topic is this raising non profit funds, the easy way, that and more coming up. Alright, cool. So today's topics actually be really, really cool. I have an awesome guest. We haven't really talked too much about nonprofits at all, but it's something that is is I've been dying to do, because there's so many things when it comes to nonprofits, that man it that in order to build a scalable, non nonprofit, you really have to have some things together. And one of those things is being able to get donations, right. But what happens when you're constantly constantly asking for money or for donations are things like that, you the, eventually your donors are going to start dropping off, right? And they're going to be like, dude, stop asking me for money. So all that being said, there's so I am here with Cui Tran, who has developed a really cool unique way of making it so that does not happen. So we How's it going, my man?

Huy Tran 1:29 It's all good in then follow EW at us on the show. Very cool show. And I'm so happy to have can talk to you today about mega hit.

Dean Soto 1:38 Yeah, no, I love it man. So you, you are one of the founders of mega mega deeds or you are the founder of mega deeds and like so So first and foremost, what is mega deeds and why did you create in the first place?

Huy Tran 1:55 Oh, we make a nice is actually is we call us a marketplace? fundraising like you say earlier fundraising in the same hotel as probably heard year. You know, people thought campaign. And they just keep sending out emails and phone calls over and over. Please donate. Donate, please donate. I think at some point oh, no. Yeah, pretty high of it. Yeah. And we saw make a nice calm our experience is that we undertook we also participate in a lot of charity donation. And, you know, we kind of get high with just here in the same thing over and over. At the same time we hear from our previous and I'll finish Ebola, you know, what, if you have something perhaps you can sell them and figure out how to sell to the otter and give the proceeds to the charity or to the cause? Yeah. So we look at it as an hour. It's not that easy. Because if you need to do the three way facts and the I sell to you, but why do you pay the body and I know that you rz and we look at it and we live but you know as technical as is doable. Even that I used to run engineer DirecTV. One DirecTV so to at&t, I look around our stuff on our farm, you know, people on Facebook, Google Amazon, but like, Hey, you know what, I have some extra cash from the payout on the Mojo. Why don't I pursue our dream. So we spent the last year and a half to be without it wiki. Exactly how we want it to be it's a it's a marketplace where, you know, anyone who wants to help a charity off Bob and raisin can do it. And people can eat body. People can sell service, and use the proceeds to donate either 50% 25% of us are generous, and hundred percent to any charity or any cause of that choice. The family can I love it. No,

Dean Soto 3:55 it's great. It's funny, it's funny that you mentioned, like, even the church thing. So so I'm Catholic, and, you know, I just remember like, I mean, I still I we still get it, it's I live in the country, so we don't get it as much anymore. But when I was in Orange County, like oh my gosh, I get literally every every mass, it was like, hey, donate to the past memorial service appeal, pastoral service appeal test or a silver spiel. And it was like, dude, stop asking so much. Like, that's all you're doing. And but if, but if there was like, if there was like, if there was something where they were giving where you can, you can actually get a good service, like maybe like maybe a speaker or something, somebody to come or something like that you paid and then some of those proceeds went to the church, then it's a different story. Because you because because you're getting value from it. And that's, that's very amazing.

Huy Tran 4:56 You know, it's funny that you mentioned because our churches few years ago, we have some you know, we got we got some short and sweet on the say, you know what, if you have something that you can sell, who wanted to order and use the proceeds to give it to us, it'd be great. He used to collect item. And you know, price and sell but it turned the church into a garage sale. And unfortunately, people property is all sort of junk, as they thought is valuable. So with this, we call it you sell something, it has to be compelling because else nobody's going to buy it. Yeah. So you can no longer sell your very own computer monitor. The whole TV and thing is what I'm about to go, you know, you cannot bring it to church and say does this thing work to $1 but he can sell it and if you sell a computer monitor on a US iPhone, right? Yeah, with a compelling value. Some people will buy from you. And if you just want to donate half, at least you can keep the other half. Yeah, you donate all send the moment people pay, it goes to the church. So so lot of power where people overvalue thing they give you know how everyone just do it through the pasties on right. Hey, old TV what I have $500 Yep. My old Paul with $1,000 now No, you have to be realistic. Yes. Great, really good marketplace for people to get.

Dean Soto 6:18 Yeah, no, you're totally right. Yeah. It's great. Because and then like, because so it's an iPhone app.

And

they, it's you you have to put something on there that it's not like you can go it's not like a Craigslist, either. It's not like where you you know, it's like I'm gonna just put up like you said, like this computer monitor. And it's and it's good. It's like it literally has to be a valuable goods or service

in order

when you put that up there and so, like, so, like, how has it been? Like, like, what I'm like what successes have you seen so far with the app when it comes to fundraising?

Huy Tran 7:01 Right so so let's look at your first question first. Why is it unlike playlist we all know Craigslist is popular but it's why is I have this new land for scammer Yeah, totally you for go lyst like gab and people offer to pay you with my you know, personal jack Cassie check a lot of them turned out to be fake it you know, we address that. So same way anybody address you know, by Felton faction First of all, we actually use PayPal so you cannot even like fake the check or you know the money. That's the check. Yeah,

it's exactly the same but

the only difference is that you know, it's not a body just your cells are now the sound against the Wi Fi. Where's the body? Gotta go. Yeah, well, we talked about with eBay. We use eBay benefaction with very secure people don't have to worry about the bank account or anything because they're gonna pay him with a PayPal account. Yeah, the second also they decide to collect money they had to have PayPal. We also provide a rating system to middle of the evening so you know, if you decide to scam people call it you can do it on one, but Eva gonna charge back you anyway. Yep. So that is a YZT that are out and do have all the requirements on PayPal, but we didn't. That's probably the hottest. The whole tape out on out a Brita. Yeah. So you know, you Holly go on the app or website Elijah there's not not fundraising an app on our apples really hot. We go Apple have like, really strictly five. Oh, yeah. Mommy at a fundraiser nap. And, you know, after six months, we finally got approved by Apple. We've been using it popped up all in. I'm all out of all the local school district and I'm all out band. Yeah. And we're excited. It absolutely went away. We had visa when we thought I gave an example. We we tied it to a hospital in Vietnam. Yeah. And you know, it's pretty hot acne, global hard auto, auto nation? Yeah. Well, yeah. A lot of email support. A lot of them have access, access to fashion. Yeah. And, you know, some people want to gather while they eat on a lot of other seaboard and never use. And we raised the model so quickly, because I don't want to tell anybody, I lose our all you know, the call, but I mean it. Yeah. And we reach our goal way the ball out. paga. And obviously, you know, when you feel impossible, but we know we all have a limit on how much we can do with that. Yep. So we got people donate people.

On board, we got a lot. me like,

nearly impossible. Yeah.

Dean Soto 10:06 For sure. For sure. Like that's that, like they like any especially in a church church setting. I mean, people just don't have cash anymore. Just and just in general. Right. You know, and so So to do that, like, like, that's, that's pretty unheard of, you know?

Huy Tran 10:22 Yeah. You know, what we found interesting, when we asked for people out on the call, a lot of people have you call? And you know, you cannot copy church. Right? They won't take it. Yeah. If you have $1, you got back by you can do it? By dollar. Yep. Right? Why it gotta get a PT?

Dean Soto 10:53 Go straight to the church. That's Yeah, see, and that that's awesome. Like, like you said, like, with a used car, if someone, someone buys like a, so the church doesn't want to, you know, have the have, or any organization really doesn't want to have like a used car sitting in their in their parking lot, all shabby, and you sell that thing for 500 bucks. And then it goes, you know, whatever percentage goes to the church, like, they didn't, they didn't have to do anything. Like they know, no inventory, know what, and whatever. They're just reaping the benefits of it in, like, I can see how organizations could, I could see how organizations could even like, they can promote and say, say, you know, hey, we're doing a used car drive or whatever, if you have a used car, just posted here on mega deeds, posted on mega deeds for our church, any used car that you want to get rid of just posted there, and we get the proceeds. And they literally don't have to do anything other than that.

Huy Tran 11:57 All right. And we can walk, we would walk in with a cool little shake off. And right now we walk in with a School District of New York. Where my kids are. Yep. And you know, right. onto the Pamela the PTA off new school.

By the PDA school year.

PDA.

Bye bye, cookie. Woke up. The school doesn't want to the dog. Yeah, but parent and suppose

you, you buy you buy gold.

And those go straight into the PDA do the school. Wow.

Dean Soto 12:51 That's cool. See? That's awesome. Man. I love this. I love this like so. So what are what are some of the things that people I know there's a lot that they can do. Like what are some some of the things that you've seen that have been the most successful? Like has it been services? Or is it more more product type stuff? Like what what do you what do you kind of see?

Huy Tran 13:19 We wanted?

So we designed the app. And you know, at first we thought Oh, this is so cool. feature. And we launched it and guess what? Nobody can

you know, you look at Asia. People. And

yeah, we actually had to go back and how do we make it? So? How do we make it so easy for people? Now, you know, a mega

nowaday, you know, nobody read the manual.

Manual. Yeah.

Yeah. And actually, that's us.

And we

all got it now. So that's number one. Number 2017. Paul, The Guardian, and you follow that law? and Alabama, you know, holy, we had a daughter. And, you know, that's why Apple very strict on that. But how do you? How do you know that? You know, I'm being corny. Yeah. So we had

and while we you with that, that,

you know, graduate?

And you know, the fact you need

to make it easy.

Right? And I'm a three you actually have to fall by. had to

decide that?

Dean Soto 15:27 grand?

Huy Tran 15:30 earlier?

Dean Soto 15:35 Yep. Yep. No, you're right. Like, because literally, they anybody nowadays, because they attend, especially because the attention span is so short. If you don't have good user interface, if you don't have a good user experience, you're done. And so, so like, how long actually how long did it take you to? Like, so you built the first the first version, love it? And then it then people were like, I don't know how to use this. How long did it actually take you to do the second version? Like how long has this been actually going on? Totally.

Huy Tran 16:39 And, you know,

we, and we will die? We have

you know, the user

right after we get off the year.

E boy getting back to them. So we've had on with apple? And we

how do we go? Boy? Wow. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

Dean Soto 17:43 Get out. Which is great, though. Like, it's, that's that is still pretty fast. But yeah, but yeah, the that's the great thing about that. I mean, it It sucks without with having to do that with Apple, but you know that the quality is going to be there, you know, that the safeguards are going to be there, which is a huge, huge plus. For for the for the app, and like you said, there's not a lot of apps out there that are able to do what you're doing right now.

Huy Tran 18:09 I think we all only wanna

we are the only ones that are.

Dean Soto 18:21 See. That's where it's, it's definitely a lot harder. And, but that's where, like, the difference is, to me, such a such a big thing. And it allows because because with with the marketplace that you are, it's not the same as just donating, like a like a Kickstarter thing, or a GoFundMe or whatever it is, right? You are adding some kind of value. But then you like you said, you also have to be able to there's going to be people who put who want to put something up there that is that's not actually true. Like so like you mentioned, like the gift card, like if someone puts a $50 gift card, and it's actually not worth, it's actually doesn't have the $50 on it. You have to have safeguards for that, and so on, you know, so so that's, that's a that's a pretty, pretty tough thing to go to go buy like. So you said you, but you sounds like you have an engineering background that I probably made it easier. The like, what were like what was what was like, did you have one instance where it was like a, you had like a really major thing happened where you're like, I'm not even sure if this is gonna work out.

Huy Tran 19:43 You know, I hated it.

I go back, you know, 1990 a.

Okay, yeah. And,

and

in 2008

Wow.

So we will

add

an ad.

You know, do I muted?

Dean Soto 21:04 Exactly.

Huy Tran 21:06 You know, what do you have? You had?

Right?

You didn't know?

Dean Soto 21:26 Yeah. Yeah, seriously? Like, three months? Three months? That's a long time.

Huy Tran 21:34 Yeah.

Dean Soto 21:44 Yeah. Wow, that's crazy. I love that. So I always ask this, this question. It's up. It's what I call the five minute mindset shift question, the five minutes like strategy. Question. Like, what's something that like that where you like it? It you, you you made a decision to do something? That if that, that once you did, it completely transformed? Everything you did in your business? Like massively like, where were it? It changed, it changed the game for you or for your team or for your customers?

Huy Tran 22:27 Right, so

we have our own challenge. You know? Yep. Yep. To

off.

Yeah. So

yeah. So we,

Holly, Holly, Holly.

Yeah. And, and we don't want

to school and just follow them.

All

right.

All right now.

And if all

you do that, you know, you have to believe it.

You can't believe you and

your family.

You can do that. But as you bad.

Dean Soto 25:16 I love that. I love that, like the making money right away. I

love that. I love that. No, I love that. It's great. Because it it it. The I love that. I don't know I I'm a big fan of 37. Six knows the guys who wrote base camp. And that's what they always say is that like, you, you don't want to you want to be you want to know how you're making money up front and not be that startup that's like, like, well, we're just gonna get a lot of users, we're gonna get millions of users, and then we'll figure it out. Like, no, you want to know that you said you want to know how you're going to make money or, like you're making money right off the bat, because that is what is going to help build it out and grow what you're doing. Otherwise, it's going to just you're just wasting, especially if you're going for venture venture capital or something like that, and wasting people's money. And eventually, you know, it could potentially crash if you're just hoping to get bought out by by Google or bought out by some big company. You know, that only that that only happens very, very rarely. So it's, it's a great idea to just focus first on like, on how how, how is this going? How's it going to grow? By bringing in revenue?

Huy Tran 27:05 Yeah, right.

I know, we never want

more

money. Yep.

Dean Soto 27:33 Yep. I love that. So how can people how can people reach you? How can people get your mega deeds app and so on and start start selling things for their charities?

Huy Tran 27:48 Right. So you know,

that

maybe? No,

Dean Soto 28:11 that's great.

Huy Tran 28:11 Bye.

And as a big love it.

So

Dean Soto 29:05 Wow. Yeah, that's really cool. So So someone jumps on and starts starts doing something for their church or organization or anything. You have a matching like actual matching program.

Huy Tran 29:21 Right now?

Yeah. Yeah.

We go, can you go

out and do that?

On a minute. That's

Dean Soto 30:26 cool. I love it. Man. This is great. This is great stuff.

Huy Tran 30:38 We didn't want to go Yep. And then we're gonna be living.

Dean Soto 30:43 I love it. That's cool, man. Well, thanks so much for being on the show. And for, for sharing this. I already know and I I mentioned to you before the show, I already know some people that I want to introduce you to because I know they do. They do fundraising. And they they also have a lot of connections with fundraising in general. So I'll be email. I'll be introducing you to them. But man, I just appreciate you being on the phone on the on the show is real pleasure having you on man.

Huy Tran 31:13 Thank you.

Dean Soto 31:19 Awesome, that sounds good. Cool. Thanks for being on the show. And guys, if you want to check it out mega deeds, go on the Apple Apple App Store and get mega deeds and start supporting your organizations that you that you want to support. I mean, what better way than to you know, just get started, get it on, get on get on there and start doing putting something of value on there that you can actually utilize to just start donating to your church to your organizations, your schools, things like that really, really cool. Really, really cool app. Also good. Go check out mega deeds calm. And yeah, it's you can tell this just this is something that I I truly believe is going to revolutionize how people raise funds. Because I know I don't like when I'm just getting asked all the time for money when I when I know that I'm able to get something of value, and it's going to a charity. That's pretty dang cool. And I know also on my end, I like being able to give value, whether it be a service or selling something and know that it's going to a good cause. So go check out mega deeds on Apple App Store, go to good mega deeds calm and get started with the app. But for now, we are done with this episode of the freedom in five minutes podcast and we will check you out in the next freedom in five minutes podcast episode.

How to avoid losing reliable supporters and donors? Is it possible to fundraise without fatigue?

Join Huy Tran, Founder of Megadeeds (https://www.megadeeds.com/), as he cuts through the challenges of raising non-profit funds and the solution that will help make it easier for donors to keep on giving naturally.

If your non-profit organization is running out of creative ideas to keep your donors coming back or you're a donor who's just about ready to stop supporting a charity because of donor fatigue, then you wouldn't want to miss this episode!

Link to the Megadeeds app on the Apple App Store:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/megadeeds/id1382326748

-----

Dean Soto 0:00
Hey, this is Dean Soto, founder of freedom in five minutes.com. And we're here again with another freedom in five minutes. Episode. Today's topic is this raising non profit funds, the easy way, that and more coming up. Alright, cool. So today's topics actually be really, really cool. I have an awesome guest. We haven't really talked too much about nonprofits at all, but it's something that is is I've been dying to do, because there's so many things when it comes to nonprofits, that man it that in order to build a scalable, non nonprofit, you really have to have some things together. And one of those things is being able to get donations, right. But what happens when you're constantly constantly asking for money or for donations are things like that, you the, eventually your donors are going to start dropping off, right? And they're going to be like, dude, stop asking me for money. So all that being said, there's so I am here with Cui Tran, who has developed a really cool unique way of making it so that does not happen. So we How's it going, my man?

Huy Tran 1:29
It's all good in then follow EW at us on the show. Very cool show. And I'm so happy to have can talk to you today about mega hit.

Dean Soto 1:38
Yeah, no, I love it man. So you, you are one of the founders of mega mega deeds or you are the founder of mega deeds and like so So first and foremost, what is mega deeds and why did you create in the first place?

Huy Tran 1:55
Oh, we make a nice is actually is we call us a marketplace? fundraising like you say earlier fundraising in the same hotel as probably heard year. You know, people thought campaign. And they just keep sending out emails and phone calls over and over. Please donate. Donate, please donate. I think at some point oh, no. Yeah, pretty high of it. Yeah. And we saw make a nice calm our experience is that we undertook we also participate in a lot of charity donation. And, you know, we kind of get high with just here in the same thing over and over. At the same time we hear from our previous and I'll finish Ebola, you know, what, if you have something perhaps you can sell them and figure out how to sell to the otter and give the proceeds to the charity or to the cause? Yeah. So we look at it as an hour. It's not that easy. Because if you need to do the three way facts and the I sell to you, but why do you pay the body and I know that you rz and we look at it and we live but you know as technical as is doable. Even that I used to run engineer DirecTV. One DirecTV so to at&t, I look around our stuff on our farm, you know, people on Facebook, Google Amazon, but like, Hey, you know what, I have some extra cash from the payout on the Mojo. Why don't I pursue our dream. So we spent the last year and a half to be without it wiki. Exactly how we want it to be it's a it's a marketplace where, you know, anyone who wants to help a charity off Bob and raisin can do it. And people can eat body. People can sell service, and use the proceeds to donate either 50% 25% of us are generous, and hundred percent to any charity or any cause of that choice. The family can I love it. No,

Dean Soto 3:55
it's great. It's funny, it's funny that you mentioned, like, even the church thing. So so I'm Catholic, and, you know, I just remember like, I mean, I still I we still get it, it's I live in the country, so we don't get it as much anymore. But when I was in Orange County, like oh my gosh, I get literally every every mass, it was like, hey, donate to the past memorial service appeal, pastoral service appeal test or a silver spiel. And it was like, dude, stop asking so much. Like, that's all you're doing. And but if, but if there was like, if there was like, if there was something where they were giving where you can, you can actually get a good service, like maybe like maybe a speaker or something, somebody to come or something like that you paid and then some of those proceeds went to the church, then it's a different story. Because you because because you're getting value from it. And that's, that's very amazing.

Huy Tran 4:56
You know, it's funny that you mentioned because our churches few years ago, we have some you know, we got we got some short and sweet on the say, you know what, if you have something that you can sell, who wanted to order and use the proceeds to give it to us, it'd be great. He used to collect item. And you know, price and sell but it turned the church into a garage sale. And unfortunately, people property is all sort of junk, as they thought is valuable. So with this, we call it you sell something, it has to be compelling because else nobody's going to buy it. Yeah. So you can no longer sell your very own computer monitor. The whole TV and thing is what I'm about to go, you know, you cannot bring it to church and say does this thing work to $1 but he can sell it and if you sell a computer monitor on a US iPhone, right? Yeah, with a compelling value. Some people will buy from you. And if you just want to donate half, at least you can keep the other half. Yeah, you donate all send the moment people pay, it goes to the church. So so lot of power where people overvalue thing they give you know how everyone just do it through the pasties on right. Hey, old TV what I have $500 Yep. My old Paul with $1,000 now No, you have to be realistic. Yes. Great, really good marketplace for people to get.

Dean Soto 6:18
Yeah, no, you're totally right. Yeah. It's great. Because and then like, because so it's an iPhone app.

And

they, it's you you have to put something on there that it's not like you can go it's not like a Craigslist, either. It's not like where you you know, it's like I'm gonna just put up like you said, like this computer monitor. And it's and it's good. It's like it literally has to be a valuable goods or service

in order

when you put that up there and so, like, so, like, how has it been? Like, like, what I'm like what successes have you seen so far with the app when it comes to fundraising?

Huy Tran 7:01
Right so so let's look at your first question first. Why is it unlike playlist we all know Craigslist is popular but it's why is I have this new land for scammer Yeah, totally you for go lyst like gab and people offer to pay you with my you know, personal jack Cassie check a lot of them turned out to be fake it you know, we address that. So same way anybody address you know, by Felton faction First of all, we actually use PayPal so you cannot even like fake the check or you know the money. That's the check. Yeah,

it's exactly the same but

the only difference is that you know, it's not a body just your cells are now the sound against the Wi Fi. Where's the body? Gotta go. Yeah, well, we talked about with eBay. We use eBay benefaction with very secure people don't have to worry about the bank account or anything because they're gonna pay him with a PayPal account. Yeah, the second also they decide to collect money they had to have PayPal. We also provide a rating system to middle of the evening so you know, if you decide to scam people call it you can do it on one, but Eva gonna charge back you anyway. Yep. So that is a YZT that are out and do have all the requirements on PayPal, but we didn't. That's probably the hottest. The whole tape out on out a Brita. Yeah. So you know, you Holly go on the app or website Elijah there's not not fundraising an app on our apples really hot. We go Apple have like, really strictly five. Oh, yeah. Mommy at a fundraiser nap. And, you know, after six months, we finally got approved by Apple. We've been using it popped up all in. I'm all out of all the local school district and I'm all out band. Yeah. And we're excited. It absolutely went away. We had visa when we thought I gave an example. We we tied it to a hospital in Vietnam. Yeah. And you know, it's pretty hot acne, global hard auto, auto nation? Yeah. Well, yeah. A lot of email support. A lot of them have access, access to fashion. Yeah. And, you know, some people want to gather while they eat on a lot of other seaboard and never use. And we raised the model so quickly, because I don't want to tell anybody, I lose our all you know, the call, but I mean it. Yeah. And we reach our goal way the ball out. paga. And obviously, you know, when you feel impossible, but we know we all have a limit on how much we can do with that. Yep. So we got people donate people.

On board, we got a lot. me like,

nearly impossible. Yeah.

Dean Soto 10:06
For sure. For sure. Like that's that, like they like any especially in a church church setting. I mean, people just don't have cash anymore. Just and just in general. Right. You know, and so So to do that, like, like, that's, that's pretty unheard of, you know?

Huy Tran 10:22
Yeah. You know, what we found interesting, when we asked for people out on the call, a lot of people have you call? And you know, you cannot copy church. Right? They won't take it. Yeah. If you have $1, you got back by you can do it? By dollar. Yep. Right? Why it gotta get a PT?

Dean Soto 10:53
Go straight to the church. That's Yeah, see, and that that's awesome. Like, like you said, like, with a used car, if someone, someone buys like a, so the church doesn't want to, you know, have the have, or any organization really doesn't want to have like a used car sitting in their in their parking lot, all shabby, and you sell that thing for 500 bucks. And then it goes, you know, whatever percentage goes to the church, like, they didn't, they didn't have to do anything. Like they know, no inventory, know what, and whatever. They're just reaping the benefits of it in, like, I can see how organizations could, I could see how organizations could even like, they can promote and say, say, you know, hey, we're doing a used car drive or whatever, if you have a used car, just posted here on mega deeds, posted on mega deeds for our church, any used car that you want to get rid of just posted there, and we get the proceeds. And they literally don't have to do anything other than that.

Huy Tran 11:57
All right. And we can walk, we would walk in with a cool little shake off. And right now we walk in with a School District of New York. Where my kids are. Yep. And you know, right. onto the Pamela the PTA off new school.

By the PDA school year.

PDA.

Bye bye, cookie. Woke up. The school doesn't want to the dog. Yeah, but parent and suppose

you, you buy you buy gold.

And those go straight into the PDA do the school. Wow.

Dean Soto 12:51
That's cool. See? That's awesome. Man. I love this. I love this like so. So what are what are some of the things that people I know there's a lot that they can do. Like what are some some of the things that you've seen that have been the most successful? Like has it been services? Or is it more more product type stuff? Like what what do you what do you kind of see?

Huy Tran 13:19
We wanted?

So we designed the app. And you know, at first we thought Oh, this is so cool. feature. And we launched it and guess what? Nobody can

you know, you look at Asia. People. And

yeah, we actually had to go back and how do we make it? So? How do we make it so easy for people? Now, you know, a mega

nowaday, you know, nobody read the manual.

Manual. Yeah.

Yeah. And actually, that's us.

And we

all got it now. So that's number one. Number 2017. Paul, The Guardian, and you follow that law? and Alabama, you know, holy, we had a daughter. And, you know, that's why Apple very strict on that. But how do you? How do you know that? You know, I'm being corny. Yeah. So we had

and while we you with that, that,

you know, graduate?

And you know, the fact you need

to make it easy.

Right? And I'm a three you actually have to fall by. had to

decide that?

Dean Soto 15:27
grand?

Huy Tran 15:30
earlier?

Dean Soto 15:35
Yep. Yep. No, you're right. Like, because literally, they anybody nowadays, because they attend, especially because the attention span is so short. If you don't have good user interface, if you don't have a good user experience, you're done. And so, so like, how long actually how long did it take you to? Like, so you built the first the first version, love it? And then it then people were like, I don't know how to use this. How long did it actually take you to do the second version? Like how long has this been actually going on? Totally.

Huy Tran 16:39
And, you know,

we, and we will die? We have

you know, the user

right after we get off the year.

E boy getting back to them. So we've had on with apple? And we

how do we go? Boy? Wow. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

Dean Soto 17:43
Get out. Which is great, though. Like, it's, that's that is still pretty fast. But yeah, but yeah, the that's the great thing about that. I mean, it It sucks without with having to do that with Apple, but you know that the quality is going to be there, you know, that the safeguards are going to be there, which is a huge, huge plus. For for the for the app, and like you said, there's not a lot of apps out there that are able to do what you're doing right now.

Huy Tran 18:09
I think we all only wanna

we are the only ones that are.

Dean Soto 18:21
See. That's where it's, it's definitely a lot harder. And, but that's where, like, the difference is, to me, such a such a big thing. And it allows because because with with the marketplace that you are, it's not the same as just donating, like a like a Kickstarter thing, or a GoFundMe or whatever it is, right? You are adding some kind of value. But then you like you said, you also have to be able to there's going to be people who put who want to put something up there that is that's not actually true. Like so like you mentioned, like the gift card, like if someone puts a $50 gift card, and it's actually not worth, it's actually doesn't have the $50 on it. You have to have safeguards for that, and so on, you know, so so that's, that's a that's a pretty, pretty tough thing to go to go buy like. So you said you, but you sounds like you have an engineering background that I probably made it easier. The like, what were like what was what was like, did you have one instance where it was like a, you had like a really major thing happened where you're like, I'm not even sure if this is gonna work out.

Huy Tran 19:43
You know, I hated it.

I go back, you know, 1990 a.

Okay, yeah. And,

and

in 2008

Wow.

So we will

add

an ad.

You know, do I muted?

Dean Soto 21:04
Exactly.

Huy Tran 21:06
You know, what do you have? You had?

Right?

You didn't know?

Dean Soto 21:26
Yeah. Yeah, seriously? Like, three months? Three months? That's a long time.

Huy Tran 21:34
Yeah.

Dean Soto 21:44
Yeah. Wow, that's crazy. I love that. So I always ask this, this question. It's up. It's what I call the five minute mindset shift question, the five minutes like strategy. Question. Like, what's something that like that where you like it? It you, you you made a decision to do something? That if that, that once you did, it completely transformed? Everything you did in your business? Like massively like, where were it? It changed, it changed the game for you or for your team or for your customers?

Huy Tran 22:27
Right, so

we have our own challenge. You know? Yep. Yep. To

off.

Yeah. So

yeah. So we,

Holly, Holly, Holly.

Yeah. And, and we don't want

to school and just follow them.

All

right.

All right now.

And if all

you do that, you know, you have to believe it.

You can't believe you and

your family.

You can do that. But as you bad.

Dean Soto 25:16
I love that. I love that, like the making money right away. I

love that. I love that. No, I love that. It's great. Because it it it. The I love that. I don't know I I'm a big fan of 37. Six knows the guys who wrote base camp. And that's what they always say is that like, you, you don't want to you want to be you want to know how you're making money up front and not be that startup that's like, like, well, we're just gonna get a lot of users, we're gonna get millions of users, and then we'll figure it out. Like, no, you want to know that you said you want to know how you're going to make money or, like you're making money right off the bat, because that is what is going to help build it out and grow what you're doing. Otherwise, it's going to just you're just wasting, especially if you're going for venture venture capital or something like that, and wasting people's money. And eventually, you know, it could potentially crash if you're just hoping to get bought out by by Google or bought out by some big company. You know, that only that that only happens very, very rarely. So it's, it's a great idea to just focus first on like, on how how, how is this going? How's it going to grow? By bringing in revenue?

Huy Tran 27:05
Yeah, right.

I know, we never want

more

money. Yep.

Dean Soto 27:33
Yep. I love that. So how can people how can people reach you? How can people get your mega deeds app and so on and start start selling things for their charities?

Huy Tran 27:48
Right. So you know,

that

maybe? No,

Dean Soto 28:11
that's great.

Huy Tran 28:11
Bye.

And as a big love it.

So

Dean Soto 29:05
Wow. Yeah, that's really cool. So So someone jumps on and starts starts doing something for their church or organization or anything. You have a matching like actual matching program.

Huy Tran 29:21
Right now?

Yeah. Yeah.

We go, can you go

out and do that?

On a minute. That's

Dean Soto 30:26
cool. I love it. Man. This is great. This is great stuff.

Huy Tran 30:38
We didn't want to go Yep. And then we're gonna be living.

Dean Soto 30:43
I love it. That's cool, man. Well, thanks so much for being on the show. And for, for sharing this. I already know and I I mentioned to you before the show, I already know some people that I want to introduce you to because I know they do. They do fundraising. And they they also have a lot of connections with fundraising in general. So I'll be email. I'll be introducing you to them. But man, I just appreciate you being on the phone on the on the show is real pleasure having you on man.

Huy Tran 31:13
Thank you.

Dean Soto 31:19
Awesome, that sounds good. Cool. Thanks for being on the show. And guys, if you want to check it out mega deeds, go on the Apple Apple App Store and get mega deeds and start supporting your organizations that you that you want to support. I mean, what better way than to you know, just get started, get it on, get on get on there and start doing putting something of value on there that you can actually utilize to just start donating to your church to your organizations, your schools, things like that really, really cool. Really, really cool app. Also good. Go check out mega deeds calm. And yeah, it's you can tell this just this is something that I I truly believe is going to revolutionize how people raise funds. Because I know I don't like when I'm just getting asked all the time for money when I when I know that I'm able to get something of value, and it's going to a charity. That's pretty dang cool. And I know also on my end, I like being able to give value, whether it be a service or selling something and know that it's going to a good cause. So go check out mega deeds on Apple App Store, go to good mega deeds calm and get started with the app. But for now, we are done with this episode of the freedom in five minutes podcast and we will check you out in the next freedom in five minutes podcast episode.