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- [00:00]
A
Rose Hahn did everything right. She got an NYU finance degree, she got a six figure Wall street job, and yet she still had a negative net worth. We're talking student loans and credit card debt. The conversation that I'm about to have with her dissects why these conventional success markers failed, why it failed her, and why it failed so many people who, quote, unquote, do everything right and still end up feeling behind. We'll also talk about how she pulled out of it. Today, Rose Hahn has over a million subscribers on her YouTube channel where she teaches about investing in options trading. She also recently authored a book called Add a Zero, all about getting to that next level of wealth. And the conversation we're about to have really establishes the foundation. So if you've ever struggled to explain the principles, the foundational principles of basic money management to your friends or family, particularly to anyone who's just starting their journey, this episode is your playbook. Because she breaks down her path from a negative net worth to seven figures. And she does it in accessible, easy to approach language that anyone can understand and that you can use when you're mentoring and teaching others. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that knows you can afford anything, not everything. This show covers five pillars. Financial psychology, increasing your income, investing, real estate, and entrepreneurship. It's double I fire. And in today's episode, we're going to focus on two out of those five letters. We're primarily going to focus on the letter E, entrepreneurship, and we're going to focus a little bit on the letter I for investing. Enjoy. Welcome, Rose.
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B
Hi, Paula. So excited to be on here after following you for so many years.
- [01:42]
A
Oh, thank you, thank you. I'm honored. Rose, when you graduated from college, you went to nyu, got a finance degree, got a job that paid a hundred thousand dollars pretty much straight out of school. I think a lot of people in their early twenties would love to have that kind of an income, but you had a negative net worth and it was staying low for a while. Can you talk about that time?
- [02:06]
B
Yeah. So one of the things that we don't learn is what to do with the money that you make and how to keep what you make. So even though I had this fancy six figure job, I didn't know how to watch my spending, to be aware of why I spent what I spent and, and to just turn some of that cash flow into permanent net worth and financial security. So, yeah, I lived paycheck to paycheck. Overdrafting my bank account was kind of a way of life and it Caused a lot of shame because I went to finance school. I worked on Wall street, for God's sake. I was moving millions of dollars around on the trading floor, yet I had a mountain of debt that wasn't moving anywhere. I was also too afraid to even look at how much I owed and who I owed it to. I feel like there's this real discrepancy between what we learn in school, which is how to be a good employee and know all these fancy numbers and things. But then when it comes to actually doing that with your own finances and creating financial security for yourself, we don't learn enough.
- [03:03]
A
Right? And you had various types of debt. So you had 103,000 in student loan debt. You had a credit card balance of a few thousand dollars. And then you also were getting hit with overdraft fees. How did you pull out of that? How did you make that shift where you decided to start approaching a zero net worth rather than a negative net worth?
- [03:26]
B
During that time, the dominant thought in my mind was that debt's never going to go away, so I won't be able to do anything about it, so let's just avoid it, and maybe it'll somehow magically go away on its own, like total head in the sand approach. But I have to rewind a little bit because before college, before I took on all this debt, I actually had a bigger vision for my life. I remember part of your story, and one of the reasons why I related to you so much is you talked about going on this year of traveling, and you wanted your life to look like that. And I had a similar experience. I went on a gap year before college, backpacking around Europe and Africa and Asia and just waking up, being able to choose my own adventure that day and living off savings, bootstrapping as an au pair, all these things. But it was my first real taste of freedom, right? But then I. I had, in the back of my mind, I'm enrolled in nyu, deferred my admission, my parents will freak out if I don't go to college. And I need to do that because that's what you do to be successful. And I thought, that's the life I want. But if I just go to college, get the degree and the job, and do everything I'm supposed to do, I'll be able to figure that out. Like, I'll make the money and I'll somehow figure out how to create that life. But obviously I went to school, and every semester I'm taking on these huge amounts of student loans and. And in the back of my mind, I'm like, this doesn't feel right. But it's what I'm supposed to do, right? My parents say, get the degree and you'll be able to pay it off and everything's going to be okay. So that's what I did. And then we know where that ended up. A couple of years into my adulting life, with my first real job, my life was the furthest from that gap year of freedom that I experienced. First I saw the contrast of this is what I was promised, what I thought I was working towards, versus what my life actually looks like right now. The contrast is so stark. You know, I remember one day I took my first real two week vacation on Wall Street. You're like required to take these two week vacations every year. And because I didn't have any savings living paycheck to paycheck, I couldn't even afford to go on this vacation. But I really, really wanted to because I worked so hard and I was stressed out. So I put that on my credit card, just keeping that revolving balance of $5,000 on my credit card. And I was sitting on the beach, you know, eating my soggy guacamole at some cheap Cancun resort because that's all I could afford. And I'm like, this is so different from what I thought my life would be like. And so from there, that was sort of the beginning of my financial awakening when I realized, okay, everything that I've been doing, everything that I've been taught to do is not, not what's going to get me to freedom. I got to learn some other things. So that's when I started reading books and just seeking the kind of financial education that we never got, but we should have gotten.
- [06:11]
A
Right. You talked about freedom and you have this framework around the levels of freedom that a person has if they are an employee versus a business owner versus if you make most of your money off of investment income. And, and it's sort of the spectrum of more free to less free. And that mirrors a similar spectrum, which is the tax efficiency spectrum. Can you talk us through both of those frameworks?
- [06:37]
B
Yeah, there's actually three kinds of income. And when I ended up paycheck to paycheck, living without any freedom, despite this high income, I realized there's actually three kinds of income. We have employee income, which is the kind most of us are taught to go after, and most of us are very good at earning. And then there's investment income and business income. Business income is money you make from your business, employee income is your paycheck, and investment income is income from dividends, stocks, rental income, et cetera. The crazy thing is that employee income, on the spectrum of time freedom, you have the least business income, and then investment income is ranks the highest on time freedom because you invest in something and that's money working for you forever. And you never have to lift a finger or show up or do anything. That's time freedom. Whereas employee income, you got to trade time for money. You stop doing the work, you stop getting paid. And then tax efficiency, employee income especially, I was living in New York at the time. So you're taxed at the highest tax bracket. You have no flexibility to shelter any of your income from taxes except for very basic things like 401ks, whereas investment income. When I started digging into this whole new world, I realized there's actually a lot of ways to pay 0%. You know, like in some tax brackets, dividend income is taxed at 0%. And rental income, I'm sure you know better than anyone, there's a lot of ways to shelter it with depreciation and et cetera. And then business income, which kind of ranks in the middle of the tax efficiency spectrum, is really cool because first of all, the corporate tax rate is like 25% or in the 20s. And there's a lot of cool ways where you can deduct your expenses and then only pay taxes on what's left. Whereas an employee, you make your income, you pay your taxes, and then what lands in your account is after tax. And that's what you have to live on for your expenses. So it was just crazy to me that the type of income that is taxed the most and gives you the least amount of time freedom is, is the kind that we're all taking on student loan debt to earn, and the only type that they really talk about, especially if you don't come from a wealthy family, just getting employee income, getting a good job is the holy grail. They don't really teach you anything else.
- [08:55]
A
Right? Right. As you discovered this and decided that you were going to start pursuing both business income and investment income, what were some of the first moves that you made and what recommendations would you give to people who are currently W2 employees and want to start incorporating both entrepreneurship and investments into their overall portfolio?
- [09:18]
B
So I think it's important to start with the basics. And that's what my whole out of zero framework is about. My out of zero framework is first getting to zero because it doesn't make sense to Go for entrepreneurship and build a business if you don't have a solid foundation in your personal finances, because as you know, business, it's risky. It takes a lot of money before you start making money. And with investments, what good is it to make 10, 20% in the stock market if the next month you get laid off and now you have to cash out of your stocks at a loss because a recession hit and you got laid off, so everything's, you know, hitting the fan at once and you have to cash out your investments at a loss because you didn't have an emergency fund. Getting to zero, taking care of your high interest credit card debt, and mastering your money mindset. Then getting to 10,000, you want to start creating a budget so that when you do earn more, you actually know what to do with that instead of just leaking money, money in, money out. Otherwise what good is it to earn more if it doesn't actually permanently add to your net worth? And then getting to 100,000, which is where you learn to keep more of what you make in a tax savvy way, stashing it away in the right types of accounts. And then only then after that, we talk about getting to a million, which is business and investment income.
- [10:42]
A
Right. And so that's where I'd like to focus, because most of the people who are listening to this have basics covered. I think where a lot of people get hung up is what do I do to accelerate my financial position, escalating to that next level, getting from the $100,000 level up to the million dollar level. That's where I'd like to focus.
- [11:04]
B
Okay, yeah, that was actually the trickiest part for me. I mean, every step of the journey had its own challenges, like getting out of debt. That's a lot of money mindset and self forgiveness. But then jumping from the 100,000 to a million dollar mark, it's really a matter of going from employee mindset to a creator and entrepreneur mindset. And to do that, I think it's important to understand the three levels of leverage. I talk about one to one, which is where you're trading time for money, essentially employee income. And then there's one to many, and then one to infinity. One to many is where in the same hour of your time, you're able to serve more people, provide more value, and therefore earn more in the same unit of time.
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A
Right.
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B
Once infinity is where you ultimately break that relationship with time and you're able to make infinite amounts of money, in theory, in the same unit of time, that's actually the key to how I reached a million in my 30s versus in my 60s after 30 years of investing in the stock market. The hardest part about reaching that level is you really have to break free of the need for instant gratification. Because as an employee, when you trade time for money, you trade the time, you get paid. You trade the time, you get paid. It happens bi weekly like clockwork. And it's kind of hard to break free of that almost sort of addiction to certainty. Like if I just do the work, I will get paid and I know exactly how much I'll get paid. But with reaching 1 to infinity, and in many cases 1 to many leverage, you often have to build something that shows no profit for a while and then all of the payoff happens later in the back end and it's not guaranteed because you're creating something that has never existed before. So it's really that jump from absolute certainty to maybe. And if it does work, it's going to pay off big time. It's really that jump that I think people like you and I who come from traditional immigrant families where like having a safe job was very, very important. That's really the tricky part for a lot of people.
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A
Yeah, I love the framework of one to one versus one to many versus one to infinity. And just to describe that a little bit more, to flesh that out a little bit more. I know the example that you give is a personal trainer.
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B
Yeah, right.
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A
A personal trainer can, on a one to one level, you know, they can work with one client at a time, but there's a cap to how much you can make in a week. If you're doing that, if that same personal trainer is teaching group classes, then it's one to many.
- [13:41]
B
Yeah, we can go through the actual math. So as a personal trainer, if you are working all day, seven days a week, let's say you take 10 clients a day and you charge each of them a hundred dollars. This is unrealistic. You do need a break and you probably won't have 10 clients a day. But let's say then you're making a thousand a day, seven days a week, that's 7,000 a week. Whereas to go to one to many leverage, let's say you start a group fitness class and you charge each person $20 for the class, but you're working the same 10 hours in a day, seven days a week. And let's say you have 10 clients per class. So now you're making $200 a class times 10 hours. That's 2,000 a day times seven days a week. That's 14,000 in a week.
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A
So you've doubled your money.
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B
Yeah. And you're working the same amount of hours. That's going to one to many leverage, then one to infinity. I always think about Shaun T. Have you ever heard of the insanity workouts? This is kind of dating myself, but.
- [14:44]
A
Is this like P90X?
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B
Yeah. Not the same guy, but the same company. Like the Beachbody fitness programs. So they have all these DVDs. I'm kind of dating myself, but when I lived in New York, I tried insanity DVD workouts. Back then it was still DVDs. Like online streaming wasn't a thing yet. And this guy, Shaun T, he's a fitness trainer, but he recorded these awesome DVDs, and you can watch his stuff at any time. And he's selling these DVDs day in and day out, getting the royalties. That's the ultimate jumping from one to one. Because he could have also been the guy in the gym just training clients one on one. But he mastered a different set of skills, which is the camera personality, learning how to package his knowledge, and a recorded class.
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A
Right.
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B
That anyone can do at home. That's jumping to one to infinity. It's interesting because I wouldn't say it's any easier or any harder than working in the gym serving clients one to one. It's just a different set of skills.
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A
Right.
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B
See what I mean?
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A
Right.
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B
Plenty of people trading time for money are extremely smart, well educated, and they have what it takes. If they just knew that their time and efforts would pay off better for doing this other thing.
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A
So focus on what's scalable.
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B
Yeah. Whatever you take on, especially if you're going to take on a side hustle. So a lot of your listeners, they're working a job and they want to learn how to make the leap. Then take on a side hustle. But before you take that on, have the ultimate game plan of how you're going to reach, at the very least, one to many leverage with that side hustle. And if you don't see a path to getting there that you'll actually want to go on, then don't even take on that side hustle. That's why it's a pet peeve of mine when I hear money experts say, yeah, take on a side hustle to create financial freedom. You know, drive Uber and do deliveries and do dog sitting. It's not that simple, you know, Then you're just taking on a second job.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And there's no. There's no more freedom in that than your current job. Whereas maybe you can do dog sitting as a side hustle. But if you're going to do it, make sure you've got a plan to maybe scale to multiple dog sitting nurseries or whatever you call them. Dog sitting dog boarding places. Yeah, centers. Dog boarding centers. Or you have a plan to hire multiple dog sitters and you just bring them customers and take a cut. So that's now one to many leverage or one to infinity leverage. Could be you learn how to teach other people to start a dog sitting business and set up their business and and you turn that into an online course. That's one to infinity leverage. So really every side hustle you take on there is a path to reaching the higher levels of leverage.
- [17:31]
A
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B
The key is to take it piece by piece. So even when you're building something with one to infinity leverage, you want to start doing one to one because you can't scale something if you don't know that it's already working. So the way I recommend people to approach this is first find that side hustle, the thing that you want to do. And I go through a three circles Exercise in my book of how to find the intersection between what you love doing, what you're good at, and what people will pay good money for. So you want to go through that whole exercise because you don't want to do something you don't love to do, right? Or something that people don't pay good money for. There's ways to validate these ideas. So first pick the right thing and then start in the one to one model as a service provider. So if you are a personal trainer, you want to create more leveraged income, then start doing the trading time for money and seeing clients one on one. Make sure that you're good at it, that you know how to get clients to pay you just even on for a one on one session and just perfect your package and offering, get initial testimonials. Then from there you can graduate to doing group fitness classes. But you already know people will have that demand because you've got clients who wanted to work with you one on one. And from there then you have to master sales and marketing. If you just take it little by little, then you shouldn't create something that you don't already know that there's market demand for.
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A
Right.
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B
So an example of how it was for my journey, I started out giving free workshops in the basement of a coworking space, just teaching people about money and investing. So I already knew there was the demand and in a sense, I was too afraid to charge for it. So that's a whole nother story.
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A
I want to talk.
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B
Oh, okay. Yeah. Because that's getting over the fear of selling. That's the huge thing, right? That's the other thing we need to master. But I already knew there was demand for that. And so from there, that's when I had the confidence to go to the one to infinity level of leverage of recording YouTube videos. And it was challenging because for the first year I was showing up every single week for a year. And again I was too afraid to charge for I, I. It took me a year and a half to launch my first paid program from that YouTube channel. I could have done it way sooner. So everyone listening, don't repeat what I did. You can cycle through these levels of leverage much faster. You know, learn from my mistakes. But it does take a certain amount of confidence to have the faith to keep going through those things. But if you just take it slow, don't jump to one to infinity leverage right away. Start with the one on one. Like feel that confidence. I couldn't have had the confidence to turn on to the camera and press record. If I didn't know that there were already people who needed what I had to share in the way I had to share it.
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A
I do want to dig into the psychology of being afraid to sell, because I've encountered that too. And it's, I think, a hang up that a lot of people, particularly highly agreeable people, have. We, we actually previously interviewed a psychologist who talked about how scoring high on agreeableness actually correlates with worse financial outcomes. For reasons like this, you know, we don't want to sell. We have these scripts that say selling is spammy or evil. There's a lot of inner work that needs to be done to be able to be a successful entrepreneur. Before we get to that, though, I'd first like to dig into the three Circles exercise. So you talk about the Venn diagram intersection of what you love, what you're skilled at, and what people will pay you for good money for good money for. All right, how do you validate each of those?
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B
Really? It's just an exercise of self reflection, at least for the first two circles. What do you love doing? Like, what do you find yourself doing on the weekends? Or just reading about and listening to podcasts about just because you enjoy it? This actually can be hard for us to think about. Like, as children, we just naturally gravitate to the things that we like to do. But then you become an adult and you start having all these adulting responsibilities. So you lose touch with what you love to do.
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A
Right?
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B
Think about if you didn't have to do whatever you have to do with your time at the moment, what would you be doing instead? The one kind of hack is not only the weekend hack, like, what do you do on the weekends? But what did you gravitate towards as a child? There was a time where I quit my Wall street job and was sort of searching and bootstrapping with side gigs while I was finding my thing. And to make ends meet, I even considered applying as a cocktail waitress at the rooftop bar of the same bar where my old Wall street colleagues would go to for happy hour. Sometimes you really just have to make the thing happen. Give yourself some time and space to explore. And while your colleagues are getting promoted and going to MBA school and becoming vp, it's okay if you're taking one step back to go two steps forward. So now looking back, I'm so glad I took that time to explore and find what I love doing, because compared to a lot of the colleagues that I went school with, and they're just following the corporate ladder, I would say I have a lot more fulfillment in what I'm doing and making way more money. That's the whole exponential income growth when you stop trading time for money.
- [26:51]
A
Right.
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B
So it's really worth taking the time to find that thing. It all starts with what you love doing. Because we were kind of talking about earlier. It takes a lot to. To stick it through until the leveraged income starts kicking in. And you're not going to stick through it if you don't love what you're doing. Never chase the money first. The money is important. That's the third circle. But starts with what you love doing because that's what's gonna give you the stamina to see it through to the end.
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A
Right? Okay. That first circle, it's what you love doing, and it might take a while to figure that out. So try a lot of different things.
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B
Yeah, sometimes that's the only way. The second circle is what you are good at, and that is things that just come naturally to you. This could be job skills that you earn, like technical skills like coding and graphic design, or it could be softer skills, which is kind of how you approach life. Like, it could be how you make people feel at ease. It could be that you're very good at making people feel listened to and heard, or how you see the connection between seemingly unconnected things. One really good way to find this out is you can text your friends, you can ask them, hey, I'm just making some big life and career decisions right now. What would you say are things that I am really good at? Maybe it's just things that come naturally to me or things that, you know, that you can come to me for. That will reveal a lot. Another thing that I recommend is taking some good old assessments. One assessment that absolutely changed the trajectory of my life is the Clifton Strengths Finder Test.
- [28:25]
A
Yeah, that's a great one.
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B
It tells you your top five strengths. And for me, it was learner achiever, futuristic competition, and activator. And that made me realize, oh, I'm really good at learning condensing information and teaching it to people in a way they can understand and action on, because I see the future of something better for them. What was great about this assessment is it made me realize, oh, I didn't know these were strengths because they come so naturally to you. That's exactly why you won't even recognize them as strengths.
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A
Right.
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B
But know that everyone is very different. They bring different value to the table. It's just about finding what that thing is for you, because I guarantee you, if you dig hard enough, it's there.
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A
The DISC assessment and the Colby analysis, those are also two really good strengths assessments.
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B
Yeah. So there's a number of tools to help you pinpoint what they are. But it really starts with understanding that you do have strengths.
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A
Right.
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B
There's nobody listening that is special and for some reason doesn't have anything unique or have strengths. Everyone has something. You just have to find what that is. That is the second key to unlocking the thing that will bring you so much success in your entrepreneurial venture.
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A
Okay, and so then once you have really unlocked those two, once you've discovered some insight into what you love and what you're good at, how do you then validate that with the overlay of what are people willing to pay not just some money, but good money for?
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B
So, ironically, this third circle is the easiest one because the first two you have to do a lot of soul searching, but the third, you just look, are there other businesses already making great money doing that exact thing? That's all the validation you need. And even though it might seem like it's actually the opposite of validation, like somebody else is doing it. So there's no room for me. On the contrary, it means there's market demand for it. So all you have to do is come in and offer your unique version of that same service. And there's already demand because people are already paying for this and putting their dollars towards this. So you're not coming out with anything new, you're just providing something that there's already demand for. That's one way to validate. Another is there's just certain areas that people will always pay money for. One is if you are helping them with some sort of high stakes moment. That's why wedding photographers can charge so much, because it's a high stakes moment and they're willing to pay good money to get it right. So any sort of wedding related service or a career change, they're going to pay really good money for you to help them find their dream job. Because it's a high stakes moment, or where you are providing convenience, where you're making life easier for somebody. There's a number of ways to validate that.
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A
What's interesting to me is that so many people, I think, have this notion that, as you said, that if I'm not innovating, if I'm not creating something new, then what is that unique thing that I have to offer? And your statement is the fact that each person is unique means that the Offering will be unique in its own way.
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B
Yeah. The basis of it, what you're offering. Maybe it's personal trainer or hairstyling services. All of these services are not new.
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A
Right.
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B
They all already exist. Everything's already been done. But the way that you approach it, maybe when you're styling someone's hair, you're really good at making them feel at ease. And maybe you also specialize in African American hair.
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A
Right.
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B
There are certain ways to distinguish yourself in the marketplace, but what it comes down to is your unique personality.
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A
Right. I go to someone who specializes in curly hair. All she does is curly haircuts. Yeah.
- [32:15]
B
And there's many women in the world with curly hair who need that. So it's not like there's only room for one person who services curly hair and own. The fact that if you are not offering what you have to offer the world, you're actually doing people a disservice. Imagine all the people I couldn't have helped if I had let the fact that there were already several youtubers doing what I wanted to do, if I'd let that stop me. And now I get messages every day from people saying, because of you, I started investing in the pandemic, and I was able to retire my dad and reach a million net worth because of your advice. Just think about that.
- [32:51]
A
You mentioned that if you're not sharing your gifts and skills and talents with the world, you are, in a sense, doing the world a disservice. But sharing that with the world requires selling. And that goes back to something that we were talking about earlier. Many of us are programmed to be afraid to sell because it feels icky, it feels spammy, it feels awkward, it feels manipulative. Yeah, yeah, Maybe we have some deeply internalized scripts that say selling is evil. And then what happens is that if you're online, which every business person has to be online, you'll get trolls that say, oh, you're a sellout, or, oh, you claim that you want to help people, but why? If you really wanted to help people, why are you charging money? Right. So you get the trolls that say that, and because they're speaking to a fear that you already hold, it's hard not to internalize that criticism because that's exactly the same fear that you have. Can you talk about the psychology of the fear of selling?
- [33:58]
B
Behind the fear of selling is a healing that needs to be done with your relationship with money. Because when you are selling, you're getting money in exchange for something you're providing. The fact that you Are afraid to expect that you get some value in return. When you are providing value, that's like codependency. That's like having no boundaries. That's like charity, or not even charity. It's just. It's just unhealthy. It would be ridiculous. Would you ever ask your friend to say, hey, I want you to help me move, come over and cook for me and give me all these things and you get nothing in return? Would you like to be my friend? So why are you doing that to yourself when you're providing a service? In order for you to show up as a personal trainer or for me to make these videos online for free, I need to sustain myself. I need to pay my team. It takes resources to do all these things. And in addition, because I'm putting a lot of my time and energy and risking a lot and putting my passion and energy into this, I deserve to get something in return. So it's really just understanding that it's just a healthy exchange. One kind of shortcut to getting over your fear of selling is really, really fall in love with your product and service and get in touch with the difference that it makes for people. When you're really, really in touch with that, you're not going to be embarrassed to tell people about it, because why wouldn't you want to help people? The shift is selling is serving, selling is serving. It's not pushing anything. Promoting, selling is serving.
- [35:34]
A
Your first launch, you made 160,000. Tell us about that launch the product, because that was an inflection point for you as a business owner.
- [35:44]
B
Yes. So, first of all, it took me a year and a half to have the courage to even charge anything or even come up with my first paid program. So learn from my mistakes. You can do it much faster. I was trying to be perfect and record this whole program and I went through multiple versions of it before I actually launched it in the world. It's better to launch ugly, see the demand, and then iterate from there. So don't take a year and a half to monetize. But when I finally did, I really had to talk through my own money. Fears of, okay, am I being a sellout? Are people gonna judge me this? And I had to talk myself through everything that I just shared. I'm doing people a service. This program is really going to help people. And every piece of it felt scary, every step of it. And this is where. This is what I want people to hear. Just because you feel fear doesn't mean you should stop by default. If you're doing something that you've never done before to create results that people around you and your family have never had. It's going to feel uncomfortable. So it's not a sign to stop, it's a sign to keep going. So, like leaning into the fear and just showing up Anyway, when I did my first live webinar to sell my program for the first time, I was scared. But I played my pump up music in the beginning, for the first few minutes, danced around my room and I said, selling is serving. And so I showed up with that energy of I'm here to serve. And if you want to work with me on a deeper level, here's how to pay me and do that. But here I'm here to serve. I mean, I get chills thinking about it because that first webinar where I walked away Having made $160,000, I thought, whoa, this stuff really works. And people are really, I'm really helping people. And to experience like getting paid good money in exchange for doing something you love and helping people, that was the best part of it.
- [37:34]
A
What I'm hearing from you is over index on providing value. And if you provide tremendous value, then you feel great about selling because you know that your clients, your customers are getting fantastic value in return.
- [37:52]
B
That's the core of it. But then there are techniques. So I did not do any of this without my business mentors. There are funnels and marketing and sales techniques like you need to have. There's elements of a rock solid offer. You need to have multiple ways for them to pay you. Payment plan, one time offer. You need to have a refund policy. You have to overcome objections. You have to help them see the path to transformation and how your offer will help them to that transformation. So there's techniques, sales is a system building a funnel, marketing something. You just hit these certain points and it works. So yeah, I don't want to discount that part. There is strategy. Just learn from someone who's done it and just copy them. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money. When you bundle your home and auto policies, the process only takes minutes and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.
- [39:13]
A
So imagine it's midnight, you're on the couch. You're scrolling through this new website, hitting the add to cart button and you decide to check out. But you remember that your wallet or your credit card is in the other room and you don't want to get off the camera couch. That's okay, you don't need to because there's that big iconic purple shop button. You know the one with that shop button? That's Shopify. And there's a reason that so many businesses sell with it, because it makes everything easier from checkout to creating your own storefront. Shopify is the commerce platform behind 10% of all e commerce in the US from household names like Mattel and Gymshark to brands that are just getting started. Shopify will give you a leg up from the beginning with beautiful ready to go templates to express your brand. And you don't need to know how to code. You can handle everything in one place from inventory to payments to analytics. And they've got built in marketing and email tools and that iconic purple shop pay button used by millions of businesses around the world. If you want to see less carts being abandoned, it's time for you to head over to Shopify. Sign up for your 1 month $1 per month trial period and start selling today at shopify.com Paula go to shopify.com Paula shopify.com Paula for the average person who's listening to this, they're working a full time job. Maybe they have kids or maybe they're caring for elderly parents. Right? They've got family commitments. How can someone who is working full time incorporate entrepreneurship into their life in the evenings and the weekends? Like, how does this begin in a life that is already busy?
- [41:00]
B
One really important thing to take care of firsthand is get your expenses down to as low as they can be. So I moved out of New York City to cheaper cities, Denver. I did sort of digital nomading in places like Berlin and Bali where my dollars stretched a lot. And at the time I was paying my bill by doing bookkeeping on upwork. And because I wanted to start this whole new YouTube thing and it took a ton of Energy, took me 50 hours to make one video. And I didn't have a team at the time, but I also had to pay my bills with this bookkeeping stuff on the side. So I had to reduce my expenses down to under $2,000. I fired all my bookkeeping clients down to just one, one that was covering all my expenses so that I could spend as little time as possible just running the treadmill of staying in Place to then build the new thing. So reducing your expenses down to the absolute minimum they can be will give you a lot more Runway so that you don't have to spend so much time just running in place. The second thing is, if you have family independence, you need to have conversations with them and say, I need your support so that I can build this thing for us that's gonna help us in the future. So that you can carve out the time, maybe have your partner help with the kids while you do one or two hours in the morning before work or in the evening. But committing to some sort of schedule that you can really stick to. There's three options for time blocks. You could do weeknights, just even one or two hours every weeknight. That makes a difference. That's five to ten hours a week. Or you can be a weekend warrior and do three hours on a Saturday afternoon. Or you could do every single lunch break for 30 minutes. Whatever recurring time block you choose, make your life organize itself around that time block. That's really the only way to create something new. You really need to put a stake in the ground and make your finances and your life and your time and your family organize around that.
- [43:08]
A
Well, it strikes me when you talk about how you geo arbitraged. For a while you were living in Berlin and Bali. You were living in places where the US dollar stretched further. You reduced your trading time for money down to 2,000amonth. My assumption would be that you probably weren't contributing to a Roth IRA at that time or a 401k at that time.
- [43:29]
B
I was doing my best. I was chipping away at my student loans and maxing out my Roth ira. Not maxing out, but putting as much of it as I could. But yeah, for that good year to two years, I wasn't accumulating much in savings. It was mostly going towards just building this new thing.
- [43:46]
A
Right. And so that is, and this is something I think about a lot as well, when two goals start to conflict with one another. Because there is that goal of max out all your retirement accounts. And there are times when the goal of maxing out your retirement accounts conflicts with the goal of being a digital nomad and starting a business. And you have to make that trade off. Any given dollar can either get reinvested back into the business that you're starting or can go into a Roth ira, but it can't do both.
- [44:21]
B
Right. Yeah. So it's really about choosing the season that you're in and being okay with it. Yeah. Before that I was working at my Wall street job and I was getting my money together towards the last few years of my career on Wall street. And I was putting everything towards savings and debt and made a lot of progress. But then when I quit and started going on this entrepreneurial, meandering journey, I wasn't making as much progress, but I was learning a lot. And I knew I was going to be building something. Well, I didn't know with absolute certainty, but I knew I was working towards building something that would be way more lucrative in the long run. Sometimes you have to make that intentional choice to be in a different season of your life and know that what's on the back end of that is going to help you move much faster when you get there. Because now that I built this business, I have so much cash flow to now put into maxing out my Roth IRA, maxing out even more than that solo 401k and now putting into taxable brokerage accounts and rental property. Like I said, it's going one step back to move two steps forward.
- [45:28]
A
Right.
- [45:28]
B
If I hadn't gone through that season of okay, my net worth's not really improving that much for a couple of years, then I couldn't have made the leapfrog jumps that I made. Because that first year that I made 160,000, I was able to put six figures away towards improving my net worth. I knocked out the last 30,000 of my student loans and put a chunk of it into investments. And then the year after that, seven figures, most of that went towards investments, rental property, stock market index funds. So yeah, just know that you choose a season so you can have much better, easier seasons later on.
- [46:03]
A
On that topic, then you mentioned rental properties. You have $800,000 in rental properties. That's about half your net worth. How has that experience been for you?
- [46:12]
B
Yeah, so when I had a bunch of cash from my cash flowing business to invest, I thought, okay, I have enough in stock market stock stuff. And everyone says, Paula says to invest in rental property. Everybody loves rental property, right? Because the, the appeal is like you get all this passive income and then your tenant pays your mortgage down and you can use debt to buy a property that you otherwise couldn't afford. If you had to pay for everything in cash, all of it sounds great and it could work for some people, but for my personality and lifestyle personally, I realized that it didn't. Even though I got three cash flowing properties and they've been doing pretty great. There was one year where a car crashed into one of the houses Just like a freak accident. 0.001% chance of something like that happening. And it happened to me as a first time property owner and remote because it was in Las Vegas and I was living in LA and Mexico City and nomading around in my camper van at the time. That's when I realized, oh, I bit off a lot more than I can chew. Because not only did insurance, there was some weird thing with insurance where it wouldn't cover all of it. So I had to pay a lot of money out of pocket. But also I had to be on calls with contractors and make big decisions. Thank God I had a property manager to help me through some of that. But at the end of the day, even if you have a property manager, the big decisions end on you. They always come to you like, should we do this? What should we do? Go with this contractor, that contractor. What kind of renovations, upgrades do you want to make? All those decisions fall on you. So you have to be really educated. So I've learned way more about pool, epoxy, coatings and roofing materials than I ever wanted to learn. I didn't sign up for that. I just signed up for the cash flow. It's passive until it's not. Yeah, for a year and a half I was just getting rental deposits and I was like, this is awesome. Until that happened. And even now, maybe once every couple of months I get an email about the pool filter broke and the palm trees dried up. Do you want to cut them, trim them? You know, there's always something going on. So it's not quite as passive as I personally want it to be. I think if you really enjoy learning about these things and getting hands on, then it's very fun. But I'm more of a stock market dividend index fund. Be anywhere in the world and never worry about getting a bad phone call. I think I'm that type of investor.
- [48:39]
A
That's good. That's important to know. It's very important to know about yourself. Then you have three rental properties. They're all in Las Vegas. What part of Las Vegas?
- [48:48]
B
Northern Las Vegas, I would say.
- [48:50]
A
Are you planning on holding those and not acquiring any more or are you planning on selling them?
- [48:56]
B
One thing I realized is once you get in, it's not as easy to just get out because there's transaction costs. You have to pay a broker fee both when you sell and. Well, when I bought, the seller paid that transaction fee. But there's closing costs when you sell. I did the math and yes, thankfully I will end up in the black if I sell but after taxes, it's like then the year on year return after having held them for three years is not, not so great. It's maybe like 6% or something like that on an after tax basis. So I'm trying to think, what are some smart ways to exit with real estate? The 1031 exchange. Maybe I'll sell all those three and roll them into one property that's bigger and not pay taxes on the money rolled into there. And that way I only have one property to manage that's bigger. Because either way you're gonna break your brain to. To manage one unit or three units or whatever. So might as well just manage one and have one property think about that has three units or like a triplex or quadruple or something like that. Or do I bite the bullet on the taxes and put it into index funds? And maybe that's not the best loophole tax strategy, but at least I get peace of mind. I'm thinking of how to navigate that. I would love to just erase this experience and put it all into index funds. But the tricky thing is when you move out of an investment, you want to make sure you move it into something that will return as much or more with index funds at all time high. I'm not sure if it's the best time to put it in there. So do I sell all the real estate, keep it in cash, and then find a really opportune moment to enter the stock market, or do I just make sure I stay invested all the way and just transfer from one to another so that I don't have any regrets and fomo, if for whatever reason, index funds just keep going up and up and up. Because that could also happen. Right. So these are all questions I haven't answered yet. I'm still. I put one of the properties on the market just to see if anyone bites at the price that I want. And I'm sensing that it's not a seller's market right now. So, yeah, I don't want to sell because I just want to. And I'll just take any price, Right?
- [51:08]
A
Definitely a buyer's market right now.
- [51:10]
B
Yeah. So I have to kind of time it and I'll probably just keep on top of it. And if and when it becomes a seller's market, then I'll jump in and sell it. Or maybe not. So I haven't decided yet. What would you advise? Because it's not just about the return and what's tax efficient, it's also about peace of mind and just how I want to live my life. And I have to say, during that year that I was fixing up this rental property where the entire wall, there was structural damage and everything. That was a lot of time that was sucked away that I could have spent building my business.
- [51:43]
A
Right.
- [51:44]
B
So it was like I was trying to save and make a little bit of money here, but I could have made way more over here. So I realized as an entrepreneur, and for many entrepreneurs listening, your business is the thing that will cash flow the most and give you the highest return than any S&P 500 index fund or rental property. So it makes sense to put a lot of your energy there. So your investments should be boring. It should be like clipping coupons. Just pay steady cash flow. Never really have to check in on it and not really take up much of your time. And it's just happening in the background because that's really what makes sense return wise.
- [52:20]
A
Right.
- [52:21]
B
It's like the barbell approach. Keep your investments really boring and hands off so that you can take risks in your business and really focus your time and energy there.
- [52:31]
A
Yeah, you and I were talking before we started recording that. That's exactly what I do as well. I've de risked my investments in every other area of my life so that I can put all of my free cash flow and liquidity and reinvestment into afford anything.
- [52:46]
B
You mentioned you paid off your properties.
- [52:49]
A
I paid off all of my rental properties. So I've got seven, all free and clear. And it technically doesn't make sense on paper to do that because they were low interest loans. So why not continue to hold low interest loans? You can arbitrage that at a much.
- [53:03]
B
Higher return and the interest is tax deductible. Yeah, there were so many reasons. Now you're sleeping better, right?
- [53:09]
A
Yeah, it's. You know, if I was a tenured professor, I would have made a totally different choice. If I was a tenured professor, I would be leveraged to the hilt on my rental properties. But I'm a business owner and being a business owner is inherently risky. And because I have inherent risk in what I do on a day to day basis, I want to counterbalance that by de risking the remainder of my investments so that across the portfolio of my life as a whole, the risk is concentrated in my business and not in my investments.
- [53:39]
B
Absolutely.
- [53:40]
A
Yeah.
- [53:40]
B
Yeah. Like what you said about the portfolio of my life as a whole. Whenever making any financial decisions, you have to look at the whole picture.
- [53:47]
A
Right. So to you then, for the rental properties that you. Have you asked what would I recommend? My question back to you is how sucky is the suck factor? You know?
- [53:58]
B
Yeah, it's like that relationship that's not so bad that you gotta leave it, but it's not that great either. It's kind of like that. Like when it's okay, it's okay. I just get one email, one or two emails every couple of months about, do you want to pay a couple hundred to fix this dryer that broke down? But when it's bad, it's bad. So overall I think the sucky factor is not so bad that I'm like, get me out of this right now. Because that property that got crashed into, it's fixed up, I raised the value on it, insurance paid for a lot of it and there's a tenant and it's cash flowing. But I'm just thinking ahead because something I'm really excited about is going on a sailing adventure around the world and we're preparing for it. My boyfriend and I were taking sailing lessons and thinking like, do we want to go for a month or is it six months or 12 months? We just want to have some sort of adventure. And I'm just thinking ahead, like I want to simplify my life and reduce the amount of things that might take me away from that adventure ahead of time. And the rental property could be one of those things.
- [55:03]
A
How far into the future is the sailing adventure?
- [55:06]
B
At minimum a year from now? I think it's going to take about that long to get confident sailing and just get our life in order, life and finances and everything in order to be able to go on that. That's the one thing that I'm really thinking about. Like it's not so. Rental property is not so terrible. But if I'm on a boat in the Mediterranean and I hope to be sailing in Greece and Turkey and that's like a bucket list destination of mine. And then I get a call that the tenant is not paying or you know, that's going to make me stressed out and maybe not enjoy my sailing adventure as much.
- [55:41]
A
Right.
- [55:41]
B
Whereas if that money is in index funds or even in a savings account, I'm never going to get that phone call. So it's like I want to organize my finances to be maximum stress free and allow me to be present with that once in a lifetime adventure.
- [55:55]
A
Right.
- [55:56]
B
So that's, that's the other big factor.
- [55:58]
A
In that case, what I would do is I would wait until that sailing adventure gets a little bit closer. Because right now we're In a buyer's market, this is a really bad time to be listing properties for sale. It's a great time to be buying and a terrible time to be selling in most locations. Obviously real estate is location specific, so I've heard about pockets, I think Albany, New York, from what I've heard from some friends of mine who invest up there is very healthy market and bidirectionally. So yeah, there might be local pockets that are unique. But overall right now this is a terrible time to be selling and a wonderful time to be buying. So what I would do is wait until you get closer to that sailing adventure, wait until you know when that's going to happen and then T minus six months. So six months prior to when you go on that sailing adventure, reassess where we are in the market. And if it's a seller's market or at least a bi directional, evenly keeled buyer seller market, I would list it at that time.
- [57:03]
B
Okay.
- [57:04]
A
And given that you don't enjoy real estate investing, I wouldn't 1031 exchange it because we've already established that you don't like it. And a 1031 exchange is a lot of work finding another property, it's a ton of work. Why do that level of work? Just to get into an asset class that we've already established that you don't like, take the tax hit, put the money into index funds or put the money into reinvesting in your own business. That's clearly where your heart is. And if you don't like rental properties, there's no reason to stay in rental properties.
- [57:41]
B
Okay, good point. That's very validating coming from you. Well, something else I was considering is now I live in LA and love it there. I definitely see myself putting roots down there. Even after a sailing adventure like that's where I'd want to come back to. Yeah, something else that I haven't explored the details or if this is even possible, but doing a 1031 exchange of those three Vegas properties into a property in Los Angeles where we can living in it and doing a house hacking situation of sorts of something like that.
- [58:11]
A
Yeah, you can. I mean, particularly for anyone who's living in a high cost of living area, house hacking is the number one way to buy real estate in a high cost of living area because you're simply offsetting the out of pocket cost of your primary residence. The drawback with house hacking is that you are the on site landlord, which means 24 hours a day your tenants could come to you at any time to Be like, my washer dryer's broken. Yeah, that's the one drawback to it. I know some people who, they circumvent that by having a property manager and never revealing that they themselves are the landlord.
- [58:51]
B
Okay, that sounds smart.
- [58:54]
A
So technically your tenants don't have to know that you're the landlord, but you.
- [58:58]
B
Know, they'll find out in some way.
- [59:01]
A
Or another comes out.
- [59:04]
B
Okay, so I'll definitely consider that.
- [59:06]
A
But I in general love house hacking as an option for anyone in a high cost area. But I like that we're having this conversation because what I think is crucial in both entrepreneurship and investing. This goes back to what you were talking about earlier. What do you love? You know, what do you enjoy? There are some people who hate the notion of having a business, running their own business, and if you know that about yourself, that's great. If you hate the idea of running a business, don't do it. If you hate the experience of owning rental properties, don't do it. There are so many ways to make money. Life is too short to pursue money making in a way that you dislike. And I tell my, my audience this all the time. Never FOMO into any type of investment or asset class or money making undertaking. And that can be very easy to do, especially if you're in personal finance circles where it seems like everybody is running a business and everybody's buying rental properties. It can be very easy to FOMO into some of these things that are just not a good fit.
- [60:12]
B
Absolutely. Because if you do something because other people say you should because you're going to make a lot of money, then you're kind of missing the point. Because the whole point of this is to create freedom and to live a better life. But if by the very virtue of reaching for freedom, you're already doing things that make you not feel free because you're doing stuff you hate doing, then you're kind of missing the point. It's like holding your breath to get to this one day freedom when I'll finally be able to do what I like to do. But in the meantime, I'm going to do all these things that I hate doing. You're kind of missing the point because also it could take a longer time to get there, you may never get there and you're not going to enjoy your life. So it's really about doing it in a way that feels fun, that feels really fulfilling to you, and always letting that be your North Star.
- [61:00]
A
I like the expression plan for the future. Don't live in it Effy?
- [61:05]
B
Yeah. One thing I really don't like about the fire movement is that, I mean, don't get me wrong, in the beginning I thought that was amazing. And it does help a lot of people. Just the very idea that you can one day retire and never have to go to work for a paycheck again. And if you get smart about investments, that's really valuable. But the whole idea of you just do stuff like work a high paying job so you can have a high savings rate and kind of live in a deprived way so that you can reach this one number one day and then you'll be free. There was a part of that that never quite resonated with me because a lot of these people are working these big corporate jobs that pay really well, but they don't like it. And then they're also foregoing vacations and very important moments with people in their lives to have a high savings rate. And there was something about that that really didn't resonate. Because what if the stock market doesn't do exactly what you want it to do in those 10 years that you plan to retire? Because that could happen, that's not under your control. If you're lucky, you retire into a bull market. But if you're not, you could have less than when you started the fire journey. Right. Like there's so many things that are out of your control. So living for the future is, I think, never the right approach. You got to balance the two.
- [62:23]
A
Right, Right. And I think that's where you get a bit of the paradox of personal finance. Because when you first enter the personal finance fear, we're told that money management means delaying gratification. And some people take that to such an extreme that you're not just delaying gratification, you are delaying your life. That's a decade of your life that you will never get back. That can lead to a lot of regret. And so the paradox then is embracing the ethos of delayed gratification without deferring that which matters most.
- [63:02]
B
Yeah, it's really an art of living to do both. But you can do both. One really simple way is just have percentages that you stick to. A percentage of my budget goes towards financial goals that will take care of future me. A good starting point is at least 10%. And if you can more 30%. I don't agree with like the 90% savings rate. You know, I would not want to live that way. And then a portion for wants and enjoying your life. Now I say 20% is a good number. And then the rest is for just, you know, living and keeping your bills paid and taking care of your needs. And it's also going back to what we talked about earlier, about the season of life you're in. Maybe you're in a season of life where your kids are really young and they're not going to be cute and three years old and like, you're not going to be the center of their universe for many more years. So maybe it's okay that you work a little bit less or take a less demanding job and put less money away into your retirement accounts so that you can be home more and be there with your kids for that very special never to happen again in a lifetime window in your life. And then to choose that season and be okay with it. Because there's also nothing more miserable than choosing to be somewhere and then always thinking, well, but I should be doing that other thing and look at all these other people who are saving a lot more or doing better than I am. It's like, be intentional about the season of life you're choosing and get on board with it. Be happy with it. This is life. Like, you don't want to miss it. And then maybe when your kids are a little bit older, you can, you know, step on the gas pedal some more and take on some side hustles. Start your business to really ramp up that money part of your life.
- [64:48]
A
Right? So there are seasons of your life, as you were talking about earlier, like when you were starting your business, it was a season of your life where you were not contributing to retirement accounts. And then when your business took off, it was a season of your life where you were reinvesting back into your company, but also investing in the stock market and in rental properties. And you were cash flowing a lot, so you had a lot of money that you could invest. And these things come in waves, right? They are cyclical and nonlinear.
- [65:18]
B
Definitely, yeah. And I would imagine in the coming years I would love to become a mom. And that is probably going to be a season where my business doesn't grow as much or maybe I can juggle both. That depends on how good I am at building a team and delegating and leveraging systems. So I'm definitely going to be kind of testing my skills with that. But I'm also prepared to enter a season of focusing more on family. My parents are getting older, so I'm prepared. And then I know that I'm just entering my prime earning years. A mentor of mine told me that business growth happens in stages and at the time I didn't really understand what he meant, but now I do. So in the beginning, to go from zero to your first dollar, it takes a certain skill. Like it takes faith to stick through and then launch the damn thing and a lot of grit and you have to be able to do a lot of different things like wear all the hats because you don't have money to pay a team. And then after you've made your first hundred thousand dollars to go to a million and more. That's really where the skill of managing people while also doing the thing that made you successful in the first place while continuing to do that.
- [66:25]
A
Your business, is it doing seven figures in revenue now? Top line revenue since my book launch.
- [66:31]
B
It'S actually gone down. So that's kind of going back to the whole season thing, right? Yeah. I really wanted to write a book. This has been a bucket list dream of mine ever since. I would hang out every Saturday at the Barnes and Noble in Union Square in the self help section. Just reading all the books about how to change my life and the financial education that I was looking for. I thought one day I am going to write a book. I really want to. So I know that the book wasn't going to be a moneymaker. It's $27, you know, so even if you sell 10,000, that's like what? 270,000. $270,000. That's still not a lot in the grand scheme of things. But yeah, from an immediate business growth perspective, it actually took me away from other revenue goals.
- [67:15]
A
It's interesting to hear you say that because we think so much about the stock market that over a prolonged period of time it always goes up. Running an individual company, you have to break that model of the trajectory is going up over time. Running an individual company, it's up, it's down, it's. You can have some very, very good years, some seven figure years, and then you can have some low six figure years, you know?
- [67:42]
B
Yeah, very low six figure years and it's okay.
- [67:46]
A
Do you have any parting advice for people who are listening, who are interested in starting a business, becoming an entrepreneur, or at a minimum starting a side hustle as well as balancing that with the overall desired. Be an investor and continue growing their portfolio.
- [68:03]
B
If I had to give one piece of advice, it would be to really put a stake in the ground and get specific about what you want to create and let your entire life organize around it. Because if you don't make it clear, if it's wishy washy like I'D like to start a side business. It would be really awesome to become an entrepreneur and work for myself. It would be really great to become a millionaire. That's just a wish. You have to decide. And deciding means you have a number, a timeline, and you tell everyone around you in your life that matters that you're doing this thing and then you organize your time around it. Yeah. Otherwise, other priorities, friends, family, it all eats in. It's just life has just a way of filling up your life with other things. If you don't create that very, very clear stake in the ground. This is what I'm creating.
- [68:55]
A
Perfect. Well, thank you for spending this time with us. Where can people find you if they'd like to learn more?
- [68:59]
B
Well, I'm best on YouTube, so just look for Roseann on YouTube. I'm going to start doing live streams on YouTube. That's something I'm excited about. Just a fun way to keep things new and fresh for me and for my audience. And I'm good on Instagram as well. It's Rose Hahn as well as on all socials and of course my book. You can go to addazero.com and if you sign up there, you get a bunch of great bonuses including a free chapter one audiobook. And you can also grab my book on Amazon and wherever books are sold.
- [69:33]
A
Thank you. Rose, what are three key takeaways that we got from this conversation? Key takeaway number one, your side hustle plan, should you choose to have one, needs to be scalable. It needs escape velocity from day one. Early in the conversation, Rose warns against the common advice to quote unquote, get a side hustle. Because not all of these lead to freedom and some just create another job for yourself and often a worse paying, leading nowhere job for yourself.
- [70:01]
B
That's why it's a pet peeve of mine. When I hear money experts say, yeah, take on a side hustle to create financial freedom. You know, drive Uber and do deliveries and do dog sitting. It's not that simple, you know, then you're just taking on a second job and there's no more freedom in that than your current job.
- [70:19]
A
You don't want low paid gig work. You want to build something scalable, something where you can leverage your time at one to infinity and something where you're truly providing value. So that is key takeaway number one. Key takeaway number two, selling is serving, but only if you genuinely believe in what you're offering. Later in the interview, Rose shares how she transformed her relationship with selling and overcame her fear of charging money for her expertise by reframing it as helping people, which is what she was doing. And of course, if you're offering value to someone, then it's fair that you get value in return. But often we have to unlearn these scripts that say selling is slimy. That's one of those deeply held money negative beliefs that you have to overcome as an entrepreneur.
- [71:10]
B
Understand what sets you apart because there's a lot that sets you apart. And own the fact that if you are not offering what you have to offer the world, you're actually doing people a disservice. Imagine all the people I couldn't have helped if I had let the fact that there were already several youtubers doing what I wanted to do. If I'd let that stop me.
- [71:30]
A
Selling is serving. That's the second key takeaway. Finally, key takeaway number three, your business is your best investment. Rose describes how when she was building her business, she didn't make many contributions into her retirement accounts. She wasn't dumping money into a 401k or Ira Roth IRA because she was living as lean as possible, bookkeeping for just one client so that she could focus on the, at the time, unpaid work of business growth. And that's sometimes what it takes. We ran an interview of about a month or two ago with a Wharton professor of entrepreneurship, Wharton's vice dean of entrepreneurship, Lori Rosenkopf, who talked through seven different types of entrepreneurs, one of which, the most common of which is the bootstrap entrepreneur. And if you are a bootstrapper, meaning you're self funded, then oftentimes taking that break from making market investments is required. And if you're deep in the personal finance space, that can be a really hard mental hurdle to get over. And you don't want to do it too long. But remember, it's temporary and for a year or two, that might be the sacrifice required.
- [72:49]
B
Sometimes you have to make that intentional choice to be in a different season of your life and know that what's on the back end of that is going to help you move much faster when you get there if I hadn't gone through that season of okay, my net worth's not really improving that much for a couple of years. Then I couldn't have made the leapfrog jumps that I made.
- [73:11]
A
Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with Rose Hahn. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope that you enjoyed this episode. And thank you. I really, I hope you enjoyed the conversation that we had about real estate investing. Also, because as we talked about, real estate investing is only for people who want to be real estate investors. You should never go into any investment from a place of fomo. FOMO is the worst reason to make any investing choice, whether that's stocks, real estate, crypto. Never use FOMO as the basis for for your investment thesis. So the only people who should invest in real estate are the people who want to invest in real estate. That is rule number one. If you want to do it, then we can teach you how to do it. And it's for the people who want to do it. It's great. It's a lot of fun. So I hope that you enjoyed the conversation that Rose and I had about that because it was clear she doesn't want to do it. She was primarily motivated to go into rental properties based on fomo, based on everybody else's doing it. And when that's your reason for going into it, then you might be doing the quote unquote, the right thing for the wrong reason. And if you do the right thing for the wrong reason, then that makes it the wrong thing for you. So for anybody who wants to invest in real estate, whether that's through house hacking or through out of state investing, or through becoming an accidental landlord when you move out of your primary residence, if you want to do it, and only if you want to do it, we have a course on real estate investing that opens for enrollment on Monday, October 20th. It's called you'd First Rental Property and it's aimed at beginner rental property investors. If you're a first time house hacker, a first time out of state investor, a first time accidental landlord, this is for you. Again, we open our doors for enrollment on Monday, October 20th. You can find out more by going to affordanything.com enroll. That's affordanything.com enroll. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it with your friends, your family, your neighbors, your co workers. Share it with anyone interested in entrepreneurship or investing and come find out more about real estate@affordanything.com enroll. Our doors open on Monday, October 20th. Thank you so much for being part of the Afford Anything community. I'm Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything podcast and I'll meet you in the next episode.