Billion Dollar Creator

Christina: But studies show if you compare people that are picking individual accounts versus these passive index funds, index funds have historically performed better. So it's no surprise when you fired your financial advisor and you started investing for yourself and you compare the difference, you're already performing better.

Attention is power, and creators harness it better than anyone else, but they're not using that attention to create the biggest impact possible and are vastly under monetized. Hi, I'm Rachel Rogers, my cohost, Nathan Barry, and I believe you can be a billion dollar creator. Sound impossible?

Over the last ten years, we followed each other on our own quest to build billion dollar companies. We've studied creators and seen how entrepreneurs build traditional audiences, and use them as a launching pad for a massive business. It got us thinking, if it can happen for them, it can happen for us. If it can happen for us, then why not you?

Billion Dollar Creator is a show teaching creators how to capture attention and turn it into real wealth. We will deep dive into brands, celebrities, and entrepreneurs who have done it before and show you how you can apply it to your business as an everyday creator.

Join us weekly as we learn from both the wild successes and the missed opportunities, the grand gestures and the integral mistakes. Through that, help you become an expert at building your audience on your journey as a billion dollar creator.

Rachel: Hello, hello, my friends. Welcome back to Billion Dollar Creator. Today we have a very special treat. I am so excited to be talking to Christina and Amon Browning of the YouTube channel Our Rich Journey. They are incredible entrepreneurs and investors who have become time billionaires.

Okay, so being a billionaire with dollars is not the only option. You could become a time billionaire, which means that your time is your own. You get to spend every minute, every hour, every second of your life doing only what you feel like doing, and it not being connected at all to your ability to pay bills, right? Imagine if you had all the money that you possibly needed to enjoy your life. You get to wake up every day and say what do I feel like doing?

That is what is true for Christina and Amon. They're going to share exactly how they did this, what it looked like, their exact details of their investment strategy. They are sharing in this episode. Whether it's investing in the stock market, investing in real estate, building and selling a business. We're talking about all of it in this episode.

I am so excited to introduce you to them. They also just happen to have a YouTube channel with almost 700,000 subscribers, over 30 million views. They have an incredible business as well. Yet their time is completely their own. They were retired by 39 years old. Can you even imagine? Listen, it sounds so good.

Here's the thing though, it is actually doable. I'm so excited for you to hear this. So this episode is in front of a live studio audience of my clients. These are my mastermind clients that are all making millions of dollars themselves and learning about these financial strategies to really become a time billionaire as well as have lots of money, right?

So get into this episode. You are going to love it. You're going to learn so much. I'm so excited to hear what you think of this incredible episode with Christina and Amon Browning of Our Rich Journey. Please enjoy.

Christina: So when we started researching about investing and really thinking about like, how do we actually get to find, how do we get to this point where we're government employees, we can quit our jobs, and never have to work again. Right? So we started thinking about investments.

We discovered index funds, and we discovered ETFs. If anyone's unfamiliar with this, they're very, very similar. They're very similar. So I'll sort of talk about them synonymously. There are slight differences. But what they do is they hold a bunch of investments in one fund, a bunch of different companies in one fund. They track a particular index or sector, like a tech sector, or things like that.

So like for example, they have an S&P 500 Index Fund. An S&P 500 Index Fund, if you invest in that, then you invest in a portion of all of the companies on the S&P 500, which are the 500 largest companies in the US stock market. So you're owning a portion of all of these companies. You don't have to go and say like oh, I want to pick. Let me research. How do I think Facebook is going to do in the future? How do I think Netflix is going to do in the future, right?

It gives you a diversification in your portfolio so that if one company does really bad and you invested in that single company, your money goes drop significantly. But if one company out of 500 does really bad, then you've got 499 other companies to do well. The stock market fluctuates significantly, right.

So we learned to think about investing long term. So we're not saying we're going to put our money into S&P 500 right now. Then next year, we're going to take it all out, and we're going to put it in something else. The idea is long term because if you look at investing, you're looking at the stock market. It goes like this and this and this, but it slowly goes like this and this and this, and it goes higher, right. But you have to think about it in the long term.

But that's how we really got to FIRE was discovering index funds and ETFs. Because it allowed us to invest in a broader range of investments without having to try and cherry pick what we think are the best ones, right? With all the work that you'd have to put into individual investments, how difficult that can be, versus doing something more passive like an index fund or an ETF.

So I'm going to go back to what Rachel said about firing her financial advisor, right? Financial advisors will cherry pick investments for you. At a minimum, they'll be picking individual investments for you, or they'll put you into a mutual fund, an actively managed mutual fund.

Not an index fund where it's passive and it's just tracking something. They're trying to convince you that they're worth their money. So listen, I'm going to pick this for you and this for you. I'm going to put all of this into your account, into your investment account.

But studies show if you compare people that are picking individual accounts versus these passive index funds, index funds have historically performed better. So it's no surprise when you fired your financial advisor and you started investing for yourself and you compared the difference, you're already performing better than your financial advisor.

We read this book. It's called The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing. It's The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing. Boglehead. B-O-G-L-E-H-E-A-D. Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing. It's a great book, especially for beginning investors. It's so well written, so clear. You could finish the book in a day.

So in this book, though, it talked about the passive investing through index funds through ETFs. There was this really great story that it told about these Mensa investors, like Mensa, these people who have these insane IQ levels, and you have to be invited to be part of this group because you're so brilliant, right?

They started an investment group. They were picking investment stocks, individual stocks, and putting their brains together, thinking about the best investments for a portfolio. Well they studied their picks compared to the total stock market, the return of the total stock market, and the return of the total stock market, like an index fund that you can invest in, performed significantly better than these Mensa investment groups.

Amon: Than the brainiacs.

Christina: Than the brainiacs, yeah. So I think part of this idea is understanding financial independence, understanding the amount of money that you need in order to get to financial independence, how to calculate it, but then also how to get there, right? If you're interested in investing in stocks and bonds, if you want a portfolio, it's possible to do this by yourself. It's possible to get rid of your financial advisors and to actually end up performing higher than your financial advisor in the process.

Amon: That's counterintuitive, right? Yeah, a financial advisor, they will have investing appear like it's supposed to be this hard, arduous thing. They're doing the work and all this magic. When, like Christina said, if you just keep up with the total return of the stock market, historically stock market has always gone up. You will do well over the long run.

For us, when we're thinking about living off our investments over the long run, we don't want no crazy volatility, right? We want to know historically how the stock market has performed because that's how it's going to work out our money over the next 30/40/50 years that were alive and living off your investment funds.

Female Speaker 1: This is going to probably prove your point, but we met with our like welfare because that's what all of my mentors were telling me we needed to do. We used someone that her people are using. Also, that's what I thought I was supposed to do until Rachel was telling me about hiring you guys. So I haven't given her any money yet.

Because I was like what percentage are you getting? She was like well, 6%. I was like then you a percentage. She was like no, that includes my fees, and she got really awkward about it. I was like okay. I'll just end it here, but that is, you guys are getting what 10 to 12 right now?

Christina: Over 10 to 12 now because the market is doing so well, right? But say it’s 10%, right, that the market is returning, but then your advisor takes 6%. So we're going to take the 10% and then you get a 4%. Right? That's just like.

Female Speaker 1: She was getting 6% returns. I think she's taking the 4%.

Christina: Oh I see.

Amon: But she's taking 4%. The power of compound interest is that over the years, that 4% or however much they're taking really adds up. So we've gone and looked at people's portfolios over the same time period that we've been investing, and their portfolios have a drag on them. They're not performing well because of the fees, because their financial advisors are taking one or 2%. Oh, it’s only one or 2%.

But over time that compounds and that is a significant amount of wealth that you're giving away to someone that is most likely underperforming. So it's this financial literacy. I don't even like using that word, financial literacy. But the more you get involved in this, when you go to talk to your financial advisors, you realize you can spot bullshit.

Yes, you're going to charge me to buy it. You're going to charge me to sell it. This is outrageous. One of the things about investing is that our parents before us, they didn't teach us anything about this thing. That's not their fault. Because they didn't know. They didn't have access to it. There's so many different factors.

Now, there's no excuse, right? The information is out there for you guys to just absorb it. Just like you know how to open up a Spotify account or how to create a playlist or whatever the case is. You can do all these things. You can buy low cost index funds, right? It is so simple. It is so straightforward. I think it's really, really empowering. Because no one else is going to care about your money more than you.

Christina: That’s a fact. Yeah. I think the other thing too is what you're saying is like when you were talking about oh, you asked questions and things got awkward, right? They want to pretend like they're doing the work that you can't do, right.

I think also as entrepreneurs, it seems sort of counterintuitive to think the less work that I put in the greater return I can get. The less work by putting it into, for example, a total stock market index one, putting your money into that and letting it grow. It's so passive. Versus wait, as an entrepreneur, I've learned that the more work I put into my business, I can expand my business. The more I can put into it and work with other people and the energy that I put into it, it can reflect in the returns of my business, right?

But it's so the exact opposite when you're investing, when you're investing, because there are passive ways to invest where you can own everything in the total stock market if you want to. You can have your returns reflect the returns of the market.

Now, of course, the market, like I said, it's going to be fluctuating up and down, but the market has always consistently gone up over the long run. So if you're thinking about long term investments then tracking the total stock market is a passive way to get those long term investments and to grow your money versus giving your money to an advisor.

Female Speaker 1: Yeah because historically it’s like 12%, right?

Christina: What's that?

Female Speaker 1: Historically, like on average, the last 100 years 12%?

Christina: 10%. 10%. But you know, the 12% is like it goes up. Sometimes it's 12 and more way more, right, and sometimes it's under. But yeah, that helps you invest your money where it's not in a savings account, not even keeping up with inflation. But over the long term, it's growing, and it's compounding, and you're getting dividends, and you're reinvesting those. That's helping your portfolio grow.

Rachel: So let's start back at the beginning. What made you start this FIRE journey? Like, when did you hear of it? What made you change your entire lives behind this journey?

Christina: This guy here. He's the one who came up with it. A lot of times when we talk to couples, it's like one person discovers something and then brings the other person.

Rachel: Then you have to sell it.

Christina: Yeah.

Amon: I didn't have to sell it. Yeah. That was the thing. That's always been the thing about our relationship is that we always, that first impression makes such a big difference. So can I tell the story?

Christina: Yeah.

Amon: When I came home from work, it was just, it was a rough day. I came home to Christina, I said, we've got to figure out something else. I said I've been thinking if there's a way that we can, and I'm so abstract, if there's a way that we could live off of our investments or try to develop some sort of real estate or something like that. Christina said, “Okay, okay.” She was listening. She said, “I'm liking what I hear.” I said basically, I want to quit my job, right? I want to retire early. This was before the FIRE movement. This was in 2011 or something.

Christina: Whispers of the FIRE movement.

Amon: Whisper the FIRE movement. Christina is all about putting a plan together, action. So when I came to her with this abstract idea, she put it on paper. Boom, boom, boom.

Christina: I love it.

Amon: This is how we can do it.

Christina: Yeah. But you know what I think is important too because I want to go back to this because if you guys have partners that you have to try and convince about this. I think one of the things that was so helpful with us is that when he said I want to retire before I'm 40. Like who says that right? You're like what? I don't even know if I knew anyone who had retired at that point. My mom was still working.

So it was like before you're 40, people can think like that. Right? To me, like one of the things that helps us move forward as a couple, as a partnership is saying yes first right? Thinking of how do we get to yes? If I'm like we don't know how to invest. There's so many reasons why you can say no that if you start from okay, let's figure out how we can actually get to explore that.

Christina: Yeah, right.

Rachel: Okay, this is a tangent, but I have to say this for this group. So we did a session when we were at Miraval. Does this sound familiar to those who are at that workshop? So we did a workshop about couples and sex. It was like the same thing. It was like start with a yes. Then say under these conditions, right.

This sounds like the same thing. You're saying yes. However, let's put a plan in place. Let's agree on what the plan is going to be. So it's like I'm seeing a theme here when it comes to like relationships and navigating life with a partner. It's like being open to the idea. Right?

Christina: Exactly.

Rachel: Being open to exploring it and saying let's come up with a plan. Let's make it work for both of us. Right? So it works for sex, works for finance. Work for dreams.

Christina: How frustrating can that be? Like just even thinking about in your businesses, right? If you have a business partner, you have these incredible ideas that you want to implement. You tell your business partner, and they're like no, that's not going to work. You're just shut down constantly, constantly, constantly? It drags on. You need to feel that support of like okay, well I mean I either do it alone, or I just, let's try and think of something else that you'll agree with.

Amon: You don’t want to explore anyway.

Rachel: Yeah, exactly.

Christina: So, I think it's about having that mindset too. I think that pursuing financial independence has a lot to do with mindset. Just having this positivity as you approach things and figuring out how to get to yes. Like, I went to law school, and I read this book. I think it was actually called.

Rachel: How to Get to Yes.

Christina: Yeah, Get to Yes and getting to, right.

Rachel: I read that book too.

Christina: Right? It's like oh, okay. There's these different routes that you can take, right, but how do you get to the end route, which is yes, right? How do you get to where you want to actually be? So I think when you embrace this mindset of positivity, and it can be hard if originally you're just like this seems like really hard when you don't have the confidence in doing particular things, right?

Surround yourself with people that have the confidence for you. Right? I always talk about like there's this thing when we are in our circle, our family, people that we really love, we will talk them up so much. Like oh, you're so amazing.

Like our daughter, Sunoa, just had a basketball game last night. She was incredible. We're like man, you killed it. You did so good Sunoa, right? We have so much faith that we put in our loved ones, but we have to have that same type of love and support for ourselves. Right? Like, receive from yourself what you give to other people that you love too and have that confidence in yourself as well. That helps you create that mindset for success.

Rachel: I love that so much and totally agree. Okay, so you started, it sounds like you had a North Star, which was I gotta get the hell out of this job. So tell us, if you're willing, what were your jobs? How much were you making in your jobs, or give us a range of if you're willing, so that we can get an understanding of okay, this is where our starting point was.

Christina: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'll start by telling you there were parts where I wasn't even working. I mean, I was almost like, so our daughters are now teenagers. I went to law school during the time. So for three years, I was a student.

Amon: This was all on the journey.

Christina: I wasn't making any money. Then after that, we moved to San Francisco, and I worked in San Francisco. Then we.

Rachel: So you moved to the most expensive city in America.

Christina: Right, right.

Rachel: I love it.

Christina: Yeah. So at the time in San Francisco as a first year, I was making like 150.

Amon: Oh, it wasn't that much.

Christina: Like, I feel like it was around 150.

Amon: Maybe, maybe.

Rachel: As a first year lawyer working at a big firm.

Christina: Yeah. Yeah. A first year lawyer working at a firm, but I had gone the three years without working. But then after that, how long did we stay in San Francisco? For two years. Then we moved abroad, we went to Japan, and I took a significant pay cut because I worked for the federal government. I had already had my couple years of experience. Then in Japan, I was making under 90. Under 90,000?

Amon: I think over the course of our journey, how much we averaged at our jobs was I was probably around 90,000.

Christina: Although not in San Francisco.

Amon: Not in San Francisco. But the majority of our journey was we were like kind of all over the world. I think I was around 90 and Christina was probably around the same.

Christina: Yeah, the thing with working for the federal government, it's your, I don't know if anyone has experienced knowledge with this, you're at a, it's called the GS level. So you go in. It's not like you get to negotiate this huge chunk. Like I came from this salary. I want to get this. You don't get to do that. You come in, they give you like a set salary that you that you fall into.

So one of the things that I think is really important too that actually helped us grow was that I was in San Francisco. Then we moved to Japan, took a pay cut, but there were so many more opportunities for us. So we got to live in Japan. We had our housing paid for. We had all our utilities paid for. We had this beautiful house in Japan right next to the ocean.

So there are things sometimes you think like this may not work. Because why would I want to take a downsize? Why would I want to cut things? But for us, we realized globally yeah, we're making a lot less money, but we're also not living in San Francisco, or in the Bay Area. We were in Oakland. We're not working in San Francisco, having to drive in all that time, and having those Bay Area costs, right.

So I think that that actually taking the pay cut helped us move forward. It helped us move forward because we were actually able to save more. We just, we were really creative. We invested in real estate. Also, when we were in the Bay Area to just try and like supplement the high cost of living when we were in the Bay Area and then moving to Japan and having that pay cut and still being able to reach this FIRE goal.

Rachel: Yes. I love your story because it also is not one of lack. Because I think that's what people associate with FIRE. That's why a lot of people are like no, thank you. It's not for me. Because they associate it with like okay, we're going to live off of nothing. We’ll like never have any conveniences. Like, we'll save every single penny and live off of as little as possible so that we can eventually enjoy our lives.

Your journey sounds like you're enjoying your lives, trying new things, having fun, traveling, living in new places, investing in real estate, flipping houses. Like, trying all kinds of fun stuff so it's not this boring journey. It can be actually really fun. It's just having the focus and like saying where's there some money that I can?

Which is a lot what I teach. I'm always teaching my clients like find the money. Where's the money? What expertise do you have that you could just sell? You can start by just saying pick my brain for $300. Then every time you get one of those $300, you put that in your investment account or whatever. So it's all about where's there some opportunity where we can take advantage of to add some extra income?

Christina: Yeah, I think definitely when you're on your FIRE journey too, you're always looking for that opportunity. Your mindset switches. You have this positive mindset, but then you're also saying oh, I see an opportunity here. I see an opportunity here. Let's go try this opportunity. So you're developing this like sense where everything is sort of snowballing where you're getting opportunity after opportunity because you're in that mindset where you're looking for these things.

Amon: It goes back to having that FIRE number. When you have that as the guiding light, you find ways to get to that.

Rachel: Yes.

Amon: Get to that guide. So our nine to five incomes, that wasn't going to get us to financial independence. It was the stuff that we were doing outside of our jobs, the side hustles, the investments, all of these things, the real estate flipping. For us, we had to be very, very resourceful. It was important that we took this journey on and had fun with it because we had very small children, and we didn't want to live that life of deprivation and scarcity and that rub off on our children or us deprive our children of certain things.

Rachel: Such a good point.

Amon: So for us, we made this journey really a family affair.

Rachel: Yes.

Amon: If you've ever met our daughters, or if you've kept up with us, you know that they were a part of everything that we do. They're in their renovating homes with us. They're in there decorating with us.

Rachel: I love it.

Amon: It was a fun activity. I would pick them up from school. I’d say hey, we’re going to Home Depot.

Rachel: After school program is Home Depot.

Amon: So it was fun.

Rachel: That's so cool. They get to see listen, we're all trying to get free. So like we're going to get free together. We’ve all got two hands and can contribute in whatever small ways. Then they get to see what confidence it builds because then they get to see oh, I built that cabinet, or I stained that floor. I painted that wall. They get to see the finished product, and then you sell it and then they're like look, we made money off of my effort.

Christina: Not only that, not only the efforts of being part of renovating the house and doing all these other things, they're investors also. They have their own investment accounts. They each have their own investment accounts. Right now over $25,000 each for both of them. It's like okay, they get money from side hustles. They get money from their allowance. They get money for birthdays. They get money for Christmas. They're all thinking about okay how do I put that in?

Rachel: It’s just that you’ve installed that mindset in their minds where they're like grandma gave me money. Opportunity, right?

Christina: You know what else we do too? We said okay, we'll be your 401k match. You put some money in, and we're going to match that money.

Rachel: Oh, I love that.

Christina: Because our youngest is a bit of a saver, right? She'll have hundreds of euro in a room. We’re like you need to, baby, you need to invest in some of that money. You don’t need all that cash. She’s got it tucked under her bed. We’re like no, no, no. We don’t do that here. We do not do that here.

So we said okay, well, how much are you going to invest because we're going to match that investment. She's like okay. Let me start counting this out. But that's that incentive. It's not just about giving them money. Here, here, we're going to match this. It's about really teaching them, okay?

When you're putting your money in into these investment accounts, look at how this money grows, look at what you're investing in. You don't even have to do anything. We have it. We put it into your account. It will automatically go, and you make that money. We'll move it over for you automatically. You don't do anything. Then all of a sudden you're at, my goodness. I wouldn't have even dreamt it having $25,000 at their age when I was a kid.

Rachel: Oh, are you kidding me?

Christina: My mom didn't even 25,000 in her account.

Rachel: I was 25. I couldn’t imagine $25,000. Twice their age.

Christina: I mean they're talking now about okay, I could use this. I could buy a house with it. I could put a down payment on a house. When I go to university, what if I use this money as a down payment. I get my roommates. They're going to pay for the mortgage.

Rachel: I love it.

Christina: They're exploring all these ways to get that wealth, grow that wealth, and get these assets associated with it.

Rachel: So good. I love it so much. I love it. Okay, so how long did the journey take? So how long do you feel like you were on your FIRE journey until you hit that guiding light number?

Christina: Yeah, that was about 10, a little less than 10 years. Now, I would say don't use this as the number of.

Rachel: I was going to say less than 10 years is short.

Christina: Right?

Rachel: When you consider most people save for 40 years of work or more to get to a retirement that usually they're not happy with.

Christina: Right. Right. Yeah, but if you think about okay, so the stock market was just on fire. I mean, we were talking about average 10% annually historically, but we're talking about over 30%. Like all of these insane returns. It just seemed like it kept compounding greater and greater and greater.

So I wouldn't necessarily say oh, think about you're going to do this in less than 10 years. I mean, if the stock market performs amazingly, then that's, of course, possible.

Rachel: But it's also, right, like just being in there.

Christina: Exactly. Exactly.

Rachel: Right now, everybody talks about like the state of the economy, and we're heading towards a recession. This is a great opportunity to invest. Because think of it as like the stock market is on sale right now.

Christina: Oh, my, I'm so glad you said that. Because I think once you become mindful about your investments, once you decide okay, I could do this myself. You start seeing those opportunities in the market where there's a crash. You're like this is great for me. When you have your money with an advisor, you're like what's going on? Why is my account down?

You see this as an incredible opportunity. If you consistently invest every single month or week or whatever your schedule is, consistently investing, that means you're investing when it's high, when it's a low. You're capturing the average return of the market. But those times when it's the dip, when it goes down, you'll see, as an investor, once you start doing it and you feel confident with your investments, you're like wow, this is a great opportunity to invest.

Whereas other people, when they don't really understand their investments or they don't feel comfortable with making their investments, they think oh my gosh. My account is down. Everything just dropped. I need to pull out. When you pull your money out, it’s like a significant loss, right?

Rachel: I'm like so wait a minute, the whole point of investing is just look away. What you're saying is do nothing. If I just do nothing, I will have more.

Christina: Right.

Rachel: Wonderful. This is the best deal on Earth, right? People get so emotionally attached to the number going up and down. Who cares? Like my account is going up and down every day. I just don't pay attention to it. I pay attention to over time what's happening. Over time it's trending up. So that's what's important, not the day to day.

So if you're going to be obsessive and check it every day, it's almost like better not to I feel like. Check it regularly but maybe not every day. Because you’re basically, you're requiring yourself to stay calm, not touch things. Because if you take it out, like you've committed to those losses now. Now you've made those losses real. Where the losses aren't real yet, you still have the opportunity to go back up. So you just leave it.

Christina: Yeah. Then what happens with those people, right? The market starts to go back up and they're like oh, I'm going to get back in again. You get in high, you get out low. That’s like the exact opposite. There was the big crash in March of 2020 with the market because of COVID.

Then there was a big crash and people were like what do I do? What do I do? So I said hey y’all, we're going to create this account. We’ll invest some money in it. Look, we're creating this. We're going to show you guys. Put their money in.

People on the comments. Like people who really follow us, who know what we're doing. They're like that's so great. It's so great that you're sharing this with people. Other people were like y'all are catching a falling knife. This is crazy. Why would you do this? Wait. It was such a small blip. It ended up being such a small blip of like maybe a month of down, and then it just shot right back up.

Then afterwards, people are like that was so great. How did you know? We're like you, and we told people it's down now. It can continue to go down. If it continues to go down, we're going to keep investing anyways. Either way, we're investing. But if you don't have that mindset of like thinking oh, this is an opportunity. I can capitalize on this. Then you're in the situation where you're pulling money out low, and then when you start seeing it go back high again, then you're okay, now it’s time to get back in,

Rachel: Buying high. It's like that don't work because math, you know what I mean? That's the thing. If you just put $1,000 in and watch it because that's how I started. You just put a little bit of money in, put it in an index fund, and just watch. When you watch it, you're going to see what's happening over time, and you're going to be oh. Then you're going to be okay, I'm in now.

Now, I started with $1,000 once. Then I started putting four grand a month. Then I was like oh, I see what's happening here. Then I started doing 10 grand a month. then you just slowly increase it. It can be monthly. So I want you all to think about how can I add this as a line item to my business. Every single month, I'm taking 10% off the top and putting it in an investment fund, right?

So it's like you, as the owner, get a portion of the profits, take your profits. By the way, this is what I teach my team to do as well. Like we rolled out our 401k. There were a couple people who didn't sign up, and I was like what's happening? Why are you not in there? Get in there and put as much as possible in there.

We put it in whether it's not a match. We just put it in for them, a percentage of their salary. So we're look, get in there. Then I watch, and I can see. I can see the back end of our 401k. So I can see who's investing and who's not. I'm like we've been talking forever about how we want to teach an investing class to our team because I want them doing it too, right? So that everybody understands this is how you get ahead. You work. You do labor in exchange for money.

Then you take some of that money and you buy an asset, and then that asset does the labor of increasing. So you don't always have to work for every dollar if you take a portion of your dollars, and you put it into an asset form that can grow. Everybody can do this.

Whether you have a job or you're an entrepreneur or whichever. It just needs to be ingrained in us because there's so much opportunity, and it's like immediately it's not going to make you rich tomorrow. But next year, you're going to be like oh, look at this. I put in 20 grand, now it’s 40. You get excited. Because you can see what's happening. Then think about okay, let me do the math. If I put a bigger chunk in and it grows, then what? It gets very, very exciting.

Amon: That's the, it goes back to our timeline to achieving financial independence. So when you think about retirement in the most traditional sense, most people put away 10 to 15% of their income in order to retire in 30 years or so. Right? But when you're thinking about FIRE, the more you put in, the sooner you get to that goal.

I think we should be talking a lot more about this while we’re talking to people about saving for retirement. So you can put in 10%, and you're going to retire at 65. But if you put in 50%, you'll retire at 35 or 40. Right? So when we realized that, it was like a light bulb went off.

Rachel: Yes. You can unknow it.

Amon: You can't, no. It’s like wait a minute. The more I put in, the sooner I get. It's common sense, but we don't realize that.

Rachel: Because it's not what we're taught. It’s not how we’re socialized. Right. Because the goal is to keep us as cogs in the machine. We've already opted out of the machine, everybody here. Whether they've chosen to work for Hello Seven or be an entrepreneur. Like we've chosen an alternative path. Our team members, same thing. We've chosen an alternative path to like the traditional work in a big corporation and work that system. That's what they teach you. Put a tiny bit in. That way you can be here until 65.

It's like no, thank you. That way you're doing what you wanted. You're showing up to do the work because you want to not because you have to write to get by. So it's so magical.

So to that end, tell us what life is like now. So you did the 10 years. For some of us, it will be a longer timeline. For some of us, it probably could be a lot shorter. There are folks here who are making millions of dollars a year. So there are people here who could be taking hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and putting it in an investment account and seeing big shifts happen really quickly if that’s what they want. So tell us what it's like on the other side so we can be like okay. Wave from the other side and tell us what does it like over there?

Amon: It's nice. Because we get this question a lot, and we got this question when we told our coworkers, when we told our friends and family that we were quitting. Financial independence and retiring early, it's not about doing nothing. It's about how being the ability to do anything.

Rachel: Yes.

Amon: So we wake up and having this ability to plan our days without the constraints of a nine to five, it's so empowering. I can't tell you. There's never a boring day. Every night feels like Friday night. Every day feels like Saturday. You wake up in the morning, you're like I used to wake up nine. I wake up at 11.

Rachel: Listen, that sounds pretty good.

Amon: We really enjoy it. So we do a lot of traveling. We do a lot of mentorship. We can be present because we have bandwidth mentally, emotionally. When we were working, I would come home from work. I would try my hardest to stay engaged with my daughters. But in the back of my mind, I was thinking I've got work tomorrow. I've got to get some rest.

Then when I finally laid down, I would be laying down thinking about I have to do a briefing tomorrow. All these things will be running through my mind about okay, I've got to remember when you're working, you're never off. You're always on.

Rachel: So same thing as an entrepreneur. Because when you run the business, that business is in your head 24/7. You are constantly thinking about the business whether you have days off or not. You're constantly solving problems, whether you have days off or not. There is no.

So the mental rest, I think, is very resonant I think for everybody here because you just, your business is just, it's your baby. So you're constantly thinking about what's next for it, solving a problem that's coming up, thinking about the future of the business, etc. So yeah, it takes up a lot of mental space, for sure.

Christina: I mean, I think also it's okay, so we have this freedom in our head, not constantly worrying about okay, what do I have to do tomorrow? But we have such a great, amazing set of friends here too that it's I mean every night we could go out. It's like.

Rachel: Wait a minute, but are they FIRE people? Because can they really hang out?

Amon: A lot of them are FIRE.

Christina: Some of them are FIRE, or some of them are working here remotely where it's like their hours are different. We're always going in well, let's go out to this rooftop happy hour. Just last week, his friend from out of town came, and we went to a happy hour, this rooftop happy hour. We go out to brunch with friends. We got to eat with friends. Now the beach is not as nice, not as warm, but we were going to the beach all the time.

Like this Thursday, I have a ladies brunch that we're doing. So it's like there's kinds of stuff. Like I was saying, we live only a 10 minute walk from here. So our oldest daughter plays basketball. So she'll jog around this area. I'm not the jogger. So me and my younger daughter, we’ll walk back and forth. Like every day, we get to go out, and we get to go for a walk. It's like, it’s so.

Amon: I mean, we're always doing something. We're traveling. We still dabble in real estate. So we're always doing renovations and things like that. It's just that that freedom.

Rachel: Yeah, you can choose what you want to do today. Do I want to go paint that wall today? Or we’re going to say you know what? We're going to happy hour. We're going to have a lazy day today. Then we'll paint this weekend. Because there's no I need to get the money out of this immediately. So you get to like move at your own pace, which is really exciting. That’s amazing.

One like mechanical question because I think it's something. It's a question in my mind. I'm sure it's a question that they have too, which is well how do you pay bills? What is the mechanics of living off of your investments? How do you get the money and pay your bills?

Christina: Where’s that money come from?

Amon: I’d like to say the big three pay our bills, dividends, interest, and capital gains. That's how we pay our bills. So from these accounts, those three things, you can pull dividends, you can grab the interest, or you can sell stocks and pay your capital gains. Just like how you put money into your accounts through automatic investing two weeks, every month, you can have that money come right out automatically yourself.

Rachel: Yes. You're right. Because when I invest in an index fund or any different investments that I have, it's always do you want to reinvest those dividends? I'm like absolutely. But then when you get to retirement, you don't reinvest it. You're like no, no, no, send that my way. That's your paycheck.

Christina: Yeah. It can be different too because we're talking right now we're talking about investing in the stock market, but we also have Airbnb properties here. So if you have real estate properties, that's another form of income that's generating that you can live off of that income as well.

So there's different sort of ways to get to where you want, either pulling from the stock market, or if you have real estate, pulling from your real estate income or doing a combination of both. But I think you asked earlier about pulling from your portfolio and the investment is that you're assuming that it continues to grow. Did you ask that earlier? Sorry.

Female Speaker 2: On your purchases, like what if you want to buy like a bigger purchase? How do you tool it out?

Christina: Oh, that's a good question. So for example, we just sold a house here. So ultimately, we're going to be reinvesting that into a property here. So what we did was we put a majority of that into a money market fund. So this is the thing too. When you're investing in the stock market, you have to be thinking long term.

Our investment, so because we sold our property here in Portugal, Portugal has a leniency where you have three years to reinvest that. Three years to reinvest that into a property and avoid capital gains taxes.

Rachel: In the US, it's like months.

Christina: Yeah, we talked to someone who just was like I just screwed up. The sale didn't go through, and I didn't get it. Now, I have to pay capital gains. We're we've got three years for this. But at the same time, we're okay we want to have access. Because maybe we don’t take three years. Maybe what if we find something next month. We're going to want to have to access that money.

So when you're thinking about investing in the stock market, you don't necessarily want to put money that you need short term into the stock market. Because what happens if the stock market dips right when you want that money? You don't want to have to pull it out at a loss.

So there's money market funds that invest in more secure type of investments. It can be like a bond or different types of things within this fund where it's, or CDs, where it's a more stable return. It's a much lower return, but at the same time it's stable so that you're not thinking okay, if I want to pull this out in the month, I could potentially have half of what I had. There's nothing like that. So we put that money into a money market fund so that we can access a large amount of money if we what to purchase our next house with it.

Rachel: Yes. Okay. So I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about your YouTube channel. At what point in the journey did you decide to start that?

Christina: Oh, that's good.

Rachel: I'm curious. Was that like you had retired? Or did you start it before you actually retired? What made you start it? What makes you continue to keep it going? Because it's totally optional.

Christina: Yeah, I love the story.

Amon: We started the channel at the end of the journey. So we didn't want to like telegraph our paths, telling people we were going to quit. Trainings would have went out the door, promotions. It’s one of those things. I think we're about a year and a half out of retiring. So we started this YouTube channel inspired by one of our friends that said you guys are always preaching about this stuff. You're always telling us. You should do a YouTube channel.

We knew absolutely nothing about YouTube. We don't even really watch YouTube. So when we went on there, we started sharing our story. So many people have had questions, and wait, how do you do this? Our channel really grew off of the community.

We had a relatively small channel. I think we were about a 20,000. Then we retired. We quit our jobs. We made that announcement. Everyone was wow, these people really did it.

Rachel: Like they're legit. They didn’t just talk about it.

Amon: Once we did that, our channel just exploded. It was almost when we when we were working, we were doing three videos a week. It was crazy. Then we retired, now we only do one video a week. Our channel, it just keeps growing and growing. I think it's because people know that when we get on there and talk, we talk about, we talked about early about how financial independence allows you all these benefits when you have it. As entrepreneur, I guess we fall into entrepreneurship, it's allowed us to be more authentic.

So when we get on there, people recognize that we're not trying to sell you NFTs or crypto or some. We’re just saying if you're consistent, we're talking about mindset. Our channel has just exploded. When we really started to be more intentional about it and say okay, let's listen to the audience. They said we want trainings. So okay, let's do a training.

We want meetups. Now we have this amazing community of people that come to Portugal and hang out with us for five days. We go from Lisbon all the way up to Porto. We drink. We have fun. We just celebrate our achievements thus far, right? It is such an amazing community. People have gotten jobs from these communities. People just leave just so inspired to take action.

Christina: Yeah, and I just love talking about that journey too. Because man if you guys look at the very first video that we did and then some and then some and then some. I mean even know if you look, there's always room for improvement. But I think like our very first video, it was like okay we're going to sit on this. It was probably less than two weeks, but it was still like pulling that plug of okay, we have to put this up. We made it, but we have to expose ourselves to people. Maybe they think it's a weird video.

Rachel: There's going to be weird comments.

Christina: Right? But I feel like you know if we would have been hindered by that, if we were just worried about okay, what if people think I'm blinking too much or whatever. Whatever weird thing maybe you do that you don't know. If you don't get past that thing that's holding you back. Because even though you know that it could turn into something great. You can share this information. You can make these connections with people.

Like Amon said, we had almost 500 people, around 500 people come visit us for these meetups here in Portugal. Came from all over the world. But none of that would have happened had we not taken that step and said let's just do this. Let’s just post it, right?

We do not look for perfection when we do things. It's like it's just unattainable. If I looked at, I edit our videos. I think it's so much fun to sit and edit and do videos. But if I was critiquing myself of everything that I did, those videos would not go up. It’d just feels like Amon. A cut video. We give to others that love that we should also be giving to ourselves.

So it's like this point where you're like I'm so happy that we took that step. That we moved past that and said this could be something way more amazing than if we don't do it at all. So we just took that step. It's just been an incredible, incredible journey.

Rachel: Yeah, I mean it's amazing. I mean, I think your courses are amazing. They're so, they're very accessible in the way that you teach. You make it so clear and so easy. They're like short videos. So it's easy to get through the content. Then the worksheets are amazing. The content is really good that you teach. So that's my other question for you. So you have this huge audience. I'm sure you get people telling you all the time, you know what y’all should do? You know what'd be a great idea? You know how you could monetize this audience even more?

I just started a podcast that's literally all about this idea of monetizing the content that you're creating. So I'm so curious for you, how do you keep yourself from saying yes to every business idea that you have? Because I'm sure you have ideas every day. That if you took action on all of them, then you wouldn't necessarily have as much flexibility anymore. Or like partnerships or things that you're pitched? How do you keep yourself in this retirement mode and not taking advantage of everything that's out there for you?

Christina: Yeah, I think that's one of the amazing things about financial independence. You don't need to take something if you don't want to take something. Right. So again, Aman was talking about being authentic and saying like is this a relationship that we want to curate with somebody? Is this something that, is this a person we're interested in?

Oh Rachel, we're interested in meeting you. We love your vision, what you're doing. But someone else comes to us. We've had people that are way bigger than us, that have millions of followers that have reached out to us and said hey, we want you to come speak on our podcast. We want you to do this or whatever. We said no we're tired. We don’t want to do it. Because to be honest, those people that are, I could think of two people specifically, two different groups. I'm not going to say it.

Rachel: We want that.

Christina: I won't say it, but their thinking doesn't align with ours. So I think that when you have that financial independence, and you're not saying oh I need the sponsorship money. I need to go collaborate with this person. I need to do this. You water down your authenticity. This is why you do something with this?

Rachel: You’ve got to find a way to make it work. You’ve got to do mental Olympics, right?

Christina: So for us it's like okay, do we find this as like this would be a really fun challenge to do this type of thing with someone? We're looking for that. Do we want to meet this person? Could we see ourselves having a relationship with this person in the future? So we look at do we want to, would we want to have coffee with this person?

Rachel: Yes. Do I want to hang out with them, or am I going to be running screaming?

Christina: Or are you like okay, I've got to go now.

Rachel: Yes, where you're looking at the time like somebody call me please. Let me out of here.

Christina: I've got to go to the bathroom real quick and then you're gone.

Rachel: What is that? An Irish exit? Leave your jacket. You’ve got to commit. Sacrifice the jacket to get out of there. But then you don’t have to do that, which is so exciting. Do y'all ever have ideas that you're man, that's a good idea, but might take up too much of our time?

Christina: Yeah. Amon has a really fun idea. I'm like that would be fun. But okay wait, I think I know what you're talking about. There was one. We’ll give you two examples because I think I know what he’s thinking about.

Amon: This is what happens with me. I have these ideas, and as I start to go down the rabbit hole, that's too much work. So I love giving the ideas away. I have an idea. I'm not going to use it. You take it.

Rachel: I love it.

Christina: Make it happen. Make it happen.

Amon: So I'm going to throw this out here, and I hope someone does it at some point. But I wanted to start a Black wine label here.

Rachel: Oh, listen, I will invest in that. We could get that popping right now.

Amon: I don’t want to deal with it. Somebody do that. We even went down the road of looking at a commercial space. We negotiated the commercial space. We were going to sign the lease the next day. It was a beautiful space. Then we said nah, that’s too much work.

Rachel: I absolutely love this so much.

Christina: Yes, oh my goodness.

Amon: Then we told someone, I said you should get on this.

Rachel: Listen, we've already negotiated.

Christina: It’s a great space.

Amon: You're just setting up hits for other people to get the home run.

Christina: It's like what you said, especially with this commercial space because I love like events and planning and bringing people together. Also oh, we can have like on Mondays, we'll have this. On Friday, why don't we have brunch? All these things where I'm like oh, it's a great opportunity to bring people together. The night before Amon was like are you sure? It's work. Right? Are you going to do this yourself? Are we going to bring in staff?

Then that's when we pulled back because we're you know what? The idea, we love it, but maybe someone else has to do it. Maybe it's too much work to put in for what, it will take too much time for all the other stuff that we want to do. It didn't work out.

Amon: It was a fun exercise though. We love. It’s just in spirit, we're entrepreneurs. But in reality, we don't want to be.

Rachel: You dabble. I feel you. Listen, these are the conversations that we have with Brittany, I have a Brittany all the time who’s the president of my company. I'm like oh, I have this great idea. Wouldn't this be great? She listens, and she's like that sounds awesome. Yeah, that'd be so fun. She listens to me talking about it.

Then she's like are you sure? I'm like well, yeah. I think it's worth at least trying. She's okay and then she like starts looking like she about to start writing notes. I'm like okay about to kill this. She's like well, what about this? Have you thought about this part? Who would do that? How many times a week would you be available to do that thing. I'm like I don't want to do this. Never mind. Thank you.

Christina: It’s like your conscience, right?

Rachel: Exactly. Shut it down.

Christina: Are you sure? You're not going to get to yourself on that one.

Rachel: Exactly. Save me from myself please. But I love that idea of the Black wine label. I love the idea of the commercial spaces. It’s like you want these things to exist. So I do think there is this interesting pathway that I hope more of us will start to explore, which is could we partner with an operator who maybe is at the beginning of their journey and really hungry and ready to put in work who is interested in like taking that challenge on and being yes, I want to do it.

I mean it still will to take up space because you're an owner in it, but can we be like silent investors in some things to help make things happen where we can put our dollars behind it, but we don't necessarily have to put all our time. Maybe some advising, but not I'm in charge of it on a day to day basis.

Christina: That’s an incredible idea because it's you can see your vision flourish, but not necessarily with the work entailed if you're doing it yourself. Being a backer to someone and like providing that mentorship, but like you said, someone who's in that hustle mode. Because we were really in the hustle mode on our FIRE journey. Now we're like we got there. Let's find these people that are ready to hustle.

Rachel: Now we’re done. Listen, that is a word. Enough is enough is a word. Because that's something, we live in a society where it's never enough. So now I'm running an eight figure business. My husband said to me, he's like well, what are your goals? What do you want? I'm like I can't think of a single thing that I want. I truly cannot. There's nothing that I want. I don't care.

Like I have a fabulous wardrobe. I don't feel like I need to add really all that much to it. Although, you probably will see me shop. Let’s just be honest about that. You know what I mean? If I see something that gets me excited, yes, but I'm not actively looking to. Like I go on the vacations I want to go on like.

Now what's so funny is like my vacations have gotten less fancy. They were getting so fancy for a while, and now I'm like now we're going on some whale tent thing on the beach in Mexico to see whales up close, and it costs 2,500 bucks. You know what I mean? We're going to stay in a tent. I'm going to pay the extra 300 bucks to have my own bathroom. By bathroom, I mean like a camp toilet.

Now it's like now I just want these experiences. It's not really about it all being fancy. You know what I mean? So, it almost creates this freedom of I have the money to do that, but do I want to do that? Do I want to spend my money on that?

It's so funny. I've been wanting to go to St. Barts for two years for my birthday. This happened to me two years in a row. I'm like they got me again. The first year I wanted to plan this trip, and I started down the path of planning it. Then I'll tell you why in a second I didn't go through that.

Then the second time I was like you know what? I messaged my friend Robert, I message our friend Susan, our little group. I'm like my treat. We going to St. Barts for my birthday. Okay, I'm getting a little like house, and it's going to be fabulous. Like it's going to be a great time. It's on me. You just get yourself there.

So I'm going to sign the contract. They send me the contract. I was like this number seems strange. It's a very low. I was like is that insurance? What is this number? I thought that the nightly rate was the weekly rate. Okay, so I thought it was like 10 or 15 grand or something like that for the week. It's 15 grand a night.

Christina: Oh my goodness.

Rachel: This is the second time I have tried to plan a trip to St. Barts and confused the nightly rate for the week. I was like never mind. I'm basic. I'm not on y’alls level. Let me stay my ass right on the island that I'm already on. St. Barts ain’t for me. Second time in a row. I was like how did I do this again? I was so mad that they got me again. Two different venues.

St. Barts is very expensive. I was like listen, could I spend that money? I can. I don't want to. I don’t want to go on a hundred grand vacation. Like it's just, that's too much to blow in a week. I ain't on that level yet. I would rather take that hundred, put it in my Charles Schwab account, and just watch it.

Christina: There you go. Maybe next time.

Rachel: Exactly. Awesome. I love it. Well, one last thing that I'll share is that with an audience like that, I'm sure like all of us in here would be give me that audience because we about to sell software. We selling war horses. We've got all kinds of things, all kinds of programs we’ll be selling all over the world. So have you thought about that? Like for example, y'all could create the Mint for FIRE people, like the daily financial software for FIRE people.

Christina: Yeah, yeah.

Rachel: Especially with the audience like that, it’d probably make a million dollars in a day.

Christina: Okay. It’s brainstorming time. No, we have thought about creating an app. Not necessarily like a budgeting Mint app, but something more similar to our 365 program. Yeah, of like having these.

Rachel: All that material, yeah.

Christina: To help you build into your plan of doing what we talk about is if you can start structuring your days where there's just a little tiny bit of time you set aside for learning about financial literacy, developing your financial literacy, or learning about investing, or taking some time to calculate your FIRE number. Just small amounts of time. It's like a micro-habit. I could just take some time. Maybe I'll listen to a podcast today. Maybe I'll do this. That's sort of like our program. We thought maybe we could develop an app that’s geared towards that.

Rachel: I love that. Having seen the program, so the program is 365 Days of FIRE. So every day you do one task. It's like you get these 30 days of tasks for the month, and there's a theme for the month. Every day you do a small task that takes you towards your FIRE journey. So in an app, that would be brilliant.

Christina: Yeah. So we've thought about that. Of course, this is a process. We’re at the thinking stage. We've been there for a while.

Rachel: So you need that hungry app developer.

Christina: Exactly. Exactly. That’s right.

Rachel: You'll be the brains to it. They do it. You give them the brilliance. They make it all happen.

Christina: Yeah.

Amon: Our meetings will be on the beach, though. You have to come meet us.

Rachel: Exactly with cocktails.

Christina: Or on a rooftop.

Rachel: There you go. There you go. All right y’all. Well, thank you so much. This was so amazing. Was this helpful y'all?

Female Speaker: Yes.

Christina: Thank you for inviting us.

Rachel: I didn't give y’all question time. Does anybody have a burning question we didn't cover?

Christina: Let’s do it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Female Speaker 3: Okay. So, everyone always talks about retirement. It feels really long term. It's not something I really wanted to use my money towards. I have investment accounts. I have financial advisors, all those things, but like I'm want money now to play with. So how do you do that? Invest in these index funds and do all that, but still get to buy a house or buy a car or like have where you retire.

Christina: It's really all the budgeting. So it's almost that idea of.

Female Speaker 3: I mean like specific to accounts. Like I know how to spend money. Like we have, for instance, we want to buy a house. So we’ve been putting it all in a savings account because we want to be able to use it. Worried that if you put it in like a brokerage account or something you can't touch it, are you allowed to touch things and still invest.

Christina: Oh, that's a great question. Yes. So, yes, you are allowed to touch things. What I would say is like for the house, I think you've got a great plan. You've got money set aside into a savings account. Like we’re talking about us doing a money market fund. It's like you're having it in more secure money.

But let's say you didn't have a savings account and you were still just consistently investing in your stock market. It doesn't mean you can never pull from it. Ideally, you don't want to pull from it when it's down. But if you're saying I want to buy a house. A house is another form of an investment. It's like you invest in stocks. You invest in real estate.

So it's okay to pull from a real estate investment to invest in house. You’re just switching assets. It's still an investment. But you want to make sure that you have some flexibility. Because if you find a house and you have it in the stock market, for example, the stock market drops then you don't really want to transfer that money.

So you sort of have to play around with what is your plan? Like how are you going to access money? What do you need that money for? Do you want it for house? Do you want it for vacation? Do you want it for these things? Then you also have to understand the repercussions of everything you do, right? You put your money into a savings account, that's great because it's secure. You're not having that flexibility.

If you put it into the stock market, you have to understand the repercussions of maybe wanting to get access to that money when the stock market's down, or pulling that money and then you have a smaller account that now you're working on building that compound interest again and growing that account even more.

But if you think about it with a plan of saying these are the things I want short term. So I'm going to put these money into these accounts, or I want to have this type of experience. I'm going to put my money into this type of account that I can access. Just know where all of your money's going.

Then ultimately, you may decide yeah the stock market's doing amazing. I'm going to take out some profits from that and invest it in a house or invest it in an experience. But it's all about outlining how you want to spend your money. Then ultimately where you're going to access your accounts in order to spend that money.

Female Speaker 3: Depending on how the accounts work.

Christina: Yes, exactly.

Rachel: Then you have money aside for a house, and then you have money aside for your long term future. So you can have a short term account and a long term account.

Christina: Yeah, yeah. What was your question Jacquelyn?

Jacquelyn: So it was kind of on that term too. So we recently moved to Los Angeles. So, we also want to buy a house. That's probably a huge chunk of the money that we're going to make in the short term versus being able to start to do that. So we do a financial advisory. It's like 1%. The way he has it set up right now it's like all of our money is liquid in a way that we could save. So it's we're on a plan, a three year plan to buy a certain price house.

So this FIRE situation, the high fat FIRE for probably like 50 million. So how do you, in like the amount of working time that I have left, think about buying a multimillion dollar home, living that life in Los Angeles, and saving up $50 million? It feels so big. So is it like Rachel's way where it's like go make more money? Then like put.

Rachel: Well, it's not just that. So it's make more money, but also think about like selling the business. That was one of the questions I was going to ask you. Your business is also an asset. So that's why we teach you at Hello Seven, we are very, very committed to teaching you how to build a business that is an asset you can sell.

That's why we talk about having a team, having a management system, like having a scalable offer, all of those things because then the business is an asset separate from you. If you have to work in the business for it to function, it has less value.

So if you're an owner/operator, you can sell it for one to three X the revenue. But if you have a team, you can sell it for like three to 5x the annual revenue. If you have a management team, now you're talking like five to 10x the annual revenue you can get for your business because you have a team who's leading that business, and it’s not all dependent on you.

So that's why like so if your number is really big, and if your business is where you're investing most of your time and most of that money is going to come from then you have to think about okay, am I building an asset? What is going to make this attractive to a buyer who would want to come along and buy this business? What kinds of buyers would want to buy this business?

Then start, to Christina's point, have a plan for how you're moving this business, moving yourself and not being the face, having it have its own brand, and moving it towards something that can be acquired. Then that acquisition provides you with a good chunk, maybe not all of it, maybe all of it.

So then you're saying okay, so if I want to be able to get 5x my revenue, I need to get it up to 10 million in annual revenue. When we hit 10 million, I'm going to sell it with the goal of getting somewhere between 30 to 50 million. That's a huge chunk of that number. Then you've got time. Or maybe you say I only want to sell if I can hit my FIRE number, you know. So just figuring out what that looks like.

Amon: We did a combination of things. So we were setting aside money into the stock market just from our income. But then we had these real estate deals that gave us these big windfalls. So whenever we had a huge chunk of money, we knew exactly where to put it towards our FIRE number.

So I think, I mean, you really have to look at it holistically. But you should always be putting that money aside for your long term goals. Because let's say your business fails, and you don't want to have, it's almost like investing in one asset, one individual stock.

Rachel: And nothing else.

Amon: So if you're just banking on selling your business in order to achieve financial independence, that's very, very risky. You’ve got to put that money aside. You have to put some money aside into the stock market or into other assets. One of the reasons why we feel so secure in our financial independence is because we have a diverse portfolio of assets.

We just don't have investments in the stock market. We also have real estate. We also have income that’s being generated from our other businesses as well. So, we're not involved in those businesses, but I think it's important to look at it from a holistic approach and have multiple things.

Rachel: Yes, same. I'm invested in all of those asset classes. I'm also invested in tech startups, which are more risky. There's one that's the riskiest. There's one that has huge, huge potential, but it's also risky. Then there's one that's pretty safe because of how long they've been in business. So that's money that will eventually be able to go into that pot, right, when they when that business sells or IPOs.

So those are different asset classes that I'm in. Real estate also, stock market, and then also Hello Seven. So you’ve got to diversify. It's an important part of it, part of the journey. So make sure all your money isn't just in your business. Some of it you're pulling out and putting in other classes. Okay, last question then we're going to wrap it up because I think we've got to go to lunch.

Female Speaker 4: Also I’ll tell you when you're looking at a house, go ahead and contact a real estate agent. If you find a house where over a set number of years, you can flip like some investments into it because it is the assets. Then as part of your planning, you can make like a million, two million.

Rachel: Right, exactly. So it's like you could buy it in an up and coming neighborhood, or you can buy a really, like I did this twice. I bought the wackest, most broke down house in the baddest neighborhood ever. So it's there's a lot of work to be done over time. But then when you do that work, there's a huge upside. So it's like being strategic so that it aligns, like what you purchased, aligns with your plan.

Jaquelyn: Multiplies the asset. My question was on this term, I'm really interested in international real estate and adding that to our portfolio. Allison, my wife, and I really like Spain or Italy, but I know Portugal allows more of that. So just what to be on our radar as far as looking at international properties and how that works if we want that as part of our FIRE plan?

Amon: Yeah. So when you invest abroad, I think one of the things that a lot of foreign investors, or one of the biggest challenges are the changing laws and regulations. So one of the things that's happening right now, especially in Portugal, Spain, I think a lot of these southern European countries, is that prices are going up so high that it's not becoming affordable for the locals.

They're seeing foreign investors like oh. They're trying to make it harder for them to get involved. So that's your biggest issue when you're investing abroad is understanding what the regulation and investment climate is like for foreign investors.

Rachel: Yes. You can find an opportunity that aligns what is helpful to the locals and actually what would benefit you as well. Like in Puerto Rico, there's this huge opportunity. They're trying to make hospitality a bigger part of their GDP.

So they will give you investment, like they will give you huge tax incentives to buy like something that you turn into a bed and breakfast. They're trying to get more hotel rooms available on the island basically. So like not necessarily short term rentals. They're not going to give you money for an Airbnb.

But if you set up a little like small boutique hotel or bed and breakfast type situation, they give you a massive tax incentive to do that because they know it's in their interest. It's in their part of their economic plan to bring more tourism to Puerto Rico. So that's what they're trying to do.

So you can get that huge advantage, right, and be contributing in a way that Puerto Rico is asking you to contribute. So then you're aligned. So I think if you do research, you can find those opportunities where there's alignment there. Then it makes sense because.

Jaquelyn: Through agents or economic coach?

Amon: The agents aren't really going to get you there.

Rachel: I feel like you’ve got to know people there.

Amon: Yeah. You really have to connect with local investors. People that are involved in that. There's investment groups.

Rachel: There's YouTube channels.

Amon: There's YouTube channels.

Rachel: I learned, actually what I just shared with you I learned on a YouTube channel and then had it confirmed by locals. Yes. So great question. All right, thank you so much.

Amon: Oh, we had a ball.

Hey y'all I hope you enjoyed this episode and learned so much. I hope you took notes, and I hope you plan to go take action on some of what was shared by Christina and Amon during this episode. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review. It makes such a difference in helping our podcasts get discovered by more people who want to learn how to become a billion dollar creator. We will see you next time. Don't worry, Nathan will be back next week. Bye y'all.

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