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At The Money: Considering a Career Change? How About FINFLUENCER? · Masters in Business

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: Radio. News.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Then I look at you. And the world's alright with me.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Just one look at you. And I know it's gonna be.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: A lovely day. Ever think of becoming a finfluencer? Shifting
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: your career to TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube? It could be
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: both interesting and lucrative. To help us unpack this and
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: what it might mean for your career, let's bring in
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Tyler Gardner. He taught economics, eventually becoming a financial advisor
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: and portfolio manager. But then he pivoted to a financial
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: media business, eventually reaching more than 6 million followers. His book,
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Real Wealth, Make Money Work for You, arrives December 1st, 2026.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: So Tyler, let's start in the beginning of your career.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: What pulled you out of education and into finance?
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  Speaker 1: I think the easiest way to sum it up is
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: I've never been pulled out of education. There was a point,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: I remember the meeting specifically, it was with our faculty
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: at a school in Connecticut where we had a representative
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: from TIA CREF who came to talk about retirement funds
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: and not One colleague of mine could understand what this
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: person was talking about when they were saying expense ratios
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: or target date funds. And I left saying there's a
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: big problem if 110 truly educated adults in this world
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: cannot understand a basic concept of expense ratio. And so
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: I wanted to add education to the financial component here.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: And I realized at some point along the educational career
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  Speaker 1: in high school, I liked talking to my colleagues a
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: little more about money than I liked talking about semicolons
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  Speaker 1: in class to 15-year-olds. I didn't try to eliminate it.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: I just started to have this vision that becoming a
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: financial advisor or portfolio manager would be education for finance.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: And I'd get to go teach these things and learn
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: these things. So that was the initial inspiration for the pivot.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: You know, some people would say the complexity and impenetrable
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  Speaker 2: jargon is a feature, not a bug, because, hey, if
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: you don't understand what financial people are saying, or for
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: that matter, contractors or doctors or lawyers, what have you, well,
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: then you have to pay.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Them for their expertise.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: But let's leave that cynicism aside. You eventually become both
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: a financial advisor and a portfolio manager. What surprised you
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: about how wealth management actually operated as an industry?
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  Speaker 1: Phenomenal question because that's all it was. It was a
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: big surprise. I worked with great people. I'll start with this.
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  Speaker 1: It was a small RIA in Vermont. And the reason
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: I was drawn to that specific RIA is that unlike
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: some of the bigger corporate wealth management firms– They really
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: struck me as valuing education. So again, I got brought
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: into this world thinking I had this real ideal vision
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: that I'd move back to Vermont. I'd get to educate
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: people in my own hometown when I came back. And
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: the biggest surprise was that the majority of people who
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: wanted us to manage their wealth didn't want to be
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: educated on managing their wealth. They wanted us to manage
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: their wealth. And there was a great irony in the
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: fact that so many people, particularly high net worth individuals...
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: wanted to give the assets and say, don't call me,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: I'll call you. We're all set. I'm paying for the convenience.
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  Speaker 1: And that surprised me. I was really looking forward to
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  Speaker 1: a scenario in which I had a daily class with
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: people or a daily coffee where people would flock to
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: wanting to learn more about index funds and low-cost investing.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: It didn't quite work like that.
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  Speaker 2: So how did the social media experiment begin? You're a
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: natural teacher- What led you to say, well, if my
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: clients aren't asking me to educate them, I'm just going
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: to educate everybody else? How did that really start?
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  Speaker 1: Well, I think, again, to give credit to the initial
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: RIA for which I worked, they noticed very quickly just
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: what you just said. They noticed and were drawn to
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  Speaker 1: the fact that I love to educate. And so they
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: brought their marketing team in and we started doing some
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: short form videos together. they as a firm said, look,
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  Speaker 1: this is a really powerful way to reach an abundance
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  Speaker 1: of people beyond a very small state in New England.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: And we want to get the message out. So we
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: started doing videos. We just weren't positioning them correctly. And
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: when I say correctly, I mean, I think we were
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: putting the majority of them on our firm's website and
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: maybe every now and then putting some on LinkedIn. And
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: they just weren't going anywhere. There was no real reach
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: or power. And so when I first really saw the
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: power of, TikTok and Instagram and Facebook. I go, this
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  Speaker 1: is the disconnect and this is where, but they knew
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  Speaker 1: early on that education combined with a considerable reach of
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  Speaker 1: these platforms was very powerful. We just never could hone
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: it as well as I know we all wanted to.
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  Speaker 2: There are lots and lots of stories of people putting
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: stuff on LinkedIn and Facebook and TikTok and YouTube and
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  Speaker 2: doesn't really generate a response, doesn't get a whole lot
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  Speaker 2: of follows, a whole lot of likes. At what point
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  Speaker 2: was there a specific video or a post that persuaded you, hey,
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: there might be a real audience here?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. The number one reason. So I came home after
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: doing probably– we had probably done 10 videos as a firm.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: And I came home and my wife was actually scrolling TikTok.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: And she said, you got to look at this person.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: They're talking about a Roth IRA. And it's really funny.
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  Speaker 1: And I looked at the video and it was funny.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: It was engaging. And the person didn't know what a
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Roth IRA was. So I look at this. I said, hon,
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  Speaker 1: this isn't actually how a Roth IRA works. And so
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: I started going down the rabbit hole because there had
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: been 2 million views on this video and it was
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: complete misinformation. So what I found when I delve a
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: little bit more into the rabbit hole, I found there
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: were a lot of people on these platforms who were
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: very engaging and could speak very confidently and articulately. And
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: they were just flat out wrong. And then the people
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: who were really accurate and data driven and who had
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: done all the work. or who had actually been PMs
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: or financial advisors for 20 years, some of them didn't
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  Speaker 1: quite know how to engage. So I looked at it
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: and said, just from a business standpoint, there's a real
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: gap in social media of someone who actually can educate
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  Speaker 1: in a simple way, somebody who's used to taking very
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: complex ideas and trying to make them digestible in 30
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: seconds or less, and is able to also actually bring
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: data points in. I almost took it as a big
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: challenge initially of how can we do this? I look
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: at it as an art form of how can you
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: package something that most of the world doesn't want to
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: think about on a daily basis, finance, investing, and make
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: it something fun. Was there a specific video early? No,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: it was more the gap in the marketplace that made
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: me want to pursue it.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: Everybody I've dealt with over the years who is both
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: at a regulated shop, be it SEC or FINRA or
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: state regs, and is a creator, blogger, videographer, podcaster, whatever,
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: runs into some issues with their firm. Way back when,
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: some of the big wire houses, when Twitter first came out,
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: would give their advisors a list of approved tweets. Like here,
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: choose from this menu, you know that's going to get
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: no pickup at all. I got really lucky. My general
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: counsel back in 0203, before that, nobody knew, nobody understood,
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: nobody cared. I was on GeoCities and then Typehead. Nobody
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: said a word because what the hell is social media?
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: What the hell is blogging? But I was lucky to
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: have a general counsel who said, listen, about all these
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: posts you're doing, you could talk about the market, the economy, sectors,
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: whatever you want. You cannot say buy Microsoft. You cannot
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: say sell Dell. No buys or sells and you're good.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: I learned that was really lucky. What was your experience
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: like with legal and compliance?
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: I won't say it was quite as loose and I
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: envy what you just said because, man, do I want
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: to come work for that firm. Yeah. And I might
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: have stuck around a lot longer had we kind of
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: appreciated or had counsel appreciated the flexibility of what we
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: might be able to do. But even before I answer
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: that question, just to be fair, I remember when I
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: was studying for both Series 65 and CFA, they would
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: always have a section, and this was probably six years back,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: seven years back, on social media. And exactly what you're saying, like,
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  Speaker 1: what is the regulation behind social media right now? The
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: punchline every time was, we don't know yet. We don't
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  Speaker 1: know what this is. We don't know what to regulate.
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  Speaker 1: We're going to have to come up with these rules
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  Speaker 1: on a fly. Is this person a registered advisor? Is
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: this person a representative? Are they a solicitor? And so
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: the initial draw to produce it, obviously, was the power
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  Speaker 1: that it had. The initial challenge was both on a
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: state level and on a federal level, We, as a
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: small RIA, wanted to be very, very careful about what
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: we said and how we said it. And even though, yes,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: at the end of the day, it was probably just a, hey,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: don't recommend buying or selling individual securities, we took it
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: so far on the prudent level of just saying, look,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: let's make this very, very educational. Don't ever name specific funds.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Don't ever name specific drawdown rates. because you never wanted
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: to conflate any of this with potential advice. And so
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  Speaker 1: I think that the real future for anybody in this space,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: and again, this is wide open. I mean, there's only
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: a handful of us who have actually kind of made
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  Speaker 1: it to a big platform here. The future is basically
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: anyone who kind of is able to say, I know
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  Speaker 1: what to say within limits. I know this is not
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: against regulations. And I'm going to market myself and how
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: I think. There's still so much room there to grow.
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  Speaker 2: No doubt about it. So you began your career as
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: a teacher. I'm curious, what did you learn in the
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: classroom that ultimately made you a better communicator of complex
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  Speaker 2: finance ideas?
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: Sure. Nobody wanted to be in the classroom inherently. I'll
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: start with that. Other than a handful of students... The
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: beauty of starting, I think, any career as a teacher
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: is that you're fighting, I won't say a losing battle,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: but you're fighting against a group of people who collectively
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: want their attention to be elsewhere, which is actually very different, obviously,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: from social media because people self-select to go onto social
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: media and to be in a place. And if they're
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: watching you, they want to. But initially, the challenge was,
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: how can I get a room of 18-year-old students who
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: who would literally rather be doing anything other than sitting
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: in this chair on this May day in gorgeous rural Connecticut,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: how can I get them to engage with an essay
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: by Virginia Woolf? And again, it always was a game
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: to me. It always was a challenge and an art
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: of what can I say and how can I say it?
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: Not just to capture their attention, but to get them
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: to feel like they have some sort of stake in
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: what this is. And that was where it was, is
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: once you were implicated in If I could communicate to
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: someone you're implicated in this class, you have a stake here. Uh,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: then I would find obviously more ownership and going forward,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: but there, but as far as communication goes, it was again,
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: just a matter of, we had a very scarce resource,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: which was time. And how do I get as much
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: into this time as possible?
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: At what point did you find posting financial content, uh,
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: morphed from a side hustle to, hey, this could actually
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: be a real career.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I'd say the easiest way to say it is
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: when I started making enough money for it to be
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: a real career and when I could actually pay the bills.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: But when we first, I'd say when I first pivoted,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: I left my W2 job and I took a leap
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: of faith two years ago. And the reason I took
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: a leap of faith is that at that point, I
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: had opened up an educational one-on-one coaching option. You could
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: come talk to me for an hour about how to invest,
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: types of investments, never advice, all obviously education, always general
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: as possible. What stuck out to me is I couldn't
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: open up enough slots to fill the immediate demand of
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: And I couldn't raise my prices high enough, quickly enough
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: to kill that initial demand or to temper it, if
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: you will. So instantly you see, oh my gosh, there
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: is a massive amount of people here who want this
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: type of information and they're willing to pay a lot
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: of money for it. They're willing to be present with it.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: I got out of the consulting part very quickly because, again,
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: back to the regulatory component, I didn't love– it seemed
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: like way too much of a gray area. And no
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: matter how many contracts somebody signs saying this isn't advice,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: I'm not your advisor, I did not feel comfortable having
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: someone ever leave a conversation thinking that they might be
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: getting advice from somebody. But that was exactly the time
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: when I said, look– This platform, wherever we go and
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: whatever we sell, this platform has so much power now
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: that I'm comfortable leaving the $ 100, 000 a year W-2 to
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: really see what we can do with this.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: So you left not one, but two very stable, relatively safe,
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: pretty comfortable jobs to sort of jump into something that
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: is risky and there was no guarantee that it.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Was going to work.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: What did your friends, family, colleagues think? And what was
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: your own biggest fear?
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: I think now, now that I would say I've allowed
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: myself to believe that the endeavor is quasi-successful now. So
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: now I've actually gotten the truth from people about how
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: they felt two years ago when I first made this pivot.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: And Almost everybody thought it wasn't going to work, that
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: this was a fad, that the attention economy is so
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: cyclical that you might be the internet's favorite person for
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: a week and then fail miserably. And that was obviously
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: the challenge was trying to think about sustainability and consistency.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: But early on, they made fun of it. And I
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: think every single person who either considers themselves an influencer
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: or somebody else considers them an influencer, you have to
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: go through what we all call the cringe phase. Where
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: you're producing terrible content because you're just not good yet.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Just like anything else, you've got to learn how to
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: do it through trial by error. And most people don't
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: want to go through that phase. Your friends all make
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: fun of you and they laugh. And it's very easy
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: in that moment to say, I want to quit. And
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, things start to shift when
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: you start getting some of the deals. But those don't
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: come for six months to a year of daily torture
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: and ridicule from the friends, the family. And it's not
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: that they doubt you as a person. They just kind
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: of doubt that this is a thing that a lot
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: of people are capable of, that if you really just
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: sit down and say, look, we can make this happen
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: because it doesn't happen to everybody.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fascinating. Doug DiMuro of Cards and Bids and
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: his own YouTube channel, I think his YouTube channel has
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: six or seven million subscribers. He's talked about The first
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: few years of doing video, he had very little pickup
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: and he was also writing a column and occasionally doing
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: a video review on a column. And one day a
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: reader wrote in and said, Doug, the video reviews are
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: the most interesting part. I don't want to read the column.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: Why don't you do more of that? and an entire
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: business was born. Did you have a moment like that
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: where it became clear, oh, if I emphasize this, this
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: will work out? Or was it really just a grind
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: to build those numbers up to quarter million, half million.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: And at what point is it clear this is a viable,
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: sustainable business? Is it a million subscribers, a half a
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: million subscribers? Where do you hit that number?
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, just like money, I think you and
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: anyone listening will understand this as well as anyone. Your
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: follower account very quickly becomes identical to your bank account.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: It's never enough, Barry. You think you want to hit
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: a million and that will somehow give you that you know,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: little endorphin hit and you'll be satisfied. That's not enough.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: Once you're at one, you want to be at 10.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Once you're at 10, you want to be better than
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: that competitor who you have always been going after. So
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: as far as is it enough or what was the moment?
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: There's never a moment. And the algorithms now, too, just
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: to get a little technical about it, it ultimately on
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: most of these channels, it doesn't actually matter how many
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: followers you have anymore. As far as the reach potential,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: you could you could create a tick. This is where
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: I'd like to inspire anyone to try it. You can
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: create a TikTok account tomorrow. Your video has an equal
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: chance to go viral as mine. And as you mentioned,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: I have millions of followers across these platforms, but it's
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: the best immediate feedback system in the entire world. It
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: beats every type of job I've ever had. If you
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: produce crap, you don't get reach. It's not a matter
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: of millions of followers. It's if you don't make something
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: entertaining and of value and engaging for those 60 seconds.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: If you don't earn someone's 30 to 60 seconds, it
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: doesn't go anywhere. So it's kind of a self-selecting process, again,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: of you're either good or you're not. But the people
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: with millions of followers obviously have in some way honed
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: the skill. You don't get to that level without kind
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: of honing the skill to begin with.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about that algorithm for a moment. What
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: attracted me to your videos was you weren't doing anything
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: clickbaity or sexy or outrageous to garner clicks. In fact,
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: you're very much a salmon swimming upstream against the tide
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: of that sort of stuff. How do you preserve that? accuracy,
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: and nuance when all of these platforms, they reward speed, oversimplification, outrage. Hey,
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: if you can make somebody furious and angry by manipulating
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: their emotions, you're much more likely to get viral than
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: by saying, and here's how you do a Roth IRA
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: conversion correctly. Right.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, you just summed it up flawlessly,
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: absolutely flawlessly. And anyone who's been doing this for a
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: little while who claims they don't know that is lying.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: If I go on and I make a video that
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: just pokes at people a little bit or nudges people
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: or alienates them, you're going to get more attention. Or
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: if you say something that you know is a little
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: bit less than nuanced and is lacking a little information,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: you know what you're doing. How I look at it,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: and I would say how I justify some of the
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: videos in which I know dang well I don't do
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: due diligence and go down as far. as I could
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: on the complexity of this. A, again, it's a limited
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: resource of 30 to 60 seconds. B, my goal at
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: this point is all social media from TikTok, Facebook, YouTube shorts.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: That's all top of funnel. for me. So even if
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: someone thinks I'm a complete ding-dong who doesn't do something
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: due diligence on TikTok, my goal is to get them
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: to read my newsletter. On the newsletter, I don't cut
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: corners because now I've got someone who is self-selected into
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: a system where they're willing to read that nuance and
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: they want that. So you invite that. That to me
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: is where I try to build more credibility. Same with
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: the podcast, right? So both of those longer form I
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: just want people, I want to get the attention on
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: the short form to get them to a place where
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: I say, look, now can you trust that I didn't
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: really think that social security was something you should decide
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: in 30 seconds after listening to me talk about it
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: and poke you like everyone should take it at 62.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: I do want to go through this, but again, if
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: you try to provide nuance in the short form, you're
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: not going anywhere. So it is kind of, it's almost
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: like a line I heard in Yellowstone the other day
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: where They're talking about politics and the game of politics
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: before you get the position is you kind of have
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: to poke and alienate and unfortunately be maybe I won't
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: say a lesser version of your moral self than you
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: want to be. But there are corners you have to
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: cut to get the attention that the video will attract
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: to get where people want to go once they're there.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: then I think you have the responsibility to say, look,
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: now that I earned a little bit of your attention,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: trust me, I'll reward you with real information and not
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: clickbait nonsense.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: What I'm hearing is that you have to adapt your
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: message to each format and make it fit into that
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: in order to work your way down the funnel. So
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: let's talk about that funnel. You start with short form videos,
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: eventually a newsletter, a podcast, and now a forthcoming book. Um,
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: was that a very purposeful conscience set of decisions to,
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: to keep the focus on the in-depth education or did
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: it just evolve? It evolves.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: I I'd be, I'd be creating a narrative where none exists.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: If I pretended that any of this was according to
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: some grand master plan.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I heard a great line years back
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: of your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: and where this has gone is If you had asked
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: me two years ago, I was creating monthly reflections on
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: where I wanted the business to go. For one year,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: I would look at my notes and it said, don't
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: ever do a newsletter because a newsletter is stupid and
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: it's a joke. And then I remember reading something from
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Tim Ferriss where he said, you're a joke if you
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: don't do a newsletter because it's the only place where
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: you gather the asset of the email address and they
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: can't take it away from you. And so when TikTok
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: went through its little temporary 24-hour ban, that actually really
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: shut down in the US. For one day, there was
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: no TikTok. And instantaneously, I went from having built two
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: years of this slightly credible platform that had good reach
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: to nothing. And I had no control. They just shut
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: down the system. And I said, look, if I don't
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: diversify these digital assets, I'm being just as much of
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: an idiot as I say people are with money when
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: they don't diversify their assets in an account, in an
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: IRA or a 401k.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: You have to own your own content. You have to
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: own your own platform and use these other platforms to
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: drive the traffic to something that can't... I mean, years ago,
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: I was on Six Apart platform, movable type. And they eventually,
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: years after I moved to WordPress, they shut it down.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: And we've seen GeoCities was shut down. We've seen all
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: sorts of changes to different algorithms, if you're ultimately not
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: driving people to something that you own, you're at the
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: mercy of these giant technology corporations and they could care
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: less about you. I saw a video of yours recently
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: where you discuss the concept of using your time and
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: wealth is really about how much time you have to yourself.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: But you make the case that it's really knowing what
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: to do with your time is the big value. And
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: I want to add something to the concept of building
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: your own business, which is agency, the ability to control
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: what you do, how you do it, who you do
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: it with, and how you spend your time and when
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: you do different things. Talk a little bit about how
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: this pivot to social media and content creation has really
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: given you much more agency over your time and your work.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Sure. I think just building on exactly what you just said,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: I don't believe that humans hate work. I don't. I
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: don't buy it. I don't think I ever will. I
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: think humans don't like being told what to do and
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: working with people they don't respect. The second you can
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: get out of that and kind of have your own
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: agency or your own authorship or autonomy, call it whatever
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: you will, instantaneously, you now have the capacity to go
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: work with other people that you say, oh, I really
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: do respect this person or I'm really drawn to this
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: person's energy. And then your energy goes up and you
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: look at this. And again, this is entrepreneurship 101 of
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: once you have control over your time, you say, wait
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: a minute, I do want to be engaged in these projects.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: And you hear over and over again, the people that
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: exit businesses at let's say 35 or 40, and they
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: come into the windfall of a couple tens of million bucks.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: They don't go sit on a beach for the next
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: 40 years. Within one year, they're looking for another project.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: Everybody I know goes through a nice honeymoon where they
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: think they made it. And then they're looking for another project.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: So for me, when I switched to this, the heaven
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: on earth that I created was, again, just being able
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: to wake up and say, if I want to work
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: on a great podcast script today, I can do that
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: for 10 hours. If I want to go film 20
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: videos today, I can do that. And our minds, as
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: we all know, some days we're on and some days
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: we're not on. And so when we have our own agency,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: when I think I'm really on and the energy is
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: good and I've had good positive interactions, I can go
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: out and I do go out into the woods and
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: that's when I film my videos. But just like everybody else,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: I have very crappy days. And if you're the W2 employee, unfortunately,
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: you have a crappy day. You're still showing up for
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: that same type of work. If you have your own agency,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: I can say, this is a down day. I'm not
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: putting myself out there today. I'm going to write some
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: more today or think about a chapter today. So it's
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: the greatest gift I've ever had is the agency to
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: choose when I work and with what energy.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: Really fascinating. Last question. So someone who's considering a career change,
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: they want to become a creator, a finfluencer, they want
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: to move from something safe to something risky. What sort
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: of advice do you have for those people? Sure.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: And I think I know you know this because I've
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: read a piece where you talk about this, but a
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: lot of people don't, in my mind, think about risk
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: in the way that they say they think about risk.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: So you just set up the polar concept that if
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: I go to a job like this, it's more risky
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: than if I don't. Whereas I always try to push
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: people just a little bit to say, look, the biggest
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: risk is you sit in the current job you have
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: for 20 years as a safe W-2 employee. And that's fine.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: I get it. You got the bills to pay. But
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: your upside is so capped, you have no idea. And
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: I would just say that the two things I value
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: most in life at this point, obviously, the cliched one
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: is owning my time. But because I own my time,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: I have the ability to focus on a daily basis
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: on anything I want to focus on. And so the
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: risk to me is that you get your one life
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: taken away for 20 to 30 years and you're not
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: focusing on a daily basis on the things you want
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: to focus on. And as just with the entrepreneurial spirit,
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: I would tell anyone who wants it, the concept of
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: risk is way more applicable in my mind to losing
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: out on what you could have done than if you
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: go try something. And if it doesn't work out after
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: a year, after two years, after a real effort, what
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: I don't think enough people understand, you can go back.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: I trust that you can go back to whatever you
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: were currently hired for. I trust, maybe not at that company,
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: but I trust that you can find another stable type
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: of position where you say, I'm back in the W2 land.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: But you'd never know unless you went out there. And
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: now the upside is insane. As you know, once you
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: start your own business, I'm blown away with where the
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: upside goes, not just on a monetary level, But also
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: just with time and decisions and the fact that I
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: get to make these decisions now. So I'd tell everybody
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: you got to try it for at least six months.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: You got to get through that initial phase where everybody
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: wants to quit and everybody does quit. Everybody I know
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: who wants to start social media and says, oh, I
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: could do this too. It's just like the New Year's
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: resolution of going to the gym in January. you quit
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: within two weeks because you didn't immediately get a million followers.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: And I'll just say this has been a trek for
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: four years now to get to this point. So none
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: of this is easy. None of this is overnight. Any
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: story about viral sensations and someone just blows up, that's
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: not how it works. You grind and you grind every
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: day and you learn and you get there, but it
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: has been worth every second and I would tell anybody
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: with the power of these platforms and the fact that
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: it's free, it's a hundred percent free to market yourself
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: and your brand, however you want. If you're not trying
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: this with your business, you're missing out on an incredible
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: opportunity that might not be there in 10 years. Really,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: really fascinating.
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: So to wrap up, if you're in a job where
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: perhaps you're not being challenged or you're a little bored
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: or lack the sort of agency that and enthusiasm that
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: you'd like to have, and you're creative and a good
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: communicator and have the ability to educate or inform or
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: entertain people, consider adding social media influencer to part of
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: your repertoire.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: Who knows?
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: It might become a new career. I'm Barry Ritholtz. This
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: is Bloomberg's At The Money.