I chat to Matt Raad from the eBusiness Institute to get an update on the current state of online business, and ask whether AI has destroyed the business model or is it still a valid strategy to reach financial independence?
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Is online business still worth it in 2026?
Episode #69 – Is online business still worth it in 2026?
Show Notes
Transcript Podcast episode #69 – Is online business still worth it in 2026?
This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.
Episode 69 Is Online Business still worth it in 2026?
Captain FI:[00:00:00] All right. Welcome back to the podcast. It has been a minute, but here we are. Today I’m joined by Matt Raad from the eBusiness Institute, someone I’ve had on the show multiple times over the years talking about online business as a pathway to financial independence. Now, when we had Matt on the podcast the very first time, and this was over six years ago, the model was pretty clear.
You could think of websites almost like digital real estate. You’d buy or build a site, grow traffic through content, use SEO to rank it, and once you had traffic, you’d monetize with ads or affiliates. And you could then either hold it for cash flow, just like receiving dividends from a share portfolio or rent from an investment property, or you could sell it down the track.
So what has happened? a fair bit has changed. We’ve seen an explosion of AI as a big disruptor in content [00:01:00] creation. We’ve seen Google search results evolving fast and arguably a lot more competition entering the space. So what used to feel like a fairly repeatable playbook might not be so straightforward anymore.
So in today’s episode, I wanna dig into what’s actually changed, what is still working, and what’s quietly died off to answer ultimately whether online business is still a credible path to financial independence in 2026. Matt, a very big welcome. How have you been, mate?
Matt Raad: Just awesome, Captain Fire. It is so good to be back here.
What an awesome intro, and you’ve summed it up perfectly and can’t wait to dive in here and help your listeners get answers to all the, I’m sure the questions they have around this space because it– Captain Fire, I’m gonna come out swinging. You knew I’d say this. It is still awesome way to get financial independence, I should be saying on your podcast, shouldn’t
Captain FI: I?
Absolutely. No, it is a great way to make money. In fact I still [00:02:00] operate a portfolio of websites. Yep … i’m sure anyone who’s a long-term listener of the podcast is obviously gonna be very familiar with your name and the eBusiness Institute. Myself being a previous student I did Champions twice.
So I’ve- Yeah … benefited from a lot of coaching with Matt and Liz and some of the other coaches at the eBusiness over the years. I do still make money from AdSense and, affiliate deals on my websites. And- Awesome … I’ve even recently sold off a bunch, which I guess we can talk to a bit later in the episode.
Now I must say usually when I do the intros I’ll talk a little bit about the person’s background, but honestly, Matt, I feel like we all know you really well by now, so Thanks, Captain Fi … I hope you don’t mind me cutting straight to the chase.
Matt Raad: I wanna cut straight to the chase too, because this is something I think you’ve timed this interview with me really well as well, because the dust is starting to settle and we’re seeing where the opportunities lie now.
So y- you’re so correct, it has [00:03:00] been an interesting space over the last, say, year or two but now i- it’s pretty clear-cut, b- as far as you can be in this AI age. What I can share, Captain Fi, is what’s working and what we’re seeing in our community.
Captain FI: Awesome. And I remember, like, when I was doing Champions, I think it was ’22, ’23 myself and a few of the other students were I guess you’d call us early adopters in some of the AI tools- Yeah
Particularly Mangools Surfer. We- Surfer SEO. Yeah, we experimented with some of the content generation. I personally didn’t find AI content generation to be ver- very successful for my portfolio. So- Yeah. Yeah … but I just more used it for I guess the soft stuff and when it comes down to like planning and that kind of stuff.
But, hey look let’s dive into it. So I just wanna set the scene I guess re- reconnect and set the context. So I guess first question, it’s it has been over a year since we last spoke on the podcast. Yeah … how would you describe, in [00:04:00] 2026, the state of online businesses as a pathway to financial independence?
Matt Raad: I’d say everything’s changed, but then everything’s still the same. So the foundations still work, we’re still seeing it work, and most importantly for us and people in our community, say if you’re buying and selling online businesses, it is 100% a buyer’s market now. And if you know what you’re doing, it is a very exciting time because AI has, is obviously the big disruptor.
It’s created some pretty big challenges for what you’ve rightly mentioned, stand- the standard content site model, which in the good old days, which is just two years ago, worked absolutely brilliantly, okay? And it was a, quite a passive strategy. It’s like you guys with real estate or shares and stuff.
But these days I would say just to kick off the podcast, it’s more active now, but I think there’s even more opportunity once you understand what’s happening, and [00:05:00] who knows what the future holds anyway. But just what we’re seeing, what we can do with AI, we’re getting, so Captain Fi, we’re getting complete beginners within six months to nine months s- realizing they can quit their jobs and replace their incomes just working from home off a laptop or wherever they want.
Captain FI: Wow. Now
Matt Raad: that’s- That’s pretty cool …
Captain FI: that’s, yeah that’s pretty incredible. My experience was, yeah, definitely more that slow and steady progression to that, that inflection or the lighthouse moment as- Yeah … as I know you and Liz used to teach. Yep. And that used to take a couple of years.
Matt Raad: Yeah. It, oh, good point. So it did used to take a couple of years, whereas now we’re seeing it, within 12 months, the results, and you can see on our podcasts and stuff, like the results of the students are getting now, Captain Fi, they’re standing on the shoulders of giants like yourself.
You’re a big success story and I think that inspires everyone. But also because of the new tools and the opportunities are out there. But you do need to be a lot smarter. And what I’ll start out by saying [00:06:00] is we’re talking about the online businesses, right? As a pathway to financial independence.
So this is how myself and Liz, my wife, and lots of our friends and lots of obviously all our community are doing it. And what I want to say is, whilst it’s changed, obviously it’s alive and well. Okay? So stop and think about this, Captain Fi, and if you’re listening to this right now, if you’ve, if, even if you’ve never made money online, just let’s we can fact-check in a minute, which I will do for you, but just at its very basic level, no matter what AI’s done, I’d just like to ask you this question: do websites still exist?
What do you reckon, Captain
Captain FI: Fi?
Matt Raad: Yeah.
Captain FI: Yeah, of course they are.
Matt Raad: But there’s still, what is it? They reckon there’s one and a half, I think there’s something like five billion websites worldwide. There’s one and a half billion. Now, as a human, I can’t comprehend that number. There’s, they reckon there’s one and a half billion webs- active websites.
Out of that one and a half billion, you’ve [00:07:00] got to be able to find one that makes money. And I know I say that- Absolutely … frequently, but literally we are talking millions of websites out there to choose from, and there’s a lot of different ways to make money. So in the past, we did teach content site strategy, which still works.
I’m gonna talk about that in a minute. There is still, even with that old playbook, Captain Fi, really interesting now that the dust has settled, our guys who are savvy are picking through the scraps and picking up absolute bargains, sites that despite themselves are making money, and they’re just giving a bit of a reno, and then they’re still passive again.
Now, you still, you definitely need to know what you’re doing there, and you need to be spending a bit more time to sift through the rubble, so to speak. But oh, Captain Fi, you would love the websites that these guys have bought. We’re talking under 10 grand, just mind-blowing. So- Yeah. Yeah … that happened as well.
Captain FI: So am I’m, not… Yeah, I’ll, it stands to reason that, with particularly AI content [00:08:00] generation, the barrier to producing content is a lot lower. Is zero. Yeah. But the flip side is, there’s probably a lot of rubbish out there. There is. Which, on the flip side again, makes the good content even more valuable because, yeah, things are just gonna stand out amongst the noise, so to speak.
Matt Raad: And you just nailed it, that on the head, and I don’t think people are reali- well, people are starting to realize that now. So AI is obviously impacting clicks, so everyone’s freaking out about it. And by the way, we’ve lived and breathed this for the last 15 years. There’s always been a Google update that impacts clicks or your rankings or whatever.
It’s just normal as an entrepreneur. If you’re gonna be an entrepreneur, you got to handle these challenges. There’s just, this one’s, one that creates a lot of opportunity here as well, but it is a big challenge at first. But the minute clicks become impacted, i.e. say clicks are becoming rarer, right?
What happens to any [00:09:00] rare resource? Goes up in value massively. So exactly as Captain Fi just said, what we’re seeing now is any website That has repeat traffic or a loyal following or does get clicks, and particularly if it’s in a nice niche and we can target it, they are gold. They’re what we call the diamonds in the rough, and that’s what basically you’re looking for.
And Captain Fire, what I’ll share with your listeners is first point, just don’t buy into this fear that websites don’t make money and that’s total BS. The, just open up your computer and, there’s website, there’s literally millions and millions of websites to choose from that are still making money.
But if you want a absolute data on that, so recently I interviewed Blake Hutchison, the CEO of Flipper. He came and spoke at one of our private events Captain Fire, that you would’ve been to in the past, at one of our boot camps, and he spoke to our community and he said, “Look,” exactly what I’m saying to you all here.
He [00:10:00] goes, “There’s a lot of noise around, even content sites not working anymore.” You know what he said, Captain Fire? Their deal flow has not changed. It hasn’t changed at all. They’re still to this day. So this is Flipper, which is the world’s biggest online marketplace for buying and selling websites.
They have 1.4 million active buyers at any one time. They’re still doing, they average 500 deals a month, which is exactly what they were selling two or three years ago.
Captain FI: Yeah. Awesome. I do- It’s pretty cool … love that, I do love that saying, the the pessimist sounds smart-
Matt Raad: Yeah …
Captain FI: but the optimist makes money.
Optimist make money. Yeah. Not that I’m, you know- They are
Matt Raad: on
Captain FI: GitHub. Absolutely. Not that I’m te- saying, telling anyone they need to rush in and, you
Matt Raad: know- Oh no. That’s the bit that’s changed. We need to talk about that. And, but, and I’ll just reiterate something as well.
So we’re seeing it in our own community, and again, coming from… So the reason I quote Blake, the CEO of Flipper he has, he’s a data man, right? And he [00:11:00] has to, he’s the CEO of this big tech company, basically, and he’s just looking up all the data and he just said “Yeah, we’re still doing the same amount of deals.
Interestingly, good content sites are still selling really well. They’re still very highly sought after by buyers because now that the dust has settled.” But most importantly, what he said has changed, and I believe you’re gonna ask, talk to me, you wanna find out about this, the main thing that’s changed from Flipper’s point of view, and by the way, this is replicated with all the brokers that I speak to behind the scenes.
The main thing that’s changed is what I said, it’s that it’s a buyer’s market. The valuations you can pick up bargains now or more importantly, on the really good websites that normally, that they’ll still sell for a good multiple, but the- There’s it’s a lot more flexible deal structure, so that’s a really exciting time to be a buyer.
So you can buy, you can’t buy websites for no money down or anything like that which is what you can do in America with bricks and mortar [00:12:00] businesses. That hasn’t that’s not available because these are still highly sought after assets. They’re very high cash flows with very low running costs, particularly with AI now.
So they still sell for good multiples, but you can definitely do what’s called seller financing. So you might put down half your money and you pay them out over five or six months. So say you buy a website for 100 grand, you might put down 50 grand or 60,000, and the other 40 to 30-odd thousand whatever you’d negotiate, can be paid out over 12 months.
And the cool thing is all the brokers now are onto this, and Blake said they’re training their brokers to accept those kind of deals. Now that’s pretty cool. I would like to also point out though- ‘Cause, and I remember,
Captain FI: yeah …
Matt Raad: you should be bargain hunting as well. When once you know what you’re doing and finding these, what we call diamonds in the rough, you can pick them up on what’s, we call a one times multiple.
So what they make in a year is what you pay. So basically you get your investment back in just 12 months. So imagine you buy a website for 10 [00:13:00] grand within 12 months you’ve made 10 grand. So that you can buy- Yeah, I recall that period … normally, you remember in your days you’re paying four to five times multiple.
So if you find- Yeah. Absolutely … the bargain sites, so this is where the bargain hunters start to make lots of money.
Captain FI: Yeah. It’s interesting. I do I do recall just on the talking about the seller financing there there was a couple of pretty big examples that, that have come up and obviously you mentioned a lot in the past about, say, Albawabs.
Matt Raad: Yeah.
Captain FI: Yeah. And, but more recently is it a Finn Peacocke with Solar Quotes. That was- Yeah. That was a big seller. Legion site. Solar, Solar Legion. Yep. And my understanding is it was bought by Origin for an undisclosed amount of money, an obscene amount. Which, you know- Yeah. Be an obscene amount
awesome. Well done. Well done, Finn. Very smart man. Ex-CSIRO engineer. And he now seems to be working for them. So there must be some kind of deal where he’s producing YouTube content, blog [00:14:00] articles, and that kind of stuff- Yeah … for a period of time.
Matt Raad: And you’ve just hit on something else that’s big now, is see how you said, “Oh, he’s working for them, and what he’s doing is-” Producing YouTube articles and blog articles.
So the content machine still needs to be created, and that bit is something that I’m really excited about because with AI I ca- it’s basically branding, right? And it’s about getting it out across the internet. That’s how you AI-proof things now. It’s very powerful. Everyone’s suddenly realized it, is jumping on it.
It’s a good thing for everyone, and that’s why people who don’t do that with their websites, they’re the bargain ones we wanna buy. The people that give up or the people that aren’t prepared to put in that sort of a work, ’cause it does take work, but it’s easy work. Oh man, we’re talking an hour a day at the most type thing with AI.
And I know I’m sounding flippant there, but I know, I’m experienced, I use AI every day. But we’ve got beginners doing the same. Captain Fi, I know I’m jumping around here a bit, but that is the exciting [00:15:00] new thing for us is where now we can do what’s called search everywhere optimization, and I think that’s the key to, or one of the keys to success with any sort of website.
And the other thing I’ll throw out there using Finn’s example, we actually teach this, as Captain Fi’s, that’s a lead gen site that he made all that money off and that sold for, it would be a significant sum to Origin. And as Captain Fi, in our community, we have a lot of success stories doing exactly that, and they’re really good websites to buy and do exactly what Origin’s done, is, just have a massive SEO, what I call an SEO footprint, a search everywhere optimization footprint.
So YouTube stuff like what you do with Captain Fi, podcast, putting content on LinkedIn, Facebook, all that sort of thing. And I wanna reiterate, once you know what you’re doing, that is very easily handled now with AI and automated and streamlined. So coming back to this idea, are these sites, passive?
No, they’re not quite as– it’s not like [00:16:00] the good old days, although hold that thought, I can share some really cool examples of ones that are. But if you wanna be super successful, then you’ve got to take action these days. And the cool thing is, there– this is still, like I said at the beginning of this podcast, in my opinion, I’ve been around buying and selling businesses, all kinds of businesses for30-odd years.
This is still, without a doubt, the best way to make money, is with an online-based business, and we use modern, digital marketing and AI techniques to grow it and expand it and to make lots of money. And I think it’s a, it’s literally the three Ws of wealth: work whenever you want, wherever you want, with whoever you want.
So might not be passive, but it means you can quit your job and work from home in your jimmy jams if you want or do the laptop lifestyle thing, which is what– I know a lot of you millennials and Gen Z-ers, that’s, that is a big thing now And even I didn’t realize, so we’re starting to get some really big success stories with millennials, and I didn’t realize you millennials have got it a lot harder than what we did.
So [00:17:00] let’s face it, in the good old days, someone in my age group just bought real estate. If you’d done that, you’re pretty much a millionaire now, right? Whereas you guys can’t do that. You, it’s, you it’s a lot harder to buy real estate, and I’ve never been a fan of real estate. My advice to someone is, man, get a online business going.
Captain FI: It’s interesting. I recently on your advice, I have been downsizing my portfolio of content sites, and this was something we were talking about before we pressed record for the podcast.
It really frees me up and reinvigorates me to work on, Yeah … the areas of my business that are cash flowing well. Yep. And yeah, I guess just to summarize what we’ve talked about for the last 10 minutes or so what would be some of the biggest changes you’ve
seen the
Captain FI: last 12 to 18 months around sort of Google updates, use of AI, and traffic?
Matt Raad: I think AI’s changed. We just have to adapt to how AI’s changed things happening online, and the good news is [00:18:00] there’s still, if you’re a go-getter, as long as you’re not expecting this to be passive, if you’re a go-getter and you wanna change your life and you want to build your own business asset that’s worth something other than just a pen when you retire, then this is the place to be, without a doubt.
Because AI’s opened up the world, but it’s mainly just a knowledge gap. You just need to understand what you’re looking for, and if you understand, say- Like how all this works, you can definitely find what we call diamonds in the rough, the assets that are being unrealized that have, w- they’re called…
You were looking for virtual assets in these websites, and they’re still out there. They’re actually even better or they’re more valuable in the right hands now. And we’re seeing our own students buying up or also building amazing online businesses that you can use AI to, to streamline.
So I think it’s still, it, in my opinion, this is still way easier than a nine-to-five job. [00:19:00] The f- it literally, if you’ve got the goal of the three Ws of wealth, which is what we call it, work whenever you want, wherever you want, with whoever you want. That’s what Liz and I decided on all those years ago.
Okay, you’ve got to work, but you’re not working nine to five, as Captain Fuck. Yeah. Might just be a couple hours a day through to, sometimes you’ve got to work 12-hour days, and that’s fine, but then you can take off for four weeks or whatever, and that’s what Liz and I are doing a lot of these days.
We’re semi-retired allegedly. We’re traveling once a month. But we’ve got lots of clients who are now millennials. This is also what’s changed. We’re seeing a lot of millennials suddenly twig onto this stuff, and they’re all it turns out they’re burnt out. They’re throwing in their jobs and doing this full-time, just working on a laptop, traveling around the world.
Pretty cool.
Captain FI: Yeah. Look, I must say my own personal experience, it took me a couple of years to really get it going. I think I started my first site in 2019 and retired in 2022, so it was about three years that it took me to build up. Mate, well done. Yeah. Thanks, Matt. I wouldn’t have been able to- It’s fantastic.
Awesome … wouldn’t have been able to [00:20:00] grow it, yeah, wouldn’t have been able to grow it without the guidance from yourself, Liz, and the coaches and the community as well which was pretty good, and the accountability. I must admit I’m just gonna g- put it out there, a bit of a public thanks to Matt.
The whole reason we’re even doing this interview is because he kept ringing me and he’s kicking my ass saying, “What’s going on?” You’re sitting on an asset. “
Matt Raad:You
Captain FI:haven’t published, you haven’t published in, in a whole year.” And I must admit- Yeah … I, the last two years for me we, we bought this acreage, this hobby farm, and I’ve been renovating and building and planting.
We’ve had a child, Yeah … and so being dad, it’s been awesome. And, the good news is my websites are continuing to tick along and grow. And even the ones that I haven’t really done anything with, they’re still growing. Yeah. The domain authority- Yeah … is growing. But the ones that my livelihood, that I derive an income from, they still tick over and still get traffic.
Yeah. Yes, the traffic has gone down but I’m still getting income from it, so
Matt Raad: Yeah, and this is, Ma- you’re the perfect example. I don’t think people would believe it, but [00:21:00] Captain Phi hasn’t worked for two years essentially, and yes, I have been gently nudging him along as his mentor. But the, Captain Phi, you’re the perfect example of what I’m talking about.
These sites are still working, they’re fine, and you could argue, and this is what I said to Captain, so for your viewers, Captain Phi, as I’ve been kicking your butt because I keep saying to you, “You are the perfect example of sitting on an unrealized asset. You are sitting on an amazing website asset there, and all you’ve got to do is reinvigorate it, and it’s it’s not quite like the good old days.
It’s pretty straightforward, though, what you’ve got to do, and we’re not talking working 9:00 to 5:00 or anything like that.” So what I want to say to people is, like Captain Phi, and now, and I will also point out, Captain Phi, you are an extreme example. I do not recommend just parking your websites for 12 months or more.
But you had a family, and you moved and all that sort of stuff, and, you’re just retiring. But the beautiful thing is, with websites, okay, what’s changed is you’ve got to work at them [00:22:00] now, but you can just park them for a month or so and go off traveling or whatever. They still sit there ticking along 24/7.
You’ve got to remember, websites are on th- this thing called the internet, but it’s not just on the internet now, they’re everywhere, okay? They’re connected to everything, like to social media accounts like LinkedIn, through to AI. So they’re incredibly well connected, and they work 24/7 with no barriers, no geographical barriers, and and it’s just electrons.
So if only you could figure out a way to make money out of that, you would be literally laughing, and that’s what we help people do.
Captain FI: Yeah. Yeah, it’s it’s a fantastic industry to be in. I’m very glad that I am in this space. So I guess just going back to the previous question the summary is, yes, in the last 12 to 24 months, the last couple of years AI has changed.
There’s some fantastic tools available. I guess the next thing I was gonna ask, AI, threat versus opportunity, has it been more of a threat to the [00:23:00] conventional process or is this an opportunity for online business owners? And, where do you think people might be getting this boundary blurred or getting it wrong?
Matt Raad: So I think on the surface, yeah, it’s been, it looks like it’s been a threat, okay? And it certainly has. For people that haven’t adapted to the, to what’s happening with AI or who have the wrong kind of websites, i.e. ones that are just mass-produced with generic content that was already written by AI, they’ve been slammed.
They’re down 90%. And but you can adapt them. So- Where the opportunity comes in is everything I’m talking about. Now that the dust has settled, we can see what’s been slammed, and you just avoid those, and you adapt your strategy, and we look for the diamonds in the rough. And also, we adapt the sorts of websites that we’re buying.
We’re not just buying sites that are reliant on content or traditional Google even. We don’t use Google as much anymore. That’s the other big thing that’s changed. So one of the, one of the opportunities that I’m really excited about, which is what I [00:24:00] mentioned with the gentleman that sold that big lead gen site that we’re all really excited about, isn’t it interesting that the buyer, Origin, are getting him to do exactly what we teach, which is, in advertent commas, the branding or the SEO footprint, the search everywhere optimization.
And that’s exactly how you can fix up a little tiny $5,000 website, by the way, and it works incredibly well if you’re smart about it and you’ve picked the right website. So there is a lot of opportunity there. And also there’s two other opportunities. I’ve talked about the diamonds in the rough, right?
Which is understanding what are the unrealized assets? But the big one I think that AI’s made very obvious to us, and what we’ve been teaching literally for the last two years, is for goodness sake, whatever website you have these days, it’s got to have a community of some kind to it.
That basically AI proofs it. And it’s interesting, again, that, the CEO of the biggest [00:25:00] online marketplace, Blake from Flippa, said exactly the same. And he said that forms what he would call a moat business. Like how Warren Buffett talks about having moat businesses online, that’s what’s giving us the moat right now, is any site that comes with a community or the ability to add a community of some kind.
So that community can be in the form of social media a LinkedIn following, typically it’s a Facebook following or Pinterest following or Instagram, something like that. Or from our point of view, we’re a bit more traditional, we love buying websites that have a big email list or a newsletter or a forum.
So something like that, that, that’s how did Blake word it? It’s like a moat. Yeah, it’s like the Warren Buffett investing idea of having a significant moat.
Captain FI: Just, I’ll just throw it out there. I’m currently selling my pet website- Good job
which has a Facebook group with over 1,000 people in it. So if anyone wants- With a moat or a community, then get in [00:26:00] touch. I say that obviously a bit tongue in cheek, but no, it obviously it makes a lot of sense. Now forgive my ignorance with the AI tools. Is there an AI tool to find these diamonds in the rough? Is it as simple as- Ooh. Can you type into ChatGPT, “Find me a undervalued website?” It’s just, Or how do we, how do you find them these days? Are you still looking through Flippa and other-
Matt Raad: Yes. Yeah … agencies? Manually.
Yeah. So really good question. So theoretically, yes, you can. You really gotta know what you’re doing, and ultimately you still gotta hunt through for the deals. And I think people– so think about this, Captain Fife, if it was that easy, everyone would be doing it type thing for a start. Although you do need knowledge.
But I’ll give you an example of one of our really successful students now is Ashlene. She is, she made your listeners might find this interesting, she made all her money out of crypto, right? So in America, in Silicon Valley, just burnt out millennial. And- She is doing, she like yourself I’ve been coaching her, [00:27:00] and she won our last year’s s- student grad- student of the year award because she’s been buying, she’s just bought five websites.
She started out small, learnt small, and she’s bought this amazing web… So most of the sites she’s bought are, like, under 10 grand or whatever, and they make a couple of hundred bucks a month, and you’re thinking that doesn’t replace your income.” But what it is proof of concept. So we get everyone to start small.
And she said, “Matt, I absolutely love those sites. It’s better than money in the bank, and literally I get 200 bucks a month pass-” She reckons they’re passive, Captain Phi. They’re like your portfolio, very similar to your sites actually, and she does a basic makeover. So they’re these little tiny, what we call they’re so crappy these sites, they just go under the Google radar and the AI radar, and they just make money despite themselves.
And she finds them. They’re there all the time. But through doing that, what she’s bought is a m- some bigger sites that have sell courses, and they’ve turned out to be incredibly successful for her, and she’s [00:28:00] just bought one recently. It’s one that teaches people how to become a Thai massage therapist, so it’s legit and everything, and it, and that they get certification out of it.
This guy’s run it. He’s a lovely German guy. He’s an expat living in Thailand. He’s got the Thai wife and everything, and he’s just been teaching this course for the last 15 years. So this is the kind of deal we’re talking about. This was on Flipper. No one else saw it. Why? Because I’m coming back to what you’re saying is could you automate finding that website?
There’s no way. You have to hunt through for the deals because when you get on the Flipper, the good deals are often behind what’s called an NDA or a confidentiality agreement, a non-disclosure agreement, and you’ve got to manually apply to see the deal. Now, most people are too lazy. Not Aisling.
She’s just been hunting through for the deals. Captain Phi, wait till you hear the stats, and even for if you’re a beginner online, wait till you hear this. This is a site that has ticked along for the last [00:29:00] 15 years, consistently making anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000 a month net profit, US. So we’re talking what in Aussie peso?
Eight grand a month. And for 15 years. Just it goes up and down a bit. And he’s bored. He’s re- retiring literally, and so he wants to sell it, so he sold it to her for 50 grand And it’s mind-blowing. Wow. It has 15 years worth of history, but hear what I just said about the moat idea, having a community, guess what it came with?
A massive community. 15 years worth of community. Gets better, it’s got a massive forum on the website, so that is AI-proof. The beauty of a c- community, especially an active community, it’s real user experience. It’s re- and that’s totally AI-proof. AI cannot replicate that at all. This is just sitting there for free on the website when she bought the thing.
It came with the 50 grand, but it gets better. There’s also 15 [00:30:00] years worth of testimonials of really happy clients. And I said to Ashlene, “Okay, that’s the hidden asset that no one else saw,” because you can turn each and every one of those with AI into an amazing story that is 100% AI-proof because it’s real, genuine stuff.
It’s what Google wants. It’s what, more importantly, it’s what the niche market of people that are coming to this site want. They want to read about the success stories. He’s done nothing with it. Also, he hasn’t updated the website in 15 years. So there’s a massive opportunity, and he’s just selling the courses really cheaply.
So I just did a coaching call with her literally two weeks ago, and she’s already started renovating the site, and she’s put the courses up slightly, and she’s going to do a launch of a much more expensive course. And she’s not a Thai massage expert or anything like that. He’s staying on quietly in the background.
She just pays him. Doesn’t cost very much ’cause he’s in Thailand. And guess what? [00:31:00] She’s already at– She’s just got the website back to making five grand a month consistently. Wow. So she paid 50 grand, so it’s
Captain FI: gonna last- It’ll pay itself off in more than, before, it, like within a year it’s paid itself off.
Matt Raad: It’ll be with- under a year easily, … because she’s about to do another big reno on it, which is pretty easy stuff. But once she starts implementing all the AI stuff, which she hadn’t even thought of, it, it’s going to be a really good asset to own. At the very least, it’ll become…
now talking about the w- amount of work, interesting thing here is she’s got to put in a fair bit of work to renovate and stuff, work in inverted commas. It’s heaps of fun doing this sort of stuff, right? Once she’s done it, though, it’s that idea, done once, done forever, then it will be on autopilot, essentially.
She’ll still have to spend an hour a week, expanding it out across social media channels and stuff. But she’s got unlimited user-generated content there that she can use for the next however many years, so it’s pretty darn easy. It will be what I would call a [00:32:00] semi-passive asset. Probably pumping out, hopefully at least five grand a month, but probably 10 grand a month if e- everything goes to plan, and it cost her 50 grand.
And guess what, Captain Fi? Not a single other person bid for it on Flippa And there’s 1.4- Wow … million active buyers on Flippa, on the Flippa platform. So coming back to your original question, hopefully your listeners are starting to understand, okay, there is a, the work in this is the fun stuff is hunting out the bargains like Ashlene did.
No one else saw that, but she did, and I don’t think AI would’ve picked that one out either. So because she got onto Zoom, she started talking to the owner and realized, oh wow, there’s a lot of good stuff here that wasn’t represented in the sale document, ’cause he doesn’t know how to sell a website, right?
And he just wanted to get rid of it. So 50 grand I would suggest is a bargain. And to cap it all off, all her other sites, little, tiny, what we’d call crappy, little, old-fashioned content sites that I wouldn’t [00:33:00] recommend anyone buy, they’re pretty much the Warren Buffett idea, like I’m gonna use his term, cigar butts.
They’ve got one or two puffs left in them. They fired up as well. Yeah. So Ashlene now has just cracked 100 grand a year off this. That’s US. And so every time I do a coaching call with her, you’ll find this cute, she’s in a different country in the world. So last time I spoke to her, she was literally in Venice and she’s just living there now.
I said, “What are you doing in Venice?” She goes, “Matt, I’m just living the dream on a laptop.” And she said it is literally like everything you’ve ever read about Venice. She reckons it’s beautiful, and she wants to stay there. So there you go.
Captain FI: But- Yeah. That’s pretty exciting. I guess just to bring it back, you mentioned th- there’s a couple of things that you wouldn’t recommend anymore.
Yeah. So I guess under the lens of AI, what has stopped working? So what are the strategies that might have worked a few years ago that are either dead, not feasible, or much riskier now?
Matt Raad: Yeah, just mass producing crappy content and posting it on a blog [00:34:00] and hoping it’s gonna work. It, yeah, it’s never really worked that well, but particularly so these days.
So if you so we, no one writes articles without AI now, but basically just mass producing content with AI and posting it onto a blog and hoping that’s gonna work that’s not smart. You have to come at with a strategy, and you have to be very specific about y- you need to look at answering or helping the niche, giving people what they want, and ideally giving them real user experiences and building a community around it.
So yeah, basically those old AI-generated websites with, tons and tons of content on them, they’re dead. You wouldn’t touch them. And basically anything that you can’t add a community to, I would avoid. And the cool thing is, if you understand how to do due diligence, it’s really easy. You just look at the Google Analytics and you look at the traffic.
If the traffic’s dying and you’re a beginner, don’t buy it. That’s my bottom line.
Captain FI: Yeah.
Matt Raad: So it’s really simple, really. It, and if it’s making no money, obviously don’t [00:35:00] buy it.
Captain FI: I’ve seen even– on captainfi.com initially when I started the website I was blogging a lot.
I was doing a lot of- Yeah … review. Now, it wasn’t because I was trying to necessarily get traffic to the website. Initially, it was actually me just trying to war game in my head what’s the best investment? What should I be putting my money into? And so- Yeah … i’d have articles comparing, say, the BetaShares A200 to the Vanguard VAS-
Matt Raad: Yeah, that stuff won’t work as well these days for the standard person, unless you’ve got a community behind you like you have.
Captain FI: Yeah, absolutely. That’s what I was gonna say. The- Yeah … i’ve noticed like the traffic to those fairly straightforward review articles has really decreased. My understanding is that, people that are going to those websites can, get that information potentially- Yeah, from
Matt Raad: AI
Captain FI: through ChatGPT or even, when someone Google searches something and Google’s Gemini comes up. Yeah. So anything that’s like that really short query type,
Matt Raad:[00:36:00] Yeah, that’s dead.
Captain FI: Yeah.
Matt Raad: It’s you need it on the site, but it’s dead. To flip it around, to give you an example of what is working now, say in your niche, there’s actually a site in, because I really like the finance niche.
It’s a, for your viewers, it’s a really lucrative niche. Captain Fi is a great example of that. But if you were going to do, say, what you’ve got, Captain Fi, you were gonna start again today, there’s a site on Flippa, you can go and look at it. It’s I don’t know what the URL is, but just search for it on Flippa.
It’s a f- it’s I just love this niche. It’s financing for parents, and it makes $140 grand a year, and it’s currently selling for $325,000. Just makes money off affiliate links and sponsorship deals in it. But why is it so successful? It’s got a newsletter and a community behind it. So there- Interesting
there’s that moat idea again. So but see also, it’s successful because of the niche. So exactly what you’re saying, like generic articles for your average website. So if you were to start a brand new website in the finance niche and you tried [00:37:00] to do what you did all those years ago with your, rank for what’s the best ETF to buy and all that sort of stuff, A, it’s very competitive, and B, it’s just gen- considered generic now.
You’re not helping anyone. Whereas going more down the rabbit hole of, say, financing for busy parents, that’s a pretty cool niche. And then you just own that spot. So what’s working these days, in a way, is like mini branding or mini, or, niching and helping a specific customer avatar.
And we’ve always taught that. For the last 15 years, we’re big on teaching You know, building websites or renovating websites for a very specific avatar. And if, and in fact, it’s one of the very first lessons in our champions program is called “Who’s the Customer Avatar?” And now what we do is, what’s really exciting is AI helps us nail the avatar perfectly.
So you can look at any website that you wanna renovate or buy or build, and you can just do so much accurate pre-research before you even consider building [00:38:00] it. You can really dial it into the nth degree, and that’s what I’ve been personally getting very excited about with the capabilities of AI now.
It’s really doing a absolutely fantastic job of dialing in the customer avatars.
Captain FI: Okay. So the AI is more– it’s not, you’re not using AI to, to generate spammy content or such.
Matt Raad: No.
Captain FI: No. You’re using it as a, almost like a personal assistant and also- Yep … to, to war game and to plan out your actual strategy.
Matt Raad: Yep. And do re- deep research. So like on that Finance for Parents, I saw that site, I showed it live on one of our boot camps, and I just said, “This is such a good idea, but don’t just listen to me, Matt Raad.” As even though I’m an expert in buying and selling websites and doing due diligence double-check it with what, throw it in AI and see what it says as well, and say, “Hey, I’m thinking of buying this website on personal finance.
Here’s the stats and details.”[00:39:00] But, is how AI, AI-proof is this over the next, say, five years? Where, what are the pros and cons? What are the weakths and strengths and, strengths and weaknesses? You can even just do it as basic as that. I recommend, there’s still more to it, but even that alone, that prompt alone, will give you some really good intel now.
Particularly really interesting as we record this we’re finding Gemini is absolutely brilliant at this because it’s owned by Google, I’m presuming, so it’s got let’s face it, Gemini’s probably scraped every single bit of data there is on the planet. So yeah, Gemini is particularly good for researching these websites.
Captain FI: Yeah. I was actually, literally you read my mind there, Matt, ’cause I was gonna ask whether you had some particularly favorite tools or whether there are- Oh, yeah … for certain tasks.
Matt Raad: Yeah. So Gemini for deep research on SEO and when we’re doing due diligence on websites or looking at the niche.
I do a lot of niche research and I live and breathe by that. And so Gemini is really good, and Liz is a [00:40:00] massive fan of Gemini. She’s the one that’s gotten me onto it. I have I gotta admit, I’ve always enjoyed using ChatGPT. It’s still very powerful, but the clear winner for branding, which I’m doing a lot of across a number of websites, for me, I go back and forth between Claude and Gemini.
Gemini is good for deep research. Claude is absolutely brilliant when you come to write articles and things like that. So everything we do now is human-inspired, human experience, but it’s AI edited. The final draft is AI edited, and that’s Claude. So for the-
Captain FI: Okay. And those, are they paid subscriptions, or can you use them for
Matt Raad: free?
Absolutely, Captain Fi. Don’t be a tightwad on these ones. If you’re, if you’re– when you’re starting out, yeah, use it for free, but once you start making money online, you’d be silly not to own those tools. It’s 20 bucks US for Claude and same for Gemini. Most of our champions and most of our members run both Claude and Gemini, ’cause they know Liz and I are such big fans of it, and it is [00:41:00] incredibly powerful.
Captain FI: Okay. And the paid versions, you just get
Matt Raad: much better answers. You need the deep thinking because we’re doing research around niches, and we’re asking very specific questions like, “Hey, give me the, is this site, where, how AI proof is it?”
I don’t want, hallucinations on answers like that. I want in-depth research, but I’ll go and verify it myself. I do my own research as well. But and Captain Fi, the other thing that’s changing is we are– I am just at the point where I’m saying to our members, “Wow, these tools are so good, they can almost do most of our keyword research rather than using…”
Now, you verify with the old-fashioned tools like KW Finder and Ahrefs and Semrush and stuff, but wow, just even in the last week or two, I just did it live off the cuff, and I know the certain niche that I did an ex- live example on, and it was so accurate, the keyword research. I actually blurted out, “Ugh, you [00:42:00] don’t even need KW Finder anymore.
Just use this.” Sacrilege. Yeah. Absolute sacrilege.
Captain FI: It
Matt Raad: is sacrilege. Yeah, I know, and- Oh my goodness … as I love getting our members to s- and for listeners, seriously, keyword research is a key money-making skill. It’s heaps of fun. Literally, I love nothing better than setting aside six hours on a Saturday and doing keyword research on a new niche, and everyone laughs, but I go, “Hey, it makes me millions of dollars, so why wouldn’t I?”
But now I can do it literally in half an hour with AI
Captain FI: Yeah. Wow, that’s, that’s- Oh,
Matt Raad: actually five minutes. I– Five minutes, I’ve got 90% of it done.
Captain FI: Yeah. That’s awesome. So I guess, look, to close the loop on what is working we talk about high-quality online businesses like we would in investing with moats.
Yep. So we’re talking about buying sites that have, Oh … still traffic that have communities, particularly Facebook- Communities, particularly … groups, forums for AI resilience. So anything with user… [00:43:00] Is that ca- you call that user-generated content, right? Yeah. Or user-generated experience.
Matt Raad: And typically, too we love lead gen sites and also- … course sales websites. So Ashlene’s with become a Thai massage therapist, or like one of our coaches, Greg, he’s got the learn how to play jazz guitar or, he’s making six figures off that. People love that sort of stuff because it naturally lends itself to a community and people are learning something.
So it’s pretty much AI-proof. So if you can find those good ones that other people have missed and fix them up, they’re worth a lot of money now. We’re seeing them very highly sought after. There’s heaps of sorts of sites you can buy out there and they- they’re probably the main ones where it’s, when you’re starting out as a beginner because they’re easy to fix up.
Also, believe it or not legitimate travel blogs and stuff still work really well. We’ve got our coaches, Chris and Beck, now. There’s a bit of an update there. They own, they mainly make their money off what’s called lead gen websites, but Captain Fire, you’ll find this really interesting, and for your [00:44:00] listeners, they have a passion, what we call a passion website, which is they’ve been traveling, they live the laptop lifestyle, and they’ve documented that as they travel around Australia in their four-wheel drive bus, and that’s gone so well for them.
Guess what? They’re looking at doing that full time. They now get paid 20 grand a gig to go fly to all these countries and just report or by tourism boards and stuff like that, and they’re that booked out. They’re booked out now for the next 12 months with gigs.
Captain FI: Holy moly. That’s awesome.
Matt Raad: And they’ve got sponsorship deals, full-on sponsorship deals like you get in Captain Fire.
Same sort of thing, big corporates now. Yeah. Because, why? They’ve built a massive following online. They’ve got a big list. They’ve got a big social media presence. And corporate sponsors know because clicks have gone down, that is hugely valuable, and they have to pay Chris and Beck a lot of money to get them to promote stuff.
So- That model for millennials, I think is very smart. And obviously it takes work though. It’s not passive. They’ve got to work at this, but they [00:45:00] absolutely love it. They just came around to our house the other day to thank us and tell us about their update and ask for a bit of coaching, should they continue with their lead gen or do they go all in on this travel site, which has just gone exponential.
So- Yeah. Fantastic. And so the big takeaway there is, again you’re talking about moat and- Yep … and that was that user-generated content- Yes. Yeah. Brilliant … and community. And so they built- Yep … a massive social media following, and that- Yep … social media is that search everywhere optimization, and that’s- Yep
Captain FI: I guess that’s hedging their bets against, say, Google or other search engines- Yeah … on the blog because they’ve got that presence- Yeah … on meta and-
Matt Raad: That’s right. And none of us now rely on Google anymore. That’s the other thing is that it- … kind of was a wake-up call for all of us. Oh, we can’t just rely on Google anymore.
And that’s what Chris and Beck are doing, and they’ve implemented AI to help just accelerate everything now. Fantastic. And if I may be so bold and what did you how did you guide them? Did you encourage them to c- to continue with [00:46:00] the agency sorry, the lead gens, or did you tell them to focus on the travel site?
Interesting question. Because the travel site has hit an inflection point and it’s really taking off and they’re hugely sought after and everything’s working for them, and it’s their passion, I can tell they absolutely love it. You can just, you literally can’t pin these guys down. They’re the coaches for us, but they’re always traveling, like they’re always somewhere overseas.
I said, “Obviously, you guys love this. That’s a sign from the universe that this thing’s firing up. Go for it. You will get another chance.” But the thing is, this is the interesting bit, right? Those lead gen sites, I said to them, and it’s interesting, we were talking about the guy that sold his solar one to Origin, because that’s one of Chris’s main lead gen sites as well in the solar industry.
And we’re talking all around that and I said, “Guys, you can just park those lead gen sites. They’re still gonna tick along for the next 12 months just fine. You can just spend an hour a month on them and they’ll still make you money.” So my advice was go all in on the passion [00:47:00] website because it’s pretty darn exciting what they’re getting.
It could actually get a lot bigger. Now they, they’ve the sort of numbers they’ve got in terms of their followings and stuff, they’re starting to attract in some pretty interesting corporate sponsors and stuff like that, and that can happen for anyone. Now that takes, that’s not, that takes a few, a good few years to build up.
You’re not gonna build that some- something like that up in 12 months. But the point is, they were building that kind of part-time in the background as a passion blog, and then it’s just gone exponential. And I said step on accelerator.” That’s potentially… those sorts of sites can sell for millions down the track.
Captain FI: Whoa. And that’s very similar advice to the, what, than what you gave me, which was with- Yeah … Captain Fire, which was to focus on Captain Fire because that was what was producing- Working … the most traffic and the most the most, Sorry, I’m just gonna redo that. V- that’s very interesting because that’s basically the same advice that you gave me, which was to focus on Captain Fire over the other content sites, because this was the [00:48:00] site that I was the most passionate about, and that was basically having the highest performance.
Matt Raad: Yes. Yep, that’s right. And when you start seeing sites, particularly in this day and age, that has, have a lot of traffic, not to the website, but also to all the other website assets that are there, like the social media accounts and YouTube channel and stuff like that’s starting to become a hugely valuable asset.
Captain FI: So what sort of size, you, we gave the exam- gave the example of is it Matt and Beck with,
Matt Raad: Chris and Beck …
Captain FI: the… Sorry, Chris and Beck- I’m Matt. … with the travel.
Matt Raad: Yeah. Yeah.
Captain FI: Yeah. What kind of a… So w- what kind of traffic are we talking to be generating that kind of income? Is that traffic on the blog or is that, say s- No
Facebook, social and Instagram followers? Like, how many do they have to reach this level of- Yeah … performance?
Matt Raad: Good question. So it’s, they started out on Instagram like a lot of millennials do, and that started to blow up for them. And then I did, it’s on our podcast, I did a bunch of coaching calls with them, and I [00:49:00] said…
And they started to get approached by sponsors even then. And then they built out Facebook page and a YouTube channel, and I kept encouraging them, “Don’t just rely on Instagram.” Too many influencers or young people, I call you guys millennials and stuff, keep thinking, “Oh, I’ve got to…” They would they’d get a million views sometimes or in the hundreds of thousands on Instagram reels.
And I said, “That’s cool, but role play with me here for a minute. I’m Mr. Corporate. I’m Mr., Canon, head of, CEO of Canon Camera or the business development manager for Canon Camera, and I want to sponsor you guys. Show me the Instagram reel that you reckon you got a million views on, and we’re live on Zoom together.”
And they couldn’t find it, and because, it gets buried. I said, “Therein is my point, guys. You need assets. Instagram, you don’t own it. It’s just one channel. You need a whole bunch of assets, so build your Facebook page out, build your YouTube channel out, and in particular, build your website out.” And that’s the advice I’d give to any listener here [00:50:00] today, and that’s really is the key to the strategy today.
And because when Mr. Canon comes along, and they said to me the other night, this is literally has happened. It’s not from Canon, but it’s from other people. I said, “Old people like me,” corp- especially corporate guys, okay they’re impressed by the numbers on social media, but they still will look at what?
Your blog, your website, and because that’s where their banner ad’s gonna sit, and they can see it, proudly sponsored by Canon Japan or whatever. We’re the sponsors are here or whatever. So having a website is still a hugely valuable asset, even in this very social media-driven day and age.
And don’t worry, I’m not saying you have to do a massive social media campaign or anything like that. In Chris and Beck’s case, they have to though, because they’re influencers, they’re travel influencers, and they’ve got a travel blog. I think all the assets are important, and that’s the exciting thing about this space.
Once you understand how all this works, then you can create this to suit your lifestyle, and that’s exactly what Chris and Beck [00:51:00] are doing now, and that’s what we’re helping them with, giving them advice around, okay, yeah, which one do you run with and what do you want out of life? And so that’s– And coming back to your idea, you’re saying what are the sort of numbers?
I’m not sure on their blog. The blog doesn’t drive a lot of traffic, interestingly. It’s not about the– But what traffic it does drive is highly targeted. It’s across the board. It’s because the YouTube channel, Instagram, Facebook, and and what’s the other main one they’ve got? The, yeah, the Instagram.
Oh, and their email list now is huge. So those numbers have really built up. But my understanding is, I think on their Instagram channel, to give you an idea, that occasionally they’ll hit a million, views, is it, on Instagram? I don’t do the Instagram thing. Wow. That’s- And it did-
Captain FI: Yeah, that’s a- On
Matt Raad: the weekend.
But no, generally I think it’s in the hundreds. That’s
Captain FI: a lot of eyeballs.
Matt Raad: Yeah, I think it’s in the hundreds of thousands. So that’s like the, that captures the attention of corporate sponsors and stuff like that. But what it does [00:52:00] is gives them power, but it’s the blog and the YouTube channel as well, I believe, and the Facebook page.
And interestingly, they said what’s turned out in 2026 to be a really big boom for them is the Facebook page. So Facebook has come back to the fore again, which is really interesting. So everyone thinks, oh, it’s all about Instagram or Pinterest or whatever. It’s not. It’s definitely really interesting.
Facebook is just as big now. They’ve changed the algorithm or something. So just food for thought for anyone out, that is out there trying to build their brand online, whether it’s personal or business. You need to be across all these channels. It’s really easy to get outsources now to help you with this, but within the next six months, you won’t even need outsources.
AI, literally you can just use Claude Cowork to automate everything.
Captain FI: Sure are. So look just as we’ve been talking, I just, I literally like how good is this information age? I’ve got this iPhone sitting in front of me. Yep … first of all what a fantastic time to be alive with all this- Oh, yeah
technology. And Chris and
Matt Raad: Bec [00:53:00] started that from zero,
Captain FI: yeah. Cost them a cent. I literally just typed in into Google, Chris and Bec salt and charcoal, and it’s got- Yeah,
Matt Raad: that’s it, salt and charcoal.
Captain FI: Yeah … Facebook, Instagram, and so they go, there you go, there’s- Yeah, awesome
140,000 followers on Instagram. That’s it. Yeah. 120,000 on Facebook. Yep. A couple of thousand on YouTube, nearly 4,000 on YouTube, and yeah, 100 videos, so that’s pretty awesome. And it
Matt Raad: doesn’t even look that big.
Captain FI: Yeah.
Matt Raad: We’re not even in inverted commas considered that big, but it all adds up. So it’s like a friend of mine said to me many years ago, and I know because it’s hard when you hear all these numbers, you think, “Oh, that, that could never be me.”
Don’t be that person that says that. That’s total crap. That’s BS. Chris and Bec, it’s interesting, Bec said live at one of our boot camps, “I never, Matt, in a million years thought we would ever be paid $5,000 for a gig,” like to, go to a top class hotel or something. Now they get paid 20 grand. So it starts at zero.
Everyone starts at [00:54:00] zero somewhere if you’re starting from scratch. They literally started this as a passion site, and by the way, passion sites are some of the best websites still to buy. Especially when someone is plodding along with it year after year and they don’t make much money, so they sell it off cheap.
But luckily, Chris and Bec stuck at it, and it adds up. And one of my friends who’s very successful, made tens of millions of dollars online, and he said to me, “Matt, you can…” When he first started posting stuff across the social media channels he got his team to help him do it, just like we all do.
Said, “We’d get, be lucky to get 50 views.” So here you are reading out Chris and Bec’s numbers, but he’s still making heaps of money out of that, because you know why? Because 50 views on LinkedIn, 50 views on Facebook, 50 views on Pinterest, 50 views on Insta, now we’re up to a couple of hundred views for one post, right?
Think of the good old days of being in a room in front of a couple of hundred people. I used to be a speaker speaking to live audiences. I can tell you 500 people or even 200 people, that’s a [00:55:00] lot of people to speak to. You get to do that literally for free, working at home on your laptop in your jimmy jams, just at the push of a button these days, punching out one, one post, and that can be replicated across five or six different platforms, all with AI, and literally you might only get 50 views on each one, but all of a sudden you’re talking to 200 people.
You do that every single day or once a week even, that’s, that asset then, it doesn’t just die. It’s sitting there 24/7, and it’s still generating views. Just think about how that starts to compound when this works. That’s why Chris and Beck now are getting paid 20 grand a pop.
Captain FI: Yeah. That’s what happened.
It’s it’s pretty amazing. And look that leads in, perfectly to m- the next question I was gonna say. I guess it comes down to capital allocation. In the fire community, we talk a lot about capital allocation and, there is discussion to the nth degree over which particular- Yep
index fund or which particular [00:56:00] investment- Yeah … class, so shares, property, crypto, or, lately everyone’s talking about stocking up on dried fruit and ammunition, right?
So we’re talking someone who is on the path to financial independence. You know- Yeah … they’ve got a bit of capital for a couple of years saved up. Maybe we’re talking say that $50,000- Yeah … investment that one- It’s very typical, yeah … could put into the time matters.
Yeah. Would you lean, obviously the first purchase we’re talking is much lower investment- Yep … and lower risk because of the learning process, but…
Matt Raad: Yeah. We’re all about starting small and just work your way up, and I think Ashlene is the perfect example. She’s literally just bought that, that, been doing this for the last now two years with us, right?
And she’s only ever bought, she’s got five sites that cost under $10,000. So she’s spent, I think she’s spent… And then she bought one for 20 grand, again, a course site. She learned on that. That was her biggest buy at that time, and then she sold it for $20,000. So she got her [00:57:00] money back, plus she made $1,200 to $1,500 a month while she owned that for a year, and then she’s just bought the one for 50 grand.
So all up, she said to me she spent around $100,000 and she’s, that’s how m- she’s making she’s gonna be making a fair bit more than that, but she’s making around 100 grand. So I think that’s, I don’t know, does that help answer the question, Captain Fire? So how would I allocate that? Yeah. If I had 50 to 100K, I would not, you definitely with these things, you until you know what you’re doing, you definitely don’t put all the, you don’t bet all your money on one horse.
You definitely spread it across a number of website buyers like Ashlene’s done. And the main thing is learning, so that’s why you just buy small ones first, which are a bit boring. They don’t, they might make you 100 bucks a month or 200 bucks a month, but at least there’s not a lot of risk.
So in business, if you wanna get wealthy that’s been my career is buying and selling businesses, entrepreneur, what I learned is you gotta spend money to make money. And in business, if I wanna even just speak to a lawyer, it’s gonna cost me five grand. So to me, five grand’s [00:58:00] nothing.
And I’m not being flippant at all, I’m being serious if you, because when we started out with no money, our first business, we s- we spent A couple of grand just speaking to a lawyer, and that was devastating to us. So now if I could’ve done this that’s where I’d be, that’s how I’d be allocating it.
I would not be spending your 50 grand up front. The other thing that we teach, and I should mention this, w- and anyone that looks us up will see, we’re having huge success at the moment with earning, we call it the earn while you learn process, Captain Fi, which is build websites for small businesses and just learn all the skillsets that you need to have, own a, an online business, and basically it pays for itself.
You’d sell a website to them for three or four grand. I would say to someone starting out, and I’m giving this advice to my own kids and to other millennials and Gen Z-ers that I’m helping out in our community, is instead of going to uni, I know this’ll sound bad, but back yourself. Take your 50 [00:59:00] grand and live off it, or ideally get a part-time job, but just back yourself for 12 months and see if you can make money.
What’s the worst case scenario? You had a gap year. You’re not in debt or anything. Yeah. You’ve backed yourself with your 50 grand. Yeah. My real answer to that is, when I think about it, is it’s not about how you would allocate it across your portfolio, and I know you as you rightly pointed out, all your listeners are used to this portfolio idea.
What, if you’re starting out, I would just… a lot of people wanna quit their job and everything, and now I’m not a big fan of getting people to quit their jobs really quickly, although I am coming around to it more and more because the people that do back themselves are getting the results.
Within 12 months they know, especially if you’re young, what’s your worst case scenario? You just go back to your job.
Captain FI: So- Yeah, it’s really not a big deal. To s- to summarize you we- you’d more encourage people to to be buying businesses, starting out small and building up the size [01:00:00] of these transactions, Yeah
rather than, say, building portfolio sites from scratch?
Matt Raad: Yeah, building-
Captain FI: and then-
Matt Raad: I’m still a fan of building portfolio sites from scratch. You know why? Think of Chris and Beck. That’s what they did. They just built a passion site from scratch and it’s worked. Okay. Yeah. It didn’t happen overnight.
Captain FI: So the ca- the caveat is it just, yeah, it just takes- Takes a lot longer
a bit longer. That’s the same with Captain Fi, yeah.
Matt Raad: Yeah. I was just about to say, you are the perfect example of someone that did exactly that, built something from scratch. I definitely don’t wanna put someone off. What I say is build one from scratch that’s your passion. That way I know, as your mentor, and you who is building it, if you’re passionate about it, we all know you’re probably, like Captain Fi did, you’re probably gonna chip away at it at least once a month, hopefully once a week, and over the years that will hopefully build into something big.
Hopefully you can accelerate a lot quicker than that as well if you’re smart. But, so I still think there’s definitely room for building from scratch, but in general, we still- Do [01:01:00] take a portfolio approach. So like Ashlene, she did ask me, she told me how much money, what her bank is, and she followed the plan exactly as you heard.
She’s bought, and my advice is the same, if you’ve got 100 grand to spend, I would buy- start out buying a couple of sites ideally under $5,000 or under definitely maybe under 10 grand. But there’s a real sweet spot out there right now, or there always has been, but we’re finding people like Ashlene and Ian, he’s doing the same thing, there’s a real sweet spot actually buying websites under 20 grand that are a bit crappy- run down. They’re the ones that people don’t want to touch, the diamonds in the rough. There’s some good opportunities there, and then there’s another sweet spot buying sites under 50 grand. So maybe you only have to buy, one or two $20,000 sites, and then you might buy one $50,000 website. That seems to be working really well.
Yeah. Because then what you do is exactly what you’ve done. G- again, just realized you’re the perfect example. As you go along on your journey, you sell off your smaller sites and you [01:02:00] just focus on your, on the ones that you’re really passionate about or that are a bit bigger. So that way you’ve got this constant portfolio.
And what we recommend is, three to five or six websites. Three to six websites is a good amount to handle. So that’s how you’d split up your portfolio.
Captain FI: Yeah, absolutely. Definitely not multiple dozen. I found that to be-
Matt Raad: No. No, that’s too much …
Captain FI: a bit overwhelming, but-
Matt Raad: Actually, that’s one thing that’s changed in this day and age, actually.
I’ll put that out there as well. I should have said that right at the beginning of the podcast, shouldn’t I? Gone are the days where we recommend people have 10 or more websites, particularly for a beginner. I think it’s too much to handle, like Captain Fire just said, and I find myself increasingly saying to our members now when I’m doing coaching calls and stuff, “Look,” just exactly what I just said to all of you now, “three to six websites is fine.
Set your vision for that, and then you sell off the smaller one.” And that’s what Ashlene’s doing. She’s sold off her first $20,000 buy already. She’s focusing on this $50,000 one, but she loves the… It’s interesting. I said, “Oh, you could [01:03:00] sell off those smaller ones.” She goes, “No, no way. They’re passive, Matt.
They’re these unique sites that are still passive.” So she just keeps them Fantastic. Now look, we’ve touched on this a little bit through the episode, but I guess no financial independence episode would be complete without briefly touching on valuations and returns. Yeah. Yep. I know in the past we’ve talked about and certainly up through the Champions program, we’ve talked about buying these diamonds in the roughs and trying to get be below that, one times multiple.
Captain FI: Yeah. With, I get changes in the space, have over the last 12 to 18 months, have we seen changes in returns and valuations? Yep … obviously in the financial markets there’s always volatility and fluctuation, with property prices skyrocketing yields are really low.
Yeah … are we seeing the same thing online? H- Well- What’s happening with the yields?
Matt Raad: Yeah, it’s a really good question. I think it’s like Blake said, at the beginning, it’s a buyer’s market. So in to give you an example, what– I, I’ll [01:04:00] actually paraphrase Blake when he gave the data on this back in– And actually there’s been a number of brokers that I’ve interviewed have said the same thing.
Back, remember in the good old days, the COVID days, couple of years after that, around COVID, so what was that? 2020 through to 2022, there was a massive boom in online business valuations, and they were going anywhere from four times to seven times, depending on the business model, right? That’s all pared back.
That froth has come back, and now the valuations are much more normal. They’re back at the 2019 levels, which is the typical three times multiple. So if the website makes 100 grand a year, it’s probably gonna sell for around 300,000. Now, if it’s a really good asset and it’s got a community and it’s very solid, it will still sell at three times multiple but there will be definitely flexibility.
It is definitely a buyer’s market. There’s not a lot of people running around with 300 grand cash, [01:05:00] so there’s always the opportunity for seller’s finance. But in terms of the valuation, it’s still the same, the good old three times multiple, which was prior to the COVID frothy period. So does that answer that?
So
Captain FI: it’s- Yeah, absolutely. So- Hopefully that answers that … so capital prices have normalized. Yeah. But that would- Yeah … mean the yields improved, right? And then- So you’re able- Yeah … to generate more income.
Matt Raad: That’s right. And then within, just bear in mind everything that we’ve been talking about today, particularly when I was talking about at the beginning of the podcast, obviously the sites that have been slammed their valuations have plummeted But they’re really obvious.
If you’re a buyer, the good news is it’s really obvious. Just look at the Google Analytics and, it’s easy, and you’ll see the profitabilities are down. So the crappy sites or the bad sites, they’re out for the count. But good quality assets, they’ve just stabilized at a three times multiple, two to three times.
And there’s definitely bargains out there, because I think also what’s happening, and Kapnfy, you’ll know this I’m a big one of this, is [01:06:00] when the economy turns, and notice I don’t say if, it’s when. So Warren Buffett says chance of a recession is 100%. We just don’t know when it’s gonna happen. But when it does happen that’s when you make a lot of money in this space.
And we’re already starting to see, and I will point this out now, because particularly in the last few months, with the cost of living and stuff and interest rates and things, but I think mainly the cost of living starting to bite, people are starting to sell assets for a bit less.
Apparently in real estate it’s come off a bit as well. So there are occasionally s- some really good negotiable deals that we’re seeing happening as well.
Captain FI: Definitely. I think, a lot of people- Keep an eye on that one … are feeling the pinch. Yeah, RBA has just increased, is it another quarter of a percent- Yeah
today up to 4.3 something.
Matt Raad: And then with the, the impact of AI on some sites, people are, so the sites that Ashleen bought, the seller said to her, “I’m not- it’s been impacted by AI, I’ll just sell it to you for five grand. And it, these are sites that used to, make [01:07:00] a lot more money than what they do now, but she just picked them up for five grand.
Captain FI: So there’s that sort of a thing happening as well. Yeah. Good. So yeah, it is definitely a buyer’s market if you know what you’re doing. You need to know what you’re doing, though.
Yeah. So I guess and you have, again, mentioned this a few times during the pod, I guess just a reality check on passive income, quote unquote being the goal- Yeah
that everyone’s looking for. Look- Yeah … myself included, when I first got into this space, I was looking to generate passive income from, any investment class that I could find, and I think a lot of people that are interested in online business are chasing passive income or at least, you know-
Matt Raad: Yeah
Captain FI: higher yield. So what does passive actually mean in 2026?
Matt Raad: It means the flexibility to work, to park the website. So like I said to Chris and Beck with their websites, and like Ashlene’s finding, you can just park them. Once you’ve got them up and running, you can park them, but you’ve still got to work at them.
So it’s not don’t think people who have a job don’t understand this. They think, “Oh, [01:08:00] I’ve bought a website, I’ve got to turn up every day and do something on it.” No, you don’t. Might turn up once a month. But what has changed is, if you’re prepared to get out there and work these things a bit more now, the returns are definitely there.
And so I don’t think it’s certainly not as passive as what it was a year or two ago, and we call it semi-passive. But what we’re seeing, just pe- speaking from pure experience, it’s up to your listeners what they wanna do, but if you’re a go-getter, we’re noticing the people that are taking an active role with these assets, they’re the ones making the big money.
So it’s your call. Yeah. Fantastic. So think of Chris and Beck, the site of, so they’ve got these lead gen sites, right? So you could say they’re semi-passive, although they’ve still got to work on them each month. They’ve got to contact the clients and, show them how many leads they’re sending through.
But we’re talking, an hour’s work or something like that. So I guess they’re semi-passive, but then the site that they’ve decided to step on the accelerator and get really active with is now [01:09:00] about to make them a lot of money. So yeah, it depends on what you want. But I don’t believe there’s any truly passive websites out there like in the good old days.
You, ideally, you’ve got to do a little bit of work on them.
Captain FI: Yeah, I would, my experience would 100% back that. So look for someone who might be looking at getting into the industry what would some of the biggest common mistakes you’re seeing from new website buyers or builders at
Matt Raad: the moment?
Yeah, same as they always have been when we first started teaching this back in 2010. And it’s the same mistakes till this day, is not doing proper due diligence, you don’t– if you don’t understand it, and believing the good word of the seller, because it always is good. So every seller will tell you, “Oh, even though it’s been hit in Google it, it’s still got a lot of promise and it’s got all these things.”
And, unfortunately, beginners or people that don’t do proper due diligence just blindly believe them. Don’t know why. Doesn’t take you long to do proper due diligence these days. Still takes a good couple of hours though, but we’re talking making great money. [01:10:00] So they’re probably the two main mistakes is…
and it’s knowledge risk, not understanding how websites work, buying the wrong kind of website to suit your circumstances. It’s basically not doing the proper research or the proper due diligence.
Captain FI: Yeah. Awesome. So I guess that leads into the next question on risk and fragility. Yep
If Google traffic disappeared tomorrow what types of online businesses would survive and which ones would thrive, and which ones would just disappear?
Matt Raad: Cool question, Captain Fire. That is perfect because when you think about it, when I– listening to you ask me that, I’m thinking, “Man, that’s a really good lens to view successful websites.”
So I love Google traffic, don’t get me wrong. It is awesome. But my honest gut feel is the good websites would definitely survive it, and it’s the ones with community and or alternative traffic sources, or really interesting, the ones that work with paid traffic. But j- definitely any [01:11:00] website with a list or a newsletter or a community of some kind, they are laughing.
So we have sites that have been impacted with lots of Google updates over the years, but because they’ve got a list, we still make the same amount of money off them. So anything with a list or a slightly different business model. There’s actually lots of businesses that don’t rely on Google to make money online, be- for all sorts of reasons.
And, there’s… Y-you can find them on Flipper. So there’s those sorts of sites as well like calculators and things like that, or very specific sites that people don’t need Google to get to. But The, in the broadest sense or the simplest sense, anything with a list.
Captain FI: Yeah. So that’s where y- I guess you’re taking control of the site and you have it- Yeah
essentially off s- I’m trying to think of the right terminology here, but it’s, you’ve- Off … taken the power off Google. Yeah. It’s j- that also sounds like just leverage in the general sense- Well- … like-
Matt Raad: Yeah. Think of yourself I think for your listeners, you’re a great, again, a great example.[01:12:00]
You’ve got a podcast. You’ve got, s- and you’ve got a list and stuff like that. You’ve got a following on f- on Facebook, on social media. So even though you haven’t worked for a year or two on this bit of public accountability, Captain Fi. Bit of mentorship here. I still, I think we should all be telling Captain Fi you’ve got such a cool asset because you’re helping people, right?
But coming back to you it your, if your blog disappeared or you haven’t done much on your blog, right? Yet the business still just keeps ticking along, okay? And so if you’ve got a big following or like Chris and Beck, as you read out all their numbers of their different social media followings if the blog site went down or disappeared, it really wouldn’t impact their income that much.
Captain FI: Okay. And it just comes back to what you said earlier, it’s the search everywhere optimization. Yeah.
Matt Raad: Search everywhere. Plus ideally an email list, just throwing that out there. That is the gold standard. If you’ve got an email list that you can contact, because it’s really easy to monetize an email list [01:13:00] in
Captain FI: most niches.
You know what, Matt? How about airing my dirty laundry in public. I have a email list and- a while ago I managed to delete it by accident .. It’s okay. It’s coming back. because a few people have- good … people have subscribed. Good. So there’s a- Yep … I think there’s about 5,000 people on the list again now, but it’s almost- Yeah
almost back to where it was. But there, I use MailChimp and like- Yeah … oh, I feel like it’s extortion. Like it, it was costing- It is … me like $200 a month or something to maintain the email list. Yep. And so I actually paused it for a while, and people are messaging me on like social media, “Oh, are you still sending out emails?”
“What’s going on?” And so I think I’m gonna have to just go back to paying the- Yeah … extortionate amount of money.
Matt Raad: So Captain Fi, that is nothing. 200 bucks a month- Yeah … is nothing. Y- you think in a traditional business, the sorts of money that you have to pay for a tool. Now, I’ve got to admit, in this day and age, it is actually something because AI is way more powerful than MailChimp, and it’s only 20 bucks a [01:14:00] month.
So in a way, it’s a little bit naughty of MailChimp to still be charging 200 bucks a month. But maybe once you start to maximize the value of that’s an incredibly powerful tool. The tools that sadly we do need some of these subscriptions to run these businesses. Remember my earlier statement, you got to spend money to make money.
That list, that 200 bucks should be making you 100x that.
Captain FI: Oh, absolutely. And I should say the, on my whole process here, for anyone that’s not really followed along, I bootstrapped Captain Fire and- Yeah … the rest of my websites. Yeah. And basically the whole time Matt has been telling me, so this whole seven years, Matt has been saying you need to pay for the proper tools and stuff.
And every time I- Yeah … every time I did that, it made my life measure- like, a lot easier. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah.
Matt Raad: I
Captain FI: am,
Matt Raad: the tools definitely make it easier. And seriously, an email list, you should never, being a mentor here, Captain Fire, you should never let it go quiet. That’s- Yeah … that, that is seriously [01:15:00] like physical real estate.
That’s equivalent of owning an amazing house in a really good web street. Now you are part- in a particularly good address because you’re in a finance niche. It’s hugely valuable. It’s the dream niche. Do you know, airing my dirty laundry here, I’ve done a lot of deals online. The one regret that Liz and I have is that we never went big in the finance niche years ago.
We had a friend of ours that we used to be really competitive with, we were frenemies online, and he would always tell us, “Guys, you’ve got to go into the finance niche. Leads are worth hundreds of dollars.” And we were good at what we did, and we just never did. To this day, I regret it. So there you go. You are in the best.
So real estate for listeners, think of a website online business as just like traditional real estate. You’ve got the address, which can be the niche or the URL, the website address, and then you’ve got the physical real estate that sits on there. That’s the website that sits on there and all the assets that are sitting there as well.
And so for [01:16:00] you, Captain Fire, you’re in the very best street, and you’ve got one of the best brandings out there here in Australia in your niche as well. So your list is an incredibly valuable piece of real estate, or it forms part of that. Maybe it’s like the master bedroom in your house or something.
Captain FI: There’s my action item for, Yes … tonight after we get off this recording. I will, I’ll- Get your credit card out … I’ll boot it up again and I’m gonna- Perfect … and I’m gonna send a email to everyone letting them know that there’s another podcast episode available.
Matt Raad:C- can I just point out to your listeners and yourself, my ears pricked up then as a coach in this space. You said you’ve got people emailing you saying, “Hey, are you gonna be sending out emails?” I’m like, oh man, like that’s precisely what I’ve been talking about all night. That’s the value of a community.
That, that is AI proof. When people, they’re that engaged, they’re they want to see these emails. So that, hopefully that’s a key lesson for everything here. That’s literally what I would call, a full on virtual [01:17:00] asset.
Captain FI: It’s pretty unreal, Matt. Like I, I’ve made some pretty amazing relationships, Yeah
like friendships through- Yep … Captain Fire, like to the point where, Like I even at one stage I was, like, temporarily living with a mate who I had basically met through the online space. Yeah. And- That’s awesome … yeah, become really good friends. Well- just while I was looking to buy our farm here.
And I just- Yeah … yeah, the amount of awesome things, like I’ve been invited to speak overseas and, you know- Yeah … it’s really been an incredible opportunity. So the community is probably what makes it so special for me- that- … and is what keeps me coming back.
Matt Raad: Yeah. And that’s a really good observation.
When we got online, ’cause our background was buying some bricks and mortar business, and we thought the same thing. It would be, you geeking out, you’re just at home in your jimmy jams literally by yourself with your laptop. But far out it’s been good for networking. It is just mind-blowing the amount of friends we’ve made, and then it’s the [01:18:00] same in our community.
As Captain Phi, all the champions and our digital investors and stuff, they’re on the Facebook. They make lifelong friends. They have little get-togethers. They all catch up, and some of them are best friends now. They re- catch up, once a week and stuff, and they and they connect up through a community.
And again, I think that’s the way of the future these days, this community idea, because society’s changing and people are realizing, man, we need to connect. This AI is gonna kill off social, what’s the word, sociability and stuff. And whereas as you and I are pointing out to your listeners, I think by getting online, you do naturally start to get involved in certain communities.
And as Captain Phi, one of my key secrets in business success is networking, and we learnt that in bricks and mortar world, but online, that’s one of the big advantages I see these days, particularly for young people. I think it’s a really good thing to Be networking continuously and being online, as you just pointed out, even with, portfolio sites and stuff, [01:19:00] you naturally end up making friends, the amount of connections you have.
So that’s a, that was something that we really, that was a really nice surprise all those years ago. And we’ve got very strong friendships now in the US because we bought so many websites over there and people we normally would never have connected with. So pretty cool. And the stuff you learn off them is mind-blowing.
Captain FI: Yeah. It’s awesome. We even recently hosted some friends that we’d met, through Captain Fi, through a speaking gig that I had in- There you go … Bali in Indonesia. Yeah. The Fly Freedom Retreat. That’s cool. And they actually came, they came all the way to Australia and visited and it was really cool.
We’re obviously down here near, near Brisbane, and we were able to take them through the hinterland and show them everything, which was really cool. And then we’ve got some more friends from Canada coming to visit in a few- Nice one … months’ time. Again- Yep … who we met who we met at that same event.
Yeah … and then even more recently I sold a couple of websites to, to someone, and they actually have a solar business, and they’re now giving us an awesome deal putting solar on our [01:20:00] roof. Like a solar battery combo. There
Matt Raad: you go.
Captain FI: So the networking thing and- It’s a good- … the friendship making has just been- Yeah.
Yeah, it’s f- it’s fantastic. So I guess I’ve just got a, I guess two small questions before we, we close up. Yeah. And it’s been awesome to… I feel like I love having these interviews, and you’re someone that’s so easy to talk to, Matt, because I feel like I’m, I feel like I’m getting like a coaching session through this podcast even though it’s, it’s going out to help the listeners, but I feel like- I hope it helps, yeah
I’m getting a lot of benefit out of it myself.
Matt Raad: I think your listeners and myself would agree we’re all onto you, Captain Fi. You need to be working on, you can see where Matt is with you here. You’re sitting on absolute gold there with what you’ve done because you help so many people. You need to keep it going, bottom line.
Okay. Anyway, go ask your last two questions. Absolutely.
Captain FI: No,
Matt Raad: I…
Captain FI: Yes. Okay. And just on that, I remember you said it was one of the first things is you can get anything you want as long as you help other people get what they want. Yeah. That’s from Zig Ziglar. And
Matt Raad: look- from the old days.
Captain FI: Ziggy Ziglar.
Matt Raad: Yeah.
Captain FI: Yes. Okay. Now, okay, so portfolio [01:21:00] perspective, again, linking this back to financial independence and- … I guess the pathway of creating work optional life, even if we’re not saying, okay these websites are gonna be passive just like an ETF and you’re gonna get dividends.
Yep, the, there is slightly more risk. Yes, there is a lot more upside potential. But no, it is not a hands-off passive thing, asset class. How should someone pursuing FIRE think about online business in their portfolio? Are they closer to shares or property or a bricks and mortar business risk?
Or how would you generally frame that? And, can you have, can you insure websites?
Matt Raad: Yeah. It’s a really good question. So you can’t insure them at all. So in terms of risk, I would definitely, they are risky. They are like a business risk, so that’s why the rewards are so much higher though.
So this is why when you’re learning this stuff, for goodness sake, start out small. Don’t rush out there and buy a $100,000 business [01:22:00] or don’t rush out there and quit your job and expect to be making money the next day. You heard Captain FIRE, it takes, 12 months plus or more. There’s no guarantees.
These are definitely in the upper range of risk because AI risk is real, the Google risk is real, everything we talked about today. I know I make it sound exciting and everything, and it is. It’s incredibly exciting, and you’ll see lots of success stories on my own podcast with our students. But I think what I do wanna point out for FIRE people is where this works so well, and Captain FIRE, again, you’re a great example, you guys are used to, you’re making, y- you’re looking for financial independence, retire early, right?
But a lot of you, what I, my observations are of the FIRE movement is that it, you guys are very frugal, and to me I, my background is I’m older fashioned, I come from nothing, like literally grew up on farms with nothing, and always had a, as a result, I always wanted [01:23:00] to be not just financially independent, I want to be wealthy, okay?
Seriously wealthy. And that’s what I find the online space can do for FIRE people, is it can dramatically boost your immediate cash flow. And not, what I’ll cut the word out immediate because you’ve got to learn how to do it, but once you get it dialed in, instead of getting, 5% yields on your dividends and stuff like, and I know they’re franked and all that sort of stuff, and I do a lot of share investing myself, but, and what’s property cash flow yields like?
Less than 5% now, right? These things can make you, like even simple little websites that cost five grand, like Ashlene’s finding, is making her 200 bucks a month. Or, you know- She’s making five grand a month off her, her latest acquisition. That’s a huge cash flow boost if you’re a FIRE person, if you’ve done the financial independence retire early.
And we’ve got a lot of clients in that space in our community, and that’s what my observation is. I think [01:24:00] it’s like a real mind shift thing. So all of a sudden they’re coming from a wealth mindset, not a frugality mindset. So if you’re always frugal because you’re trying to save your way to freedom, I think that’s very dangerous mindset-wise, and maybe do another podcast.
As Captain Five knows, I’m huge on the mindset thing. The way I turned my life around was getting out of a poverty mindset or a frugal mindset and just thinking big and just, Liz and I took the, our philosophy is cash flow first. Don’t care about anything else. I’m not going into debt. I just want cash flow.
So to me, this day and age, the best, smartest thing you could do in terms of cash flow is just do a local business strategy. It’s easy, it’s a no-brainer. There’s no debt, and you make cash flow from day one. So-
Captain FI: Yeah …
Matt Raad: that’s my thoughts on it there. So FIRE is an interesting one. In this day and age, I don’t think anyone should be passive anymore.
The world’s changed. It’s not what it was two years ago. I’ll throw that out there too. So maybe that’s a little bit more of a [01:25:00] philosophical answer than you were expecting, but that’s my honest thoughts. I d- I really don’t think people should be passive now. There’s way too much opportunity to make serious sums of money, or at least get financially independent a hell of a lot quicker without trying to save your way to it.
The saving your way to being rich sucks. I tried it. It’s it sucks. So just make lots of money. Sorry, I’m
Captain FI: just laughing here in the background. Yeah. I don’t know, I mean- no one wants to be-
Matt Raad: Hopefully I’m not- … making $18 million a year … upsetting any FIRE people, but I, but, people need to listen to someone like me, and I hang out with a lot of friends who are very similar to me, who come from nothing.
We’re a fair bit older, and all of us have gone for the cash flow. We’re business entrepreneurs, but that’s what an entrepreneur does. An entrepreneur literally starts, buys, and builds website. Sorry, businesses. And yeah, I guess I’m not comfortable with the idea of trying to save my way to f- to financial independence.
And I, and just observation, just to summarize, I’ve noticed with our FIRE guys, when they get this, it’s “Oh, wow, this is amazing, Matt, on just the cash flow [01:26:00] returns. It’s really been able to help me retire a hell of a lot earlier because I’ve suddenly got cash flow again.”
Captain FI: Yeah, absolutely. It really accelerated my path.
It was something that when I had that income coming in, it was r- that was really what gave me- Gives you security … a lot of confidence. Yeah, absolutely. Because, I must say, I was just as guilty as everyone else with that one more year syndrome, and I’d even- Yeah … reached financial independence, but I still kept on working and- Kept going, yeah
and pretty much had some pretty s- serious effects on my own personal health. And that, that was the main reason why I was looking at getting into this space is I really wanted to take back control of my life and- Cool. Yeah … work on my own terms and- That’s awesome … yeah, have to be yeah, forced into- See-
difficult situations.
Matt Raad: This is unreal. So this is the stuff I love. For your listeners listeners, listen carefully to what Captain Fire just said. It’s all mindset stuff. It’s always mindset. That’s what changed your life, Captain Fire. Absolutely. You made a decision- Yeah … to make a change, and you mentioned a few things there, like mental health stuff and, we help lots of people with that, all that sort of a thing.
And [01:27:00] I think it’s so important to have a vision. So yeah, that’s, I know maybe you and I got a bit more philosophical there, but hopefully that helps out some fire people.
Captain FI: Yeah, absolutely. So I guess my takeaway is, yes, websites are a high risk, high reward. I would say they’re more risk and more reward than equities, shares.
Yes. Yeah. That’s right. But that’s the beauty. That’s where the diamonds in the rough can be found. So a little bit more of an active workload. So- You know having said that, and I know you’re really big on it, having said that, me, I’m still happy to have a balance, and I think, it comes down to whatever people’s individual choices are.
Yeah. There’s nothing stopping you from having an investment property, having a share portfolio, and then working on your online business. And surprise, surprise- Yeah … that’s actually exactly what I do. But I’m now spending- Yeah. Cool … more and more time on the websites.
Matt Raad: Good.
Captain FI: It’s been an awesome, it’s been a bloody awesome interview, Matt.
I guess, Yeah … usually I finish off asking for some- Yeah. No … some cliche question about, “Hey, what are your three favorite books, and what’s your best tip to save money?” And okay, obviously I [01:28:00] can tell there’s no point asking you that because you’re not going to say, “Yes, eat baked beans so that you can, buy one more unit of index funds.”
Matt Raad: No. So- Cash flow first. That’s my thing. To- Yes … go for the cash flow. Come to my
Captain FI: side. So that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to finish this interview with, a personal playbook for you. So Matt, if you had to start from zero today- … and you get to retain all of your experience, decades of knowledge in mergers and acquisitions and websites- Man
what would your first 90 days look like? And I’ve chosen 90 days because that’s in the eBusiness Institute, we set the 90-day goals. Yeah. So what’s your first three months like?
Matt Raad: So you mean I get to have all the knowledge that I have right now, but I just have $0? Is that right?
Captain FI: You have $0 and zero websites, yes.
Okay.
Matt Raad: Easy peasy. So I can’t go out and buy a website easily. So what I’m gonna do is exactly what our other number two strategy that we teach is, and it’s working [01:29:00] so right now. I’d just start up a digital agency and I’d become a digital, what we call a digital advisor, and I would start building websites for local businesses, because every time I sell one, there’s three grand in the bank.
And then from there, I would leverage it with AI and build it up so that in 12 months I have a big enough bank to buy some serious websites. And that’s literally what our students are doing right
Captain FI: now. Fantastic. So yeah. Forgive me, forgive my ignorance here, but w- how do you get these clients?
How do you get these leads- On a busy … and how do you get them over the line?
Matt Raad: Networking. You go and talk to them. So knowing if you know how to build a website, there is a screaming demand out there amongst tradespeople through to lawyers and accountants and white collars. They need this online presence.
Everything we talked about today, it’s exactly the same as what we do with when we’re buying and selling websites. It’s just that we’re doing it for local businesses. And most of our, you’ll hear on our podcast or any, speak to any of our students, most of them get their start from [01:30:00] joining a BNI group or like a local business group.
Just, or no, actually, most of us get their start from talking around amongst friends or DM-ing people in Facebook groups and saying, “Hey, I, do you know anyone that needs a website built?” And literally you start building them for free, and then you charge 500 bucks, then you charge 1,200 bucks, then you charge three grand.
And so again, start small. So you build for free to get reps on the board and to get a bit of a portfolio going, and then you start charging, the next round. It works really well and there’s not a lot of risk to it. And if you don’t like it, go back to your job. That’s- Yeah … basically what I would do.
Captain FI: Yeah. I love it. I, ’cause that is also another viable option is, for those first 90 days, you could get a high-paying job and then use that money to buy a website or flip it to raise-
Matt Raad: Yeah. No, that’s not in my plan. I would never get a job in this day and age. It’s not gonna be secure. It’s probably gonna be disrupted by it.
Why would you get a job in this day and age? No. I seriously- Yeah … I’m very serious on this. First [01:31:00] 90 days, start your own business. You have to in this day and age. If you, if your goal is to get wealthy and to get financially independent, and if you’ve come this far in the interview, I’m sure it is, why the hell would you have a job?
It’s never– How much are you gonna make out of a job? You can only– You get no leverage in a job except what you’re paid on an hourly rate. That’s it. And if you want, every year you want to increase your income what are you likely to increase it by? 5%, 10%, whatever. Even if you become a CEO. Yeah, if that.
Like- Yeah … hardly anyone becomes a CEO and gets paid millions. So there’s, for your average person, the most you’re ever gonna earn is what? Couple hundred grand,300 grand. We got, heaps of clients that do that, but then they max out. Entrepreneur, sky’s the limit. You can earn $3 million a year if you get this stuff right.
Captain FI: It’s funny, Matt- So why the hell would you not back yourself? Yeah. My, my wife and I actually have been having this exact same conversation over dinners and, in the evenings just, when we’re in bed before going to sleep. And yeah, she’s actually made the [01:32:00] decision not to work, Awesome
in the medical space- as an employee, but instead we’ve started a business. And yeah, it’s been a bit of work getting all of the insurances- Yeah … and checks and- It
Matt Raad:is …
Captain FI: registrations. But it’s very lucrative, oh, worth it. Yep. Yeah, absolutely. To the point where, she’ll potentially be working one day and bringing in three and a half, $4,000 for certain assessments.
Matt Raad: That’s it. You can’t do that in a job if you’re paid an hourly rate. If you’re paid 50 bucks an hour or 100 bucks an hour, you cannot get that leverage at all. Whereas at least, like you’re, you were asking me what does my 90 days look, I’ll be having a crack at some- at my own business.
Captain FI: Absolutely. Yeah. I think m- my wife was being offered, contracts in around $100 an hour.
Matt Raad: Yeah.
Captain FI: It’s normal. And- Yep … the the business that’s still charging three and a half, four and a half thousand dollars for these services and assessments, they’re banking the difference.
And I get it, like there’s overheads to running a business and there’s risk, but it’s reassuring to know that we’re on the right [01:33:00] track and that’s what- Yeah … that’s what your 90 days would look like as well.
Matt Raad: Hell yeah. Yeah. And I the full disclosure for everyone, I’ve always been an entrepreneur.
I actually see jobs as not secure, whereas I see business as the most secure thing you can do. So that’s not financial advice. You need to assess your own risk profile. But in this day and age, holy moly, and knowing what’s coming with AI, ah, oof traditional white collar roles, yeah, anyway.
Yeah. At the very least, even if you don’t lose your job, with traditional white collar roles, the most you’ll ever get as a pay increase is 5%. We now have clients who are telling us this is mind-blowing. I– We’ve got a young guy right now, leave you with this story. John, he’s from Ireland, came out here as a backpacker or to back himself to do our course actually.
He’s a vet, trained, four years, just like you, Captain Fyre, spent heaps on a degree. He works on large animals back in Ireland. He literally just took [01:34:00] a year off, came out to Australia, knew nothing, knew no one in business, and I’ve just interviewed him about it. He’s at month nine in our champions course, and he’s already replaced his income and he’s just hit his first $20,000 month.
So 20 grand.
Captain FI: That’s pretty impressive.
Matt Raad: That’s impressive. And he said he’s not ever going back to being a vet. That this is the opportunity. And he said to me, sorry, he said to me, “Matt, this is the best business in the world that I… Because I can literally work whenever I want, wherever I want, with whoever I want.”
He doesn’t have any bosses anymore. He literally, he’s working in Australia. He lives on a, in a, at Newcastle on a beachside suburb. He just loves being near the beach and the Australian culture, and he’s just networking and it hasn’t cost him anything to start that up, and he’s already got an asset.
I said to him, “Mate, you could sell that digital agency right now when you go back to Ireland. You could sell that.” And he goes, “I know.” He can sell it [01:35:00] potentially for a lot of money as well. And on that note, he’s going back to Ireland for two months and he said, amazingly, the business will just keep running.
He’ll just run it off a laptop when he’s in Ireland.
Captain FI: Hey. I might have to touch base with him and see if he wants to buy mypetreview.com, which is my-
Matt Raad: no. He- … he’s not doing that. No, what he’s doing, he’s not buying websites, he’s building websites for local businesses. That’s his strategy.
Captain FI: Oh, yeah, but everyone’s got to switch to a, they used- isn’t that the playbook? Isn’t that- No, he doesn’t want to … hippie
Matt Raad: one? No. He wants to build this up and sell it for seven figures.
Captain FI: Oh, okay. So he’s chasing a big payout. Yeah. Yeah.
Matt Raad: Yeah.
Captain FI: Big sell item, yeah.
Matt Raad: So that’s my point.
He could not do that as a vet. So there’s no chance. He could only ever… He said to me, “I could only ever get a little crappy increase every year on my wage or whatever.” Then working as a vet, and, he’s worked long hours and stuff. Now he just works whatever he wants and wherever he wants.
Captain FI: It’s a very difficult profession, isn’t it, as a veterinarian? Yeah, it is. Especially, and you could have a brick at, bricks-and-mortar vet business, but it’s incredibly difficult. The margins are- Yeah … i’m understand are quite [01:36:00] thin. Yeah. It’s quite stressful.
Matt Raad: He was working as a vet.
He didn’t even own his own business as a vet. Yeah. He was working
Captain FI: as
Matt Raad: a vet, and that’s what my point is. It w- I think for anyone from my point of view, I don’t think a job is a smart idea. It’s good for security. Okay, if you’re married and got kids, family and a mortgage, one of you needs to keep working while you build up a business.
But if you’re in the lucky position, like you said to me, it’s me re- starting with my knowledge, there’s zero chance I would ever even vaguely consider taking on a job. But that’s a dead end, that one. That’s like a, no, I won’t use a strong sentence. I was gonna say it’s like a death sentence to me.
But … it just, there’s no chance. I just- Should laugh,
Captain FI: yeah.
Matt Raad: No, I’m serious. You I would- For me personally, I would always start a business and back myself because the upside, if you get it right, is mind-blowing. It is potentially, especially if you’re good at setting visions and you’re a high achiever the opportunities in business are way bigger than in a job these days, especially if you’re [01:37:00] setting it up- Absolutely
right with the flexibility. So there you go. That’s my
Captain FI: take. Yeah. That’s a pretty, that’s a pretty high, cool high note to, to end the interview. Look, Matt, it’s been awesome chatting to you this evening. It’s been great to reconnect and to have you back on the pod. It’s been really cool to hear some of the changes over the past 12 to 18 months.
In particular it’s really awesome to hear that the, some of that paid AI tools are fantastic for research. So me personally, I’m gonna be going out and like you said, I’m gonna be getting Gemini and Claude and be using that- Brilliant … to do some deep dive research. Yep. Cool. I, I’m, again, I’m reassured that I’m on the right track.
I know about six months ago you oh gosh, might even be 12 months ago, you did tell me to start focusing my efforts onto, one or two of the core, Yeah … performing sites, and so- Yeah … I have been doing that. I’ve been, Good … slowly selling off the smaller ones to, to focus my efforts.
So it’s c- it’s good to hear that is the way the market is shifting. Shifting- Yep … into sites with [01:38:00] moats. So we’re talking communities, email lists and I’ve loved that. That’s a new one for me today, SEO optimization, search everywhere optimization. Yeah. As opposed to literally just optimizing a blog, say, on Surfer to, to rank one on Google, where now we’re actually looking at multiple search engines YouTube- Yeah
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest. Having all the different, as you mentioned with having f- say fif- if it was only 50 viewers per platform, but if you’re across those platforms, all of a sudden- It’s huge … you’re s- you’re speaking to 200 people. It’s awesome to hear that AI is an opportunity and not a threat.
It’s actually good to hear that, spammy sites are being Google slapped because they’re no longer- no one’s
Matt Raad: buying them. Yeah.
Captain FI: Oh, that’s right. They’re no longer c- com- competitors, No … to, to good content. Yeah, and I think everything that we’ve talked about when it comes to capital allocation, yes, websites are higher risk much higher [01:39:00] reward.
They are definitely a- active but the re- the rewards from that is much higher potential, and you can get quite significant cash flow from a smaller investment, which actually makes it really quite attractive for someone on the path- Yeah … to f- to FIRE. It w- it was actually really interesting to hear the valuations for the websites have come back, they’ve normalized back to pre-COVID levels, so we’re looking at, one to three X multiples.
Matt Raad: Yes.
Captain FI: Yep. Which again, people say, “Oh, that sounds bad. Your website’s not ma- you’re not gonna sell it out for as much.” But the flip side is actually for someone on the path to financial independence who’s chasing, semi-passive- Cash flow … income. Yeah. It’s cash flow. It’s cash flow. Yeah. And you’re gonna get more yield for a smaller investment.
And it definitely seems like the goal now is to be buying an established cash flowing business, which ideally we buy a rough one, maybe a bit of an ugly site with an old theme that kinda looks a bit clunky. Yep. Where we can apply our renovation skills increase the [01:40:00] prices and yeah, just get a really good return off that web renovation.
Matt Raad: Bingo.
Captain FI: Sounds like the common mistakes are the same don’t rush in, don’t jump in with both feet. No. Learn and try before you buy, and I really like that learn earn as you learn with the agency model. I personally- Yeah … didn’t do the agency model, but if I didn’t have, the financial backing the, high-paying job and the investments and the dividend income that I had when I was getting into this industry, that is 100% what I’d be doing.
Yeah … and yeah. So- Yep. No, it’s a no-brainer … Matt I feel like I probably haven’t done this interview justice summarizing, in a few minutes- That’s all right … what we’ve spoken about. I will use, and I’ll use my new AI tool to create a transcript and a summary of this episode. Ooh,
Matt Raad: good.
Captain FI: How does that sound?
Matt Raad: Sounds awesome. And
Captain FI: I’m gonna post it across all the platforms. It’s gonna go on everything,
Matt Raad: man. I think you should, Captain. See, this is great. So this has turned into an awesome- … mentoring session with yourself or public [01:41:00] accountability. What do we reckon, listeners, for Captain Fi?
Because he has done such an awesome job and has helped so many people, it’s important to keep this going, right? Not just to make money or anything, but just to tidy it up and I think yeah, you’re on a big winner there, Captain Fi and I wanna say a big thank you for having me on today. It’s so much fun going through all this ’cause this is obviously something I’m very passionate about.
Absolutely love what I’m doing at the moment. I really should retire, but it is just- We are in a particularly exciting time in human history also with, what’s happening out there geopolitically. But I’m particularly interested these days in helping millennials because I think you guys, I didn’t realize, have got it way harder than what we did now, and I think business is the way.
That’s what I’d like to end with. Seriously, you can hear it in my voice. Give you one bit of advice, especially if you’ve got kids or anything as well, you gotta teach them to get out of the rat race to look at s- something different and just start a side hustle even. Don’t spend a lot of money on it, just something really small.
Doesn’t have to be with us or anything like that, just any kind of side hustle at [01:42:00] all, but it’s got to be digitally run, like something to do online. That’s my final
Captain FI: bit of advice. Yeah I love your passion, Matt. It’s it’s infectious. Y- it’s firing me up. It’s giving me motivation and- … and this is, I, I loved learning from you and it’s why I’ve have, stayed involved as a student with eBusiness.
Awesome … again, thank you so much for your time this evening. Also, send our best regards to Liz as well. And, Thank you … for, for the listeners, if you want to learn anything more about Matt Rudd and the eBusiness Institute, I definitely recommend you go back. We’ve got loads, I think there’s, nearly 100 podcast episodes out now.
If you go back this, there is a couple of interviews in the past with Matt. As I mentioned, we did interview Matt and Liz back, in COVID times at early 2020. Oh my gosh, I can’t believe that is six and a half years ago now. I know.
Matt Raad: Oh
Captain FI: my goodness. And so it’s been really cool to just watch this space, and particularly for me as I have grown in the digital [01:43:00] space, it’s been really interesting to have this coaching relationship with Matt, and I do really appreciate all of your help along the way.
Helped me to become where I am today. So definitely check out the previous podcast episodes with Matt and Liz. And again, I have reviews of my experience along the way. And yeah. And I’m pretty sure, Matt, you still have there’s still this o- online training that people are able to do- Yeah.
Yeah … through through eBusiness.
Matt Raad: Yep. And you can just check out our free masterclass, and at the end of that, we talk about our digital investors course as well, if people wanna take it any further. But check out our free masterclass on the ebusinessinstitute.com.au site. I’m sure Captain Fire will put in the link in the show notes for you guys.
Captain FI: Yeah, absolutely. That’ll go yeah, so I’ll, I usually upload to, to Spotify, but you should be able to get this episode obviously you’re listening to it, so you got here somehow. But most of the podcast streaming services will have the show notes. If not, just jump onto the Captain Fire blog or, Yeah
social media. That’s a good idea. There’ll [01:44:00] be links on there. But yeah, highly recommend taking the masterclass, couple hours and it’s well worth your time. Again, Matt, we better finish up, mate, because- All right … I know you’ve mentioned you had a, an engagement you need to get to.
Yeah. And I’ve got a toddler that’s about to start banging on the office door. So I better go and find some berries- Awesome … to subdue this toddler with. Mate, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thanks so much for your time.
Matt Raad: Likewise, Captain Fire. Thanks so much for having me on.
Captain FI is a Retired Pilot who lives in Adelaide, South Australia. He is passionate about Financial Independence and writes about Personal Finance and his journey to reach FI at 29, allowing him to retire at 30.
