Podcast | Deacon Hayes – Well Kept wallet

For today’s podcast, I welcome Deacon Hayes from Well Kept Wallet who went from over $50,000 in debt, to financial independence and who became a financial planner along the way.

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Introduction – Deacon Hayes – Well Kept Wallet

For today’s podcast, I welcome Deacon Hayes from Well Kept Wallet who went from over $50,000 in debt, to financial independence and who actually became a financial planner along the way. Deacon paid off his debt in just over a year and a half and became so excited about the process.

deacon hayes

He studied finance, became a financial planner and founded Well Kept Wallet, advising high net worth clients as a way to share his experience with money and to help others. He wrote the book, ‘You can retire early’ and has been featured as a personal finance expert by the mainstream media.

He joins me today to share his journey to financial independence and to share the money lessons he has learned!

 

Episode 47: Deacon Hayes – Well Kept Wallet

Show Notes


Transcript

Episode 47: Deacon Hayes – Well Kept Wallet

Captain Fi: [00:00:00] Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. Welcome aboard the Financial Independence Podcast.

Gday and welcome to another episode of Captain Fire, the Financial Independence Podcast, where I open the cockpit to some of the best and brightest in personal finance, as well as those who have reached or are on their way to financial independence. Before we get started, remember nothing said here is financial advice, and you should always do your own independent research before making any financial choices.

With that being said, I hope you enjoy the episode and learn something new.[00:01:00]

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Goodday welcome to another episode of the Captain Fire Podcast. On board today is Deacon who went from over $50,000 in debt to financial independence and who actually became a financial planner along the way. Deacon paid off $52,000 in debt in just over a year and a half and became so excited about the process.

He actually studied finance and became a financial planner for a little while. He founded well kept Wallet after his experience, advising high net worth clients as a way to share his experience and his growing experience with money to help others. He’s also written the book, you Can Retire Early.

Deacon’s been featured as a personal finance expert source by the mainstream media, including on Yahoo and cnn, and joins us today to [00:03:00] discuss his journey to financial independence and lessons he can share. Deacon, good day mate. How you going?

Deacon: Good. Thanks for having me.

Captain Fi: Oh, absolutely. My pleasure mate.

So, can you tell us a little bit about yourself before we get

Deacon: started? Sure. So, I’m based out of Scottsdale, Arizona. We basically live in a desert with my wife and two kids. I’ve got a six year old and an eight year old. And currently I spend my days very differently nowadays.

Every day’s different, but it’s fun.

Captain Fi: So, I mean, getting stuck into it, what does financial independence mean to you?

Deacon: So put simply, I would say having the financial resources to do what I want when I want.

Captain Fi: Yeah, it’s good. It’s all about giving you more choices, isn’t it? Correct. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey to fire?

Because you started with over $50,000 worth of debt, which is, that’s a pretty big handicap on the starting line. And, I would say that probably a lot of professionals might find themselves in a [00:04:00] similar position with things like student loans or maybe they have other forms of personal debt.

You then studied, became a financial planner and reached financial independence. So really interesting story. I’d love to sort of hear about the

Deacon: process. Yeah. So when we started out my wife and I decided we’re gonna put all of our financial information on one piece of paper. I called it a financial game plan cuz I’m a really simple guy and I like being able to look at like one thing and be able to.

Analyze it and say, oh, this is where we’re at. Right? And when we did that, it was interesting because she had some student loans. I had some student loans, we had some credit card debt. I had a car loan that I just got for a new job and I was like, man, we got $52,000 debt. And on top of that I had bought some properties at the height of the market in Arizona and they, they went south.

So we had two properties that were underwater, had $52,000 in debt and said, wow, we gotta figure something out because we shouldn’t be starting off our professional lives this way. And so that kind of led me on a journey [00:05:00] of like, Well, I like to learn from people who have been successful with money, and so I started looking at, obviously Warren Buffet’s been successful, but I’m like, okay, he’s really good when it comes to picking stocks. I’m like, that’s not necessarily the advice, but I read his book, the Snowball, or I listened to it. It was amazing. But the book that really struck a chord with me was Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover, because he had a very simple plan to paying off debt.

So that was kind of the first step was like, okay let’s create this plan, list our debt small, the largest, using this debt snowball. And I got an extra job. My wife, let me sell some of her designer clothes that she didn’t want anymore. There’s all sorts of things that went into the equation.

But that was the starting point for our journey to go from being in debt to going towards financial independence.

Captain Fi: Wow. Yeah that’s pretty cool, man. Like, not a lot of people do take it that far. What was the trigger for you guys to put together your, one page financial

Deacon: plan?

I think both of us came from very different backgrounds. Her parents were affluent, but they always lived paycheck to paycheck, and they still had a ton of debt. They had car loans, [00:06:00] they had mortgages, and they were, farther along in life. My parents never really managed money. Well, they grew up, kind of also paycheck to paycheck, but not having any resources.

Both my mom and dad they’re divorced. They went bankrupt. They had houses foreclosed on. So we just realized we didn’t get the tools to learn how to deal with our finances from our families, or even from our school system. So we kind of had to go figure it out on our own.

And just being newly married and said, Hey, this is something we could do together as a couple, get on the same page so that we can set ourselves up for success in the future and so that our kids don’t have that to worry about in their future.

Captain Fi: Yeah. Hey, getting on the same page, literally. No, that’s awesome man.

Cuz a lot of people just kind of, put it off or they don’t really talk about it. I can kind of relate to maybe your upbringing a bit because Yeah, I don’t think I was really ever told about money either. , and certainly, paycheck to paycheck was how we lived growing up.

So yeah. Awesome. So it was time for a change. You really just wanted to I guess sort out the admin [00:07:00] behind your life together after being newly married. That makes a lot of sense, man. So you’ve blogged a bit about it on your blog and podcasts. Can you tell us a little bit about the website?

Well

Deacon: kept wallet? Yeah. So I was, when we were paying off our debt, I was selling wood floors and it was during the recession 2008, 2009 area. And I just thought it’d be really cool to share our journey of paying off our debt. Online really just to give people tips. I heard about blogging and I thought, okay, well as we, I sold it upside down car.

I’m gonna blog about that. Or I bought two cars that were less than $5,000. I’m gonna blog about that because there’s a stigma of getting used cars that are old and how they’re not reliable and all that kinda stuff. And I, I. Got a second job delivering pizza. So I talked about that and how I got that job in eight days, right?

Because a lot of people say, well, I can’t do it. I, it’s hard for me to find an another job. And I’m like, well, I was able to just go within a five mile radius of my house and go to every pizza place until someone [00:08:00] hired me. And so it was like I, the well kept wallet was born. It’s just kind of a way to share our journey, paying off our debt to kind of inspire other people.

Started that in 2010. And it’s just been kind of growing ever since.

Captain Fi: Oh, that’s awesome. Like you’ve definitely got a lot of really good resources on the site. And so, for anyone listening, check it out. Well, cap wallet.com deacon’s got, sections about how to make money, save money, pay off debt, and invest.

So it’s really I guess the four core areas of money management. And, lots of genuinely interesting articles that sort of come out. Obviously mainly with a US based flavor, but still, you just gotta apply it to, Australian personal finance. So, now interesting.

Dickon you just mentioned, like that you had Jumped on board a bunch of like side hustles which, side hustles, otherwise known as, second jobs awesome way to boost your income. And a critical part of, I guess, reaching financial independence is exactly that.

Boosting your income whilst also trying to [00:09:00] save and invest the difference or put that towards paying down debt. I’d be interested to hear, , you’ve gone out you’ve tried a lot of other jobs, you’ve done a lot of side hustles. You’ve written about it. Can you tell us some of the most successful side hustles or second jobs that you have done?

Deacon: Well, the one by far is going to be the website. So really blogging, I didn’t really create it to make money. I didn’t really know kind of what the path was to making money on a website. I just thought, hey, I could help people, I could share a story, mainly friends and family. And then one day a buddy of mine said, Hey, I’ve got an insurance agent at this company and he’d like to advertise in your sidebar.

And I was like, really? He’s like, yeah, he think said it’d be good for his business, might get some clients out of it. And I think he paid me like, I don’t know, it was like 150 bucks or something. And I just thought, that’s kind of crazy. Like someone would pay to just have like a little ad on the side of my sidebar.

And so I did that and then I found out about Google AdSense. [00:10:00] Which isn’t really used much today, but 10 years ago that was the way that you just did display ads on your website. And the crazy thing is I was so excited about sharing our story of paying off our debt. I got these Google ads, so display ads on the website and I have this local news station come to our house and they’re talking to me about paying off debt.

And I told ’em about that financial game plan form and they’re like, Hey, could we film that on your computer? And I’m like, sure. So I just pull it up and excel and I show it to ’em. It’s nothing, it’s very simple. And they link to it. Well, I kid you not, I made like two or three grand within a few days of ad revenue from just that one new segment.

And I just thought to myself, this is insane. Like, I had an eBay business once where I sold $40,000 worth of product in a year. I must have did a hundred trips to the post office and I made a thousand dollars profit, right? This was a website just sitting there and I made a few grand and a few [00:11:00] days by telling people our story.

So it totally just changed my view of like how to make money, how to reach people. And so the website by far has been the best side hustle that’s paid off for us.

Captain Fi: Yeah it’s actually an industry that I’ve sort of, stumbled into as well. A friend of mine did a course on how to build and sell websites to local businesses.

And a couple of my other friends and I, we didn’t really think much of it. And, we were very obsessed with property investing and development igs back then. Sure. But we sort of came around and a friend and I, we started an aviation site together because, we, me and my buddy, we both were engineers and both interested in aviation.

And yeah. And then I had the specialist knowledge as a pilot, so just, we started this aviation site and that was our plan actually from the beginning was as you mentioned, just to put AdSense on it, And I, around the same time actually started Captain Fire because I was on this journey to fire and [00:12:00] just similar to yourself, I wanted to really blog about my experience and investing and lessons learned and that kind of stuff.

And so whilst captain Fire has been like my Passion Project Baby some of my other sites have just been like an un unashamed commercial experiment. And I’m pretty happy to say I just recently put upgraded to Mediavine. And now it’s, one of the sites alone’s just bringing in a couple of thousand in revenue a month, which is really exciting.

We were talking about it before we recorded and sometimes I feel a bit awkward about, blogging about financial independence because I guess the core tenant is to, make more, save more and invest the difference. And I’ve done that and I’ve built a portfolio of index funds. I have other assets, property and websites, but the index funds they’re typically producing a couple of thousand bucks.

A month in dividends, which I’m making from this website that I started not that long ago. And it doesn’t really take any effort. So, they’re super powerful, aren’t they? The websites are super powerful [00:13:00] online businesses for reaching financial independence.

Deacon: Oh, they really are. And congrats to you.

I mean, I know for Mediavine, what is it, 50,000 visitors a month you have to have now or something like that?

Captain Fi: Yeah. So , it’s actually interesting. It ebbs and flows a bit. So, I think it was sitting around like just over a hundred thousand sessions. And so it was awesome. Got in, had a bit of a glut with some of the Google algorithm, them updates.

I think it drove right back down to like, down to 10,000 a month. And then, yeah, been sort of steadily increasing. I think it’s around 70 at the moment. But I, it’s sort of, I shouldn’t say that it’s all beer and Skittles because sometimes the traffic does take a hit and you’ve gotta sort of figure out what’s going on.

But yeah it’s so much fun. I think the key is you really I, because I’ve started many sides I, at one point I had 20 sites cause I got really excited. I’m like, oh, I’m gonna do everything. And the ones that have done well, actually, the ones that I would say that I’m more passionate about and that I have sort of specialist knowledge for, [00:14:00] so for example the PET website definitely doesn’t do as well as the pilot website.

Or the, the gym fitness website. It is definitely not as good as the travel website cuz you know I know about aviation and I know about flying and all about travel, that kind of stuff. So, I think choosing a niche is a sort of a, an important. Part, probably good to have a couple of sites and maybe see which one works.

But yeah I’m definitely not an expert. I’m just a guy who like stumbled into it and is just amazed at the possibility. But it sounds like you similarly you kind of, stumbled across this sort of business model. And this was what, like over a decade ago for you now?

Deacon: Yeah, 2010. And the interesting thing is that that’s when I was a financial planner, so I decided to quit selling wood floors. I went to become a financial planner from like 2010 to 2013. And so well CAP wallet just kind of put on the side, it’s like, Hey, I’ll work on this when I can.

I’m now helping people more high net worth individuals with money. Like, let’s just focus on that. [00:15:00] And it wasn’t until about, I, I. I quit in 2013 to, to work for myself full-time. But it wasn’t until about 2016 when I decided , okay, I really need to figure out how to create this as a business, add value to people.

And then it just started to explode.

Captain Fi: Well, and so when did you launch the podcast? Was that around the same time I

Deacon: wanna say it was around 2013. Yeah. So around when I quit my job, because the first episode actually talks about why I quit my job and what I was trying to accomplish and who I was trying to reach and that kind of thing.

Captain Fi: Ah, interesting. Yeah, I’ll link to that in the show notes because I actually want to have a listen to that cuz it’d be really cool to see what your mindset was back in 2013 versus, fuss forward 10 years since the future now.

Deacon: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And it’s, it was cool because I had interviewed a lot of people that were either financially independent or successful business, people.

One, one of my first episodes was John Lee Dumas, who at the time was making 10 grand with his podcast, and now I think he makes a [00:16:00] hundred grand a month. And so it’s just cool, like you said to hear about these people’s journeys, be inspired by them, share ’em with an audience but learn a ton, at the same

time.

Captain Fi: Yeah, it’s awesome that, this method of sharing information is sort of available. Like we, we, really awesome that we live in a time where, we can really access this information just by, jumping onto our phone or our computer and reading a blog or listening to a podcast.

And I think, If we look at what successful people do or people that are debt free or that have reached financial independence or have built businesses, if we can listen to them and try and emulate them that’s gonna increase our chance of success. And to be honest, that’s one of the main reasons why I wanted to start the Captain Fire podcast as well, is I wanted to be able to interview successful people who are, have reached or are on their way to fire and kind of get to the heart of, okay, well what are you doing and how can we do it as well?

So yeah, it’s a brilliant tool mate. In 10 years, over 10 years of running an online business[00:17:00] what are some of the challenges that you faced?

Deacon: At first it was that it wasn’t making a lot of money, right? I would only make money if I did news appearances, all right?

I didn’t get a lot of traffic, so it’s like I’d have to get. News spots and if I got a news spot, then I’d have to see if they would link to my website. Cuz if they don’t then nobody’s going there. Right? And so it definitely felt like this carrot and stick kind of business model where, it’s like an order for me to get traffic, I gotta do these things.

And once I do those things, then I get the traffic, but then I kind of repeat that cycle. One of the books that I read back when I was selling wood floors was the Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. And that was super impactful on me because it made me think that there are ways to create businesses that are kind of self-sustainable and don’t need you to run them.

And like I had mentioned, the eBay business where I didn’t make any money that was a lot of work, where I’m physically have to be there, package stuff, message people. And so really I started creating well kept wallet in a way. [00:18:00] Where I could start to get traffic from other sources.

So for a season it was Facebook, another season, it was Pinterest, and then eventually Google from all the new stuff I was doing, started to give the site authority and I got traffic from people searching for things. And so, a combination of all of these different sources of traffic and people coming to the site really started to compound.

And it was, in the peak, over a hundred thousand dollars a month of revenue from a website that didn’t really require a lot to manage which is incredible, just even to say it’s not there now, but even at the place it’s at now it’s a very livable income and we’re definitely blessed by it.

But it, it was one of those things where I had to learn, like, how does a Pinterest algorithm work? How does Facebook algorithm work? How does YouTube, at one point I was doing that, it’s, and so there was a lot of just trial and error figuring stuff out as I went.

Holy

Captain Fi: moly. A hundred thousand a month. Now that’s US dollars as well. So in Australian, that’s 150 K a month [00:19:00] revenue. Wow. Gee. Well, good thing you were a financial planner so you knew what to do with that money. Congrats mate. That’s awesome. Like, I’m aware that, not all two months are the same and sometimes revenues drop and they go back up, but gee, what an accomplishment mate.

That’s yeah that’s really impressive. I’m just trying to think, based off like valuations, cuz I was always taught that the base valuation of a website is 36 times the monthly revenue. So 150,000 times 36. I’m trying to do the math in my head.

I it’s gotta be over 5 million.

Deacon: Right. Yeah. And I mean, for me, yeah, so it would’ve been about 3.6 million and then yeah, probably somewhere around five Australian. And I had some buyers that were interested and I kind of kicked myself because when you talk about phi, right?

Like there’s different paths. And I’ve wrote about this, and in my book, which is you can retire early, which is like, you have business, you have the [00:20:00] stock market, you have real estate. Those are kind of the three different avenues, right? And some are more stable than others. Like I would say that real estate and stock market, you just have such a long history, right?

You have cap rates for real estate, you have dividends, first stocks, business is kind of a crapshoot, right? You’re like, how long is this income going to last? In my mind, at that time, I thought I was just getting started. Like I said, 2016 is when I started To start working it as a business. And in 2018 is where it was at that a hundred K point, right.

So I’m like, two years in, I’m like, I’m just scratching the surface. I can’t sell this thing. But yeah, if I did at that point in time, it would’ve been worth probably around three to 4 million.

Captain Fi: Wow. That’s really impressive. I actually did some training with a like a website training provider.

And it’s awesome. I started off just doing like a, Distance course. And then ended up doing like a yearlong sort of intensive course, which just goes into a bit more detail and has some mentoring and [00:21:00] accountability. And that was awesome. It was like when I was transitioning out of my full-time job as a pilot and it was kind of a nice transition thing.

And I had these sites which was fun to, to work on. And one of the big things that Matt, who’s like , my trainer keeps talking about is these big. Exits. In that, there’s a lot of corporations entities that have money to spend to invest in buying up these small businesses to, to aggregate them and then actually put them into funds.

And this sort of blew my mind. Because when you look at I guess say the PE ratio of like a website, well, it’s around three, right? So three times annual earnings, and that’s like similar to bricks and water business as well, right? Whereas when you look at like the p of a fund, I mean, it’s what, that’s like the average is what, around like 15, 16.

Right. Yeah. And so, what Matt was explaining that he used to do in mergers and acquisitions and private [00:22:00] equity, they would actually go and hoover up websites just like well kept wallet. They’d put them into funds and then that would be basically sold to a bank which would mean it would be added to their run sheet, their p and l and shares of that would be sold.

So essentially by doing that, they were like five x-ing the money because a website that’s, say it’s making, well, just for argument’s sake, like yours was a hundred thousand a month. So the valuation is, 3.6 million. All of a sudden when you wrap that up into a fund instead of it being 3.6 million you are now creating.

19 million worth of value to shareholders. And it sort of didn’t seem right, like it sort of sounds like a bit of a scam, right? But no, that’s legit how it happens. Just because they’re, I guess they’re they’re putting their credibility on the line that, oh, this is a sound business.

They’ve gone through the accounting. And yeah, that blew my mind. And so [00:23:00] what the outcome of that is that for people that, run small businesses there’s this sort of market to sort of either build from scratch or buy a small website and build it up into a, a medium sized website and then sort of do the sellout in the seven figures and.

I often wondered are people just saying this to hype up online businesses and, to try and encourage people to, pay for training or support the industry. But you know, I’ve spoken to dozens and dozens of people that have done this. I wouldn’t say it’s something that everybody is gonna be able to do, but a couple spring to mind of some awesome case studies.

There’s a fellow in Australia, his name’s Albo and I love mentioning him because he created I think it was called car advice.com which was a really popular website about cars. And I think Albo had the title was the youngest person to drive the Bugatti Veron. And he, anyway, he built this really successful site and yeah, sold it [00:24:00] to a big media company in Australia.

I think it was Channel Nine, which is one of the big television companies. And it was like 67 million that he sold this website. And it’s really funny. I think he just, he plotted along afterwards, bought a Lamborghini, did all the things he wanted to do. And then as soon as his, no, no compete clause expired, he’s just started car expert.com.

And he’s like, actually, I’m gonna bring it up now. Yeah, car expert.com and it’s already DA 65, so

Deacon: that’s incredible.

Captain Fi: Oh, actually, you know what? I think I have it backwards. I think it was, I think it was car expert. No. It was car advice. Car advice. That’s right. Car advice got sold and then car expert is this new one. So, yeah pretty impressive.

We will get back to the show in a moment, but for now, I wanna ask you a question. Do you have a side hustle? And if you do, is it scalable? My side hustle is building and running websites a form of digital real estate. Now, it might sound tricky to make money online for beginners, but [00:25:00] really they’re just small online businesses that have low overheads, high margins, and which you can easily scale by outsourcing.

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Then it can be viewed potentially millions of times and easily updated by my editors over the years to remain relevant. If you want to learn more about this lucrative side hustle and retraining for the Digital Workforce revolution, then check out my article about making money online and read my review of the E-Business Institute and their online self-paced courses.

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 So like you mentioned, you were kicking yourself about not selling out a business.

I mean, is that something that you would consider doing if you got revenues to increase

Deacon: again? Yeah I definitely consider it. I think one of the things I didn’t realize when I was getting into it, because I was just doing it similar to what you talked about with, you were a pilot and you create an aviation site.

Like I, I had a story of paying off debt and I was a financial planner, and so it was just natural for me to create a personal finance site. But what I [00:27:00] didn’t realize, it is the most heavily scrutinized next to medical advice industry on the web. And so for traffic it’s so competitive, it’s so cutthroat that it’s not like car advice.

Gosh, I wish I would’ve done something like that with the knowledge that I have because it’s just not as difficult to rank. It’s easy to get stuff that’s long tail that has lots of volume, and so anyways, all that to say is yeah, I would consider selling it at some point.

But right now, it’s, it makes a decent living gives us time, freedom, flexibility, and so we’re just enjoying it for the time being.

Captain Fi: Yeah, it’s a lifestyle, isn’t it? And would you consider launching another online business, maybe about hardwood flooring?

Deacon: I have not considered hardwood flooring. I have, I’ve done other sites. I actually created another site that made a hundred grand 2022, I think. But like you, I had a Google algorithm update and it totally crushed the site. So [00:28:00] I lean more towards more traditional stuff now be, to be honest with you.

I mean, there’s definitely the lure of the online business and the freedom that it gives you, but it doesn’t give you the same security at that you would get from index funds or from real estate. So in my mind, with some of our extra cash, I’m looking at. Some duplexes some triplexes, things like that where it’s like, Hey, I wanna invest some of my extra money outside.

Diversify outside of the online world. Because there, there is a lot that rides on how does the search engine feel this month. And you don’t have a lot of control in that and that, that can be scary.

Captain Fi: Yeah. Look, I can totally relate to that. And this is a area where my mentor, Matt and I sort of butt heads a bit because I definitely see the need.

To diversify and I actually just finished a a small development. We built a couple of duplexes. And gee, that was stressful. I wouldn’t recommend anyone rushing to a development. Maybe buying is probably a bit less stressful. [00:29:00] But yeah I definitely think online businesses can be a way to have an awesome side hustle that you can really grow into essentially a full-time business.

You can either make income from it as a lifestyle choice or you can work towards like that big sellout and I think moving that money into more passive assets cuz, four hour work week the terminology it does work. It is sort of semi passive, but it does require work and there is an element of risk.

I think that’s why you get compensated so much for taking on that risk. But yeah, so I personally want to take Profits from, selling websites or monthly incomes and definitely also wanna diversify into things like index funds and residential property. Whereas my mentor he’s like, why aren’t you just rolling that money into buying a bigger website?

Or like outsourcing more and, so it’s it’s definitely, a challenge for me it’s fun but it can also be scary.

Deacon: Oh, for sure. And just to touch on a little bit, AI is going to change the way people find [00:30:00] information. And it’s taken me a while to really come to terms with that because I we’re just so used to, if you are looking for something, you go to Google, right?

And now people are actually bypassing Google to go to chat g p t or they’re using Bing because it has it built into it, right? So, The online world is so new, I think we forget that, right? The beauty of the stock market is you have a hundred year track record. Beauty of real estate is you’ve got over a hundred year track, like you’ve got history behind you.

The website space, like you said, there’s a lot of upside potential, but there’s also a lot of risk, right? So you gotta weigh that in the equation when you’re trying to choose that path that’s right for you, right?

Captain Fi: Yeah. And I think that’s probably one of the reasons why, Matt is always talking about doing these big sellouts to to corporations like the corporate buyouts.

Because I guess once it gets to that stage where you probably need an mba, you probably need a team complex accounting you might need large amounts of capital behind you to develop the business further. [00:31:00] So there’s definitely a limit to where. Yeah, quote unquote mom and dad website builder can really take a business before you, you sort of probably do need to have a board or a CEO really developing the site.

Now I just wanna step back a bit cuz you mentioned earlier a little bit about your book. Cause you talked about, the three tiers being like, stock market, real estate and business. So obviously you wrote your book, you can retire early. Can you tell us a little bit more about the book please?

Deacon: Yeah. so I got approached by a publisher that really wanted the concept. They realized that fire was a huge movement. They said, would I be interested in writing? And I was like, yeah, as long as I can give my perspective, use case studies, things like that. And so the idea was to give people kind of a very Like, if you know nothing about financial independence how do you get started?

What are the different avenues? And the first chapter is about, starting with your why, right? Like a lot of people want it, but they don’t know why. And if you don’t know why, you’re not gonna really have a clear path to achieve it.[00:32:00] And so it could be that you really are just miserable at your job and you will rather be doing something else.

Well, okay, now let’s do some self work and figure out what is that something else. Do you just need a new job because like, that could solve that problem? Or is it that you want to be able to spend more time with your kids or your family, or you wanna travel or whatever. So really the book kind of goes through like, once you have your why, then, okay, what are the different paths?

What plan is right for you based on your risk tolerance and how early you wanna retire? And so, it was a really cool project. I’ve been really blessed by it got, a lot of feedback from people that’s been positive and so that was the whole journey there of writing that book and I think published in 2017.

So it’s been about six years, but the information still valid, still holds true. The only thing that’s different is the interest rates are different for sure that I use in the d the different case studies and such. But it all kind of masks out the

Captain Fi: same. Yeah. Gee. Well, I’m gonna have to have a read of that cause I haven’t actually read your book yet, mate.

And I’ve got a really long reading list. Sure. But I think I’m gonna, I’m gonna add it to my [00:33:00] reading list and have a have a good old peruse through it. And it, I mean, if it’s anything like your site you’re very switched on guy, I think that one’s gonna be added to the the captain’s reading list.

Deacon: Oh, well, thank you.

Captain Fi: I appreciate that. I’m just blown away that somebody reached out to you and asked you to write a book. That’s pretty awesome.

Deacon: Yeah, it was super humbling, and it’s just cool to see along the way. Another thing that I did recently I’m not sure if you’re a rap fan, but a buddy and I decided to write a rap called Everyday Millionaire.

So we published a rap song. So it’s like I gotta keep this publishing thing going. I don’t know what else I can publish book rap song, but I just like putting content out there to help inspire people.

Captain Fi: I am literally typing everyday millionaire rap into Google right now. I can see it.

That’s awesome.

Deacon: Hopefully well kept all comes number one, but maybe Amazon or something. I don’t know what’s beating me these days.

Captain Fi: Oh goodness me. Okay, so I don’t have YouTube premium, so that’s an ad playing, so I’m just going to. [00:34:00] Mute that whilst it plays. Cause I, I really wanna see this. Maybe I’m gonna like cut it into the edit so we can all listen to this halfway through

Deacon: the podcast.

No, that’s so funny you say that. So I spoke at a conference called Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas, and I had mentioned it to whoever the host was, and I kid you not, at the end of our panel, they play it as like the exit music. And , I had this big smile on my face, like, just ear to ear grin.

, I can’t believe that they’re playing my song at a conference right now that I’m speaking at. Right. Like, I don’t know. I hope that encourages people though, right? Like, if you follow something that you’re truly passionate about that you enjoy, you’ve got a skillset set and knowledge base that can help other people.

Like other people will recognize that, right? And there’s just so much that will come from it that you don’t even realize.

Captain Fi: Yeah I certainly want to get more involved with the community as I’m doing more and more interviews and, starting to run more fire meetups. It’s, it used to be kind of scary at first, scary to put [00:35:00] yourself out there and to try and network and meet people.

But it’s so much fun and I’ve met some really amazing people and actually through, funnily enough, through Captain Fire, I’ve actually met and made a lot of really close personal friends that, are some of my closest friends now. So I’m super glad that I did it and I would encourage anyone to sort of lean into it and get involved with the community cuz who I was speaking to someone recently who described anyone who is.

Interested in like personal finance as like a unicorn. And in the, not a lot of people are really interested and passionate about financial independence. And so when you meet other people that are well you’ve got a lot of common values and interests. So it’s a great way.

 To start a

Deacon: friendship. Oh, for sure. Have you ever heard of the conference FinCon?

Captain Fi: Yes. Yes I have. And that is something I’ve always wanted to go to. But it’s just, it’s a big commitment to travel,

Deacon: To the [00:36:00] usa. Oh, it totally is. So I don’t blame you there, but if you ever get a chance to go, you’ll feel like these are by people.

There are, all the unicorns are in one place.

Captain Fi: So I guess on that topic Not only have you been, writing and podcasting, you’re also a speaker and you’ve done a lot of guest speaking in the personal finance community. How did you get involved with guest speaking and what does it entail?

Deacon: Yeah, the first thing was I think my first ever was at FinCon in 2013. And part of it was just kinda sharing my journey. I think it’s funny because back then I didn’t really have much success. I just had a little bit of success but there’s, at least at FinCon there’s different tracks.

They have beginner, intermediate, and advanced. And so over the years I kind of just graduated from like, okay, I was a beginner then. I was intermediate, then I was advanced, and then I would get other opportunities. I spoke at an e-commerce conference because they needed someone to talk about affiliate marketing, and cuz that was kind of foreign to people in e-commerce.

And[00:37:00] I had Schools like here, we’ve got a local university where I speak usually twice a year in the spring and in the, in, in the fall about personal finance and starting out your life, on the right foot when it comes to money. So I think it’s just starting where you’re at, right?

And so I was at these conferences, I saw opportunities, I seized them. And so I think, don’t sell yourself short if you’ve got some expertise like yourself, like, you’re a pilot not saying that you’d wanna do this, but you know, if there’s a conference that comes up and they’re like, Hey, we wanna talk to a pilot that has x, y, Z experience.

And you’re like, well, I could do that. I’ve got that knowledge, like, just apply. And I was just shocked to see how many people would say yes. I’ve even got approached, I got approached this year to go to Memphis, Tennessee to speak at a conference called Freedom Fest. It just didn’t work out.

But I think the more you know, you do it, then people notice and then they just start to reach out to you.

Captain Fi: Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So it’s more of a like, cause I was gonna ask how do you get involved in it? And so it’s more of like a personal network kind of thing?

Deacon: Yeah, I mean, I’d say first it’s, it takes [00:38:00] getting out.

 I think there is this tendency now that I’m more, I work from home. I, I don’t have to go to an office, I don’t have to go anywhere. You can kind of be secluded, well, if you will. And I think I make it an very intentional decision to get out to conferences, to meet with people, to have experiences.

And in doing so, that opens up opportunities. And so I think, that’s like, what’s one thing you could do this quarter that would bring excitement, joy, into your life? And it could be business, it could be pleasure. And then find like, what resonates with you? For me, I would look at someone that spoke at a conference center that inspired me.

 I would love to be able to do that to somebody else. And so that’s kind of, I think what lit the spark.

Captain Fi: I think it’s definitely something that’s for me it feels a bit scary, but I’d love to do it as well. So, yeah. I’ll definitely keep my mind open and know next time someone asks me, I might have to instead of politely declining give

Deacon: it a go.

Yeah, I’d encourage you to do it. And I honestly, FinCon would be a great place. Maybe that’s how you get over there. I mean, basically you get a free [00:39:00] ticket, all you gotta do is pay for the plane ride, which I know that’s expensive, but at least that covers another huge part of it, right? Yeah.

Captain Fi: Well, I’ve been wanting to travel to the US for a long time.

So you know what? Maybe I need to just bloody do it. We had some of the guys Some of the local podcasters in Australia I think it’s Alec and Bryce from Equity Mates. They ran a version of it in Australia called a version of FinCon called Fin Fest.

And everyone thought it was great. I’m pretty sure it was in Sydney. , they’re not gonna be running it this year, but it’ll be back next year as well. So, that’s also something I want to check out. And yeah, it’d be kind of cool, sort of , meet some of the I guess the authors and podcasters and people who have inspired you over the time and yeah, rub shoulders with with some of those people that have been doing it for quite a while.

Yeah,

Deacon: absolutely.

Captain Fi: So look, I wanna I guess shift up now and just kind of ask you a bit more personal questions about your finances and investing, if that’s all right. Sure. Okay, cool. So now we’ve kind of alluded to this already but what do you [00:40:00] invest in and why?

Deacon: Yeah, so we primarily invest in index funds.

And the funny thing is during 2020 to 2022, I dabbled in single stocks, because the market was crazy. It was exciting, and I was just doing it with a small amount of money, nothing that was significant, probably less than 5% of our holdings. And it, it was a really good experiment, I guess, if you will, because some stuff did really good and some stuff did really bad.

At the end of the day, the s and p 500 or the total stock market did better, and so you’re kinda like, it really is just like this tried and true diversified way to invest. Another thing that we decided to do was pay off our home. One thing that I don’t think people realize is when you have to make a mortgage payment in retirement, That you’d have to have let’s say if we’re using the 4% rule, right?

So for every a hundred thousand dollars in mortgage. So, and the interest rates have changed. They used to be, what, 3%? Now they’re 7%, but you’d have to have a significant amount of money more [00:41:00] to be able to pay that mortgage, right? And so if we’re saying 4% of a hundred thousand dollars, that’s $4,000 a year.

Well, so if you have let’s say for for $300,000 would give you $12,000 a year in dividends. That means a thousand dollars per month. Well, you can’t live in a home in America for a thousand dollars a month anymore unless it’s like a small apartment condo in a suburb. So really you need to have like 600 to $900,000 in investments.

Just to make your mortgage payment. So for us it was like a clear thing of, okay, let’s pay this off so we don’t have to make this mortgage payment, which I think was like 23 or 2,400 bucks a month at the time. So that, that’s another thing, I dunno if I’d call that an investment, but just kind of like a financial decision to have that freedom and independence.

And then the business kinda like your mentor had said, like, I’ve definitely plowed more money into the business, or I’ve acquired sites of time and sold them. And so it’s that’s where I’ve made most of my money is through the online world. And so right now [00:42:00] the two buckets are business and index funds and then kind of how I alluded to before, we are planning to do something with like a duplex or a triplex.

So we have, a lot of revenue coming in, but we don’t have tenants all over the place that we have to manage, if that makes sense.

Captain Fi: Yeah. It makes it just a lot easier when you can kind of outsource that For sure. Yeah. When you created and I’m guessing like, back when your wife and you created your, like your one page financial plan and you were, wanting to pay off debt and get better with money.

Had you sort of heard of the term fire back then?

Deacon: No, I haven’t. The first time I think I ever heard of it was from Pete Mr. Money Mustache. And I wanna say it’s probably 2013, so probably three years after.

Captain Fi: Yeah. Okay. And, well, I guess, cause what I was gonna ask is, at any point did you sort of, come up with, like a fire figure, like a fire number or a sort of a passive income goal that that your family wanted

Deacon: to live off?

Yeah. So based off of kind of lifestyle where [00:43:00] we wanted to be 2 million was kind of the number, right. And. Then I realized, at least for us, it’s not about that end number, it’s more about monthly cash flow. Right? Kind of what you’re alluding to is how much money do you need each month to make sure that you have the financial freedom to make those choices.

And so for us it’s about eight grand a month. Is approximately what it is. So for us, somewhere around 2 million was what we were looking for. My business does way more than eight grand a month right now. And it’s semi-passive. And so it’s kind of one of those things where I’ve been a little bit more loose with it and being like, okay, I don’t need to have this big pile of money necessarily.

I just need to make sure that I have a stable income that will provide for our resources and has a likelihood to in the future. And so that’s kind of where we’re at currently. But like, as I mentioned, because of the I’d say the volatility of the internet, Google. Ai, that kind of stuff, we are looking to kind of shift and diversify.[00:44:00]

So instead of it being like, Hey, I wanna have 2000 or 2 million in index funds, it’s like, well, if I have a million dollars in index funds and I’ve got $600,000 of real estate and then I’ve got this business, which we already talked about has a decent value we feel pretty comfortable and well diversified in that scenario.

Captain Fi: Yeah, that’s epic. It’s really funny I mean obviously your figures are in like us but I found myself in a similar position splitting my money between index funds property and online business. Predominantly those sort of three areas. Now I guess the question is since, when you were working and then now you’ve mentioned you’ve sort of relaxed a little bit cuz you, you’ve got this income from the business.

What kind of a savings rate did you guys target.

Deacon: It’s funny because it was more about how much do we wanna put away per year versus how much money do we make, and then what’s the savings rate. So I was never as focused on that as long as I was maxing out whatever our retirement was, which is usually like 50 or 60 grand a year, and I think for a [00:45:00] lot of people, like they’re maxing out their Roth ira or in, the US it’s like seven, 7,000.

So I always felt like, gosh, we’re doing like 10 x that almost. And so, that was more kind of the metrics that I was using at that time. I do see the benefit of it for sure. But we never really kind of tracked our savings rate. Yeah,

Captain Fi: I think it can be a trap too because I certainly got really obsessed with it.

And I was like, doing whatever I could to like eke out a few more percent. But yeah, I think, if you’ve got the fundamentals sorted it’s probably not something you need to get too swept up about. But I do think it’s a really awesome metric for people to, to track. And it’s, if you are if you’ve got a decent savings rate, at least, 50% or more which it sounded, it sounds like you.

Definitely had a pretty healthy savings rate if you were like maxing out those. And then like, con contributing 10 tenfold above and beyond you’re sort of tracking in the right direction. Did you guys then track your net wealth as it grew?

Deacon: Yeah, absolutely. So I used to do it on a spreadsheet and now I use, I think it’s called [00:46:00] Empower, but it basically just logs in and shows me everything on one screen or whatever.

And that’s been helpful too. I mean, obviously to be able to see, hey we’re continuing every month to see that number go up, right? Because when we started out, like we mentioned at the beginning of the show, it’s like we were negative net worth. I had the negative, I had the $52,000 net and then I had the two properties that were underwater.

And so yeah, now we have this kind of way to, to view our net worth on a regular basis. And that helps make sure, hey, yeah, we’re obviously spending less than we make, we’re saving and investing for the future, and things are going in the right direction.

Captain Fi: Awesome. And I like to ask about quote unquote early retirement, which for some people it’s, they don’t like that word.

And obviously you guys are I would say maybe semi-retired working on passive business. And so you mentioned as well, you wanted to look at more conventional things. Does that mean, are you still working now? Are you doing other jobs other than running the websites?

Deacon: No. The website is, like I mentioned the income is very significant. So it’s like, no, I don’t do anything else outside of that. I do have [00:47:00] some other websites that I partner with other people on that are pretty minimal. What I’ve found is like hiring writers, editors, someone to manage is it’s like an online property, right?

It’s, you kind of have a property management company, you have someone that checks in on ’em, make sure things get done. So those are pretty passive too. But what I would say is, I don’t know if I’d say, I don’t like the words early retirement, but I think the challenge is I had a mentor, or I still do, his name’s Steve.

And he made this comment that I thought was awesome cuz he’s older, he’s like in the seventies, and he said, most people want to retire away from something when really they should be retiring towards something. Right? Because I had this guy come over one time, he wanted to get some rocks. I was getting rid of these lava rocks.

I, we were just having kids and they’re sharp. And anyways, he was in his seventies and I said what do you do? He’s like, I’m retired. I’m like, oh, that’s cool. And I, and I said I’m writing a book on, retiring early. He’s like, oh, I did that once.

I’m like, what happened? He’s like, well, I sat on the couch. I didn’t know what to do. I watched a bunch of tv. I ate a bunch of junk food. I had a heart attack. I was like, [00:48:00] well, what’d you do then? He’s like, I went back to work. And so it’s like people have this dream of retiring, but if you don’t have a reason why, if you don’t know what you’re retiring towards, you’re gonna get there and you’re gonna be like, wow, this is a letdown.

Right? It’s like you gotta have something meaningful that you say, Hey, this is what I’m moving towards. And so I think for me, I think we’re created the work. I think there’s a part of us that wants to be productive, right? We want to add value. And so I don’t want to ever get rid of that part of me.

That’s part of how I’m designed. But I do want to have control over my time. I wanna have control over what type of work I do, how often I do it. And so I think that’s where the mindset piece, I think I might differ from a lot of people. Where it’s like they truly just want passivity. And you’re like I’ve gone on beaches, I’ve gone on cruises, I’ve done the traveling.

Like it does not bring ultimate satisfaction, right? Like you, you’ll be left wanting. And so there’s gotta be something more to it. And so that’s why I just encourage people, make sure you’re retiring towards something, not away from something.

Captain Fi: [00:49:00] Yeah. And like from, maybe a better phrase I’ve heard people use before is work optional.

Yeah, absolutely. And that, yeah. Allowing you to kind of work on your passion projects. I, it’s funny I resonate so much with what you just said. De and I, when I left flying, actually I became a carer for my mom. And so it was kinda like trading one full on job for another. But after she passed away I definitely felt like I was floating cuz in amongst sort of the grief of losing your mom.

It was also like, What do I do with my time? And actually I like played Nintendo like video games for a couple of months. And then my partner and I went traveling for a few months around Southeast Asia, which was really cool. And when we got back I definitely was like, oh, what am I gonna do with my time?

And so leaning back into like writing and podcasting has been awesome for me. It’s been a lot of fun. Love, like, I guess being productive and yeah it’s really interesting to hear I guess the advice from people who have been there and done it [00:50:00] before. And they can kind of give you a heads up and yeah, I think you spot on.

I think we definitely need to be productive and have something to do otherwise, what’s the

Deacon: point? Yeah, I couldn’t agree more.

Captain Fi: So look one of the last couple of questions that I wanna ask, which it’s very frustrating people hate these questions. It’s because I basically want to, see what successful people are reading what they’re listening to and what their advice is.

So other than of course your book you can retire early, what are some of your favorites, mate? What are some of your, I mean you mentioned a couple before, but do you have any one particular favorites that stand out or a couple that

Deacon: you really like? Yeah, well, so what I’m listening to, and I’m rereading it actually, so, I just was listening to Jim this morning is the power of habit.

And the reason why I like it is he uses a lot of stories of people with bad habits and what they did differently to get new habits that had like a transformational effect. And so I, I love that book. Another [00:51:00] book that I love is The One Thing by Gary Keller. I think he talks about like one, one thing.

If you do it, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary. So you think kind of deeply about your life and what you’re doing and like, am I doing things just to do them? And if so, is there another way that I could do them to where I have a better outcome? And so I’d say those are two books that really kind of, resonate with me.

Another one that’s this is probably more of like, just fascinating is never Split the Difference by Chris Voss, where he was an hostage negotiator and he talks about negotiating tactics and it’s just it’s great for relationships with your wife, with your kids, with friends, in business.

And it’s just super exciting cuz he is talking about when, people get kidnapped and how he gets the, the kidnap eba and so it kind of brings in this like exciting, thrilling but also I can learn from at the same time. If that makes

Captain Fi: sense. Yeah. Awesome. Great. Recommendations.

 I’ve had a read of the power of Habit Charles duh Higg before. Awesome book.[00:52:00] And never split Difference is on my reading list as well. Yeah, I’m looking forward to reading it. I think everything we do really becomes a negotiation, isn’t it? Like whenever you’re dealing with another party?

Deacon: Oh, for sure. Yeah. And that’s kind of what it gets to because, you might think about it, you’re like, well, I’m never gonna be in a hostage situation, or, I don’t have to negotiate at work. Well, maybe you do for a raise, or maybe it’s, your wife wants to do something, you wanna do something else.

It’s like, yeah, like you said, everything can be a negotiation and there’s ways that you can make it the most amicable or the, the most profitable outcome possible if you kinda learn different techniques and stuff. And that’s kind of what he goes

Captain Fi: through. Yeah. Now what about podcasts other than the the Well Kept Wallet podcast?

What are some of your favorites?

Deacon: Yeah, well, it’s interesting I used to listen to stacking Benjamin’s personal finance podcast. I’m really more into audio books nowadays. So if I listen to a podcast, it might be more specific about what I’m interested in. So I might search a Tim Ferriss and say, has he [00:53:00] done something that is related to ai?

Because that’s something that’s impacting my business. Oh, but he has. And so this is, what’s going on in that world. So I will be much more inclined to searching for podcasts that have specific guests. Joe Rogan often will have a lot of these people on there that I’m like, I wanna hear from them about this topic because it’s relevant.

So I’d say, it’s probably more of the mainstream stuff. And it’s more the people that are kind of the key players and whatever’s happening just so I can keep my finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the world.

Captain Fi: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I think it’s a good way to do things as well cuz you can kind of pick and choose what interests you rather than sort of, I guess subscribing to a regular show.

I know like I can sort of overwhelm myself sometimes with personal finance content if I just sort of immerse myself in it a bit too much. So it’s nice to sort of branch out and actually listen to something on a completely different

Deacon: topic. Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, I mean I think sometimes it’s different mediums.

Right now I really love YouTube, like video really speaks to me in a different [00:54:00] way than audio. And so I think sometimes the medium could just be different for different seasons.

Captain Fi: Yeah, I’ve certainly binged a lot of YouTube as well. I’d love to be able to make YouTube videos, but oh man, it’s like, there’s a lot of work that goes into those, so for sure, like props to everyone that’s doing it, like it’s not it’s not easy.

So good on him. So look finishing up mate I always like to finish on a nice simple, I guess wrapping things up. So what would be your top pieces of advice for someone pursuing financial independence?

Deacon: I’d say slow down is the first thing. I think a lot of times we make decisions because we’re just.

Overwhelmed, busy, whatever. And we don’t slow down to take the time to really think through the process. It’s that whole, leaning a ladder up against the wrong wall and getting to the top and realizing that, oh, you wanted to be on the other wall, and so it’s really slowing down and saying, okay, [00:55:00] what do you wanna achieve?

Why do you wanna achieve it? Who are the key players? Your spouse, your kids other friends, whatever it might be. Ended up developing a plan to achieve it, it sounds oversimplified, but like, I love, like you’ve mentioned JL Collins, like simplify the wealth. Like it is not rocket science.

It’s literally you spend less than you make, you save and invest the difference. And, You do that for a certain period of time until you have the resources to have the independence that you want. And so you just gotta pick the path that makes the most sense for you. And then do the research, right?

Don’t just rely on, on, oh, I picked the path. Like, no, make sure you do your due diligence. Real estate can be tricky. We I bought a property that was on a land lease and I didn’t know much about land leases and then they increased it. And so it really does take a lot of due diligence to say, Hey, what do I need to know about this?

And not just kind of be whim school about it.

Captain Fi: So your first bit is slow down and actually look at where you want to get.

Deacon: Yeah, absolutely. Cuz I think what happens is a lot of people are overwhelmed.[00:56:00] And so it’s like that’s why they wanna retire. I. Like, I’m stressed out, my job is running me ragged.

I’m driving to rush hour traffic. Like I just get me outta here. Right? Yeah. And it’s like, okay, I get that. That’s real, but what else is going on? Right? What else could you do? Could you work from home instead of driving into the office? Is it that you are miserable in that position and there’s a better position in your company?

Like, I think that there’s things like instead of thinking that retiring early is a solution, I think that slowing down and really thinking about what’s going on in your life and addressing it with what needs to be addressed can help you think more clearly so that you’re making sure you’re putting the ladder on the right wall.

Captain Fi: Yeah, ladder on the right wall. Look I think for me as well, that was a big thing is I think I was quite stressed out. I had family stuff going on and I certainly latched onto the idea of using fire and financial independence as a way to sort of get away and regain control.

And I think, maybe if I had taken more time and slowed down,[00:57:00] maybe I wouldn’t have been as vigorous about saving as much as possible and getting outta my job as, as soon as possible. Cause it was a fun job. I absolutely loved it. Do I regret retiring? There is an element.

I do miss it. But I’m very glad that I’m able to dictate life on my own terms now. But yeah, I definitely do miss it. So I think probably slowing down It would’ve been very good piece of advice if I could tell myself that if I could go back a few years.

Well, very cool. Okay, awesome. Alright, well Deacon, thanks so much for coming on the show today, mate. I really appreciate your time. Before we finish up, is there anything else that you’d like to mention that we might have missed?

Deacon: No, I just really appreciate you having me on the show. This has been awesome and I hope people have gotten some valuable information that they can take away and hopefully transform their lives financially.

Oh yeah,

Captain Fi: there’s heaps in here. And mate always love , to chat about online business, so, if you’re up for it, maybe we should do another episode and just focus more on on

Deacon: online business. Yeah, I’d definitely be up for it. I think there’s a lot to unpack there.[00:58:00]

And I think it’s important to also know the risks, right? And so I think that’s a lot of times we see you’ll hear about the a hundred grand a month or you hear about the people that sell for big money, but you don’t hear about all the kind of the stuff behind the scenes that happens and the risk that’s involved.

And so, definitely up for that.

Captain Fi: Yeah, there’s a lot to it. It’s a bit of a beast, isn’t it? Now deacon, where can listeners find out more about you or contact you if they had any questions?

Deacon: Yeah, best places well kept while.com, and then at the bottom there’s a contact form and I get those directed in my email.

I’d love to hear from anybody and help out any way I can.

Captain Fi: Awesome. So if anyone wants to check out deacon’s website, check it out. WW dot well cat wallet.com. I’ll have a link. In the show notes as well as the transcript of today’s episode. And a link to deacon on socials.

Awesome. Well, hey, mate had an absolute blast. Thank you so much for your time and sharing your expertise today. And I look forward to catching up in the future. Maybe it’s at FinCon.

Deacon: Yeah, that’d be awesome. Thanks again for having me on. Awesome.

Captain Fi: Cheers mate. Bye.[00:59:00]

Thanks for listening to another episode of the Captain Fire Financial Independence Podcast. To read the transcripts or check out the show notes, head over to www.captainfire.com for all the details. If you have a question for the captain, make sure to get in touch. You might even make it on the airwaves.

You can reach me online through the Captain Fire contact form. Or get in touch through the socials I’m at, given on Facebook and Instagram, as well as a number of online finance and investing forums. And finally, remember the information presented on the show and the links provided are for general information purposes only.

They should not be taken as constituting professional financial advice. You should always do your own research when making any financial decisions and make sure it’s [01:00:00] appropriate for your personal circumstance.

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