Podcast | Entrepreneurship with Liz Raad

On board the podcast today is Liz Raad; a successful online entrepreneur and educator who’s expertise is buying and selling websites and teaching women how to do the same. She is the co-founder of the eBusiness Institute a private training organisation that provides digital marketing courses designed specifically for those who want to re-train for the digital future or earn income independently.

Liz and I chat about her experience with Entrepreneurship; how her and her Partner Matt transitioned from being professional zoologists on a PAY-G wage, into running physical business and then transitioning into digital business (websites) buying and building a portfolio that produces a seven figure income. I also ask Liz about her experience being a Mum in business, and learn a bit more about she invests for her family.

CaptainFI is not a Financial Advisor and the information below is factual review information, not financial advice. This website is reader-supported, which means we may be paid by advertising on the site, or when you visit links to partner or featured sites. For more information please read my Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, and Financial Disclaimer.

“You have got to have your long-term vision. You have to have that picture in your mind of what you’re creating – thats gotta be strong enough that you always go back to it. Every decision you make needs to be based on is that taking me towards that vision or is it not. Long term focus”

Liz Raad

Entrepreneurship with Liz Raad

Show Notes

• Check out Liz on Twitter

• Check out Liz on Linked in

• Check out the podcast with Liz and Matt Raad about the eBusiness Institute together here

• Check out my review of the eBusiness Institute

Liz Raad’s Top Tips

1. You’ve got to have your long-term vision. You have to have that picture in your mind of what you’re creating – thats gotta be strong enough that you always go back to it. Every decision you make needs to be based on is that taking me towards that vision or is it not. Long term focus, Long term focus!

2. You have to value your time. Be able to set those boundaries and step up and say, okay, well, what am I willing to put up with, what am I not willing to put up with, and what am I worth?

3. Recognize your progress – understanding and really knowing that small steps can build and snowball toward much larger achievements – kind of like how compound interest works. Recognise how an exponential curve works – flat on the bottom, but massive returns at the end!

4. You are the average of the five closest people to you – so surround yourself with the people you want to be like!

Liz Raad’s top influences

1. Tom Hopkins who is a sales trainer

2. Zig Ziglar who is a sales trainer and motivational speaker

3. Tony Robbins

Transcript

Entrepreneurship with Liz Raad

Captain FI: [00:00:00] Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Welcome aboard captain thigh, the financial independence podcast.

[00:00:24] Get a welcome to an episode of captain fire, the financial independence podcast, where I opened the cockpit for some of the best and brightest in personal finance, as well as those who’ve reached or are on their way to financial independence.

[00:00:42] Good morning. Welcome today. I have with me, Liz Rob who’s created financial freedom in her life, starting from zero and using a very unconventional. She and her husband, Matt are website investors, which means they use digital assets to generate their cashflow and be a wealth. They were one of the first in the world to realize that they could actually buy websites, renovate them just like real estate and then decide to either keep them for cashflow or sell them for profit.

[00:01:14] I’ve asked Liz to share some of her insights into her journey as a successful female entrepreneur. You started out as a zoologist and went Andres a young family and have lots of great adventures on the way. So Liz, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. It’s great to be here. So first out, I know I’ve spoken to you and Matt in the past, and I am actually one of your students, but for the benefit of people who haven’t come across yourself or Matt before, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

[00:01:48] Liz raad: [00:01:48] Like I said, in the introduction, it’s all a bit different term now than where I started back. I do now live a life that I really only could dream of. Little girl in a farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere. And now we own a portfolio of websites. We basically invest in digital assets and generate wealth through those by using a strategy that we learned on the way, because we’ve been in business now.

[00:02:14] I have a 20 years and been together two Matt and I for over 20 years. And we’re adventurous. We’ve always had a spirit of curiosity and we’ve gone out there and always had a really strong long-term goal to create financial freedom. And, and that was something that saw us through our whole journey. So I grew up on a farm.

[00:02:35] We became scientists, which sounds really bizarre now that’s we loved it. We were very outdoors people. We love anything on two wheels. We love mountain biking. We love adventuring. We own road bikes there at one time. So we’ve got a whole range of things that we’ve done in our lives. And now, like I said, I have a young family and raise them throughout the whole process of generating that wealth and creating financial freedom in our.

[00:03:00] Pretty incredible. One of the things that I look up to you the most is how you’ve been able to design a lifestyle rather than a business or attack approaching it from a point of view, you really have designed. A financially independent lifestyle. And for most of the people listening to the captain fire podcast, they’re really interested in financial independence.

[00:03:27] We often hear this term fire or financial independence retire early. Well, something that, like I said, I really admire is how you’ve been able to use your skills as an entrepreneur to generate that lifestyle without necessarily having to. Follow a conventional path of working as a professional, building up a huge sum of money and buying index funds.

[00:03:50] Captain FI: [00:03:50] It just shows that there are many different ways to tackle this problem. And we were just talking before we jumped on air and you guys have just come back from a pretty awesome little holiday. You just sort of gone. Now, I’m going to take a couple of weeks off and go off and have an adventure. That’s something that’s really important to us.

[00:04:08] Liz raad: [00:04:08] That’s very much part of our vision is. We want to be able to make choices. So if someone says, and this is what happened, you know, a group of people we hang around, most of them are retired and they just said, oh, we’re going to go down to the snowy mountains and we’re going mountain biking. Do you want to come?

[00:04:25] And we just go. Cool. Yeah. So we took out a couple of weeks and when adventuring, and that was a big part of why we wanted to create what we created. The thing is too. It’s about not putting that stuff off. So one of our biggest learnings. In our journey. So initially I think we started out like everyone, you know, you’re powering on.

[00:04:47] I was very impatient. I was like, come on, I don’t want this to happen now. And you’re working really hard. You think you’ve got to do everything all at once. And I think the biggest learning I’ve had in our journey is that. Actually, and like, you’ve alluded to there. You don’t have to do it like everybody else does.

[00:05:04] You can find your own way and create your own path stick true to your goals. It’s actually about saying no, a lot of the time, more than, yeah. I think that’s the key to it. One of the big keys to success, and one of our biggest learnings was okay, we can do it our way. If we’re strong and true to our vision, then we can create the life and the journey to cause that you brought that up to.

[00:05:28] One of my big things was I did not want to be a baked beans millionaire, where you got to live on baked beans for 10 years before you finally crack it. That wasn’t my idea of the fun. So. We’ve had fun the whole way, because we have always scheduled time for fun, I guess. You know what I think, actually, that’s something you really got to practice.

[00:05:50] You got to schedule in time for fun. I’m hearing you loud and clear Liz, and I’m trying to do that for my own journey. I definitely am guilty of wanting to do everything all the time. I said that’s some very, very wise words and you know, I know it might be rude or a bit of a pho par to be discussing numbers here.

[00:06:10] Captain FI: [00:06:10] I would just say for the benefit of the audience, Liz is the real deal in terms of starting from nothing and building a business with, is it a seven figure income? So yeah, it can be done. And that’s why I appreciate you making time to actually speak about your journey today. And for some people that might think, oh yeah, Unachievable.

[00:06:34] Well, no, it isn’t because Liz started with literally nothing. And as I said earlier, I am learning from Liz and her husband, Matt, and they are helping me to build some of my online businesses as well. Definitely a very interesting topic. Topic of business. You started out as a biologist. Why did you start your business?

[00:06:58] And why did you give up on being such a successful professional? You guys were studying doctorate, so you lead us in your build.

[00:07:08] Liz raad: [00:07:08] But we looked into the future, I’m sure like many of your listeners found you’re looking into the future and you think, is this actually going to get me to where I want to be in life in the future? And so ology is great and it’s fun. And it was, it’s such an adventure. But there’s not a lot of money in that field.

[00:07:26] And we could see the people around us, the people ahead of us, you know, 10 years ahead of us or 20 years ahead of us still struggling for money. And that’s not what we wanted because the other thing too is we thought, well, we can help the world’s a whole lot more. If we have a whole lot of money, we can be funding these projects.

[00:07:44] We can be working on these projects and helping the world. Far bigger way than if we are always scrimping and scraping and trying to survive. And I think that’s part of it. So we decided we’re going to do something different and an opportunity came up with this little business that we came across for sale.

[00:08:04] So there’s this little business that we found for sale and we got advice. We went to an accountant and asked him, okay, is this business okay? Is this valuation okay? And yes, he was overly positive and, yup. So we went ahead with a bit of money we’d scrimped together. And Matt actually had a redundancy payout that he’d had from before he went into the zoology.

[00:08:26] So we screamed and pulled together with family. We got in there and when we bought that business, when we bought it, we realized a few months after being in there that it was going out of business. We’ve either made a really big mistake, or this is an opportunity we took as an opportunity to grow. We knew we had to, we had no other option we were in now.

[00:08:47] And so we had to learn about business. Matt did accounting courses. We did sales courses. We did everything we could. To turn this business around, but that was our first experience, but we loved it. What it felt like was we were in control. The things that we did in that business had effects. The more we own, the more we learned and the more effective we were in that business.

[00:09:11] The bitter, it got, you know, that little tiny business. We ended up exporting our products to Germany and all around the world. We totally turned that business around and that was something I think, straightaway. We learned, okay. We like being in control of our future and our finances and with a business.

[00:09:28] We have that control. We don’t have to go cap in hand to a boss or whatever and play rules about what we need to do to be able to get a raise. We saw actually far more freedom in a business because we could design it to suit our hours. So even through that time, when we were working pretty hard, we still had a ball, even though we didn’t have a huge amount of money to start with, we were still out riding and doing our adventures, traveling and doing things.

[00:09:54] We did it on a budget. It’s like you said earlier, you really wanted to build a lifestyle rather than just a career or a life. Yeah. And we wanted to be in control of it. What we realized was the skills we were learning gave us huge control over these assets. These businesses were assets, and that’s why we did it again.

[00:10:13] We thought this is awesome. We set up that business. It was very much outsourced, so it didn’t need a lot of time on it. And then we started buying and selling. Buying and renovating. When we had enough money, we started buying properties and renovating them as well. We realized with business, you’ve just got so much leverage.

[00:10:31] So that’s the direction we went. The idea of being in control of your finances, if your future, I think that’s very desirable and a very appealing to a lot of the patients. Who are interested in the fire movement. You’re not at the mercy or the risk of losing your job, selling your time for money. And then you worked 30 years for a company.

[00:10:53] And what happens at the end? It’s like, oh, thanks very much. See you later, your super fund was invested. Whereas having your business means you have much more control over your destiny. So that’s fantastic. I think a great answer. You started your business. So you said you’d started at quite early when you were young and you’ve since had a family.

[00:11:18] What are some of the implications of. Running a business and trying to raise a family at the same time. Have you have you come into many struggles? I think everybody does anyone. Who’s an entrepreneur and has a family. When you have a family, kids are random, are unpredictable. Suddenly life is turned upside down.

[00:11:41] The little being that you love and care for and suddenly your attention is divided. I think a lot of people step up when they have a family, they realize, okay, I’m responsible for someone now. And I think it gives you even added motivation to create that financial freedom and the ability to have choice.

[00:11:59] So by the time we had a family that was just at the point where the internet was starting to take off. And it was moving beyond the, I don’t know how many of you probably even remember this, but you know, he used to have a modem and squeak and you could download one image that wasn’t moving. Normally I remember trying to pick up the phone and you’d hear that horrendous sort of cyber voice.

[00:12:26] Yup. So that’s when we started our internet journey, we were doing this with businesses, but obviously it was the two of us and we had unlimited time and the ability to work whenever we wanted, because there’s just the two of us. But once you have a family on board, it throws in a whole lot of different challenges because you now have a timetable if the baby needs to sleep or if the baby needs things, or if the kids are white, basically they can be mayhem.

[00:12:49] So that’s when we started getting online, that was one of the big motivators for getting online. Cause we thought, okay, Can we do this? What we’ve been doing is buying and renovating these assets. Can we do this in an online space? And we also were looking at, okay, can we do this, not have interaction with people because that’s the other element.

[00:13:09] So we originally owned business in offline business. We’re talking to people at times on a networking, a lot of time taken up with that. And online suddenly we had the ability to reach a worldwide bar. And not even have to talk to anyone on a daily basis and we’re going okay, that can, this leverage actually started out by building a couple of sites.

[00:13:30] And I thought me being impatient, I just go, oh, can we just bypass all the building stuff and just buy one? And that’s when we started looking and originally we were looking on sites like eBay and flipper didn’t exist. It was, there was site point, which was just like a forum. And we just started looking around and connecting with people and finding assets that way.

[00:13:51] That’s when we started again, what I had to do is very much set boundaries. So say, okay, well there’s family time. And there’s some work time being able to still have those long-term goals, but be okay with the journey, perhaps taking a little bit longer sometimes or being disrupted. So it was very much about knowing the law.

[00:14:13] Game being really happy with even achieving small things in a day. And just revising that expectation. Interesting. I’m hearing a lot of similarities from what you’re saying too, in the fire community. When we talk about get rich slow, and again, you touched on it at the start, which was. You don’t need to be constantly doing things and Rome wasn’t built in a day, so to speak.

[00:14:39] That’s a really important reflection that if you are going to have a family and juggle that with business, that maybe be reasonable about your expectations for what’s going to happen. Yeah, I think so, because it is an incredible time and you want to be in a mindset where you have got time for them.

[00:14:57] They’re a big part of life. Know what happens in those first few years is important for them. Growth and development as well. If you can set those boundaries and just be okay with expectations and accept that for maybe a few years, the journey won’t potentially run as fast as you think it will, but it constantly amazes me how much you can actually get done.

[00:15:22] As long as you focus on something, we call the MRAs the maximum return activity. So it’s not just the. Getting a whole lot of stuff done. It’s actually just being really clear about, okay, well, if I finally got one thing done today, what would make the most impact towards my journey? And sometimes that’s the scariest thing.

[00:15:41] You put that off, but if you can discipline yourself, Let’s go for the MRIs each day. Your progress is actually faster than if you mixed around and look busy doing a whole lot of little bits and pieces. I’ve seen people like that. They carry a clipboard or a beige envelope and walk around the office looking busy and it’s just FaceTime or busy work.

[00:16:06] But concentrating on the MRIs is something that I’m trying to learn, um, when it comes to digital business as well. So that’s fantastic. Speaking of raising a family and being a mom. When you were working in the corporate world, you talked about, you had to do a lot of networking and a lot of business meetings.

[00:16:24] Did you face any particular challenges or come across any discrimination as a result of either your gender or being a mum? It’s a very common thing. I think, I think my pure. I dunno what the word is. I always just assumed I was as good as anything. So I would walk into a meeting and look them straight in the eye and speak to them as if there was no difference.

[00:16:56] I rarely found someone who excluded me or looked down at me because I was knowledgeable. I knew my stuff, and I felt like I had value to add or to bring. And on the rare occasion that there was someone who obviously was kind of looking down their nose and trying to exclude me or things like that. Just be like ma you’re not part of my world anymore.

[00:17:19] It’s kind of like that energy of, well, if you don’t want to hear it from me, then whatever, I’m not working with you, then I think I always had that attitude of, I know in the corporate world, sometimes I think you’re trapped. I think this is the other thing too in business. I had the choice. Well, if that person isn’t going to work with me because I’m female, then you missed out dude kind of attitude.

[00:17:42] Whereas I know in the corporate world, sometimes, maybe that doesn’t work once you watch your thoughts. I love that Liz. I love the fact that being a business owner gave the power back to you to be able to control those situations and those dynamics. And I think knowing your value and your worth is so.

[00:18:00] Important. 

[00:18:01] Captain FI: [00:18:01] I think there’s one realizes that I think there are always, will be sometimes that imbalance and sometimes that kind of attitude with some people. It’s interesting. Cause I actually heard an interview with Julie Bishop not long ago and she’s pretty amazing lady here. She is at the top of a game in politics.

[00:18:18] And even she says, you should be in a room. If something’s being discussed and she’ll come up with an idea and it will be ignored and then some bloke will come up with the idea and everyone would go, oh yeah, that’s good. And she’d be like, hang on.

[00:18:35] Liz raad: [00:18:35] No, it does happen. I think, I think the main thing is it’s about speaking up and saying, hang on. I just said that. And being able to. Get that point across that? Yes, you are. You have value and it must be respected. Yeah. I love it. Just walking there, hit up, looking me in the eyes and lay down on the wall.

[00:18:56] That’s great. Liz.

[00:18:58] I sound old dragon lady now, but I did it with a smile.

[00:19:02]Interestingly, I’ve coached a lot of women now over the years who are in those corporate roles.

[00:19:07] Invariably, when I say to them, look, you have a value. It must be respected going to get that attitude to one of two things either. The bow. I’ve had several women who have gone to their boss and said, hang on. No, that’s not my job. Like they’re being asked to do way too much. And they’ve said, hang on.

[00:19:25] That’s not my job. There’s one of two responses either. The boss says, well, you’re not a team. Yeah. You know, or caught the boss says, oh, okay, righto, let’s rework that. And if the boss says you, obviously, you’re not part of this team kind of thing, variably that woman, that I’ve said that to she’s left and found a better job, better paid better hours.

[00:19:52] And with a respectful corporate environment, just because she stepped up and said, Hey, I’m not going to put up with that anymore. I think that is very powerful. I think the relevance to everyone here now on this is when you stand up in the life and say, Hey, this is what I want and I’m not going to accept anything less.

[00:20:10] That’s what starts coming into your

[00:20:15] it’s interesting.

[00:20:17]Captain FI: [00:20:17] I’ve seen  in aviation, when it comes to pilots that have families, both male and female, there is this tendency to almost discriminate against. The parents, because there’s a perception that someone who’s single and who doesn’t have kids with no responsibilities at home, they’re going to be more of that team player.

[00:20:36] They’re going to work harder. What would be your advice to parents or new parents that might be facing discrimination? Well, the fact that I have a young family,

[00:20:46] Liz raad: [00:20:46] I must admit I’m of the opinion. Well, if it’s really important to you to have time for your family, you need to reassess, is this the right workplace for me?

[00:20:57] Because I’m assuming that’s a lot of, what’s driving you to say, all right, I want to things. I’m going to create a business or do something else that generates income so that I don’t have to put up with that. Cause some corporate environments are like that and they will preference those people and you’ve got to decide, well, do I want to be part of that environment or not?

[00:21:17] And sometimes you can’t change the environment. You can change you and you’re you were willing to do or put up with or handle. And sometimes actually walking away. Not that I want to tell everyone to walk away from their job, but. Maybe that’s the intention because you’re standing up and saying, Hey, I’m not going to put up with that.

[00:21:40] If they want to put an environment I can work with, then this is not an environment I want to be part of. I love it. And having a strong financial foundation and as it’s sort of affectionately referred to as F U money or a big emergency fund, I think that helps people with having the confidence to maybe stand up for themselves in that situation.

[00:22:05] Definitely. And so if you’re in that situation at the moment when you don’t have that backstop, so you have to put up with a bit of this for the moment. This is where again, the long-term vision is really important. So you go, okay, well, I know this is going to change because I’m saving up right now. I’m doing stuff and I’m taking steps so that I won’t have to put up with this for the rest of my life and we can handle it for now because there’s also that level of acceptance.

[00:22:28] If you’re in a situation, even if it sucks, This has happened too many times to origin times when businesses had, and things have gone wrong and things aren’t working the way we want it’s at those moments, when we fall back on that long-term vision is heading in that direction. Yes, I’m off. I’m on a little bit of a, at the moment.

[00:22:49] It’s not quite right, but I know I’m putting in place and making decisions every day. That is building something that is going to get me back to where we want to be in the longterm. So there is that level of, okay. Accept things. Aren’t quite how are with them right now in my heart, know my value. I know where I’m heading and I’m going to set stuff up now every day, I’m going to do little things to make sure I’m on that path.

[00:23:14] So that’ll give you a sense of security. Okay. Confidence. So on the topic of websites and being a parent. Cause you’ve obviously created quite a lot. And you have a lot of experience across a broad spectrum of digital properties. Do you find that there are any particular style of websites that might be well suited to individuals?

[00:23:41] Like are there websites that are best for moms to run? Would there be some that are best for dads or sit the best Susan for females? Okay. I think, well, certainly how strategy has always been the leveraged style websites. So the sort of websites that. By or to be from sale to be made or for it to make money.

[00:24:02] So we don’t do e-commerce. We don’t hold any stock or I don’t want to deal with customers and returns and all that sort of stuff. So we purposely, when we got into the online space, we purposely chose businesses that were leveraged so that all we needed. Basically for our websites, we just need to add content, provide great content, give people a good user experience, make sure they’re answering their questions, solving their problems, providing a really good experience.

[00:24:29] And then we get paid by either advertising or by selling an information product or a membership or something like that. Or by selling other people’s products. So referring them on to a business that does do those products and getting paid a commission or a federal payment, if they go and buy something that guided our whole choice of every website we buy has to fit into that mold so that we’re buying ourselves, not a job, but buying ourselves an investment and an a leveraged income in terms of.

[00:25:01] Who like a lot of women are very good on social. So if you have specific talents or passions, you love connect communicating with people, maybe via social. You may have an element where you’d buy a website that perhaps had a social media element to it. Maybe some social media followings and things that you could build up.

[00:25:23] And that may be your superpower. Everybody has a superpower, something that they’re really good at or really love doing. And that can mean that your acceleration and renovation of that. It’s even faster or bigger because you will love it. So you can buy websites that are in particular topics too. So if you love a particular topic, you can have that, but sometimes that’s the danger because it draws you in and you get too involved in it.

[00:25:46] We have websites that are all different topics from cars to pigeon racing, to. Oh, everything like we’ve got product sites. We’ve got it doesn’t matter. And a lot of them, I have no idea you watch about the topic because we have outsources who run them. We favor that we got a little favorites that we, we love the topic.

[00:26:11] Interesting. Now I’m starting myself at half a dozen sites and I can relate because I’ve got one or two that I really like in hint. One of them is probably captain five. I probably spend far too much time writing, but I’m learning to outsource, as you mentioned. So. That’s a really good summary because it doesn’t mean that you need to pigeonhole yourself into a certain type of website, which means that there’s no particular website that’s best suited for anyone.

[00:26:39] And it really comes down to organizational and management skills with the outsourcers. So I definitely, at the beginning, when you’re picking a website to buy, or Bill’s thinking about the structure of how that’s going to make money and how it’s going to generate its traffic so that, you know, is automateable focus again, everything I’m noticing that word keeps coming up.

[00:27:02] The long-term always thinking about, okay, what do I want? What is it I actually want in life? And whenever I do a coaching with people, the first question I’ll always ask is. Okay, where are we heading? What’s the goal here, because I can’t give you advice until I know where you want to go, because where you want to go, it might be different to where, where I want to go or where I think you should go.

[00:27:26] So it is about, okay, where do you want to go? And let’s set it up based on that. So speaking of coaching and where people want to get. Back at the start of your career, right? When you were leaving your profession as a scientist, where did you want to go? And is there anything you wished you knew before you began that transformation?

[00:27:46] Like what would you coach yourself? If you could have a conversation with your younger self life of freedom? Really? When we were young, I grew up on a farm and I just loved it. We’d have adventures all day. I’d be off, down in the river or riding our bikes somewhere, doing stuff. Did learning about the world.

[00:28:05] And I love that sense of freedom. And we had that through, uh, when we did a degree, we were working on a field station out in far Western new south Wales, and they just gave us stuff and said off you go and. We love that sense of freedom. So that was a really big part of our vision was that we still had that freedom to do the things that we wanted to do, organize our time, how we wanted, we didn’t want to show up in an office from exhale to this hour, but that was a big part of our vision.

[00:28:33] And the other part was that we wanted to be able to have the ability to choose, you know, do we work or do we not work if we love it? Yay. If we don’t, we can move on to have that. Sense of power over our lives to say, if we don’t like something, we can say, well, we don’t want to do that and move and we can stop.

[00:28:52] And I said, that was a very big driving force thing, I guess I’d say to my younger self is. Amendment to stay focused. You don’t have to do everything. So I know when we first started, we were just into everything and it’s very directed. Admittedly, you have to learn stuff. And, and that was part of our journey.

[00:29:14] But I think there was times when there’s so many opportunities and I wanted to say yes to all of them. And there were times when we spread ourselves a bit thin because we were trying to do everything and get it all done and have it all happens straight away. I think I’d say just relax, focus, keep doing just the important things each day and you’ll get there.

[00:29:37] I know Matt was very much. The grounded than me. I’m the hypo one. And he often was saying to me, just relax. That’s fantastic. So you’re a bit of a content machine Liz. Yes. So I’m there. Let’s do it.

[00:29:55] I’m definitely vibing with you because I do that as well. And maybe I need to go and find the equivalent of Matt to keep me a bit more grounded. I’ll say it to you now. It’ll come, just focus on your MRIs, maximum return activity, MRIs. Exactly. With that in mind. What advice would you offer to someone who’s wanting to start a career in digital media?

[00:30:21] I think the first step is. Education, like understanding the marketplace and getting a good picture of, okay, what’s here. What are the options and what best suits me in what I want to achieve? So I, you need to learn some stuff. Now, whether that’s through an organization, like one of ours, where we obviously train people in a specific strategy with a vision.

[00:30:45] Clear sort of focus and step-by-step pathway. The other thing though you can do is of course it out there on the web and find out how are all these people doing this? Like, what are the different ways people have created this in their life and you’ll find different solutions. You’ll find one that really resonates with you and you think, oh, I love how they did that in the end, your pathway, or your strategy might be a combination of a few different things that you can.

[00:31:11] From different people, but getting that foundation, there’s a few things that you really need those foundations, like learning how to build a website. If you want to get into digital, you need to know how a website works and you need your basic marketing as well. Because I see so many people who have fantastic ideas and concepts, then they know how to create a technically.

[00:31:32] But my first is always, well, how are people going to find out about this? How are you going to reach. Okay. And most people stumble on that. That’s the big thing that, that holds them back. So understanding marketing and. Reach people in this digital world is step number one.

[00:31:50]Captain FI: [00:31:50] I meant people undertake some kind of formal marketing training, or is it something that you can learn on them?

[00:31:57] Liz raad: [00:31:57] Good question. Well, certainly there is like university based and formal education, but my experience is that a lot of that we’ve got marketing graduates and it graduates and things come to us. They often say I never learnt this bit of it, the practical stuff. So I think one of the dangers of the kind of university education is that it is conceptual and broad by the sounds of it.

[00:32:22] Now I’m only talking from experience from hearing people’s experiences. So I don’t want to say don’t go out and get formal education. Cause I think for some careers and some people. Important pathway does take a long time, though. If you can get specific training on specific, um, strategies or channels, I think it’s much more focused.

[00:32:45] It’s much more effective. You can learn a lot on the job as well, but I certainly think having some strong foundations in certain skills will help you a lot. One of the things that I certainly picked up from you, Liz was that it’s good to have a bit of an overview and that’s kind of. Outsourcing correctly.

[00:33:05] And I get this picture of Elan mask. We obviously, he’s a very successful business person and he’s got this massive companies and he knows enough to hire the specialist. Did these websites really take off? You end up paying someone who’s gone to university and got a degree and then they work for you. So that’s.

[00:33:25] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So you won the strategy and the bigger picture you’re right. Very much is so important. And that’s the other thing too, to really jump up to success and something I’ve noticed in working with people for quite a few years now is the success really comes when you do jump that mindset up and you become the leader rather than working in the trends.

[00:33:49] Once you can do that once you can have that broader perspective and have your bigger picture goal and think, okay, how can people help me achieve this? That’s when you get a whole lot more leverage and it’ll suddenly accelerate for you is when you can have your team doing a lot of that work. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:34:11] Captain FI: [00:34:11] And you can just then be focusing on the creativity management, organizational structure and the ideas, and that can facilitate it from actually happening. Wonderful. It wouldn’t be the captain. Financial independence podcast. If we didn’t at least touch on investing a little bit. So we all know you’re big investors in websites and digital media, but what about other forms of investing?

[00:34:38] Do you have any other forms of personal investing? Yeah.

[00:34:44] Liz raad: [00:34:44] So our big picture strategy is we want to buy an asset and add value to it. We’ve done quite a few properties. I don’t know how many, you know, when we were young, it’s that many kitchens and bathrooms and bowls and things painted. And so we’ve done flipping of properties, buy and renovate and sell properties.

[00:35:01] And that was again, informal. Very much an inspiration for what we do align now buy, renovate and sell. There’s a lot of growth in the tech market. So we’re focused on investing in companies that are foundational to the tech growth. We say we invest in digital real estate. So we invest in company. That are creating the digital real estate for the future.

[00:35:25] We invest in cybersecurity. We invest in data storage. We invest in gaming companies like the platforms. So I don’t know if you talk about. About the company, the web three and the metaverse, and then looking at non fungible tokens and the rise of crypto. So we’re investing in the platforms that are, are making that happen.

[00:35:47] So rather than the end result, like the games and all the front end stuff, we tend to invest in the stuff that is, it’s like that old analogy. If you want to make money in a gold rush, don’t dig for gold. It’s just self shovels. They were investing in the shovel sellers. Well, yeah, that’s interesting. So I guess I’ve had a very basic understanding of investing in myself and I basically just look at ETFs and market cap, index funds.

[00:36:12] I’ve personally been burned a few times with individual stock picking, but it sounds like you go into quite a detailed analysis before you invest in a particular. Oh, yes, definitely. So that remember that’s our skill valuation valuation of an asset. So we have a whole process of valuing those businesses before, and then it’s a combination.

[00:36:33] So both fundamental and technical trading, looking at the fundamentals of a company, and then looking at the technical side that the charting to see when to actually buy. Does that make. Well, it’s giving me anxiety. Just listening to that. Also invest in a lot of just ETFs. You don’t have to be a full-on trader to.

[00:36:58] Can we invest in this marketplace, you can invest in those index funds that relate to tech companies or all those growth stocks. Now, admittedly, we’re looking at growth there, depending on where you’re at in your journey, you might be looking more at dividends or returns rather than growth. That’s another really important part of understanding this kind of investing journey is you invest.

[00:37:20] This is about your goals again about, okay. Well, what is my purpose at the moment for investing in these shares? Am I going for growth or am I going for income? And that changes over time as well. Okay. So, so what about other asset classes? Are you still, for example, actively investing in property, you talked about the backend with crypto, but what about the front end?

[00:37:41] Do you personally invest in cryptocurrencies or NFTs or what other sort of assets. Are you interested in,

[00:37:49] I’m looking into crypto at the moment now, obviously it’s very volatile at this point, but I think there is phenomenal growth going to happen in that marketplace. We’re excited about that because also crypto and within non fungible tokens and all that sort of thing coming on board that pretty much proves to the world that digital assets are real, which is what we’ve been trying to tell people for the last 10 years, but they don’t want to believe it because there’ll be frightened.

[00:38:13] Online world. I think this is going to be a great thing for website and valuations and online business evaluations, because, and people are going to get more used to the idea that digital assets are real. They have value, they can be traded. You can add value to them. I’m probably not going to invest in a huge, yeah, I might change my mind later, but at the moment, not a huge amount of crypto only because it’s kind of a striping for the ride type investment.

[00:38:39] I can’t add value to crypto. If I buy a heap of Bitcoin. With the flow it’s same as investing in gold. So we invest in gold, but I sort of see crypto in a similar way in that I can buy it, but there’s nothing I can do to add value to it. That’s why at this stage, we’re not heavily invested in crypto the actual front end

[00:39:01] Captain FI: [00:39:01] fantastic summaries that you want to invest in things that you can add value to.

[00:39:06] Liz raad: [00:39:06] You know, there’s a lot of FOMO at the moment. Obviously crypto, we’ve got people who bought crypto football Bitcoin for $2. Yeah. Not $2, but yet a few hundred dollars. And they now multi-billion is because they’ve written a trend. But I think that’s kind of like looking at people who’ve won the lottery. A lot of them got lucky.

[00:39:26] A lot of them, I mean, you know, it was smart, obviously that a lot of people saw this coming and good on them, but that’s just not my strategy. So you’ve got to be careful of not feeling, oh, I missed out. I’ve got to get him now because. You got to always make those decisions based on what your strategy is and where you’re at.

[00:39:43] Yeah. That’s great advice. Don’t let the FOMO trick you into being fearful or greedy. And I think that long-term focus and Debby tricked into making any investments. So we’ve covered a few, but if you could summarize some of your experience into three tips, what would you say for someone who was on their path to financial independence?

[00:40:08] We’ve said it so much. I don’t even know if it counts anymore, but you’ve got to have your long-term vision. You have to have that picture in your mind of what you’re creating and that’s gotta be strong enough that you always go back to it. Every decision you make based on is that taking me towards that vision that is fit.

[00:40:26] And I think the second biggest thing is valuing your time. Uh, being able to set those boundaries and step up and say, okay, well, what am I willing to put up with? And what am I not willing to put up with? And what am I worth? What’s my time worth that sort of follows in with that. Okay. Focusing on those maximum return activities, if you’re going to spend time working at something, do the good stuff.

[00:40:48] Don’t mess around with little stuff and the stuff that matters. I think the third thing that’s really important for me, if I have noticed for myself and for a lot of people I’ve coached over the years is recognizing your progress and understanding and really knowing that small steps can. We often say this one, push-up a day idea.

[00:41:10] It sounds ridiculous. When if someone said to you, okay, to get fit, all you have to do is one push-up a day. It sort of feels ridiculous. You think, oh, that’s not even worth doing. Like, why would I do one push-up a day. That’s not going to make any difference. I guarantee if you actually made that commitment said, I’m going to do one push-up a day.

[00:41:30] It will stop by doing one push-up and you probably feel a bit silly doing it, and it’ll probably feel uncomfortable. And you think, oh, this is silly. Gradually you’re getting in the habit of one push-up a day. And maybe while you’re there one day you’ll actually do two or three or four, five or six, or actually one of our students just got back to me.

[00:41:48] He’s in his he’s 60, he’s now doing 50 a day. He started with one. And I think understanding that those small steps, those little things that you’re doing. It affects you in so many ways. It’s not just that you’re making progress, but it’s also that you’re telling yourself I’m going to do this. And when you follow through your confidence and your valuation of yourself increases, and it’s like a spiral upwards, we always draw a curve.

[00:42:16] I don’t know if anybody knows what an exponential curve looks like, but at the beginning of the journey, it always feels pretty flat. All those little things that you’re doing. Each little micro thing is actually rising your line, raising your curve. You might not notice it to start with then suddenly in a year’s time or two years time, or whenever it is feel this incredible snowball effect, Warren Buffett’s is that snowball effects suddenly it all comes together and boom, you go, wow.

[00:42:46] I would not success. The long-term focus. Long-term focus. And it’s that commitment to just keep working. Bit by bit. And knowing that that counts everything you do counts Liz. To know all this stuff who have been the most influential people on your journey or some of the experiences you’ve had or books that you’ve read on your journey to financial independence that have made you who you are today.

[00:43:16] One of the main ones is met my husband. He has such a strong vision, and I learned a lot from him. He kind of introduced me to. The world of reading books and reading and learning this kind of thing and actually setting goals because that’s not something I did when I was a kid. I was very sort of, yeah, well, life will take me where it will take me.

[00:43:40] So I learned that a lot from Matt, but when we got into our first business, Massive influence because we needed to learn how to sell. And so a massive influence as a sales trainer, Tom Hopkins, who is such a gentleman and such a happy guy, Tom Hopkins and Zig Ziglar. We had lots of labs and learned so much from those guys.

[00:44:01] And if you want to learn to sell, they’re a bit old. Now they’re back from the eighties, but it’s still awesome stuff. Tony Robbins, Tony Robbins was a big change in our lives. We did the walk on fire and I think he’s got some really good stuff. Of course. I think the other thing too, is to really be conscious of and something that you can do for yourself.

[00:44:21] I believe in that adage, that you are the average of the five closest people to you. So that’s something that was very important in my journey surrounding myself with people who were supportive and who were a step ahead. So we have mentors around us who are multi multi-millionaires in the tens or even hundreds.

[00:44:42] We’ve actually got a billionaire friend. Really good to be with those people because it changes your expectations. It makes you realize what’s possible. And I think if you can surround yourself with people and have to start out with a billionaire, you can start out with just someone who’s positive and like this community.

[00:45:00] This is perfect. That’s fantastic. I’ll make sure to put all of those in the show notes so that anyone who’s listening can jump onto the website and have a look and then link some of the books that, that Liz pointed out. I totally agree with you, Liz. I think if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room, that’s certainly what I’m trying to do.

[00:45:22] I’m trying to hang around with them. Uh, that I can learn from, uh, really thank you for all of the advice that you’ve been able to give us today for people that are listening might want to get to know you more or learn a little bit more about digital assets. Where can people find more information about you and your company?

[00:45:40]you can head over to e-business institute.com that I, you, I think you can probably put in the link there for us to make it easy over there. You can find out what we do. You can have a look at our strategy, how we do it and how we’ve done it. And there’s some free training there too, so you can really get a good idea of what’s possible.

[00:45:58] I think in this digital market, that’s the first step, open your mind to what’s possible and see if that path will suit your end goal. Again, end goals. Long-term focus. Yeah. If anyone wants to check that out, I’ll have all the links in the show notes and as well, feel free to shoot me a line either through the website email or on the socials.

[00:46:21] And I can tell you a bit about my experience as a student Billy’s and that’s. So again, Liz, thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate you coming on to the show, to have a bit of a chat about your journey. I feel like I’ve learnt a lot of really good. From you, and I’m sure that the listeners are definitely come away with hopefully a bit of a spark that might’ve been lit and maybe a little bit more curiosity about other ways that they can go about reaching their longterm goals of becoming financially independent.

[00:46:52] So again, thank you very much, and I hope that you’re going to enjoy your next adventure of research.

[00:46:57] I certainly will. Thanks so much for having me.

[00:47:00] Thanks for listening to another episode of the captain fire financial independence podcast. So read the transcripts or check out the show notes, head over to www captain fire.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.

[00:47:23] You can reach me online through the captain fire contact. Getting touched through the socials. I’m active 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, uh, for general information purposes only they should not be taken as constituting professional financial advice.

[00:47:50] You should always do your own research when making any financial decisions and make sure it’s appropriate for your personal circumstance. Yeah.