Welcome to Part THREE of my Q and A Session with Matt Raad from the eBusiness Institute, who is joining us again, to cover some FAQs about making money from websites..make sure you listen to Parts One and Two as well.
“Matt and Liz Raad are Website investors, Angel Investors and leading educators in digital marketing, website design and website monetisation. They are recognized as the Australian experts in Flipping Websites.”
CaptainFI is not a Financial Advisor and the information below is not financial advice. This website is reader-supported, which means we may be paid when you visit links to partner or featured sites, or by advertising on the site. For more information please read my Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, and Financial Disclaimer.

Introduction – Matt Raad
On the pod today we welcome back Matt Raad from the E-Business Institute. Matt and his wife Liz, teach and mentor their students on how to create online business (websites) for passive income.
This podcast is the third in a series of three pods where we unpack a huge series of listener Q and A’s. So tune in for Part Three of our Q and A session and listen in to Parts One and Two if you missed those, with even more listener questions answered!
For some more context, you can go back and listen to Episode 11 – (Digital Entrepreneurs Matt and Liz Raad) as well as Episode 23 (Entrepreneurship with Liz Raad). The eBusiness Institute run a Digital Investors course as well as a higher level Champions course which I personally have just graduated from, so we go into a little bit of detail about what’s involved in these courses and how they can help to accelerate you towards financial freedom by boosting your digital skills to create successful online businesses.
Episode 51: Q and A Session with Matt Raad – Part THREE
Show Notes
- Check out my Review of Making Money online
“The key to success and what we understood right from the beginning is when you look for a website to buy, you’re buying something that’s answering a question or solving a problem. And that’s the key to making money online, answer questions and solve problems.”
Matt and Liz Raad
Matt and Liz Raad’s Top financial tips
- Diversify – Whether it is your income sources or your investments, you need to diversify. Create multiple sources of income, and have a broadly diversified portfolio across a range of assets, and a range of sectors within those assets.
- Get Educated – Learn everything you can before making an investment – especially so in business and websites
- Growth mindset – You need to adopt a growth mindset and known your true worth.
- Start small – Make a small investment initially, and then scale that up as you gain experience
Matt and Liz Raad’s top Books and influences
- What they don’t teach you at Harvard business school
- Louise hay – you can heal your life.
- Unlimited power by Tony Robbins.
- Awaken the giant within by Tony Robbins.
- Zig Ziglar
- Tommy Hopkins
Transcript
Episode 51: Q and A Session with Matt Raad – Part THREE
Matt Raad Q & A – PART THREE
Captain Fi: Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. Welcome aboard the Financial Independence Podcast,
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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Welcome to part three of my q and a session [00:02:00] with Matt Rad from the E-Business Institute. If you missed out on part one and part two, make sure to head over to the blog or you can just stick around here and listen to the q and as from this session. Let’s get started.
So you’ve got a very unique insight, Matt, in the, not only your personal experience, but you’ve been advising high net worth. You’ve been working in mergers and acquisitions, Yep.
And so you’ve got a pretty good gauge on, the big money or the big. net worth individuals. And how are they sort of mentally and practically planning for these recessions?
Matt Raad: Yeah, it’s a really good question. I know exactly what they’re all doing. , they’re actively acquiring businesses.
, the market is hot because there’s a lot of cash out there and they know they’re always buying and selling businesses. Now we need to be careful. You gotta remember, I’m in a what do you call it? Capital fire. Like a microcosm of unique individuals who, that’s what they do. So I’m not saying the general wider business community or anything like that are out busy buying, business assets or anything like that.
[00:03:00] We also heard that saying many years ago. Liz and I guess we’re very lucky that we can actually do this, is follow the big money. If you want to be rich, just follow the big money. Don’t try and reinvent the world. Just emulate what they’re doing, right? And so we’ve always looked up to our mentors and people that we’re lucky enough to hang around with and work with and ask exactly that question.
And yes, we are in a very unique position in that we can speak to some amazing people. We have coffees with them or beers or whatever, and sit around and we chat about this stuff. Okay, what are you investing in at the moment? Okay, you’ve got cash. Are you worried about inflation? Hell yeah. What are you doing?
What are you investing in? And it’s funny, the people wear around right at this minute, interesting observation. A lot of us are all saying, Ooh, we’re gonna raise some cash and to sit and wait. and get ready to maybe buy some real estate again. Interesting comment. If there’s a flash crash, cause a lot of people are gonna be forced to sell their sell properties cuz if interest rates go right up, I can’t tell [00:04:00] you how many times I’ve had that conversation with various people recently.
This is just in kind of the last, what, three months. Just, you were asking what are people doing with their money? That’s just one comment that’s coming through. I’ll share a lesson with you all though. And this really shocked me when I was learning this stuff many years ago, to realize that following the big money, they tend not to panic and they tend to just keep going.
Even when things are looking bad, they don’t give up and bury their heads in the sand. And I’ll give you an example. In the G FFC here in Australia, I was selling a particular business. This is a big Manufacturing business in the western suburbs of Sydney, actually out the back of Campbelltown.
It’s called SM and Grange. Some of your listeners might know it. There’s a big industrial area out there, and I had a high net worth and I’m selling, trying to sell him my client’s business, which is a big manufacturing. It was also a high net worth. And we’re standing out the front of this big factory in s Meet and Grange and we’re looking down the road and [00:05:00] my high net worth client says to my other client, oh, who owns that factory down?
Then we could see the sign on it. It was a very well known company. And he goes, oh, that’s my mate. And he’s expanding. He’s bought the factory next to him, and then the other high net worth is going, ah, , I wouldn’t mind buying that as well. What else is for sale around here? And I’m sitting there going, man, hang on.
Isn’t the world falling down? These aren’t people, freaking out and stuff. There’s a recession and these guys are just working out how to do deals because they can get assets at good prices. And I know what you think, you’re thinking it’s all right for them. They’re rich. Rich people still feel the pain of losing money.
Doesn’t matter at what level you’re at. And what surprised me through this, and I saw this repeated everywhere, was the guys that I looked up to who are truly successful in many areas of their lives. What’s interesting is they didn’t stop and they didn’t panic. And I used to come home and I’d say it to Liz, man, these guys are just forging on, there’s this bloody recession going on.
And these guys are not stopping, they’re still doing deals, [00:06:00] it’s just they’re negotiating harder on prices, but they’re not holding back. They’re working with their banks to raise the funds, everything like that. And yes, they’re in. You could say they’re in privileged positions, but not really. They’re not that privileged.
They’ve still gotta work with the banks and stuff, but they just did not stop. And it was a real eye-opener to me. And I guess that’s like for you guys in the fire movement, that dollar cost averaging idea, maybe you just keep going. Maybe that’s, I don’t know. I just realized that then.
But it was fascinating to me, and I’ve seen that play out time and time again. I think when you’re an entrepreneur and you’ve got some success and you know what you’re doing, in times like this is quite possibly one of the best times to start making some serious money.
Captain Fi: Yeah. No, that’s really that’s a really important lesson is just don’t freak out.
There’s been so many, you don’t freak out. There’s been so many cases of, people selling even like stuffing with their super, switching it to cash or selling their shares and then completely missing the [00:07:00] upswing in the recovery. I’ve seen a lot of unfortunate, sad stories posted on like Reddit and in Facebook groups of, in the fire community alone, of people that have done that with their portfolios.
And I’m sure it happens in larger business circles as well. I also really liked you mentioned about um, consolidating your cash position as well, cuz I’ve heard that from a lot of very experienced older investors. Yeah, Aussie Fbar interviewed Peter Thornhill for an episode of his podcast.
and he said it a couple of times. He says he waits for the hoards to go stampeding past, and then he turns around and picks ’em off from the rear. And that’s, just as you were saying Yep. As you did in Covid, you were buying good assets at distress prices. Yeah, it’s good to know that you don’t need to freak out.
It’s actually an opportunity for the patient.
Matt Raad: Absolutely. I think one of the important things is, and again, this is something I admire about the fire movement, and I’m gonna mention this here, have a plan. Okay. And practically and mentally rehearse it for a recession. They’re let’s not live in fear.
, I think that’s a lesson from my high [00:08:00] net worth guys that I just shared with you. Don’t live in fear of a recession. A recession is actually a big opportunity. And luckily here in Australia, the reality is we don’t tend to get hit too hard with the recession. I mean, I nearly watched my mom and dad go bankrupt, but it wasn’t the end of the world.
, we all still lived 19 87 to 18% interest rates. Everyone lived through it. It’s not as bad as what you think. But what I would also say is, whilst you should keep going and everything like that, and always be proactive. That’s a thing that Liz and I live by.
We teach it to our kids. We teach it to all you champions and anyone in our courses. Just be proactive. Don’t bury your head in the sand, but also, . One of the things you can do to be proactive in a time like this, if you are worried about high interest rates or recessions or what are you’re doing with your share portfolios?
Cause I know a lot of fire people, myself included, invest heavily into shares. Right? This is now when you want to be very clear on your plan and what you are doing. And because too many people, like you just said, captain FY do [00:09:00] freak out and get very emotional when they see their shared portfolios drop 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%.
So I know, yeah. Captain FY for you. Right. You’re saying , you’re trying not to look at it and you’re not pulling money out. The share markets only dropped 30%. You better have a plan in your head. You better rehearse in your head, mentally prepare yourself in case it drops 50%.
Because look what happened in Covid. People were panicking and saying the world was over. And in the share market that is, and the share market did drop 50%. What I’m saying is, for goodness sake, practice it. If you are telling yourself you are part of the fire movement and that you are, dollar cost averaging in no matter what, then make sure you’re practice and rehearse that.
Because I can guarantee you, , you might change your mind if you watch your share portfolio start dropping 30 to 50%. Oh, it was,
Captain Fi: it was gut wrenching. Yeah. And I remember thinking, oh God, have, I made a mistake in following this fire movement? And I’ve [00:10:00] just, yep. Seen, basically 40% losses on just a basic portfolio of index funds.
But, it’s not a loss unless you sell. And I guess I was That’s right. Very fortunate. It was a quick recovery.
Matt Raad: kept brutal though, mindset, brutal wise.
Captain Fi: Oh yeah. It had me second guessing myself. I was very nervous. And in fact, I actually stopped investing for quite a period of time.
I stopped my regular investments and that was something when I actually zoomed out and analyzed like a post activity report. And I’m thinking like, okay, what will I do better next time? And one of my takeaways was, I’m gonna continue investing. And so that’s why I usually use an auto invest tool now, and so I take myself completely out of the loop.
And in the short term, yes, it can be gut wrenching, but my intent is that in the future it’ll provide me with better returns. Okay. Wow. Share market. We’ve talked a lot about finance and share market and business. It’s been awesome. Liz and yourself are very brilliant people mindset wise, and in fact, I really enjoyed the words of [00:11:00] Wisdom course short Oh, cool.
Short course , you included with the training that I did last year. Awesome., it’s something that I like to go back and just check in on because Yep. Yes, we’ve got all these skills. Yes, we’ve gotta deal with this money, we’ve gotta build, if we’re talking about building websites and building a business and managing teams.
But at the end of the day, like for me, I found that the common. Denominator is literally me, . And so totally by working on my own feelings, my own confidence and my own happiness it’s gonna make me better at this. And it is something I’ve kind of struggled a little bit with. I’ve had some unfortunately some pretty major life events happening.
The loss of my, I know you have. Yeah, my mom recently. It’s just been absolutely brutal. And one of the whole reasons I’m involved in the fire movement and why I started training with you guys is to be happy and to try and be free and to reduce stress. . So this is something that’s super important.
And, I feel like we get so wrapped up or I get, can get so wrapped up in like the nitty gritty about, know, shares and frugality and you should do this and you should do that. At the end of the day, that’s like a very small [00:12:00] percentage of fire, like the 98% is the mindset and the behavior.
With that being said, from someone who’s been through it and done it, and you’ve Yep. Raising a family very happy family. Liz and yourself been together for decades. And, your kids are almost ready to fly. The coup , they’re you’ve had a, you’ve had a very successful life.
How can we learn to do that? How can we learn to spend more on things that, bring us value and live our rich lives? You’ve come from a very humble beginning and now you know, you have a very high net worth. How have you sort of reconciled that journey?
Matt Raad: It’s a really good question, and , I’ll just say what came into my mind as you were asking that question, captain Fire, it’s a strategy in itself.
So creating happiness or a balanced life or success is definitely a strategy in itself. And I know what you mean. I just think anyone that we work with or know, or, in our circles, they all know Matt and Liz, like from, all of our [00:13:00] wonderful members of the digital investor community through the champions, through to all the high net worths that we work with.
They all know us and they know, they look at Liz and I and go, wow, you guys are just, you’re always so enthusiastic and happy and everything like that. Obviously it’s not always like that though. We work hard at it and we worked to a strategy, so we decided when we got together to consciously design our lives, I used to read a lot of mindset books.
I started out with the great one, and I think I mentioned this on one of your earlier podcasts, didn’t I? How to Win Friends and Influence People magic of Thinking Big, all those sorts of books. And I realized I can change my life with. My mind, what’s going on in my head. And then when I started learning about Arnold Schwartzenegger, he just had a very definit.
You know, Life plan, a master vision for himself. And I always said to Liz I think we should do the same. I think we can change our situation and where we’re at. And luckily, she was on board for it. And she was the one too that brought in Matt’s not just all about money. See, for me it was [00:14:00] I felt physical pain as a child with lack of money.
It was really painful for us so mum was single mom until she remarried. Dad, who’s now my dad, he’s awesome. Really very lucky there. But with the three of us, it was really difficult financially, and we were always on the edge. it scared the crap out of all of us, so looking at my background, where I came from and some of the dodgy areas where I grew up and stuff, and then to be living on the farm was wonderful. But my dad was a farm manager and they weren’t paid much more than the workers on the farm, right? Money to me was a big driver when I left school and watching mom and dad nearly lose what little they had anyway, to all the banks.
I think the minute I left school I moved into Sydney and I wanted to figure out this money thing, but like you said, it’s not all just money. You need a balanced life and I’ve been very, fortunate in that , I literally have had a blessed life and it’s just been amazing.
Now that in itself, what I just said right [00:15:00] there is one of my number one strategies, which is I always look at life with rose colored glasses and I’ve trained myself to be very optimistic and rose colored glasses and luckily, Liz and I ended up together and she’s exactly the same. Neither of us look back at the past.
We try not to talk about it. You’ll notice Captain Fire you’ll see me at, at, at the Champions boot camps. What I talk about when I talk about mindset, I don’t very often talk much about my past because it happened yesterday and I don’t care about it anymore. I don’t even look forward or live in the now.
And so what Liz and I did, we realized that because we had so little money for Liz and I for many years, we weren’t get rich quick entrepreneurs or anything like that. We weren’t young wiz kids at all, none of that. It took us bloody years to get to where we are for most of our journey. We’ve had hardly any money or always been in debt to the bank, mainly and because of physical businesses.
So we realized, I don’t have much money, but I still wanna be really happy and feel freedom. So how can you do that? And [00:16:00] that’s a strategy and that’s what we work on. Just so you know, anyone listening, Liz and I work on our happiness and life fulfillment strategies just as much, if not more, than our money making strategies.
So here we are. You guys all see us on the surface as being these educators that teach people how to quit their jobs and work from home, right? That’s what we do. We retrain people with digital skills so they can get financial freedom in their lives, and you see that, but we work just as hard. On the other side of our lives, which is personal fulfillment and being happy and creating a wonderful family and a wonderful life that we enjoy and feel enthusiastic about every day.
And there’s certain strategies that we follow on a daily basis to achieve that. And also on a weekly, a monthly and a yearly basis. And every five years we reset our master plan and stuff like that. But what my point is here, if you’re listening to this , you need to [00:17:00] consciously create your life and what you want out of life.
You’ll notice every single thing I do when I’m helping someone always starts out with, tell me your goals. And you know what I’ve noticed a lot of people aren’t clear on that. And that’s fine by the way. . I think you need to consciously think about your life and what you want out of it. And it’s not just in the money side.
, money does bring happiness, right? I don’t care what anyone says. Money definitely is a huge part of creating a fulfilling life and happiness, particularly if you’ve come from my background. It sucks being poor. I don’t care who you are. Don’t kid yourself that having money won’t make you happy.
It bloody does and anyone that tells you otherwise has either never had money or has never been poor. And I’ve been both and I like that famous saying. I can tell you I’ve been rich is heaps better. But on top of that though, obviously , there’s an element of. Money doesn’t bring true happiness.
You need to look for other things like personal fulfillment. And again, you’ve gotta work at that, make a conscious decision about it. Does that answer your question? I probably went off way on a tangent.
Yeah,
Captain Fi: it’s beautiful mate. You really [00:18:00] do need to of begin with the end in mind and look at designing the kind of life that you want to live.
. I mean, obviously Liz and yourself have been very successful. We have a beautiful family living in the sunny Southeast Queensland. What’s the day-to-day life like for you guys?
Matt Raad: In order to create that, I just realized what my day-to-day life is like.
It’s like a lot of my mentors over the years. So I think I’ll come back to the previous question too. Liz and I have always surrounded ourselves or read lots of books about other people who’ve been hugely successful in life, not just financially, by the way. And what we do is we call it. The SMOs board of life.
So we look at someone and we go, wow, that’s super cool. I want to bring that into my life. And that’s how, by the way, how we realized buying and selling websites was such a cool thing. Cause it was the best business. So we were SMOs boarding , different business models, right? But we also do this with our personal lives.
And for instance, over the years we’ve hung out with we’re pretty darn fit. I’m in my fifties and I’m probably fitter than most 30 year olds. [00:19:00] Okay. I dunno whether that’s a good thing or not. There’s a lot of 30 year olds who aren’t particularly fit these days, in my opinion but you you are lucky. No, it’s not lucky that I’m that fit it’s a conscious decision. Why? Because we’ve got friends who are older than us in their sixties and seventies, and you should see these guys, they’re super, super fit. We ride mountain bikes all the time.
They can out ride me. So I look at that and go, that’s inspirational. I’m gonna bring that part of their lives into my life. So that’s a big thing for us, staying fit. When we were younger, we hung out with some people who were not rich, but they were super, super rich in their family lives. They had beautiful kids.
They had this amazing family life as a, a couple of them in particular. And they’re still good friends to this day. And now we help them with business tips and stuff. But what’s really interesting is. We took lessons from them. They’re older than us of how they raised their kids.
So when we had kids, we said, ah, we want our kids and our family life to be just like these guys. And so we brought that part [00:20:00] into our lives. And so what I’d recommend you do is start when you’re consciously creating your life and thinking about what you want. Start looking around for role models or people that you can emulate and.
just through reading books. So when you are asking Capy, what’s the day in the life now for Liz and I? It’s funny. My first thought was I’m a little bit like Warren Buffett in that I actually spent a lot of time reading and researching investments. So share market, I read the financial press every day.
I read also a lot of American Press to get a feel for what’s happening in America. I spend a lot of time networking and speaking to people who are well connected, like website brokers and stuff, and other business people. , I’m constantly trying to get a feel for what’s really happening out there in the real world, on the street of business.
Cuz typically business owners will see the recession coming before your average person will, because we’re at the forefront of, you know, watching what customers are buying and stuff like that. So I’m [00:21:00] always networking in a typical day, but also for me, I have the flexibility. to work whatever hours I want and basically whenever I want.
And that was one of the definitions I think that one of our mentors gave us of being rich many years ago, was the ability to work whenever you want with whoever you want, wherever you want or, and do whatever you want. And so we are in that position now where if I don’t wanna work, I don’t have to, but we choose to work.
I love what I do and I love, working in the e-Business institute and creating new lessons and networking. So for me, I’ve created this life where I’ve been able to blend in my day, you are asking what’s my average day look like? I’ve been able to blend in all the fun stuff that I’ve. Decided I love doing over the last 30 idea into what I do on a daily basis.
So that is networking with all sorts of fascinating people, including all our clients in the Champions program, which I absolutely love. Researching, investing or buying other websites [00:22:00] and then writing new lessons that help other people. Cause that was always my mission, was that once I made it, I always promised myself, all right, I’m gonna teach other people what I’ve done, exactly what I’ve done.
So I do all three in the day, plus I get to hang out with my kids cuz I work from home here. This is my home office and our kids are right here with us and I get to ride mountain bikes basically outta my back door. So we live on the bush on acreage and we’ve got some of the best mountain bike trails in Australia .
Within riding distance of where we are. And Liz and I do that together. And then we can have coffee in the morning at a beautiful little local cafe that we’ve got here with some other friends of ours who are also doing similar things. Pretty cool setup. But that’s all been manifested up here and I set those goals 30 years ago and now we live it.
That’s the power of your mind. And I learned that through Arnold Schwarzenegger. Exactly the same thing. And so for me, my average day, some days I’ll work long, hard hours. So [00:23:00] my day today, captain Fight, you’ll find this fascinating. Started at what time did I do my first interview at seven o’clock.
So I’ve done three or four interviews today with various people, which are kind of networking when you think about it. And then I’ve talked to some of my team members, chatted to Liz, hung out with my mom and dad who are up here with us. They were up here looking after the kids.
And today I will finish at, to give you all an idea, I’ll finish at six o’clock and it feels like I barely worked cuz I’m just sitting around doing the things that I love. That’s pretty cool. Yeah. Way to be. Now I don’t work, invert coms, does that work? To me? It’s not work, but, there’s 10 hours there, 11 hours, whatever.
But it’s not work. But I don’t do that every day. I will tend to go hard for three or four days and then take four days off or something like that. That’s, yeah. It’s
Captain Fi: Do it. It’s nice that you have the the control of the autonomy. You can set your own schedule Yeah. Workload. Yeah.
And you can listen to your body if it needs a rest or if you can go a bit harder. Yeah.
Matt Raad: Yeah. That’s awesome. So at this point in my life, my commitment is to our champions clients. That’s a [00:24:00] personal thing that, that’s a passion thing for me, and that’s what the Champions program is. So that’s a super high priority for me.
And then it’s also networking and then it’s also family. and also my immediate community, like the people that are my friends, that business friends who I hang out with. So that then dictates what I do day to day. So I’m not a fan of, and I know this is gonna sound controversial for you guys in the fire movement, I’m not a fan of retiring early because none of my mentors ever did that.
, can I jump into this Captain Fire? Are you okay if I mention this? Yeah, unpack it. Yeah. This is good. . So we’re going from daily activity cuz some of you are sitting there thinking, why the hell would you work 10 hour days? Cuz I love it and it doesn’t feel like work.
And so that it’s pretty cool. Like I’m, having fun. But here’s is something you guys wanna think about. Those of you are trying to set goals for how you want your life. I know the fire movement and you’ve all heard me say I love the fire mill. Love what you all teach each other. And I love the collaborative effects of the fire movement and I’m super impressed.
[00:25:00] But for me personally, I don’t like the re bit of your fire movement. I could not handle retiring early. No way. And , here’s why. Here’s another reason. There’s a very practical reason. I think a lot of blokes once they’re in their fifties and sixties. See a lot of you listening are maybe a bit younger, but I can tell you what happens to guys that retire early.
You wanna take a guest captain fire? Yeah. They don’t last
Captain Fi: longer, they.
Matt Raad: No, it’s pretty savage. They die. And I’ve seen it experienced, watched it happen in front of my own eyes, and as a business broker, and when I used to do merchant acquisitions, we used to see it all the time. Guys would sell their businesses, which were their babies, get a massive payout.
They might make millions and tens of millions of dollars, right? Some of ’em, hundreds of millions. And guess what would happen? They’re going into depression. And we know for guys in this day and age, we can talk about this publicly now, we never used to talk about this 10 years ago, but everyone knows what happens to guys when they’re under depression doesn’t end well, typically.
And you need to think about that. I know I’m sounding very blunt, but presume you’re listening [00:26:00] to this, getting ideas about creating your own life, right? I’ve seen it happen too many times. And it’s not about you’re a workaholic and you’re addicted to work and stuff like that.
When you’re in a business that you love. , it’s not work and you just can’t walk away from it. I think retiring early. For me personally, I’ll just go stir crazy. I’d get bored and I know, and Liz knows that too because we’ve got so many friends that have been through that. And you know what?
You know what used to happen? One of the reasons we hung out with so many really cool, interesting high net worth guys was . Guess what happens a year after they sell their business? Their wives send them to Matt and say, find him a bloody business. He’s annoying the crap outta me at home. He’s moping around and they all, back then it was all the rage was for wealthy, older guys used to play golf, right?
They all say to me, they go, you know what? After about a year of playing golf, man, you get bored. So find me your business. and you can’t stop a high achiever. If you’ve listened to this podcast this far, my guess is you are a [00:27:00] high achiever type, whether you say it or not, and you have high goals and you love listening to Captain Fyre who has awesome advice for you, right?
About investing and getting financial independence. I love the financial independence bit. You definitely need to go for that. That was my number one goal in life. Financial independence, but the retire early bit. I’d seriously rethink that if I were you I’d be thinking, if you’re listening to this and you’ve gotten this far and you are a high achiever, you’re a goal oriented, maybe set your goal to have a business that you absolutely love and it doesn’t feel like work.
obviously I’m biased. That’s the kind of person I am. That’s the kind of people I hang out with. But retiring early, it’s probably not what you really want down the track.
Captain Fi: I can kind of say, I mean, I finished flying when was it? April? . March, that’s true. March last.
Geez, it’s been 12 months. Oh my God.
Matt Raad: Yeah. So I’m interested here. Captain Fire, you’re a young guy. You’re not even one of us. 50 to 60 plus guys. Right. And you [00:28:00] are obviously an ultra high achiever in your previous career, a pilot and you know, your stuff. So I’m interested on that note, how do you feel now about retiring early after you’ve done the journey and you’re only, what are you, you’re only in your thirties, aren’t you?
Yeah.
Captain Fi: Yeah. I’m about to turn 32 soon. Oh man. 32.
Matt Raad: Thanks Captain Fay. Oh, I’m nearly twice your age, man. . No, I
Captain Fi: dare say you could probably overtake me going up a hill on the mountain bike. I, I’ll probably need to put in some retro traps in the gym. .
Matt Raad: Mate, seriously anyone listening, what do we all reckon, man?
Hats off to you, dude. You’ve retired or quit your job at Yeah, at 32. I hope you realize Captain Fire, how seriously impressive that is. The, who I work with seriously well done. Like man. Yeah,
Captain Fi: It’s definitely been a journey and been rewarding. , it’s not that I didn’t want to work.
As it turned out, I’ve had time to unpack this and, I’ve gone to a therapist and, yeah, we haven’t talked about this kind of stuff and I’ve come to the realization that. the job that I was in. I absolutely love flying. I love [00:29:00] aviation, love instructing, and my goal is to get back into a bit of instructing and, cool, watching students develop is amazing.
And I love that I can do this through my aviation site, where I can put in all my lesson plans, advice, career tips interview tips, that kind of stuff. And also like safe safety stuff. I can keep my finger in the pie. And , I really enjoyed doing that. But I think I was just in a very high tempo.
Quite stressful role. And it just got really toxic and unfortunately I just had a lot of crap go wrong in my life with, family health and relationships. And my own physical health started to deteriorate. And so I kind of latched onto the fire movement as bit of a coping mechanism.
And it was a way, yeah, it was a way for me to try and generate some security and I had some sort of childhood traumas about money and insecurity, similar to yourself. Yep. And where that financial independence was really able to provide a relief from money, anxiety. And look, I’ve done a lot of work over the past 12 months.
On my mental [00:30:00] health and on dealing with my money traumas. And I think I’m coming into a really good place now. And I know we’ve talked about this in the coaching calls in that when I had just left my job or , I was in the process of leaving, it was very stressful. It’s almost like a leap of faith.
I had two terminal parents with cancer and yeah, and I was doing champions and it was just the reps, it was just getting yeah, getting onto the lectures, doing some of the work, doing the writing, keeping myself going. It was really important to give my life some direction and some structure.
And I noticed this, once I finished, once I graduated from the Champions program, is that I didn’t really have much structure in my life. , everything in my life revolved around caring for my mom. And then after she passed um, Honestly can say, yeah, I did fall into a bit of depression.
Like I was sitting around, yeah. What do I do? My partner was lovely. We went and spent three months in the Philippines through a couple of months and meeting her family and traveling and learning new [00:31:00] skills, scuba diving, all that kind of stuff, which was really cool.
But I feel since I’ve gotten home and I’m getting back into the podcasting, back into writing back into working with the team, it’s definitely. Given me more of a sense of direction and purpose. And, I’m doing things like volunteering and community gardens. Actually we just, we’ve just booked a Vietnamese cooking class.
Cool. And so we are looking to, do productive, constructive things with our time. Yeah, I don’t think I could sit around and watch another Netflix TV show. . I’d just go mad. So you think you’re a hundred percent on the money you need to retire to something. And I think I did not, I put all my focus on getting away from the job rather than getting to something I loved which set me up for a bit of disappointment.
Matt Raad: See, and that Captain Fire that’s why, as in Champions program, and what I’m, what I’ve said here on this podcast is it’s so important to consciously design your life. And if we step back from there, what we’ve observed we’ve worked with a lot of people, so we’ve worked with people, rich and Bo who, gone through exactly the [00:32:00] same thing.
We work with a lot of people, advising them through challenging periods in their lives. And it always comes back to what’s your vision? Have a vision for yourself. If I can give you one bit of advice, if you’re listening to this, and as for you Captain Fire, we get you to go through a process where you sit down and write out your goals or your vision on a regular basis, like at least every 90 days, and then definitely every year.
And most people won’t do that. I learned many years ago now, if you just sit down and write your goals, you stand a pretty high chance of achieving them. So that excited me, got me thinking what are my goals? and still doing that to this day. And luckily I’m married to someone who’s on board with that and she enjoys it just as much as me of just consciously designing our lives and writing out goals.
But one of the things we’ve noticed is those people that have goals, they will carry you through the hard moments. Cuz don’t think for a minute life’s not hard or will be challeng free. What we like to say is pick your [00:33:00] up, you be the one that picks the challenges. Don’t let life just throw crap at you.
Right? Cause it will do. And everyone, like I’ve said before, everyone looks at Liz and I think, oh man you guys are charmed. You live the dream life. No, it’s been freaking hard sometimes. We’ve been some through some pretty bad stuff in our lives. And as everyone has, and I’m learning now at this age, everyone goes through it now.
Life’s never perfect, but it’s what you make of it. And I think. By having a vision and setting goals, it will carry you through those tough times. And also that can be the danger of retiring early. See, people don’t set goals or don’t, especially if you’re a high performing individual, it’s very dangerous to sit around doing nothing.
As you’ve found Captain Fire, particularly then when other challenges come in, like for yourself, I know what you’ve been through, it’s very challenging. You need to be occupied with something to get yourself through those times. And exciting thing about setting goals for yourself, even if they seem unattainable, is at least you’re [00:34:00] working towards something and you do tend to hit your goals, which is pretty cool.
So for me I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve achieved I think 95% of the goals I wrote out 30 years ago. That’s pretty cool to me. . Look, I am actually super proud of that. I think that’s so cool. But it was a simple process of writing them out and it’s carried me through the good times and the bad times.
And I think that’s an important thing. Write out your goals, have that vision, and be learning off lots of other people around you and thinking what could work out here? A little bit like what you are doing right now, Kaplan Fire in your life, which is here, what you just said. You’re testing out a few things with your partner.
Like you, you’re trying Vietnamese cooking, you’re joining, local gardening groups and stuff. You’re doing the website stuff, you’re doing a bit of podcasting. Liz and I call that, sampling from the SMOs Board of Life and figuring out what bits do we like the best and what bits are we gonna keep .
We always have our lighthouse goal, which guides us on a daily basis. And then you try all these different things. And it’s like [00:35:00] how I said, we look at different people and watch how do they raise their families, or what do they do to stay healthy, or what do they do to stay happy? What can we borrow from those?
And we read books about it and we just test out all these different things on ourselves and see what works best. And I think that’s a really smart thing to do. But see, you wouldn’t do that unless you had an overriding goal and vision for your life to achieve a certain thing. Because most people do what?
They just sit at home at night and have a beer and watch Netflix. And there’s nothing wrong with that, by the way. But you know where they’re gonna be in 10 and 20 years time, they’re still gonna be sitting at home having a beer, watching Netflix, and probably not be as rich as what they wanted to be, or as happy as what they wanted to be, or as healthy as what they wanted to be.
Whereas if you can consciously and each day work on testing out little things in your life, trying different things, pushing yourself a little bit to achieve certain goals, pushing up against a few boundaries, doing a bit of mindset work, you’ll be very pleasantly surprised how life pans out for you in five and 10 years [00:36:00] time.
Captain Fi: Reps, reps,
Matt Raad: absolutely. Yep. Doing the reps and have that goal though, to hold it together. That’s your guiding light. That’s the thing that want to be working on. Now, Matt,
Captain Fi: We were talking the other day and I absolutely lost it at this story that you told me about. So it’s about your billionaire friend.
Yes. Billionaire with a b .
Matt Raad: Yeah. Not not billionaire. Nine figures. Nine figures. Oh, hang on. So he’s done a, done a billion dollar deal. Wow.
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Okay. So , we were talking the other day and I. Lost it at this story. I’m gonna let you tell the story cause I can’t do it justice, but basically you’re at a networking event and Yeah.
I think it just goes to show how hard ingrained money habits can be to That’s
Matt Raad: right. And also around it also shows your money doesn’t always change who you are. , I had another very successful friend and mentor say to me many years ago, you always come back to your roots, so you’ve gotta be working on your mindset around money.
But it was , really cool. We were standing outside. It was late at night and Liz and I are chatting with him and we’re talking about, actually talking about investing in some internet related businesses and stuff. And we’re all kind of just lost track at the moment.
Suddenly realized, oh geez, it’s dark and late and we’re in the middle of the city, and we said, all right, let’s go back to our car together. and he said, oh, I’ve parked down the road. [00:38:00] We’re going, hang on. Why? Why aren’t you parked in this car park here? And he goes, cause , because I dunno whether anyone knows how much parking is in Brisbane, it’s as expensive as Sydney.
It’s a really surprisingly expensive, it’s a fortune to park here. And so we’re in an expensive car park and he goes no, I’ve parked down the road at the council car park . And goes, what? Where? He goes, yeah, cause it’s cheap. You can get $5 car park. And I’m going, dude, Liz hits him on the arm and says, dude, you can afford a park wherever you want.
Like you, you’ve just done this massive deal. And we’re all burst out laughing and going, oh man. And he goes, no, you can get it for five bucks. I’m parking down there and you’re gonna walk down the street by yourself for 10 minutes to get to this cheap car park as the council car park. So I just thought that was hugely amusing.
And like you said, captain Fire, it’s it just shows how, old habits. Die hard. , he’s a very successful guy. He is someone who we look up to and I really admire what he’s done. And it’s funny, he can literally afford any car park he wants on the [00:39:00] planet, I reckon.
And yet he chooses to park in the $5 car park down the road.
Captain Fi: Yeah it’s funny, I’m trying to focus less on the smaller decisions and more on the larger decisions. Yep. Smart. I got into sort of the dogma of the financial independence movement and, in insane frugality and oh, must live on lentils and rice kind of thing.
Yep. And what I’m actually realizing is like sustainably on the long term, yeah, those things will help you to save money, but then no one really wants to be a, a. A baked bean millionaire.
Matt Raad: No, we talk about that a lot and it’s something we’ve observed that, that was Liz and my key goal many years ago.
We don’t wanna be baked bean millionaires cause we saw too many people do that. And obviously we work with ’em and stuff. And something else that I would mention about the fire movement. You’ve just touched on it there. Captain Fire, I think it’s worth thinking about is I really admire the frugality aspect of the fire movement.
And I come from a very poor background, so I can certainly appreciate it. And , I was raised more by my grandparents [00:40:00] because my mom had the work when she was a single mom. And literally she said to me, , what will she get paid on Thursday? But her wages were all gone by Tuesday. We had nothing.
And , this was in Southwest and suburbs of Sydney. It’s a pretty rough area where we were living at the time. And so I know all about being frugal. Right. I know how to do it. And also when we’re on the farm with mom and dad, he comes from a very poor background as well. We’re all really good in our family at being very frugal.
There’s a problem with that is it’s not wealth and abundance. You’re not ever gonna get truly rich unless you get over that some. I’m not saying you’ve gotta go out there and start spending lots of money or anything like that, but it’s a juxtaposition. I know. But at some point in your life, if you’re listening to this and you’re doing the frugal thing, you’re scrimping and saving to become financially independent.
That’s awesome. It sets up really good habits. I, to this day I’m like my friend. I still can’t just blow money on, on an expensive car or anything like that. That’s deep psychological trauma sitting right there. Right. At some point I [00:41:00] realized in my life I had to overcome this thing of penny pinching all the time and things like that.
And I did a lot of work on myself to figure that out because if you’ve got a goal to be wealthy and significantly wealthy, you can’t be worrying about penny pinching all the time. Or, being significantly wealthy means you can have, you can afford to spend money on some nice stuff at some point in your life, presumably, and you need to work on mindset around that.
And for me, and this captain Fire, one of the biggest things where my life changed was when I finally figured out the subconscious blockages that were sitting in my mind around wealth that I had. They were deep, psychological subconscious blockages. And I released. Through a lot of mindset work, and that’s what we help people with these days because it was so dramatic, it seemed like that’s when my life just totally freed up and I was able to allow in wealth and abundance into my life.
So it’s just a little observation for you [00:42:00] guys , be careful of always being totally frugal. And I think this is why it’s so important to come back to what I’m obviously very passionate about, which is please make sure you’re setting goals for yourself and you know what they are, and keep focused on those.
So if it’s to be wealthy, then you need to kind of look at what’s the point at which I can stop being frugal? Because otherwise you’re gonna lock yourself into being, I’m gonna swear here. Okay. Am I okay to swear a little bit ? Yeah, man, let it out. Okay. You don’t wanna lock yourself into being a tight ass all your.
Captain Fi: Come on. That wasn’t financial swearing
Matt Raad: only. It’s swearing as, I don’t swear, I don’t swear publicly. Right. . But you know, you don’t always be thinking like a tight ass all your life. Because in business you’ve gotta realize to generate money, you’ve gotta spend money, you’ve gotta make investments and things like that.
And you’ve gotta get out there and you need to be thinking wealth and abundance because in your. Opens up, you get amazing deals come to you. So that’s my thing is, deal flow, right? And getting deals coming to me. Once I started thinking abundantly and stopped thinking like [00:43:00] a tight ass deals just landed on my lap, it’s like magic.
The world opens up. So once you’ve figured out those subconscious blockages in your life, if you’re not earning the money that you want, or if you’re not financially comfortable, or you’re not in a position where you know you’re happy with your financial situation, and this has been going on for quite a few years, I’ll almost guarantee you, you have cycle ups, deep subconscious blockages sitting there around wealth, around wealth issues that you probably need to work on release.
And that Captain Fi is a topic for ano whole nother podcast. Or more importantly, , another rap for myself that’s what we help coach people with. Yeah. And
Captain Fi: that’s, it’s a big, it’s a big topic. It’s huge. I mean, that abundance mindset and moving away from that scarcity mindset and knowing that even if you lost all of your wealth today, you have the skill to turn around and build that
Matt Raad: up again.
Ground around. Yeah. look at you Captain Fire. You just said it on this podcast and you’ve said it, I know you’ve said it on other podcasts. And thank you for the compliment too, [00:44:00] because it means a lot to me. Cuz I know a lot about your background, right? You and I have very similar backgrounds and, raised by, the females and all that sort of stuff.
And because it very similar and. , like you said, one of the main things you got out of being on our course, it always stood out to me when you said, wow, that words of wealth, remember before you even come on champions, you said that to me and I realized when you’re on champions, wow, this guy’s the real girl.
Oh man, , that’s one of the big things you think you got out of being around someone like Liz and I is you realize too, yeah, man, these guys are right. You’re gotta work on this subconscious block. It is what the hell’s going on around my wealth mindset here. And that then frees up your whole life.
And I think that was a big change for you, just like it was for me many years ago, or was big catalyst for me is to finally figure that crap out and work through it. And that’s one of the things we love helping people with as well. Go and read books on it. Just, there’s all sorts of books. I mean, I’ve mentioned it on one of your podcast, a book that helped me enormously was you Can Heal Your Life by Louise.
Hey. Yeah, Louise. Hey. Yeah. [00:45:00] Brilliant book. This is really good. Yeah, really good simple stuff in there to help if you’re interested in beginning to explore these subconscious blockages idea. It was funny, a really tough ass businessman gave me that book and said, this will help you, Matt. And so there you go.
There’s my bit of advice for you if you’re interested in starting on that path.
Captain Fi: Yeah. It’s awesome. I feel a bit better cause I’ve got about a hundred books in my to-do list, but I actually have a copy of that. It’s been sitting on my bedside table, , and I’m a bit ashamed to say this probably since we got back to Australia.
And so I’m going to read the first bloody 20 pages tonight and I’m really excited. Actually, I wanna redo my goals again tonight. After it reinvigorated me with goal setting after our conversation here, Matt. So I’m
Matt Raad: gonna sit down. Just remember Captain Flight, they come real. They, what? You write down what you put pen to paper.
When I learnt that years ago just blew my mind. It’s really? So if I write down something, it will actually come true. So I straight away wrote down, I wanna be a million. And, like I’m thinking, cool, when’s it gonna [00:46:00] happen five years later? When’s it gonna happen? , they don’t, what they don’t tell you is it takes a lot longer than you think, but you can speed it up by exploring these things.
But seriously, you should get excited about your goals. Write them down again, because just tell yourself this, Matt’s always right and they will come true ?
Captain Fi: Yes. Okay.
Matt Raad: I’m gonna adding extra, don’t
Captain Fi: you? Yeah. I’m gonna add an extra zero to my to my wealth and wealth goal now, .
Matt Raad: What you do is you fill out that picture.
See when the goal setting thing becomes magic is when you can start writing out what does that mean? What does it even mean to be a millionaire? See, back then when I wrote that down, I didn’t even know any millionaires. So I actually had no concept. What the hell does that mean being a millionaire?
Is that. Net is that, what do you do with a million bucks? Is that just tied up in a house or something? So what you wanna do is get clarity around it. And this is that idea again, of smalls border life. Start looking around and writing down and just filling this out. This should be an ongoing document that follows you throughout your life and that you just refine every, every 90 days and [00:47:00] discuss it with your significant other.
That’s the other cool thing that I think’s worked really well for. Liz and I we’re very open and we talk about, and luckily we have similar goals now that’s lucky in itself, but we regularly check in with each other and say, Hey what? How does our life look? in five years time or 10 years time, where are you at?
The kids are now at a certain age cause things change. Our goals have changed over the last 10 years dramatically. There’s certain things now that are way more important. Obviously money’s not important anymore. I mean, it’s always fun, but you know, our health, our ongoing health is probably more important now and our family and our social situation, hanging out with friends and stuff that thing now is what we’re refining more and more.
So luckily, and I urge this, anyone listening is involve your partner in this stuff. And by the way, if they’re not on board with you or they think this is all, crap or whatever, or they don’t want to create the same life that, that you want to do, then you know, are you with the right partner? I’m just being blunt here.
It’s probably one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make in your life is who your life partner is. Geez, you’d want to hope they’re on board with you on your [00:48:00] vision. So food for thought there. I know that’s a little bit controversial. I’m just being super blunt. Yeah, it’s important.
It’s
Captain Fi: very important, you
Matt Raad: know. It’s a suc, it’s a key success factor is sharing stuff with your partner and picking the right partner. No stress or anything for those of you who are pretty young and still yet to bit your partner. But it is important. I got lucky there. Hey, what do you reckon?
Captain Fi: Yeah, Liz is pretty awesome.
Matt Raad: Yeah. Yeah. Yes, I got extremely lucky, but I gotta say she, she did okay out of it too.
The original meaning of my surname if you look it up, RA in Dutch is good advice. Love it.
Captain Fi: All right, Matt. Look, geez, we’ve gotten through an absolute mammoth here today.
We have. It’s been awesome. Thanks so much for your time, Matt. It’s always really good to to check in with you. Again, we’ve spoken for ages off record as well. I find it really helpful Every time we check in and you help me with my business, my websites, my mindset.
Massive appreciation for you and Liz and what you do and for all the time that you’ve you allocate to me and, for all of your students really. I think we’re , pretty lucky to have you in the community. So [00:49:00] again, thank you so much for your time. You’re a massive valuable asset for us.
Matt Raad: Oh big thanks cap fire. And it’s always my pleasure, as to speak to you cuz I, I really admire a, as you’ve heard me say in these podcasts, the fire movement and particularly yourself for what you do. I know you’ve got a heart of gold, you come from the right place. I could tell that, your integrity level is so high and like us, you just love educating people and stuff.
And then, hats off to you, what you’ve achieved with Captain Fire. You’ve influenced a lot of lives. I know I’ve met lots of your clients. They’ve come onto our program and geez mate, they love you. Absolutely love you. So it’s definitely my pleasure to be invited onto your podcast. Um, I’ve, and hopefully listeners have gotten something really cool out of it.
And a big thank you for asking such awesome questions as well. There’s heaps of. Oh
Captain Fi: yeah, it’s brilliant. And look, a lot of these questions come straight from the community too. So I feel like I’m just a poor facilitator here that, badly asks questions, but we get there in the end.
Matt Raad: , I want to [00:50:00] encourage everyone go on the journey like Captain Fire’s done, find, financial independence and think about your vision for retiring early.
What does that actually look like? That would be my main advice. I, yeah, back to seriously think about your future vision. Yep.
Captain Fi: Great. Awesome, Matt. Thanks very much for your time and enjoy spending time with with your parents and the in-laws. Will do. We’re in town with you.
Awesome. Cheers, Matt.
Matt Raad: No worries, Captn fire, thanks for having me on.
Captain Fi: 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 active on Facebook and Instagram, as well as a number of [00:51:00] 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 appropriate for your personal circumstance.
Captain FI is a Retired Pilot who lives in Adelaide, South Australia. He is passionate about Financial Independence and writes about Personal Finance and his journey to reach FI at 29, allowing him to retire at 30.