We start with special guest Mike Heroux, retired at age 35 and creator of thedividendguyblog.com, who tells us about his business and what he does. He tells us his investment journey and where he went from college to day trading, and then his struggles with that. He bought The Dividend Guy Blog for about $20,000, which was making about $15,000 per year. We discuss what happened to his blog as time went on and Google changed, and then how Mike advises people on investing in dividend stocks. We talk about some of the dividend stocks that he likes, such as Microsoft. He tells us it’s important to look at the growth of a dividend rather than the size of the dividend because a high dividend often means more volatility in equity. The growth of the yield rate is a greater indicator of the strength of the company rather than the growth of the stock. Mike tells us about the dividend triangle, which is 1) revenue growth, 2) earning growth, and 3) dividend growth. He explains that the percentage of money paid out to investors is the percentage of value that will be coming out of the company. So unless the company is growing at a significant rate higher than they are paying out, the value of said company will decrease. Mike tells us he’s not in it for the dividend yield, but is helping to identify great stocks to buy. Mike’s background 2:18 What Google did to his blog 8:52 How Mike advises people on investing in dividend stocks 10:48 Dividend stocks that Mike likes 14:50The dividend triangle 19:06 How The Dividend Guy Blog works 26:14 “Regardless of how you invest your portfolio, clear all the noise. Don’t listen to the media, don’t listen to all those pros telling you the market is going to crash and then you put 50% of your money into gold and stuff like that. Stick to your plan. So many people have a hard time sticking to their plan.” 33:50Thedividendguyblog.com Twitter:@thedividendguyblogReach Out To Keith, Get Help and Resources: https://dincpie.com/

Diversified Income Experiment | Passive Income

Mike Heroux | The Dividend Guy Blog

Income is definitely affected by what’s going on in our economy right now and many businesses in our own community are closing up shop. They shut down because it just wasn’t making any money. We applied here for a PPP loan and that has helped, but there was only enough money to pay for a couple months of down time. Things with the virus are picking up again, so it’s looking like the economy might have to shut down again. In terms of our auto parts business, everyone kind of took a hiatus, so they stopped doing everything and stopped doing projects. The kind of businesses that are thriving now are the RV and boat suppliers because of all the people who are doing these safer vacations as opposed to traveling abroad. Our Amazon business has been affected by Covid quite a bit. We were getting 100 sales at the beginning of the economic shut down, but now we’re only getting about 1 per week. Right now you can buy property with cheap interest rates. It might be a good opportunity to buy a house. Owning your own business may be smart right now, depending on the type of business you start or acquire. Our Amazon business 7:07Ajnaliving.com - cheap furniture 7:58Quiet Light Brokerage 9:46“When you’re out of money and you have a family, you get desperate. And times will get ugly. All we needed was one little spark to flash this idea. That happened in the George Floyd incident which of course is just horrific. And so are lots of other things that are horrific. That sparked this fire that is now burning--people were on edge of rioting and looting anyway over the fact that they’re out of money… this tinder box was ready to burn.” 3:03Reach Out To Keith, Get Help and Resources: https://dincpie.com/

Kookie Times | Plan For Your Future

In this episode, we update you on the franchise, Smash My Trash, that Keith brought in January of 2020. It’s been live for a week, and we share the revenue growth we’ve seen. We explain the main advantages of franchising, including lowering risk by having proven business models available for you to follow. We also talk about the advantages of a major franchise’s brand, patented technology, and value around process and industry awareness. We refer you to our previous episode, Franchising | Aaron Bakken, and recommend you find him on LinkedIn to find out more about franchising. We share what Keith has learned about being honest with yourself and your own compatibility with the franchises you consider. We tell you more about Smash My Trash, it’s model and value proposition. It’s value proposition is to save money on a necessary service, and it’s entire employee force consists of a salesperson, drivers, and yourself. If you set it up right, it also has the potential to be a very hands-off endeavor. We discuss how owning a business always has a hard, labor-intensive stage, and how right now we are in that stage with Smash My Trash, as well as our other businesses. We talk about what has and hasn’t worked for us in terms of selling this service to businesses. We finish with an overview of the advantages of franchising. Finding the Right Franchise -- Lower Your Risk 0:52What Keith Has Learned About Franchises 6:05Smash My Trash -- Why It’s a Good Fit For Keith 7:46Challenges With Sales 13:31“The process of evaluating franchises is important...I think franchising can provide an opportunity to create wealth -- they’re real businesses that are proven, and have track records, and you can be able to replicate those. That’s the whole model.” 18:58Reach Out To Keith, Get Help and Resources: https://dincpie.com/

How To Choose the Right Franchise | The Advantages of Buying a Franchise

Today, we update you on the status in its first 2 months of the third laundromat we’ve opened. We begin by sharing the process of obtaining the property. We purchased the building in May of 2018, closed the deal in the following December, and we just got it up and running in April of 2020. We then encourage the listener to consider this an example of how long this process can take and prepare accordingly. We share the details and delays in getting the building ready to run the laundromat, including the structural and extensive plumbing renovations to get the building ready. We talk about our plan and its ramp rate to revenue, and how we did in month 1 compared to this plan. We share the statistics of our earnings by day and by month. We also share the progress of the other two laundromats according to the model. We share the growth of our wash, dry, fold operation. We attribute that growth to switching our website to the service offered by CurbSide Laundries (https://www.curbsidelaundries.com/), using their advertising. In addition to this, we are advertising on https://nextdoor.com/. We talk about the growth of Laundromat #3, discussing adding security measures like bars on windows and bollards in front of the store to adapt to the local circumstances. We talk about our efforts providing a good experience for customers and then asking them to leave a Google review. We talk about adapting our delivery service communications protocol to customer needs. We talk about the best way to handle customer complaints, including giving refunds in credit for the store when possible. Purchasing and Preparing the Property, Payment System 0:41Revenue in Month 1 5:34Wash, Dry, Fold Earnings; Website and Advertising 10:04Other Details About #3; Google Ratings 13:48“We build a plan that has a ramp rate to revenue...month 1, that’s where it starts. Month 1 is 10% of the target where we will ultimately end up when we get to a production run rate.” 6:03Reach Out To Keith, Get Help and Resources: https://dincpie.com/

Laundromat #3 is Live | How It’s Doing

In today’s episode, we give you an update on our passive income experiment, as discussed on our previous episode, the The PIE Episode | How To Source and Sell Products Online. We give you a summary of what our experiment is. We share that the product we chose to do our experiment with is a 10” acacia wood kitchen turntable (https://www.amazon.com/Lipper-International-1301-Kitchen-Turntable/dp/B073SBDZSH?th=1). We created our Facebook ad, and found that over the course of a few days, 500 people clicked on the ad. We explain how with that click rate, if 10 people buy the product, it fits within our model as a promising customer acquisition cost. However, we found that out of those 500 clicks, we didn’t have a single sale. Even after adjusting our click funnel -- including the images and price of the product, and the design of the page -- we couldn’t get a single sale. Using the eye-tracking tools on Crazy Egg (https://www.crazyegg.com/), which helps you track a website’s operation, we found that no one even entered their name in the first field. We then determined that we weren’t selling to the right demographic, considering that we had a high-selling product on Amazon, and that our sales funnel looked great. We talk about how we’re going to double check that our product is priced right as an impulse buy, and target our ads to the right demographic, and structure our funnel differently and involve discount codes and email address collection. Recap of Product Launch Idea 0:31Update on Our Experiment 2:05Tuning Our Website for the Right Demographic 7:27Our Strategy Moving Forward 10:45“If you’d like to know exactly how much those products generate in revenue, you can just go to Viral Launch, or Helium 10 -- get a one month subscription for like 60 bucks -- and you can enter the product number, which is called the ASIN, and it will tell you exactly how much the product sells for. And the idea was to be able to locate a product that sells really well on Amazon -- to verify that there is demand -- and then create Facebook ads to drive people to your own little one or two page website where you are selling that product.” 0:45Reach Out To Keith, Get Help and Resources: https://dincpie.com/

The Second PIE Episode | Demographic Targeting and Optimizing your Sales Funnel

Today, we talk about marketing with Melissa Forziat, marketing speaker, consultant, and author (https://melissaforziatevents.com/). We discuss winning strategies in marketing, pointing out that every business and every audience is different. We also talk about the need to constantly adapt to change and continually invest in marketing. We compare different methods like personal networking, partnership marketing, and brand awareness, emphasizing the importance of identifying exactly how your are attracting customers. Melissa also shares that the key to marketing is always having a next step in your marketing plan for every move you make, in order to build relationships and make them last as long as possible. We discuss the importance of both strategy and market testing. We list examples of both Melissa and Keith’s efforts to expand their businesses, sharing the ways they illustrate important principles of strategy, creativity, and relationship building. Marketing: Winning a Game When the Rules Are Always Changing 2:28 Melissa’s Process When Working with Clients 11:04How to Build a Career in Speaking 23:14The Importance of “Now What?” 26:04 “If you think it would become a full-time business, try to give some thought not just to what products are hot, but what makes sense for you to sell. What makes sense for you to have affiliate links for, and is there an overarching message around the types of products that you’re choosing.” 30:29Reach Out To Keith, Get Help and Resources: https://dincpie.com/

“Now What?” The Key to Successful Marketing Strategy | Melissa Forziat

In today’s episode, we interview Nathan Hirsch, Co-founder of Free Up, an online service that “gives business owners fast access to a hand-picked network of top freelancers in eCommerce, digital marketing, web development,” and other services (https://freeup.net/), and Outsource School, a resource for learning “how to interview, onboard, train, and manage virtual assistants.” (https://www.outsourceschool.com/). We talk about the conception and development of both businesses, as well as the several unique and useful advantages they offer to business owners. We discuss the systems that should be in place before integrating VA’s, as well as the ideal role they play in your business structure. We share the courses and resources offered by Outsource School. We finish by sharing ideas about what makes a successful business, focusing on the win-win, using podcasts, and living a positive lifestyle. Origin of Free Up and Outsource School 1:04Bookkeeping and Other Applications 10:00How to Use VA’s; Topics Covered by Outsource School 16:28What Drives Nathan Hirsch; The Podcast Outreach Formula 25:16“If you don’t have systems and processes, you’re not gonna be able to hire a virtual assistant. And that could be an executive assistant to do your scheduling, that could be someone to do customer service, it could be lead generation, it could be research to get you on a podcast -- that’s where the VA falls in.” 17:41Reach Out To Keith, Get Help and Resources: https://dincpie.com/

The Godfather of VA’s | Nathan Hirsch on Scaling Your Business With Virtual Assistants

Today, we discuss different passive income streams, including those that have become Keith’s favorites over time. We talk about effective money-making strategies in real estate with short-term rentals, long-term residential, and commercial real estate. We recommend looking up our previous episode with Antioine Martel (“Turnkey Real Estate”), as well as listening to his podcast for more tips on residential real estate. We give you a proven model for a profitable commercial property flip. We finish by giving you a new idea for an Amazon Alexa programming service for smart homes. Passive After Outsourcing; Writing Covered Calls in the Stock Market 0:28Residential Real Estate: Short-term and Long-term 4:19Commercial Real Estate: A Successful, Repeatable Model 13:14Be Creative, Use Your Skills, Fill Needs 17:29“Things become more passive, sometimes, with scale, so in anything that you start, there’s a little bit of effort up front to get them running. And then, they become more passive over time as you can outsource the various components of them.” 1:20Reach Out To Keith, Get Help and Resources: https://dincpie.com/

How To Make Passive Income | Ideas and Strategies for Short-term and Long-term Profit

Today’s episode is all about our passive income experiment (P.I.E.), selling a home decor product exclusively through a website. We give an example of how this same model was wildly successful for another seller. We take you through how to determine which product will sell using a chrome extension like Viral Launch (https://viral-launch.com/), as well as how we created our funnel (https://www.clickfunnels.com/, with help from Marsha from https://www.onlinejobs.ph/) or website for this product. We explain how we are calculating profit based on customer acquisition cost, cost of product (find out how much it costs to source a product on https://www.alibaba.com/), and the cost of the other tools and resources mentioned above. We then recommend that before you buy all your inventory, you source your product through Amazon until you see your experiment works.Origin of Our Experiment -- Success Story 1:27How to Use Amazon to Research a Product 6:50Creating Your Website; Developing Facebook Ads; Upselling 11:25Source Through Amazon Until You Prove It Sells 16:24“In a prior episode, I talked about finding a product that is a relatively low price point (like maybe 30-50 bucks), and then, if you can confirm that there is demand for that -- and we’ll talk about how to do that in a minute -- then maybe you can just put that product on its own website and direct traffic there from Facebook ads and see if it will sell.” 1:42Reach Out To Keith, Get Help and Resources: https://dincpie.com/

The PIE Episode | How To Source and Sell Products Online

In today’s episode, we explain exactly what we mean by diversified income, within the context of active vs. passive income. We give examples of passive income (such as investing in the stock market or real estate, or E-commerce) and active income (such as providing and selling a service). For ideas on passive and active income streams, we recommend listening to previous episodes of this podcast, as well as “Side Hustle Nation” with Nick Loper, and “A Millennial’s Guide to Real Estate Investing With Antoine Martel,” both of whom have been interviewed on our podcast. Why Diversify Your Income? 0:50Active vs. Passive Income 1:33Find Ideas for Diversifying Your Income 4:14“When I talk about diversified income, I’m just saying diversify it however you need to, because your primary income stream will end. Maybe it just did with COVID-19.” 3:48Reach Out To Keith, Get Help and Resources: https://dincpie.com/

What is Diversified Income? | Ideas for Passive and Active Income Streams

In today’s episode, we fill you in on the details of Keith’s purchased franchise, Smash My Trash. We cover what the business does, what it costs to buy, what the operating model is, and where Keith is at in the process of getting it up and running. We also give tips on how to market this service to businesses. We finish by sharing the total earnings that Keith is projected to make from all his diversified income streams combined, and encourage you to look for and begin similar projects for yourself. What Is Smash My Trash? Business Model, Entry Fee, Net Margin 1:28What Keith’s Doing To Sell To Businesses 5:18Potential Earnings; The Advantage of Diversified Income 8:48Heads Up! Here’s a New Product Opportunity 12:27“The entry fee is reasonable, the value proposition is about cost savings as opposed to trying to extract dollars that you’re going to spend somewhere else, and number 3, is that this thing is designed to operate at about a 40 percent net margin.” 4:52Reach Out To Keith, Get Help and Resources: https://dincpie.com/

How To Make Money With Franchises | Buying, Operating, and Marketing Smash My Trash

Today, we talk about Keith’s third laundromat which just opened. We walk through the timeline, the financials, including the cost to build the facility, the operating math, equipment, and growth in the wash, dry, fold business. We share what we would have done differently with machine selection and distribution, give you the profit margins and how much is going to debt service, utilities, payroll, and other professional fees. We talk about growth in the wash, dry, fold business -- especially during the coronavirus pandemic. We finish by summarizing what makes the laundromat business promising and what your priorities should be when opening one. Subscribe, Send Feedback, Share Ideas, Get On The Podcast: Go to dincpie.com 1:47Timeline, Goals, Financials and Operating Model 3:08Wash, Dry, Fold and The Commercial Laundry Business During The Pandemic 16:18Summary: The How And Why of Laundromats 21:56“You’re trying to create a diversified income stream so that 10 years down the road when you do have the debt paid off, this thing’s gonna make a lot of money!” 23:43Reach Out To Keith, Get Help and Resources: https://dincpie.com/

How To Make Money With Laundromats | Laundromat #3 Open For Business

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Diversified Income Experiment | Passive Income

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