Podcast 228. Leveraging Digital Assets for Passive Income with Matt Raad

Average Joe Finances:
0:01

Hey, welcome back to the Average Joe Finances podcast. I'm your host, Mike Cavaggioni. And today's guest is Matt Raad. And right now for Matt, it's actually tomorrow. Cause he's over in Australia. So we were just talking about that a little bit and we're about what I think 18, 19 hour difference apart right now. Matt, super excited to have you on. We had an awesome pre recording conversation, just talking about side hustles and everything. And I am super excited to get into that with you today. So thank you so much for joining me.

Matt Raad:
0:31

And thanks so much for having me on Mike. Likewise. It is awesome to hear your background, like kindred spirits here, I think in terms of side hustles and you've even had a go at buying websites as well, which is super impressive. That's so rare.

Average Joe Finances:
0:46

Yeah. Hey, I appreciate it. I dabbled in whatever I could, because for me I'm an income enthusiast, if it's something that I can make money with, it interests me. But yeah.

Matt Raad:
0:55

Perfect, so I'm looking forward as I think the listeners are going to get a great time because like you said. I have shared all similar passions when it comes to side hustles and passive in for me, passive income as well.

Average Joe Finances:
1:07

Absolutely. Hey, let's kick this off the same way we start every podcast episode, and we want to know more about you. So if you could share a little bit about yourself, share your story. Tell us who is Matt Raad.

Matt Raad:
1:20

Okay. So as ever since a kid, I've been fascinated by financial freedom because I grew up with a lot of us grew up with nothing in the seventies. I grew up here in, in rural Australia. Mom and dad had hardly any money and during there was a recession then, and it was really tough times. And so I think that's what's always driven me. And I think in later years when I met my wife, Liz, the two of us shared this fascination for, as I just said. Passive income, like, how do you free up your time so everyone around us work nine to five? And so I guess our journey has been quite unique in that we decided and discovered that businesses Can give you freedom, massive freedom, not just financial, but particularly from the nine to five. We always were attracted to businesses that allowed us to not be working nine to five and that is through manufacturing and wholesale import businesses. So really our background starts in this game from reading books like cashflow, rich dad, poor dad and all those business books. Back in those days, really impressed upon us the need to get leverage on our time and our money. And we started buying and selling businesses. And then if we fast forward a bit to around the GFC time, we were starting a young family then. And it was tough buying and selling businesses. We've had quite a journey through that as young entrepreneurs. We never had any money and all that sort of stuff. And we started to discover this thing called the internet back then. And there were websites. And one day Liz basically said to me, what the hell are we doing buying and selling, we're always in debt to the bank and we're skating on the edge of bankruptcy here for the last 15 odd years or whatever it was back then. And okay, you can do really well with these business, but every last cent we had was going back into businesses and say, why don't we just start buying internet businesses that there's no inventory needed and they work 24 seven. They're basically, they work while we sleep and maybe that's how we're going to get truly passive income. And as we say, then the rest is history. So go Liz we literally just recreated what our background was from buying and selling businesses into websites and it worked phenomenally well. It was pretty much like I'm. You got to work at it, but Mike, compared to buying and selling bricks and mortar businesses, internet businesses for us was like, like we're in Nirvana, it was do I say easy? I'm not going to say it's totally easy, but compared to bricks and mortar businesses, absolutely. As young entrepreneurs, it was like the holy grail for us. That's been our, that's us in a nutshell.

Average Joe Finances:
3:59

Yeah, no, I absolutely love that. So we were talking a little bit before we hit record. I was telling you about this one time I was trying, like trying out to just flip a website. And I built this website from scratch just, and it was an e commerce website but everything was done through drop shipping. So there was no physical inventory. And I put this whole thing together for about a total of 150 and I turn around and sold it on Flippa for 750. So doing stuff like that is very real and I was just doing that to prove that it's something that can be done And, I thought about maybe doing it some more because I am pretty good at building websites. So I think, building up like small websites to, to just help somebody with a startup or even just, saying, Hey I'll build the website and then just sell them whatever it might be. I feel like, there, there is a business there, right? There's a whole business side of that. And the fact that, you and Liz, you guys were doing the whole thing with brick and mortar businesses. And you said, okay. This brick and mortar stuff, this is getting pretty heavy, but there's got to be a way to do this with websites. And then you started doing it with the websites. Now, what was it that like, when you discovered that you can do the same business model on websites and you do it with brick and mortar, like what was it that like flipped that switch for you that you and Liz were just like, Hey, this is what we're going to do. This is the future.

Matt Raad:
5:20

I think, what actually was the turning point. When we first started hearing about this and we were all, we're totally self taught in every aspect of business, but, and particularly in internet businesses, because no one teaches any of this stuff until now, that's why we do it now. But back then in 2008, we were listening to a couple of American educators and there were only a few people were talking about not buying websites, they're all talking about starting up. Internet businesses and not e commerce. So what we need to say is what's very different about what we do is we just do ad sites and affiliate sites. And there's a couple of, I guess you'd call them like underground people talking about these amazing AdSense sites or affiliate sites, and we got really interested in it, but back then it was super tough. Technically you had hand coded websites. So what kicked us off was we realized. The power of that strategy was just mind blowing. It literally ticked every single box that we'd been on a quest for in our buying and selling bricks and mortar businesses. And we had mentors who are really successful at bricks and mortar businesses is very high net worth individuals. And we wanted to emulate what they'd done. But when we saw this internet model, we realized there's so much leverage there. They're working 24 seven. They've got a worldwide market. That was the main thing that attracted. Us to it, but we had to overcome this technical challenge. So what happened was Liz. It was a mindset shift at first. We had to overcome these fears. We're two kids from growing up on farms. Liz grew up on farms as well. We've never grown up with computers. We didn't, I didn't like really, we really dislike computers. Let's just put it that way. So we had to get over the mindset and Liz. Just said, all right, I'm going to do this. It is so worth it. It is so good. I'm going to figure out how to hand code a website. And she did that and she built a website. And back in those days too, just around the time, I think there's a program called Dreamweaver came along. If anyone knows about building websites from back in the early 2000s, that was the program. And it was tough technically to do it. But it worked brilliantly for us, but not in the first year. So this was before 2008, Liz had a crack at building this site and she only got it to breaking even. And we had a mentor say to us back then, who's an expert with doing paid traffic on Google. And I said, why don't you do some paid traffic? And we did that. And Liz go Liz got it working and within a year, it was making wait till you hear this 5, 000 a month net like that's net profit, like literally for this thing that was passive. So she went through all the pain of a year previous building it up. And I want to reiterate something these days. It's way easier, but. She went through this pain and then suddenly it just went exponential. Like I know five grand may or may not be a lot of money. To your listeners it doesn't matter about the money. But the fact is, for us, that was, we literally wake up in the morning and there's money in the bank account from affiliate sales and stuff,

Average Joe Finances:
8:29

and and that first one was proof of concept, right? It was like this, it was proof of that. This is proof that works.

Matt Raad:
8:34

What I'm looking for. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that was a mindset shift for us. All of a sudden. I think that's when both of us, our eyes lit up. It was. Our mentor said to us one day, what happens is when you get successful, he was a multimillionaire, this guy. And he said, when in business, you go on, you don't realize how successful all of a sudden. And then one day for him and his wife, they just looked at each other and said, wow, we just did it. And you suddenly realize, and there was that moment, I think when we realized we're making $5,000 a month off that website, and we literally weren't touching it that much. It had just. Okay. There was the hard yards of setting it up. I think that was the turning point for us. And it was at that point then that Liz just said next, see, Liz is real. I'm more patient and happy to like, I will just work at something till it's done. If it takes me however long, I don't care. Liz is very impatient. We'll go get a ultra high achiever. And she just said. We're not going to, I'm not going through that pain, Matt, of building that thing up again. What the hell are we doing? Why don't we just do what we've always done? There's got to be a way to buy these websites. And this was before Flippa existed, Mike, there was no platforms for it. And she just said, someone, there's so many websites out there. People have got to sell them somewhere. So let's just do what we've always done, which is private approach. So we literally would just send out emails to people in America and say, Hey, we noticed you're in the same niche as us. We're from Australia. We're cash buyers. We're looking to buy more websites in this niche. Are you interested in selling? And that's pretty much how we got, and that's how we used to buy bricks and mortar business as well. We call it private approach, just very confidential, quiet, approach. And. It because we've done it so many times.

Average Joe Finances:
10:15

How are you getting these email addresses that you were reaching out to the folks? Were you looking up the who is information? Like.

Matt Raad:
10:20

Yes.

Average Joe Finances:
10:21

How did you even do that back then? Because I know it's easier to do that now, but in the early 2000s, it was a lot more complicated to pull that info all that data.

Matt Raad:
10:30

So there's two ways we would do the, who is, or normally on most of these sites, they would have a contact us page and we just got your form. Okay. Or we would even, we'd look through their terms and conditions. How often in the terms and conditions or their privacy policy, they have a support that. Yeah, support at. And so we just, it took a long time. Like it was, this was, I want to reiterate this bit of the journey that wasn't passive, but we were used to that. See people think, Oh, so you know, you can outsource it or whatever. And you can these days, but, and people go, wow, why would you do that? It was literally, I'll give the number. It was a 1 percent hit rate, which doesn't say we'd have to contact a hundred people, but you got to realize you imagine, is it worth it to you? Every time you get a website that makes you five grand. Absolutely. It's, and that's the same because we've done all the hard yards in bricks and mortar world. We knew the numbers. It's just a numbers game when you start contacting people and we knew we're going to get, and actually with websites, it was actually better than 1%. We got, we bought some amazing websites. It was just, it worked phenomenally well for us. And then in later years, these website broker platforms came along and, yeah. It just got, in my opinion, it gets easier and easier, but of course, we're also very experienced. So we, it's almost intuitive what we do these days. And that's why these days we love teaching beginners how to do what we've done because we made a lot of mistakes in the early days. I know I'm making it sound easy and everything like that, but honestly, there's work to this. This is, there's a lot to learn technically. But the good news is these days, it's not like the dream weaver days. We can teach literally total beginners. Typically we have people like I'm in my fifties, we've got kids. Typically, like I was saying to you earlier we train total beginners who are burnt out corporates and ex military people, ex teachers, all that sort of stuff, people that are sick of swapping time for money. We love teaching them to do what we've done and not make the mistakes that we've made over the years.

Average Joe Finances:
12:31

Yeah, no, that's awesome. And it's funny because like when you talk about success stories, that especially once it started, like before things got so much easier and there was all these resources available and you realize how much effort and work you had to put in to get that to where we are today, to how much easier it is for somebody to go ahead and do that and find success, it goes to show that like when you've done it the hard way, The easy way is almost a joke to you at this point, right? Now you can outsource like sometimes somebody to do some data scrapping, scraping for you. You can, or there's even AI now that'll do it for you too, right? You can just ask it, Hey, scrape all of these websites and get me their contact info. Put it in a, in an Excel format. So I can add it to an email list and just shoot out an email. Now there's so many resources where you could just do things in bulk and just massively. And quickly, and the efficiency that you get with that and the time and the money that you save now makes it even more lucrative for someone that's done it the hard way.

Matt Raad:
13:37

Yeah.

Average Joe Finances:
13:37

And what's great is the fact that you teach people now how to do this, and you're teaching them the current way, how to do this. This is how you do it. Today Hey, we had to do it the hard way. This is how you do it today. And it's so much easier. And let me show you why. So I think that's awesome.

Matt Raad:
13:54

Yeah. And we can give them better skills. So like you we highly recommend and Mike, I know what you tell your listeners, we're very passionate about this. You hear Liz and I talk about how much, how well we're doing and our students are doing, and it's really tempting to just go, all right, I'm going to throw my job and replace my six figure income. And we say no, do not throw in your job. Please learn. This is a side hustle. So whilst it's a lot easier, there's still a lot to learn and typically. You've got to retrain with digital skills, but in essence, even though we teach beginners, but if you are a beginner, the thing is, it's going to take you longer. So what we love about website businesses, as opposed to bricks and mortar businesses, the other thing, why we're so passionate about website businesses, because we used to buy and sell bricks and mortar businesses. And we did it professionally in mergers and acquisitions. And most people, if they're trying to quit the corporate rat race. I've got to come into a bricks and mortar and I've got to go into heavy debt like what Liz and I used to. And we don't want people doing that with websites. You don't have to do that. You can start out and buy a simple website that you can learn on for under $5,000 or under $2,000 or even under $1,000 realistically. Now it's not going to be a perfect website or anything like that, but you can pretty much learn the essential skills on a simple $1,000 website. You did, when you're telling me off camera, how you started that side. What, like a $30 for a Shopify account?

Average Joe Finances:
15:20

Yeah.

Matt Raad:
15:21

20 bucks was the main name.

Average Joe Finances:
15:22

50 bucks. Yeah.

Matt Raad:
15:24

50 bucks.

Average Joe Finances:
15:24

And that's'cause I outsourced somebody building the store for me. There you go. If I would've done it myself, I would've, made more money on it, but I was like, I didn't have time. So I was like, oh, let me just hire somebody to build the site for me. I was like, this is what I want to look like. They did it and I turned around and sold it for a $500 profit.

Matt Raad:
15:40

So actually your story is the perfect story, even though Mike, it involves physical inventory. We don't do those sorts of sites, but really the numbers behind your story, if you're listening to this, like Mike says, don't go quitting your job. We're exactly the same. And you're hearing it from an expert in buying and selling businesses, right? You don't have to, if you do it with websites, Mike found. Try and get a site under a thousand bucks. And like you said, Mike, yours was 150 bucks. You sold it later for 750. What your mindset got out of that is like Liz and I all those years ago, it's proof of concept. You go, yeah, this works. And then what we typically find is once people get comfortable and we call it getting that online confidence, like website confidence, the technical confidence to do this, then you can start just adding zeros to the numbers. As you get more. Comfortable with things. And so it's the perfect way really for people to do is like a nice little part time side hustle or as a way to transition out of their careers because with the websites that we're buying and selling or rent, we call them renovating with. Basically fixing up these websites and you can build them from scratch as well. Basically they're semi passive. So they're not nine to five. You don't have to turn up each week and do anything. So if your life gets busy and just park them off to the side and they still just keep ticking along but you do need to do something on them, but it's not like it's not connected to time. It's not like you have to be there every day or anything. So when you think about it, it's the perfect way to dip your toe in the water. If any of the listeners have ever wanted to own a business. Obviously I'm biased and I'm going to say this and I'm not giving financial advice, but seriously, in all my experience, you'd be crazy not to try a website business. It's just that in my opinion, there's not a lot of downside. If you start out small don't make mistakes. Don't go out there and buy big. Sites, which you can do once you're good at it, but it's the perfect learning vehicle. And that's what we love about it.

Average Joe Finances:
17:34

Yeah, no, I absolutely love that because, especially with the fact that you talk about like the start this off as a side hustle, there will come a time and place where you can leave your W-2 when you can walk away from your job after you've done this a couple of times. And you've gotten to the point where your business income is now making as much or more. Then your W-2 income. Once you're at that point, you can safely walk away from your W-2 job. But if you think about it, if your W-2 job is still making you that much money, plus the side business that you really don't have to touch too much is still making that much money. Now you're making twice as much as you were in your W-2 job. Do you really want to leave yet? Or do you want to wait until that gets up even higher? So it, everybody's journey. And this journey to financial independence is different, right? You might say, Hey, once I've replaced my W-2 income, I'm done. I'm walking away. And there might be some people out there that says okay, I've replaced my W-2 income, but now I'm making twice as much. And now I've got more money to do some of these other things that I've wanted to do for a long time. So again, it's going to be all about what is that time worth to you? If staying in your W-2 is worth it. Because it's good money and it's not, stressing you out too much by all means, stay in your job. But if you're doing this because you're like, Hey I want to get the heck out of my job. I don't quit right away. Just wait till you, you've built it up to a point where now you feel comfortable where you can walk away. Your business now covers all of your expenses and a little bit more. That's where you want to be. You don't want to be just paying off your expenses and just scraping by. Trust me, I did that and it stung.

Matt Raad:
19:11

So it's a tough, it's a tough journey. That one. We also have a lot of couples on our program. People obviously look at Liz and I and go, yeah, I want to be like those guys, so we've got a lot of people who are, and also like father daughters or daughter. Daughter, like a lot of families do our thing, but what that means is when couple what we've seen work is in terms of anyone listening, thinking about transitioning job. Typically one of normally it's the highest income earner will keep their job and the other one can transition out a lot earlier. So that's the other smart way to use whatever your side hustle is for that matter. We've seen that work really well in our community where it. One of them keeps their full time job, but they're supportive of their partner that's doing say our program or real estate or whatever the side hustles are. So that, that can work well if you're lucky enough to have a partner on board with you.

Average Joe Finances:
20:03

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, especially if both of you are working, it can get to the point where, one can say, Hey, I'm going to go ahead and stay home now and run the business. So yeah, that, that's a very great point. Okay. So now. You made that transition from brick and mortar businesses to the websites, and this was in the early 2000s. I want to see since then, since Liz built that first website, you guys started making that $5,000 a month, and you're like, oh my gosh, this is so awesome. Let's rinse and repeat and scale. So what did that journey look like for the two of you when you said, okay, we got the one? Let's get more. I know you said you started reaching out to folks in the U S you were, you said one in every hundred is when you would finally get a website. So what did that journey from then to today look like? And where are you at right now?

Matt Raad:
20:52

Yep. So in terms of the one in 100, that was in our. Like private approach where that's the hustle bit where we're privately approaching people, getting to know people, what happened later was it, this sounds funny there, there were no platforms or brokers for buying and selling websites. So once they did start up though, which was a few years later, then it became a lot easier for us because we could jump onto those platforms like flipper or empire flippers or FI international, which are all I will. Flipper is interesting enough as an Aussie firm, but all the other companies are in America. Once you're on those platforms for buying and selling websites, it's just heaps easier. That's where everyone goes now because they've got all the best listings and stuff like that. So that's how our journey evolved. We started buying and selling through that way. It's funny, just at that, before they existed, our first website that we actually bought wasn't a private approach. I don't think. Was but the best one that we bought our most successful one that we bought in the early days was off ebay because that was the other place. I wouldn't recommend you buy them off ebay now because the seller said to us the same as what we found. There's nowhere to buy or sell these. Website businesses, and he was this lovely guy in America and he just wanted to cash out. He needed money for I think it was for a tax bill or something like that. And he just stuck it on eBay. Hope someone would see it. And Liz found it and reached out to him. And so we bought that site for $19,000. And by then we knew what we were doing. And we looked at where the traffic was going. It's quite a.$1,000 a month, but it had a lot of traffic and the main affiliate offer wasn't being monetized properly. And all the traffic was going to an internal page. And I know your listeners probably going, what's going on here. It's, this isn't a technical thing, really. It's just, you gotta realize websites have got multiple pages, right? And all we did literally was within one week of owning it we changed where all the affiliate offer was. We just put it in front of. The, there was heaps of visitors coming there and literally the next month we made $3,000 and then ever since then it just went up. And so we just bought more websites in that same niche and we build up quite a big portfolio of websites. We're up over 100 websites, but these days what's changed to any of your listeners and answering your question as well, Mike, our journey. What we found the market has changed a bit, thankfully, and we do not recommend you own portfolios like Liz and I did. Cause you know, we had, we're good at this. We build up teams and this took years to do these days. We recommend in the ideal world, you have 10 websites, a bit of a, if you're a serious, real estate investor, real estate invest, a lot of people here in Australia and a lot of our clients are very successful real estate investors. And I typically own one to five. Say investment properties and I'm sure it's I know it's the same in America with websites. What we say is just treat them as like another asset, buying and renovating real estate and you build up a portfolio over a period of years, you might build up a really nice portfolio of 5 to 10 really good websites, cashflow websites. And in that time, you're just gently adding to your team. So you shouldn't be working on these yourself. You just, you outsource everything now because they're all virtual. Everything's virtual. On these sites, we're not want to reiterate. We're not dealing with as long as you're not buying sites that deal with physical inventory. These things are not, you're not dealing having to do with the end. Users or public or anything like that. Everything's automated. The monetization side is automated. We literally just put ads on them or affiliate offers. So you can build up a really nice portfolio over time. Not don't rush out there and do it straight away. Cause if you don't know what you're doing, that's tricky. You need a team behind you, but you can just gently add, say one website a year. The 10 websites. That's the, how this journey's evolved.

Average Joe Finances:
24:51

Hey, if you. Get 10 websites that are generating $5,000 a month, each that's $50,000 a month. That's livable, right? That'd be something that's good. It's what I really like about the whole system is how there is no physical inventory, right? How you're using affiliates and you see it a lot. Like I've seen a lot of like blogs out there. You see some very successful blogs that what they do is they'll rank like, Oh, here's the top 10. Amazon products of blah, blah, blah. And each one of those products is an affiliate link for that person. So you go on and you're like, Oh the number one one looks great, but number two looks awesome too. Let me go buy the number two one. You go buy the number two one. And then anything else that you bought in that cart. That affiliate just got paid on everything that was in your cart, which is awesome because it puts that tracking cookie on for 30 days. So I've seen a lot of successful blogs and people say, Oh, how do you have a blog that makes six figures a year? That's how you do it. It's not from the traffic. It's not from the AdSense. It's from the affiliate marketing.

Matt Raad:
25:52

It's from the, and I'll tell you a really funny story. We've got a lovely lady on our program called Chris and she's real technophobic and she's quite alternative, so she's into mindset and spirituality stuff. And she started the she bought this blog and she was an affiliate for like essential oils or something like that. And exactly what you're saying, Mark, she goes, she said this to our whole community. Once she goes, it's so funny. I've got an affiliate commission of someone that clicked on my affiliate link and bought a 20 bottle of essential oils. And whilst they're on Amazon, they went and bought like a muffler system for a car. And that was over a thousand dollars or something like that. She said it was just crazy. And she's not into, you can imagine, she just did not expect that. And then she said, and we get affiliate commissions off the same, like people will buy mattresses, they'll buy, like real, all sorts of things. Cause they're cookied for 24 hours. So she, when she.

Average Joe Finances:
26:45

Just got to get in the door. That's it got to get in the door, the select your product, add it to the cart. And then if they already had a bunch of stuff in their cart and they're like, okay, it's time to purchase everything. Cause a lot of people do that, right? They'll get my wife does it. Okay. They'll rack up their Amazon cart. And then one day it's just okay, let's get everything. And it's Oh, hang on a second.

Matt Raad:
27:04

Yeah. And so you don't have to, when you're an affiliate, you don't have to be the one selling, stocking a warehouse full of Muffler systems or essential oils, right? That's the person that runs the Amazon store. We just get an affiliate commission for that. Cause you help sell it. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a really, it's a really cool model from us with all our experience in business. We just love it because there's no risk. If the website doesn't work, that's our only risk. We're, it's not like we forked out money for for inventory. It's not stuck in a warehouse somewhere. We don't have to worry about the hassles of. Importing from China and all that sort of stuff. It's just get the traffic and a certain percentage of the traffic will take an action. And one of the key strategies that we teach that we have seen, and we're even more passionate about teaching this now, because this is where the, like the best or the easiest money is to be made online with these sorts of sites is going into niche passion or passion niches. So it's not broad topics where there's lots of competition, if you're listening to this and you're thinking of getting into this game, just play around and do like a passion site. So we've got really successful clients of ours who own websites that are about gardening or for us like golfing, we've made lots of money in the golfing niche. We've always been in a crafting niche and we're not into sewing or knitting. That's where we first started online, but we hire expert writers off. Places like Upwork to write for us. But the point is those niches like crafting, gardening, anything to do with sport or anything where people are learning a new skill, because typically what we can do is we can provide what you're trying to do is. What we were taught by our mentors many years ago when we got into this is you're just answering questions that's really, we're trying to help people online. So if that's our model, so if we help someone in a certain topic, they're going to come to our website, spend time, and then they're going to take our recommendations. And so like my people listening to your podcast here, people are going to, you're helping them out with all these awesome ideas around side hustles and, transitioning their jobs and whatever. And then you help them out by suggesting certain resources or whatever. That's what you do with, that's what a website is too. When you think about podcast, in a way is a new website, really, when you think it through, because ultimately we're trying to help people. And so what we've found is. That's easiest to do or it's. The best sort of websites are those passion niches because typically by their very nature, you're trying to help, you're passionate about the topic or someone's passionate about topic and readers will read that. And so now it's funny, we're seeing food blogs, which I never thought I would see. We know all the top website brokers in the world. They say to me, Matt, food blogs. Now, if they're more than 10 years old, some of them are, we're selling them regularly for millions of dollars, sometimes tens of millions of dollars. And people would never know it. Like we had one of the world's top website brokers said, I just sold a web, a food site about paleo. Cooking recipes or whatever. And I said what? And it just makes money off AdSense. Automated ads and he sold it for eight figures. That's over $10 million. That's just mind blowing, but it,

Average Joe Finances:
30:21

And that's just off of AdSense. That's not with affiliate.

Matt Raad:
30:23

No, that was hardly any affiliate. It was, there was affiliate offers on there, but mine is just a volume play at that level. Now that's a, got to reiterate. That's not a startup site. That was a site that had been around for what I, what fascinates me is why are these passion sites all of a sudden, like over the last few years now selling for Eight figures rather than six and seven figures. There's a big difference between$100,000 for a business or a website and a million dollars. And then once we get into the tens of millions, and that's something that personally fascinates me.

Average Joe Finances:
30:53

I'll tell you why, Matt.

Matt Raad:
30:55

Why?

Average Joe Finances:
30:55

I'll tell you why, because they started those websites when they were just small little niches. When it was just, a small passion site and it's become more mainstream now, right? Like when you're talking about that paleo site that just sold paleo. When I first heard about paleo was like back in 2007, 2008, I knew one person that was doing it and they were like, Oh yeah it's, this is what it is. It's like the caveman diet and this and that or whatever. And that's how it started off at, they didn't call it paleo. They called it the caveman diet. And that's all people, and. I heard very little, a little about it. Nowadays you see all these products on the shelves. Hey, paleo friendly. The same thing with vegan, right? Okay. Vegetarian was a thing. I didn't know what the heck a vegan was. And now it's all vegan vegan. So all these things that were just these small passions are now mainstream. And for the folks that got into it when it was a small passion, 10, 12, 13, 15 years ago now they're cashing out. Because now it's a huge thing. So yeah, that's.

Matt Raad:
31:54

And that brings me to my next point. Cause people listening to think have I missed the market? We always get asked that. And I say, no way, because just yeah, perfect. That's exactly what it's like, because this now is a mature market in that the big buyers desperately want those seven and eight figure. Websites, because they're not allowed nice problem to have, but, big private equity firms and venture capital firms. They can't spend anything smaller. So what that means is for our clients that are doing this, they're going around buying up small little passion sites in the paleo nation, gardening nation, golfing nation, whatever, any health, wealth and happiness niches, we call it. They buy them up for a thousand bucks, 5, 000, renovate them, And then sell them out for big money down the track. And I've got the perfect example is, same thing is happening with the gardening niche. Mike, when we first started this gardening was, everyone. So I'm in the gardening and what's the first thing you do when you're in a gardening, you're on the internet in your lunch break, looking up, how to grow tomatoes or whatever. We used to teach that we say you should get in the gardening niche and we've just had, so that's grown into a multimillion dollar industry online, right? Even now. We have multiple clients that are still to this day buying small niche gardening sites and making really good money with them. And our best one is we've got a young couple on our course. They've just been traveling around the world on living on their laptops. They do this full time. Now they bought a little gardening site here in Australia about growing native Australian trees and stuff, 400 doing exactly what. I said, our original strategy was they just privately approached this guy. They saw that he hadn't touched his website in five years, 10 years. And I said, Oh. Mate, what are you doing with your website? Knows you haven't posted on it or blogged on it. He said, yeah, I'm sick of it. I bored. Don't make any money. You can have it 400 bucks. And so they bought it for 400 bucks today. That site, we're just about to hit spring here in Australia. So we're in the middle of our winter right now. We're just about to go into spring. That is getting over 80,000 visitors a month. And it's making them $4,000 a month. Semi passively. So they've just been posted more content and they're not gardeners. They live on a laptop, traveling around the world. That's what it's all about. Yeah. They live in Thailand and stuff like that. And they they just hire outsource staff like writers or they've got on their team, mainly as writers that they hire off Upwork or Fiverr. And they've just hired some people that are passionate about gardening. And they've built it up now that's taken them they, they own multiple sites like that. But what I want to say to your listeners is please don't think this market's overcrowded or, you had to have started a blog 10 years ago. The goal is if you can find those older sites that have been neglected and there's heaps of them, there's millions of websites or there's billions, I think of websites on the internet now, but there's a lot of, what we call diamonds in the rough websites out. And is what we teach people to look for the neglected sites, renovate them. Semi passively own half a dozen of those and that's a nice little side income for you or if you're young and happy to live in places like Thailand, it's probably a, at the very least it's a nice lifestyle business for in those years. And then you can build it into something bigger if you want.

Average Joe Finances:
35:10

Absolutely. Yeah. I love that. What a great example that you just shared too. That somebody was able to take a, essentially a dying website that was just sitting there and renovate it and flip it right. Just like you would do in real estate. It's the same thing. Yeah. So if he, that's why I think like a lot of people that. A lot of my listeners on this podcast here are real estate investors. So I feel like they can really resonate with this. And if it's something you want to do a little bit different than the real estate side, and you want to, do like another business, you could treat this the same exact way. And start getting that cashflow, right? Because, you go buy a rental property and after everything's said and done and, after all your expenses, your cashflow is anywhere between $250, $500 a month. You do this with a website and make that even even bigger return. And actually, if you think about the money you put into the website, it's a much larger return than if it was, you were buying a property and put, a certain percentage down and things like that. Absolutely. Love that stuff, Matt. So what I'd like to do now is transition this into something that I call the final round. It's where I'm going to ask you the same four questions that I ask everybody that comes on the show. And it gives us a good idea of how you are under a little bit of pressure and put on the spot. So if you're ready to go, we'll get the party started. Matt, let's do this final round. So first question of the final round for you, Matt is what's the biggest mistake you've ever made when it comes to your finance or business life?

Matt Raad:
36:31

There's so many, but honestly, we were so green when we bought our first business, not knowing how to do due diligence and nearly sent us bankrupt multiple times. And that's what drives us today. That's why we teach it. Yeah, definitely biggest mistake listening to the. Opinions of accountants and stuff and not taking the time to learn how to do due diligence ourselves. And that's a big part of what we do to this day because it was a huge mistake. Absolutely.

Average Joe Finances:
36:58

Love that. Due diligence is 100 percent important in any business, no matter what it is that you do or any investment, so.

Matt Raad:
37:06

Any investment for that. Yeah, you're right. Any in same in, if for those of you that do real estate we only do business, but yeah. And Mike, I'll say on behalf of a lot of our clients, that's what we see their mistakes too. They get impatient. So I keep saying to your clients, don't guys don't start this too big, learn how to do due diligence on websites first.

Average Joe Finances:
37:24

Yep. Absolutely. All right. Okay. Next question for you, Matt. And you'll see that these all kind of tie into each other. What is something that you've learned that you wish you knew when you first got started?

Matt Raad:
37:41

This is more an investing thing. Now that I'm a bit, I'm in my fifties. The power of compounding interest and feeding the cash flows back into the business. We've always done it, but it's not until much later in life. I've been buying some businesses for over 30 years now. And now I realize Warren Buffett is definitely right when he says it's like that, what does he say? It's the eighth wonder of the world or whatever. And the power of, and so the power of. Consistency, turning up every day and knowing that your knowledge and money are compounding. It did when you're a young entrepreneur, we're very impatient. It, it mind blowing when you're older, you realize how powerful that is. So I know you've probably got young listeners like yourself, Mike, and don't realize it yet. Wait till you're my age. You'll realize what I just said. It is mind blowing.

Average Joe Finances:
38:33

No definitely appreciate that answer too.'cause it's, there, there are so many things that you're gonna learn in your journey right as you're going, that's gonna make you even stronger as you get, closer to the end, quote unquote.

Matt Raad:
38:47

Yeah, I'm thinking of your real estate. Investor listeners to they'll appreciate it more when they're in my age as well, like that compounding interest. Oh, my God. I think in every. Anyone listening to all of us here listening to this today, no matter what all of us are interested in, make, like you said, earning money and stuff off investments. And seriously, I think that's the biggest thing I have learned is the power of compound interest.

Average Joe Finances:
39:11

Yeah, no, that's great. And it's one of the best things you can learn because, as you grow and the goal for a lot of people that listen to the show is building that generational wealth. That's what I'm saying. As you get closer to the end there, like you're setting your family up. For success for that, when, when you do leave this earth that you've given them everything you could. And that's the goal. I think for most of us out there is yes, we want financial independence, but we also want to build that generational wealth for our families. Okay. Matt, next question is, do you have any tips or tricks that you would recommend to someone that is just getting started out today?

Matt Raad:
39:47

In what we do buying and selling websites or just site hustles in general or business.

Average Joe Finances:
39:52

Yeah, no, in buying and selling websites in what you guys do.

Matt Raad:
39:55

So in all seriousness, it's related to our first big mistake is learn how to do due diligence on websites and learn how this marketplace works. And the biggest step tip I can get, which I've hopefully reiterated enough here is for goodness sake, start out small, just because you can, you don't have to risk hundreds of thousands of dollars to do this or tens of thousands even. To start out really small first and learn on that. And ideally learn how to build a website as well, because that teaches you how to do better due diligence. So there's three answers there, but it's really, it's start out small and learn it with a goal of learning due diligence and how to build a website. Yeah. That's my answer. I think that's pretty that's awesome.

Average Joe Finances:
40:35

I think that's a great answer too, because the, that due diligence really is going to play a big part. And if you. Actually build a website and learn the intricacies of it, which it's really not as hard as it used to be. I've built several websites and I'm not a coder or anything, but I'm really good at using WordPress.

Matt Raad:
40:55

Yeah. That's what, that's the skill you want. That's what that's perfect. That is exactly what. What Mike just said is part of my answer as well. Learning how to build a website. Don't do the coding thing like Liz did all those years ago. You use WordPress. That's the number one thing we teach here.

Average Joe Finances:
41:10

You can't steal what I said and make it part of your answer. No, I'm kidding. All right, so part of it. Yeah. Reiterate. That's cheating. All right.

Matt Raad:
41:20

You helped me answer. You said you're going to put me on the spot. So I'm, you're helping me out here.

Average Joe Finances:
41:24

Utilize all your resources, right? Okay. So the final question of the final round is besides your own, do you have a favorite business investing or real estate related book or podcast or both?

Matt Raad:
41:38

Yes, the, there's actually two there because one of them is, I mentioned is that the one that's the autobiography of Warren Buffett, I think it's called the snowball effect. That's a book that I recommend to everyone. I'm presuming a lot of, I know it's about share investing and stuff, but there's really good lessons in there about business and about compound. The name of the book is all about when you think about it's about compound interest, the snowball effect, it's a really good look into Warren Buffett and the other. I'll just mention one other one because it is. The books are written by Tony Robbins on the month. I think it's called the money game. I can just picture the cover. The, one of the ones that Tony Robbins did. And of course, rich dad poured out. I'm presuming everyone's read that anyway. So that's just, that's a cliche one, but in my experience of, because we're also investors into shares, heavily invest in shares. And I really, I think Tony Robbins did a really good summary there of how to generate or. Create wealth for your family over the longterm. And I think that money book was, that was, that's a pretty impressive book as well.

Average Joe Finances:
42:39

All right. Awesome. Definitely appreciate those recommendations. Wrote them down. Okay. Now that is it for the final round. So pat yourself on the back. You survived, you made it. But now so Matt, I do have another question for you and this is probably gonna be the most important question I ask you out of this entire interview, because people have been listening to the show and they're saying, Hey, you know what? Maybe this is something I want to learn a little bit more about or get into maybe buying websites and having these businesses, these website businesses is something I'm interested in. With that being said, where can people find more information about you? Do you have a website you could share with us? Any social media profiles, anything like that? And where can we listen to your podcast?

Matt Raad:
43:21

Yep. You just can Google my name, Matt Raad, R double A D it's Norwegian. People struggle over how to pronounce it, but you can go to our main business site, which is quite long, but it's ebusinessinstitute.com.au because we're Australian, but we have a lot of American clients in our community. And the good thing is if you can find that website, which you should be able to find quite easily, we have a free masterclass on there. And you can just literally do a 90 minute masterclass where we show all the strategies and the sorts of sites we buy and where you buy them. So I'd highly recommend that. Or you can listen to our digital investors podcast, where we interview lots of our clients about, and also people in our industry that are doing six and seven and eight figure website deals. So you can get inspired for, even if you're just interested in learning what other people are doing or. I would recommend you go and do our free masterclass or listen to some of our success stories.

Average Joe Finances:
44:18

Awesome. Thank you so much for that. Matt, we're going to go ahead and make sure we have those links in the show notes, make it easy for our listeners to just copy and paste or click away. The only thing I ask to my listeners is please don't do it if you're driving right now. Thank you very much. Okay. So Matt, this has been absolutely fantastic. I feel like I've learned a lot. I feel validated on some things as well. And I feel like a lot of my listeners are feeling that. Two. To close things out, do you have any final thoughts you'd like to share with our listeners today?

Matt Raad:
44:48

Yeah, I think I do actually is guys, you've got to have a crack at this. If you're in a situation where you want to make a big change in your life, it's worth it. So I know it's not always easy. The path never is, but when you, when things start compounding for you and you hit what we call the inflection point, you look back at that journey, you go, it was worth. Worth, the day that I started. So we have a saying here, which is I think it's from, is it Wayne Gretzky? Yeah, you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take. And if you've heard something like this or anything that you've heard on Mike's podcasts and stuff, just be out there and consistently chipping it away at it every day. That idea of consistency and turning up and just having a crack at it means you'll get success in life. So get out there and have fun with it.

Average Joe Finances:
45:36

Awesome. Thanks so much for that, Matt. And thank you again so much for taking the time out of your day to chat with me today and join us on the podcast. This was truly a great interview. I really appreciate it.

Matt Raad:
45:47

Oh, that was awesome. Mike, thank you so much for having me on. It's a real pleasure being here. That's

Average Joe Finances:
45:51

for sure. All right. Awesome. And Hey, to my listeners, I also want to thank all of you so very much for joining me and our special guest, Matt Raad on the Average Joe Finances podcast. Go leave us a five star review and tell us what you liked about today's episode with Matt. Aloha from Hawaii and from Australia and have a great rest of your day.