Passive Income through Digital Products - Episode 18

Cody has been an entrepreneur from a young age. He learned about the value of passive income early on and was able to reach financial independence in his twenties. Learn how he tried and failed at several side hustles until he discovered digital products and what that has done for his life. Transform your life by learning how to make passive income with digital products with this free eBook.

Resources mentioned:
Financial Freedom: A Proven Path to All the Money You Will Ever Need
by Grant Sabatier
The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Tim Ferriss
The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement

About Our Guest: Cody Berman is the co-founder of Gold City Ventures, co-host of The Financial Independence Show, a real estate investor, and a passive income expert. He reached financial independence at age 25 through a combination of online business, strategic investing, and intentional spending. When he’s not teaching others about passive income, you might find him traveling, working out, or starting a new business venture.

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TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Naseema: What's up? What's up, what's up? My financially intentional people. I'm super used to be having Cody Beerman joining us today. And if you don't know about Cody, you should know about him because he is a goat in the financial independent space because namely, he started at about 10 on his path of financial independence.

But he has done a lot in this space. and I'll just let him tell you. But anyway. What's up Cody? How are you doing?

[00:00:32] Cody: Good. How are you? It's been far too long. It's always good, whether it's behind a camera or not, or whether it's in person at FinCon. It's always good to see you,

[00:00:39] Naseema: Nasima. I don't know. Good hanging out with you.

[00:00:41] Cody: Where do you want me to start this? Do you want me to start the SA Financial independence When I learned about at 19. Do you actually want me to go back to when I was 10? Let's let me know where to start and I'll take one. I. Yeah,

[00:00:52] Naseema: I think going back to 10 will kind of give, you know, people an idea of just how your mindset works and how you just have been in this space for so long.

Just because, you know, I'm sure you've had some influences that have helped you, but you could share that as well.

[00:01:09] Cody: So, actually going back to before I was 10, so just growing up, my parents were savers. They, you know, they weren't into financial independence. They didn't know much about investing, but they had always told me to save as much as I possibly can.

So if I was getting birthday money or money from Santa or whatever, whatever money I could get my hands on, you know, pre 10. They were like, make sure you save as much as you possibly can because you never know when you're gonna need money. So I, I kind of always stuck with that mindset. At age 10 though, is when I first got my first side hustle.

So I guess that's the kind of the beginning of my financial journey per se. I was working in the Snack Shack, my uncle's disc golf shop. For people who don't know what that is, disc golf is like ball golf, except instead of hitting a ball into a hole with a club, you're throwing a plastic disc into a pin or into the chains.

And so I was making five bucks an hour. I. I was putting in a couple shifts a week with my brother and, you know, that 20 bucks was going straight into my bank account and I wasn't touching it. And that kind of persisted all throughout as I got better and better jobs. It wasn't always the $5 an hour, the Snack shack, you know, I started working in retail jobs.

I got like waiter jobs. Later on I started doing some online stock hustles, but like all the way from middle school through the end of high school into college, like I was saving. 90 plus percent of my income, I just didn't spend on like those extra things that I didn't need. Like I was getting clothes at Savers.

I was like asking for a specific video game for Christmas instead of like going out and buying 10 of them like my friends might be doing. So that kind of carried with me all throughout high school and all throughout those early ages as I was side hustling.

[00:02:41] Naseema: Yeah. And then I know before adulthood.

And I should mention, Cody reached financial independence at 25 , but I know it was because of the influence of your mom. She kind of introduced you to this space, like how did that come about?

[00:02:59] Cody: So that's like right after I, I'll just pick off right before I left. So graduate high school, 18, 19. This is actually the summer going into my sophomore year of college.

My mom had sent me over the article and two things happened at once. She sent me over an article by Mr. Money Mustache was the shockingly simple math to early retirement, and I was like, what? People are, are, can retire in their twenties and their thirties. Like it's, it's just a math equation. I thought everyone had to work till 65, like everyone tells you, but that's not the case at all.

So she sends me that article and she also has me read The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris and those two kind of. Pieces of information just kind of started like co-mingling in my mind and I realized that like I could, we're gonna talk about this a lot today with the Side hustle stuff, especially with the four hour work week, there's a lot of side hustles, a lot of businesses where you kind of front load the work, you front load the time, you front load the energy, and then you can.

Reap the rewards of that labor later on. So it's not like a one for one trade. It's not like you're, you know, there's a lot of side hustles where you're just, you only get paid based on the amount of time that you're doing it, like driving for Uber, or there's even, you know, some freelancing, like you're getting paid based on the number of hours you worked, but, Tim Ferris from the Four Hour Work Week taught me that like there were some other options out there where you could build something, you could buy something, you could create something that then will pay you later.

And then, you know, mixed with the Mr. Money mustache stuff. I'm like, if I can create a money and building machine and then understand the personal finance, like the spending side of the equation, I can retire hella early. And so that was my.

[00:04:31] Naseema: I love that. And I'm actually gonna link to those two things in the show notes because those are excellent resources.

The four Hour Work Week is an amazing read. It's old, actually. It's pretty old. Oh seven I think. Yeah. But it's still really relevant and I think there's a little bit of an update in it that he did recently. Or not so recently. And then the shocking the, you know, that math thing from Mustache is like one of the classic articles that I actually read too in the beginning of my journey to a financial independence.

And it just puts everything in perspective. And just like you, it was like this kind of aha moment where I was just like, wait a minute, what do you mean? You don't have to work into traditional retirement age, and I wish I would've discovered it at 19, but I was well in my thirties and well into my second career actually at that time when I discovered it.

But I think like that's what made it easy for you or not easy, but that's what made it like an option for you to even reach early retirement. in your twenties because you understood the math, you understood what it took and like the numbers behind, like reaching financial independence. So did you, did you finish college and get your, your degree and get a job in your career that you worked so hard to earn a degree in?

[00:05:55] Cody: Yeah, so at the time, like throughout college, I was side hustling. I was building businesses, but I never had. I wasn't one of those people that like had the hundred thousand dollars business while I'm in college. I, I was probably real realistically making like 12 to $1,500 a month for my side hustles, which, you know, it's, it's nothing to scoff at.

Like, it, it's a decent amount of money, especially for a college kid. Like, it allowed me to mm-hmm. graduate without student loan debt. It allowed me to like, kind of do the things I wanted to do and pay for my housing and all that cool stuff, but it wasn't enough where I'm like, you know, at screw college I'm, I'm gonna leave.

So I did end up. , you know, getting internships. I went down the road of getting a traditional job and I ended up, once I graduated in commercial real estate lending. Now this is when things kind of turned for me. Did not last too long in that career. I actually only stayed in that job for seven months and I was still building up those side hustles.

And at that point, you know, I was making a ton of money for my corporate job. Quite frankly, you know, personal finance, well not personal finance, but just finance pays a lot. I was working in Boston. I was still working in the city, but I was being super frugal, still driving the same car. I was sharing a room, I was being really cheap with groceries, not going out very much, you know, I wouldn't go out to the bar and buy drinks.

I had like pregame, like all these things to save money, but still have fun at the same time. And so I, I was able to accumulate like $35,000 in seven months cuz I was literally just living off my side hustle, income, saving everything from my signing bonus and on my salary and all that stuff. So, Depending who's listening.

That might sound like a lot. It might sound like a little, but to me I was like, I'm spending $1,200 a month-ish. I just saved up $35,000. Like that is almost three years of entrepreneurial freedom to go and try something else. Like I had that money, it was a nice safety net sitting in the bank. So I'm like, screw it.

I'm just gonna go for this entrepreneurship thing. And I jumped ship seven months. Well,

[00:07:45] Naseema: lemme just tell you something. To save $35,000 in that short amount of time in your early twenties is like unheard of . So even if, if for some people, like I think like you're thinking like in the whole scheme of thing, like in the financial independence community, we're just like, oh, well we saved $2 million.

But that's over like a span of like years and years and years. But in your early twenties, in your first job, , you were able to accomplish that. That is an amazing fee. So I wanna give you your props on that. So you ended up quitting at seven months, and then what did you do?

[00:08:18] Cody: So kind of through a whirlwind of events, and we talked about FinCon briefly earlier in this personal finance.

Yeah. Getting together with other personal finance content creators. I actually went on a book tour with another friend of ours grant Sabatier. He wrote a book called Financial Freedom. , I met this guy at FinCon 2018, and then he is like, Hey, you wanna help me with my book tour? And long story short, ended up managing and organizing this guy's book tour, 33 states, 16,000 miles around the country.

And I ended up living with him like in a van, basically , traveling the country, going to all these different personal finance events. And, you know, I'm still doing my side hustle. So we would have time where we'd just like go to Starbucks or whatever. In between events or the hotel or wherever, and that was kind of the next chapter.

So I literally went from going to work every day. I had a two hour commute each way. I was miserable in my job. I was like looking at my boss. He hated his family. His family hated him. My coworkers weren't going anywhere. They weren't excited to traveling the country with this guy I just met in event . And it sounds like the craziest, dumbest decision ever, but it ended up being one of the best cause.

Woody did like, and you know, grant didn't pay me like a million dollars to, to go with him or anything, but he was already like financially independent. But what he taught me was just like, There were so many things that I didn't understand about money and life and networking, and I feel like so many of the self employ imposed glass ceilings that I put on myself about what was possible with business and side hustling and FI grant, just like he helped me, you know, raise the roof and shattered all of those glass ceilings.

So that was a, that was huge and super instrumental for me. That book tour and it, you know, obviously not everybody's gonna have the chance to go on a book tour with an author and meet him, meet someone at a financial event. But it was just like, I think a lot of this story as we go through this podcast is gonna be just like, I'm not afraid to take chances.

Like I, I don't care if I fail. I've had many businesses I've shut down. I've definitely fell flat on my face before. But like, it's, it's the risks that have really paid off for me, that have allowed me to, you know, do something like hit financial independence at 20.

[00:10:18] Naseema: And I just think that first of all, I actually remember, so I've been knowing Cody for years and years, , so I remember this like transition between like you quitting your job and then you like becoming really, really involved.

More like the HAN space and even hosting your own FinCon event. And then doing this book tour with Grant Batier. . That book, that grant somebody wrote is a phenomenal book about financial independence. So I'm actually gonna put that in the show notes as well because I think it's a great resource.

But I think that like that was an excellent opportunity because it was like a crash course. In what's possible outside of like all the things that we're told by society we're supposed to do. And again, the fact that you got it so early when you had, you know, so little liabilities and all these things set you on a course.

To really be able to define your life according to how, you know you really wanted to live. And I love following your story. And I love just hearing about your journey of, you know, Y all your businesses, all your side hustles, all the things that you're willing to do. And not everything is successful, but I don't think that a lot of people need to understand you don't, everything doesn't work out fine, but you do it anyway because win, lose, you know, fail, whatever you wanna call it.

You are going to get lessons and the lessons that you got were compounded and they were exponentially faster even than you getting university degrees. Mm-hmm. , because you were able to put yourselves in po in you, you were able to put yourself in a position where you were just open, open to learning and growing.

So Now . You, you like, I, I mean, I'll just watch you like travel the world. You know, you run these businesses from wherever you're at. You're location independent. You have a successful podcast that you've had for over four years. Like you have done so many things that a lot of people. Just don't have the courage to do because they're scared of messing up or doing it perfectly.

But the amount of success that you had is because of the things that just didn't work out. So I just want that to put that out there like as a lesson for people because. . A lot of times it's not about doing it perfectly, it's just about starting and doing it and having faith that, you know, whatever you're gonna get out of it, is going to aid you in either being successful or helping you on the next, in the next venture that you're going into.

[00:13:03] Cody: I love that. Yeah, I, an analogy I always like using is riding a bike. Like I just, I love the analogy you drew earlier is like you could get a university degree or you could just go out and do it, and the doing is literally. It's exponential learning. Like I guarantee that someone who read 10 books on like the best bike riding styles and like, this is how you get your pedal speed perfect or whatever.

Someone who rides a bike for 20 minutes is gonna be way better than the person who read 10 books about riding a bike, I promise you. So just doing something, even if you suck at it first, you're just gonna learn so much faster. And yeah, so I guess kinda the next thing that happened for me, I, I know I kind of hinted that this earlier with the Tim Ferris stuff.

And, you know, speaking of failed businesses and ventures, I don't do anymore. So at this time, like after the book tour, book tour is over the things that I was doing was mostly all freelancing. So I'm just kind of skill building at this point. I didn't think of it, like, I didn't think of it like that at the time, but looking back, I'm like, I built so many skills.

I'm just doing the randomest stuff for people to make money. Like I was building websites, I was writing email copy, I was running affiliate marketing, I was doing podcast editing, I was doing video editing, I was writing white papers. I was. Freaking delivering Uber Eats on a bicycle , like I was doing everything I could to just make ends meet because I wanted to.

I just want, I wanted it so bad. I was like, you know, I quit my job. I need to make this work. I'm just gonna hustle and make money any anyway I can. When things changed for me, the first time, I kind of shifted gears and started to go toward what Tim Ferris called Muses in the four Hour Work Week. Kind of these like more passive income systems where you're putting the money or energy or time in upfront.

and then reaping. The benefit of that reward, like I mentioned earlier, was digital products. So my friend Julie had mentioned to me, cuz we're, we are both just side hustlers. We had podcasts in the personal finance space and she's like, I just tried this thing called selling printables on Etsy. And I was like, I've never been on Etsy, so what's that?

And she's like, basically I create a digital file and then I list it my Etsy shop. And then, you know, unlike a hat or a basket or some other handmade item, an unlimited number of people can buy a digital product. So she had put up like, I don't know. I wanted to say like 50 digital products in her ETSI shop, and she didn't spend much time on it either.

Like a lot of these, she had just spent like an hour or two creating, and she had made like six grand from that. And she's like, honestly, I spent like 50 to 60 hours putting this all together and made like six grand and I'm still making sales and I'm not working on this anymore. So I'm like, okay. I mean, I'm, I'm down.

I'll give it a shot. Like I'm, it's better than riding a bike and delivering Uber Eats . So I started creating printables and I for the first few months. Honestly, it was like terrible. I, I made no sales. I was a horrible graphic designer. I just didn't know what I was doing. I was just like creating products that nobody would ever want.

like no, in their entire life. And I'm a lot better now and understand like keyword research and Byron set and stuff. But it wasn't until Valentine's Day and we were, I was actually riding with a bunch of FinCon people at like Ski Con and my phone was just like blowing up my pocket and I, I was expecting a call and I had the sound on and.

If you're an Etsy seller, you know, it's like this really annoying cha-ching sound. It's like cha-ching, cha-ching. You just sound like you're cocky, like you're getting a bunch of Venmos or something, or Cash App. People are like, what the, what's going on in your pocket? I'm like I think it's Etsy. And so we go into the lodge halfway through like one of the first days, I think this is like February 9th or 10th, cuz I created a bunch of Valentine's Day products and I had made like a hundred bucks from two or three designs and I was like, oh, watch is on me.

And during the course of that week, I had made like $700 and. I didn't even have my laptop on me, like I wasn't working at all. And it was kind of my first foray to like, oh my God, like this passive income thing that people talk about that Tim Ferris wrote about. Like it's actually real. Like up until that point I just heard people talk about it.

And even like financial independence, I'm sure you were in this boat, like when you first hear about it in the cma, you're like, that's bs. Like why wouldn't everybody be doing this if it was a real thing? And that's what I thought. Anything passive income, like that's just, you know, that's bs. That's the people standing in front of the Lambos on Instagram.

But you know, I'm, it's not Lambo money, but I made 700, over $700 in that week during Valentine's Day week. And I didn't work at all on my Etsy shop and it was amazing. And that's kind of when the light switch flipped for me was like, I need to focus more on this stuff, not on freelance writing and delivering Uber Eats

[00:17:22] Naseema: Yeah. So you, you found a product that, you know, does provide passive income, and I think you, you do a good job of explaining the difference between like, like these musics, like the, that you were saying. Like there's certain things where you, you're trading time for money that like, you know, like hours for dollars, like Uber driving for Uber, all of those kind of things.

Like you have to physically do it to make money as a side hustle as to where like Julie introduced you to this space where. You know, she put like a maybe a week and a half worth, worth of work into something that is continuing and still continues to generate revenue for her over and over again. And I just want to also emphasize the fact that even if it's just a couple hundred dollars a month, how that can change the trajectory of your path to financial independence or whatever financial goal that you have.

It just helps accelerate. Freeing up money that you don't have to work. I mean, like, like finding money or getting money that you don't physically have to work for is a game changer. And e especially if you have a plan and a goal for it, like I know you do Cody cuz you, you are super like frugal and you have a plan for all of your dollars.

But even like when people, when I talk about talk to people about like investing, it really only takes a couple hundred dollars a month to change generations and generations of people. If you know the money is invested intentionally. But a lot of times people are just like, well, how can I free up that money?

How do I get this money? And so there are. In penal an unlimited amount of ways that you can earn extra money. But I just think that this, the digital product space is where it's at right now. It does not take a long time to create digital products. It does not take a lot of time to set up your Etsy store, but you have created a roadmap for people to make it even easier.

Can you talk about your principals course that you have?

[00:19:29] Cody: Yeah, real quick, cuz I don't get the opportunity to kind of bring financial independence and Etsy together. Like when I'm on a podcast, sometimes it's just like one or the other. It's, mm-hmm , they're really interested in becoming Etsy seller or they're like talking about Path the five, but like what you just said.

So let's give some real numbers and some real scenarios and you know, we know the power of compound interest. Inness sema, if you sell three, $5 printables digital downloads every single day. So 15 bucks a day, you're making about an extra $450 a month. Let's say you're living paycheck to paycheck right now, and you just like, you're like, I need money to invest.

You invest that $450 every month into the, you know, a total stock market index fund for the next 35 years, and with an 8% return, you're gonna be a millionaire. With, with selling three, $5 products a day and you, you know, you're not inflating your lifestyle. You're keeping everything the exact same that it is right now, that extra four 50 a month over the course of, you know, 35 years.

And of course that could change. Like maybe you start doing something else if you don't wanna sell digital products, whatever. But that, that's what it is. It's 15 bucks a day. And I just think digital products is one of the easiest ways to get there. And so, yeah, I just wanted to bring those two things together.

That's, yeah, I love that example. . It's so, it's so crazy and nobody tells you this stuff, but it's like if you, if you kind of break it down like that, like becoming a millionaire doesn't have to be that hard. 15 bucks a day. Mm-hmm. invested. Like that's probably pretty doable for most people. So but yeah.

We'll get to the principles of course. Cuz I, I know you went through it in SMA and you said mm-hmm. . , you said you loved it and that, that was awesome feedback because man, we have just ripped the, ripped the course apart. Re-put it back together. Like every time we get feedback. When we first launched it back in like 2019, because shortly after Julie and I figured this out, you know, we talk, we have a bunch of friends in the.

FinCon and financial independent space, and people are like, what are you selling? Like how are you making this extra money? How, how did you make $700 in a week? I'm like, oh, like I'm selling digital products and Etsy. And they're like, what? Like what are you talking about? And so we got a lot, so many, what?

What are you talking about? How can I do the same thing that you're doing? And we're like, let's just kind of throw together a course and see if people are interested in this. And a lot of people are interested. And now we have a whole community of sellers and we teach. all the mistakes that we made at the beginning.

Like, like I mentioned, I just didn't know anything about keyword research or seo. I was just creating like random products that I thought people might be interested in. But now we have like a, you know, actually proven model. Like this is how you're going to find products that are successful. This is how many people are searching for that product per month.

This is what the competition looks like. This is how you should create your listing pictures. And it's, it's been pretty amazing. I know. , you know, you're kind of in the community, you've gone through the course, but like some of the, some of the success stories, my God, like make me feel like I'm standing still.

Like we had a woman who was featured last year and a couple of big media outlets who made 160 K on the side with her Etsy shop. Now, I'm not saying that's typical, like most people are aiming for and. , that's what we kind of promote. It's like extra, a couple hundred bucks a month, like the four 50 a month, like I just mentioned with that.

Math is life changing, but people are making 160 K with the stuff on the side. It's mm-hmm. . So yeah, it's, it's been pretty amazing. It's evolved over the course of the last three and a half years, but it's, yeah, it's, it's just been so rewarding. It's been, it's been really awesome to help other people on their financial independence or their South hustle.

[00:22:38] Naseema: Yeah. And what I like about the course is that there's so much support and it comes in different kind of mediums depending on what kind of learner you are. You know, I'm a nurse, so you always have to go through like, what is your learning style. So you guys have, you know, live videos, you have calls, you have podcasts dedicated specifically to the principles.

The course is great as far as how it's laid out, like super detail also. With the course, like you get all these downloads and they tell you how to go in and tweak it. And like when I tell you, it literally takes a couple of minutes to go in, add your flare, and you know, just be ready to open the store and start selling.

That's what it takes. And so I think you guys make it super duper easy for anybody at any learning level, with any learning style. As a matter of fact. , I went through it to see if it was something that my eight year old could do because she's been asking to start a business and I want her to do something that's more passive and more sustainable than something like babysitting or, you know, like, you know, selling candy or those traditional things that , you know, we've all done.

But also like that also embraces like what she's really interested in. And so she's really interested in like anim. , but like in the world of anime, there's not a lot of black faces, right? It's Japanese , you know, cartoons. But so she was like, mommy, I wanna do cre. I wanna create like these black anime, you know?

Products and coloring books and things like that. And I was like, oh, that'll be perfect for like a digital product. And you know, and and she was like, oh, I can make money off of that. I'm like, yeah, girl. And so that's why I. That's why I went through the course. Cause I was like, well, how easy is it gonna be for my eight year old to grasp these things?

And I showed it to her and she was like, oh yeah, mommy, I could do that. And so it's it, I think it's so approachable for so many people. It's like one of those things, it's like, oh, why? It's like, why not? Like I don't understand why everybody isn't doing it. And then, and then you'll have those people say again, like you talked about, like, well if it's so easy, why isn't everybody doing it?

And it's just because. just people won't . Even if, and even if everybody was doing it, there still would be space for you. Just like there's their taco tr a million taco trucks. You know, like, it doesn't matter. Like, I think you know, just to give people like, just an idea that. Like I said, there's a whole bunch of ways to, you know, grow your income, but everybody is just like, okay, yeah, but how?

Mm-hmm. , this is a, a great how so I love what you put together.

[00:25:23] Cody: I think an important piece of that, and I wasn't even gonna talk about this cuz I was gonna like hit the financial angle cuz, you know, I'm financially intentional, , is the creative part. Like, it's, it's actually a really fun side hustle too.

Like it's, you know, the numbers are great in talking about the four 50 a month, retire with a millionaire and 35 years, but like you don't have this much fun freelance writing. Like when you're creating digital products, the world is your oyster. You can create whatever the heck you want. You can create black anime characters, you can create invites.

You could create cards. You could create like all these really neat and creative little projects and then put 'em up for sale. And if other people have similar interests to you and they think it's cool as well. You're making money. So it's like, it's basically like drawing on a piece of a digital paper and then putting it up for sale for people to buy.

And an Unle unlimited number of people can buy that project from you. So it's just like, yeah, not only is it lucrative, it's, it's super fun too. It's one of my favorites.

[00:26:14] Naseema: Yeah, I think it's a great way to actually solve problems too, because I, you know, there's always these things that you're really, really good at that, you know, people tell you that you're good at and you don't, you really don't have like a outlet for you.

Just like, okay, well this is like really easy, like I just do it X, Y, and Z. But the whole thing is, , you could be making money off of it. And so like the, one of the things that I like to do is kind of like anytime I see like any kind of problems, I like jotted down. I have it in my notes and I jotted down like this would make a great principle idea.

Also, I also, I know a friend, she didn't necessarily take this principal's course, but she sells like nursing study guides and she's. almost 2 million as a new grad nurse. I saw that article doing this. Yes. Uhhuh . She's been on the podcast as well, Stephanie. And she's just amazing. And it's just because she has a unique study style that's very efficient.

But she also does a lot of marketing around her stuff, so I'm not gonna say those results are typical, but she just took something that she was really good at. She solved the problem. and she was able to make way more money than she makes in her nursing career yet. And still, she's still a nurse and she's a actually a professor.

I'm just saying like, this is a creative way to act and it's a cre, it's a way to cre to express your cre creativity, but at the same time make money. So I'm just gonna give you an idea of like, some of the things that I just like jot down , I'm just like jotted down like like domestic violence, like check in sheet.

Like how to travel, like a travel checklist if you're traveling domestically, a travel checklist if you're traveling internationally. And then from that, like there's so many ideas like travel checklist, if you're traveling with, with kids, travel checklist, if you're traveling, pregnant travel checklist, if you're traveling with pets and you, it kind of goes there.

And that's just like a couple things that I've jotted down. But these are things that man, like I wish I just had like a go-to because there's not great resources for that, but you know. and, and, and then there's print, I mean, , you could actually just say travel checklist with traveling with pets, and then it'll be blank.

And then you have people fill that out. Mm-hmm. . But just because it's out there, people know that, hey, this is something that I should be looking at. This is something that I could actually use. And so I, I, I think it's just, it's, it's so many ideas that you can put into these spreadsheets in so many ways that somebody can use it.

So I don't ever want people to think. Oh my God. Well everybody's doing that, so I'm not gonna do it. No . .

[00:28:53] Cody: Yeah. There's an unlimited number of ways to like customize stuff. I'm glad you said that because I know you were asking about the course before, like, and you were talking about the templates in the course.

The reason why we have templates, they're things like you just mentioned, it's like a travel checklist and then we give you a bunch of ideas and you can go out and make, you could go out and make 25 iterations of a travel checklist and you know, even if. . You know, let's say there's 10 people a month searching for it, like travel checklist for fill in the blank.

If you could even get one or two or three of those people per month and you're selling that thing for 10 bucks, like. , Hey, I'd be happy with an extra 30 bucks. Like it's, it really adds up. So like, yeah, it's, it doesn't, some people will be like, oh, you know, like, why would you even bother selling a five or $10 printable?

It's like, well, if you're selling a couple hundred of those a month, like that really adds up. It can be a couple hundred, couple thousand dollars, and that can really change someone's financial situation. So, yeah, I, I love that. Yeah,

[00:29:45] Naseema: I love it too. And so I just think it's a great option. First, somebody but like on the other side, on the financial independence side, what has like, creating this course and the things like, so you have your Etsy store, but you also create a course and you also have an amazing affiliate program where you help where other people help you promote this course.

Where has. Taking you on your financial independence journey, even though you're technically already financial inde, financially independent.

[00:30:13] Cody: Yeah. I mean all of the things you just mentioned have continued to grow. So my own se shop, I'm now selling stuff on Shopify as well. We have like a whole template store that's like part of the Gold City Ventures brand.

The course itself has now grown to over 10,000 students, which is absolutely insane. Like yeah, I

[00:30:29] Naseema: was gonna say that. It's a lot of people in this course, like, yeah. So that speaks to the success of it.

[00:30:35] Cody: and I mean, the only reason it's grown quite frankly, like, you know, if you were to an okay course, you could only pull over the w pull the wool over people's eyes for so long.

Like the only reason it's been successful is cause we put like our hearts and soul into this. If we didn't have the testimonials, we didn't have people that were crushing it on the side and. You know, getting featured in big media, like it wouldn't continue to grow, like kind of the wildfire it's been, which has just been, like I said, super rewarding to be able to help people.

So, yeah, for me personally, I mean, I've been able to increase my income. That's, that's not the only thing I do, but it's a, it's a big portion of my day, like a lot of it is focused on, Gold duty ventures, and whether it's optimizing like the sales side of things or just revamping the course, we're constantly having to rerecord videos when software changes its interface or whatever.

So yeah, always doing a lot of backend work on that, but it's, it's, it's allowed me to, well, one, it's helped me reach financial independence and, you know, I'm reinvesting a lot of the money that I'm making now, like, I'm still fairly frugal. I'm definitely less frugal than I was. like straight outta college when I was literally spending only $1,200 a month.

But I haven't like really had any crazy lifestyle creep. I'm still actually driving the same car I was then I'm house hacking, so I'm, my housing is paid for and I've been, yeah, I've been able to buy rental properties with the money I'm making and it's just kind of made my financial independence that much sweeter.

I've been able to kind of. Increase my cash flow and increase that nest egg that I've been investing in. So, yeah, I've, it's just, it's been ama it's pretty surreal, honestly, to see, like, to rewind and if I were to talk myself like even four years ago to where I am now, it's, it's night and day, but it's just because, and I just wanna say this, there's a lot of things that I've done that I've failed, like whether it was in.

That business. So we're talking about the Gold City ventures, the principles and digital, digital product business. But like I've failed with real estate, ive failed with other business ventures. I've been failing all like all the way through. So it's not like I just discovered a Magic South Hustle, became a millionaire, retired and h financial independence.

It's like, no, like I'm constantly trying new things. Constantly failing, getting kicked down, getting back up, trying the next thing. And yeah, this is just, this is just one of the things that happened to hit, but I wouldn't have got here if I didn't try a million things before it and land here.

[00:32:43] Naseema: It's called failing forward

Yeah. Well, yeah. Failing forward. Yeah. . Yes. And it's something that people should aspire to do, but I wanna talk about the other half of Gold City ventures. So, Julie. Just to give you some perspective on how possible this is for so many people, like Julie's like crushing it, like only, you know, and, and just on her et he side, you know, and she started like only doing it a couple hours a week transitioning.

I know she did it through having a baby, a major move, like not working for a while. and was able to, you know accumulate enough income to help out with the household expenses. And so like that was a major thing for her because, you know, like when you have a baby or go through all these transitions, it's kind of like you're in a vulnerable, po vulnerable position, right.

And for her, I know that that loss of, you know having a job and so much control over your life, it can be daunting for people. So to have an income, an income source like this, where there's not a lot of work, she can still be there for her. Daughter still be there for her family. I think like it's something that a lot of people would aspire to do.

And so I just wanna, you know, share a little bit of Julie's story because I think that you know, a lot of people can see themselves in that position as well.

[00:34:07] Cody: For sure. Yeah. I mean, some people resonate with me and my story. Some people resonate with her. In 20, was it 20? 20? Yeah, 2020. She moved across the country, like she drove from Seattle to basically Boston and took it slow.

Like she was on the road for a couple months. She took six months off from her Etsy shop, and she was still averaging, I think 1200 or $1,500 a month without touching it. Like she actually wasn't doing anything. She couldn't, she wasn't working and her daughter was like hot off the press. . Yeah. So, so I mean it was, yeah, she was just like a, a working mom who didn't have much free time and.

That's, that's a big kind of portion of the people who come into our course, into our community. There are those working moms who like, don't have much free time. Maybe they have a couple hours that they can scrounge together every week. 15 minutes here, 15 minutes there. But that's all it takes. Like it's just, it's getting the products up in your shop online.

And then once they're up there, if they're a successful product that people wanna buy, like you start making money and you start, ma, sometimes you'll wake up to notifications and you're like, wow. 20 bucks while I was sleeping last night. That's amazing. And then there's, you know, other people who kind of resonate more with my stories.

Like I, I don't have any kids yet. I love to travel. And I know you mentioned this earlier, Nasima, like I, last year, I think I probably spent three or four months outta the year traveling, like I was in Europe for over a month. I was in Hawaii for six weeks. I was, I was traveling all around and I was able to do this side.

All my own time, you know, check in every once in a while, put, put new products in my shop. But it was like, it's time zoned, agnostic, and I could work on it when I wanted to, which is just like super cool. And that's, that's the life that I want right at this point, at this stage of my life anyway.

[00:35:41] Naseema: And since, I mean, you're not working technically, which you're always working.

I still work hard. I have fun. Yeah, I know, I know, right. But how do you fund all this travel?

[00:35:55] Cody: I mean, it's income from digital products. It's income from, I make money from my podcast. It's income from courses, from community, from. Did some consulting before. Yeah. So I'm just using, yeah, dipping into, dipping into some of those savings to afford those travel.

And the cool thing is like, like I mentioned, I'm, I'm house hacking, so Yes. While, like, I, I'm not paying for housing while I'm home, so it's like when I go travel, it's not like I'm. You know, now I'm doubling up. Now I'm double dipping. I'm paying my mortgage and I'm paying for the Airbnb that we're staying in.

It's like, no, we just get up and go and then we just have this like Airbnb expense for the next couple weeks while we're traveling. So it's honestly more affordable than most people think. Like I think most people think of travel and they think of going to Hawaii for seven days and spending 10 grand, like that's like the traditional American vacation.

You just like spend as much as you possibly can in a week period, and drink as much as you can. Horribly and then come back and hit your life and you're like, oh my God. Like, I can't believe I'm, but there's other ways to travel. Like I know some people who, they quit, they hit financial independence. They make like 30 to $40,000 a year, which it's not, not high income.

and they travel for like six plus months out of the year. Cuz they're just traveling cheap and they're doing slow travel and you know, they're, they go somewhere, they get like an Airbnb for a couple months. They're buying their groceries, they're doing like cheap activities. They're not doing the, you know, $800 scuba dive tour off the cruise ship or whatever,

So there's a lot of ways to travel smarter, I think, than people. Are led to believe like just too many people think, like, well, they'll ask me like, Cody, doesn't it cost you like 200 grand to travel that much? It's like, no. Like even though I'm, I'm, I'm doing really well financially now. Like I'm still, you know, the Airbnbs, we stayed in in Europe this past May.

I think we probably ended up spending like 2,500 total across four countries staying in Portugal, Southern France, and Italy. And it was an amazing trip. And you know, the food's not that expensive either if you're not eating out. Crazy five star restaurants every night. And so, yeah, I mean, get out there if, if you can, if you have a remote job, get out there and travel, especially if you can mm-hmm.

because you're gonna regret not doing it later in life. And

[00:38:03] Naseema: I think two the really important things is like slow travel actually allows you to actually see the countries and explore and not just do all the touristy thing. Mm-hmm. . And that's what's important cuz I really feel like. understanding col different countries and cultures and history is like where it's at.

That's really how you expand. Like what you know, like is expand your knowledge base. But also the biggest thing for me is that. Your housing costs, which is usually, you know, the biggest chunk of people's expenses are covered because you house hack and we talk about house hack on the PO house hacking on the podcast.

But I just wanna reiterate, like house hacking is when you are able to cover some or all. Or even make a profit from your housing cost because you are either sharing the house, like for me, I rent out a room to a nurse, or you have a multi-family or a multi Unit building like a duplex, triplex, and you're renting out those places and that rent that comes in covers your portion or all, or even you're able to make a profit off of that rent.

And so if people aren't doing that, I think that's the ultimate like. Hack to life, especially if you're younger. Like I wish I would've known about that. Younger, yes, I have roommates and all of that kind of stuff, but I wasn't optimizing in the way that, you know, I could have bought a place earlier on and done that and had my housing costs covered.

And that frees up so much money to do the things that you're really passionate about. So I'm a strong advocate for house hacking.

[00:39:38] Cody: I'll give your listeners a next level hack that some of my friends do. We've, we've labeled it geo hacking, where basically you rent out your primary residence on Airbnb and then you go and travel somewhere that's significantly cheaper.

So like my co-host on my podcast, Justin, he has a house in Austin, Texas. He go to all Airbnb ready. He could go and get an Airbnb in Costa Rica. He was talking about for $1,500 for the entire month on the beach. And he could rent out his house in Austin during south by south, south by Southwest and a c l Austin City limits for $10,000 revenue that month.

Yay. So he's now the, the delta between what he is making from Airbnb profits at his place and what he's paying for an Airbnb coast. He goes $8,500, like. I know not everybody's gonna do that insane, but for the few whose like, mine just blew and the light bulb went off, like it is such a crazy hack. And if you're someone who's like, I've always wanted to travel, but I, I can't figure it out.

Maybe you, you got the McMansion and you're, you're, you're regretting it, you could still make use of it. You could re, you could get that thing Airbnb ready, even lock the master bedroom if you really want to put all your valuables in there. And then, Rent it out and you could make a pretty

[00:40:47] Naseema: penny. And you know what, actually that is

That's my solution because I have a ha a ni, a nice four bedroom house, and it's like, I wanna travel with my kids. But it was like this thing of like, should I sell my house or should I keep my house? And I was just like, I have three bedrooms. Like all I have to do is lock everything, move all my kids' stuff into my bedroom.

And rent out all these rooms cover all my cost, you know? Mm-hmm. . So it just doesn't make any sense. And I, I'm reluctant to sell my house cause I have such a cheap, a cheap interest rate. So I'm like, I will never get that again, . But we do wanna do some months in ironically Costa Rica. So I'm just like, look at that, you know, like that's my solution.

And so yeah. I love that love. Level.

[00:41:32] Cody: I had no idea you were doing that. What? Like what a perfect way to Yeah. I had no idea. Geo hacking. You're doing it. Yes.

[00:41:39] Naseema: Yes, yes, I am. Or I plan to Once this another next baby pops out. . Perfect . Well anyway, Cody, let the people know how they can get in contact with you, how they can access the Etsy course.

I mean the, well, the principals course, let's just call it what it is cuz you can do it on multiple platforms and then like what's next for you.

[00:42:05] Cody: Well, I will give your listeners an ebook that we typically sell, but I'll, I'll give you the special link so they, they can go grab it in the podcast show notes or wherever this is gonna be, and that's just special for your audience,

And then if you like listening to podcasts, you can hear all about financial independence on the Financial Independent Show or the five show for short. We're abul, listen to podcasts and we're there every week talking. Make money, save money, retire early investing, all the good stuff that you hear in this podcast as well.

So

[00:42:34] Naseema: definitely see, there's an amazing podcast that I have listened to for years as well. So

[00:42:39] Cody: check out, highly recommended, check out na, same as episode to start, and then you'll get addicted, and then you can just crush the whole library. ,

[00:42:47] Naseema: right. . All right. Well it's been amazing, Cody. Thank you so much.

Thanks for

[00:42:54] Cody: having me. Cool.

Hey there I’m Naseema

My dream is for everyone to know that financial independence is attainable with a little intentionality. Learn how I can help you finally break the cycle of living paycheck to paycheck.

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