How to Become a Full-time YouTuber ft. Marko from Whiteboard Finance

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This is the digital nomad quest podcast with Sharon Tseung. teaching people how to build passive income, become financially free and design the best lives.0:14
Hey guys, it’s Sharon from digital nomad quest. today. I’m excited to speak with Marco from whiteboard finance. How are you doing today? I’m doing well. Thanks for having me. Awesome. So Marco is a huge finance YouTuber. You guys probably seen him around. He’s almost at 300,000 subscribers now, Mark, I’d love to hear actually your introduction. Maybe you can tell us about yourself. Yeah, so first of all, again, thanks for having me. Yeah, Marco from whiteboard finance. If you see some guy that thinks he knows what he’s talking about in front of a whiteboard, that’s probably me. All joking aside, I talk about topics that a lot of people want to know about. They just seem maybe a little bit intimidated by so things like personal finance, entrepreneurship, which is what you obviously teach, you know, investing real estate investing, equity, markets, stocks, things like that. So just talk1:00
about a lot of things that people may have an interest in and they just may feel intimidated by it. So I just try and break it down in a nice digestible format on the whiteboard. Awesome. I love that and you have like finance degree and stuff, right? Yeah, so I finished my four year degree bachelor’s degree from University of Akron. You know, shout out to Ohio LeBron, Northeast Ohio. It’s not a cornfield, like, you may think it is. But yeah, I finished with a finance degree and I also work professionally also in commercial real estate, capital markets, commercial mortgage lending, and then also as a analyst at a bank for credit risk. Cool. So in today’s episode, I’d love to kind of dive into your transition from your finance job to becoming a YouTuber and also love to hear some more of your kind of tips around YouTube. So how long were you working at your you know, finance job and you know, what were you doing? Yeah, so graduated in December 2010. You know, started my first big boy job at roughly 2122 years old right around there. were perfect.2:00
professionally for about 10 years and decided to make the leap full time in July of 2019. So I put in my two weeks in the middle of June two months prior to that I did have a video that kind of blew up and it did go viral that video has about I think six and a half million views now basically just talking about you know how to buy cars from a dealership you know how dealerships may try and rip you off? Not my proudest video, but I actually used to sell cars so there’s a lot of inside information that video and ultimately the reason I waited a couple months before I put in my two weeks at the credit analyst position was because I just wanted to make sure that YouTube was a viable business model and you can actually create a living from the ad revenue. So waited a couple months, you know, told my wife and she’s 100% supportive so I’ve been full time ever since. So at the time of this recording, it’s been about say seven eight months, and I’ve been going pretty steady ever since knock on wood. Cool seven, eight months since you quit right? Correct. Yep. Okay, cool. So what made you want to quit so you didn’t really did you like your job or3:00
How’s that? Yeah, I wasn’t one of those people that’s like, Oh, you know, I hate this job I hate everyone I work with I worked at a publicly traded bank here in Cleveland, great company, you know, great benefits, great coworkers. However, it’s, you know, it’s still the rat race, you know, it’s still cubicle life, it’s still eight to five, you know, you you love and you appreciate, you know, the opportunity to have a stable income. But if you’re entrepreneurial whatsoever, you’re never going to be happy in that situation. You’re always gonna have that itch to try and you know, break off and do something on your own. So yes, I’m not your typical, like, I hate everyone, you’ll get me out of here. It wasn’t that bad. But at the end of the day, it was still, you know, Excel spreadsheets. You know, you’re looking over a commercial credit lines, you know, it’s it can only be so exciting. You know what I mean? Yeah, I got it. I mean, you were there for 10 years. So you stuck it out, actually. So with your job, were you kind of growing and stuff in it? Or were you like, like, were you learning or, you know, was it kind of balanced out where you’re like, Okay, I need some more challenge now, or how was that? Yeah, just to clarify for the audience. So4:00
I wasn’t at that one single position for 10 years, I had a number of positions within finance over 10 years. So, definitely learned a lot from each to answer your question definitely learned a lot from each position because you’re kind of working in different facets of the industry, which is cool. However, you know, it’s, you know, money wise, salary wise, I wasn’t sales, you know, make good money, and then it went on to the back end towards less client facing, you’re getting more of like a salary, you know, like a nine to five, you know, you’re getting paid every other Friday. And from a compensation standpoint, it was it was good, you know, I live in the Midwest or cost of living isn’t high. But you know, you get to a point where you feel like I’m learning more on YouTube than I am, you know, in my actual job, kind of a thing. So it’s nice to work on the inside of finance, you know, how things work, but at the same time, it’s nice to actually be able to teach things, you know, I’ve always felt like I was kind of like a natural teacher, which led me to YouTube in the first place. Okay, so you actually gravitate more towards teaching people like that’s more of your passion or Yeah, actually wanted to be a teacher and then realize, you know, they don’t know

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make that much money, but it’s okay you have a lot of time, which is good. And so I wanted to be a financial advisor, a financial advisor is kind of like a teacher, and you’re also helping. And it’s also talking about finance, which I have a natural passion for anyway, but I graduated December of 2010. And that was like, when everything hit the fan, those the whole eight financial crisis, you know, those like kind of like the echoes of it to where unemployment was really high. And no one was hiring, especially in finance. So I ended up selling cars for here, believe it or not, with a finance degree. So well, so you said you learn more on YouTube now than you know what you were doing before? So are you saying like in terms of marketing, or like, online business type of stuff, so you mean, absolutely. Yeah. And I probably phrased that incorrectly. So it’s a good clarification. So obviously, learning on the job is the best form of learning you can do. But when it comes to being an entrepreneur, I was learning more on YouTube because there’s all these young people such as yourself, and I’m not saying I’m old or anything but like I’m way out of touch with like Gen Z men. These kids are just

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smarter, especially with marketing, tick tock, you know, Instagram different platforms, I’m just okay at those things. But what I’m good at is YouTube and I think that I have a natural presence on camera and I can be kind of corny and funny at the same time which people like, but when it comes to like learning about digital marketing, email campaigns, you know, social media marketing, like Gen Z, and like the younger millennials, man, you guys are crushing it.

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Awesome. So you know, when you say like, YouTube is kind of your dream job. So, like talking on camera, teaching people and stuff like that? Yeah, it’s kind of crazy, because I’m working probably, you know, 2025 hours a week, you know, that’s being you know, pretty generous. Actually, I probably work less than that or not, I try and knock out two videos a week and I’m also working on a blog, it’s whiteboard, finance, calm, it’s just gonna be a review site of a bunch of different investment platforms from an objective perspective. So there’s no ulterior motive. There’s no you know, paid ads or anything like that. It’s just helping people and teaching people so

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I think YouTube kind of encompasses that teaching and helping aspect of things, just because to be successful on YouTube, you can’t really go in there with the mentality of thinking like, Hey, I’m gonna monetize after a day and become a millionaire, full time YouTuber, you know, that happens after you’ve provided massive, massive, massive amounts of value for free. And I’ve done that for about two years. And then the channel kind of blew up after that. Got it. When When did you start your blog, the blog was completed, I think in December of 19. But I don’t have many articles uploaded to it yet. I want to make it live just yet. So it’s been live by developer created about a month and a half, two months ago. But again, it’s not live just consciously because I don’t want to upload until I have like maybe 2030 articles up there. Because the worst thing you want to do is like pay two grand opening and then you have like two articles. Like this sucks. Yeah. So yeah, got it. And so your content strategy kind of is like two videos a week and then blog posts like how often are you doing that?

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Yeah, so good question. I’m trying to do it every week. So far, I’ve been kind of lazy so far in 2020. Yeah, it was kind of sick in December, I had a real bad sinus infection for two weeks. And then I had some stuff in January that came up. So I only knocked out maybe about five or six videos for January. My goal is to do eight videos a month, so two a week and then try and do a blog post every week. So four blog posts a month, and that way I can really, you know, take my time and make it a well crafted article instead of trying to rush and just get something out. Yeah, sounds like a good strategy. Are you more focused on like, you know, your overall plan? Are you more focused on YouTube or blog like in the future? Yeah, it’s a great question. So I think you know, both of us were kind of those, you know, digital nomads, you know, I mean, I’m not a nomad, but if I want it to be I could, which is cool, but you know, I’m married and

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my wife’s like, No, I’m not leaving Cleveland.

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I’m like, okay, whatever. The cool thing about our job is, you know, we can do it literally anywhere with an internet connection and a camera, but to answer your question, I am

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Focusing on YouTube just because I think like a real estate investor. So when it comes to real estate, you always think, Okay, what is the best and highest use for this land or best and highest use of this location. So when I think of my best and highest use of my time, it’s definitely YouTube because it’s the most bang per book, it’s the most revenue per minute if you will, is I create a video once and that video could live forever and still make me money kind of a thing. Same thing with the blog post, except YouTube is a little bit more instant gratification to where you can kind of blow up and you know, a couple days on YouTube as to where it may take a couple of years for a blog. So best in highest use of my time is YouTube, but I definitely want to grow the blog on the side. And just to complete my thought on this is because we need multiple sources of income as you obviously know. You know, if I live 99.9% on ad revenue, and that goes away tomorrow, you know, I’m up the creek without a paddle. You know, I need to diversify my income streams. Yeah, I’m all about this person.

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vacation and you know, you bring up real estate. And I’m wondering how you split your time. So you got 25 hours ish on your content? And then how about real estate? How much time you spent on it? Yeah, good question. So I actually sold I made a video about this maybe about a month ago, and we actually sold all of our rental properties. So I was in a partnership with two other people. It was a builder partner, the other guy put up who’s a money partner equity partner, and then I also put up money and was kind of like the sales slash leasing guy. So we had three units, we built a couple other properties spec, meaning speculative without an end buyer in mind, building a house is cool, but it’s very stressful. So we sold those houses we sold the rental properties and right now I don’t own any real estate. The way I’m investing in real estate you may have seen some of my videos or heard about it is fundrise fundrise is pretty cool, basically allows you to invest in real real estate, actual real estate all around the country. And you can start with as little as 500 bucks and I’m not paid by them. I’m not sponsored by them. It’s just a cool way to diversify your portfolio if you don’t want to actually

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Physically own, you know, the rental property and have to you know, fix toilets and stuff at two in the morning. So, yeah, I remember talking to you about that, like you. You’re not really about kind of owning your own properties, you kind of want to get off that right. So you’re just like, let’s do fundrise Yeah, fundrise is cool. Don’t get me wrong. I think that physical real estate belongs in every prop in every portfolio. It just depends on how you want to invest in it. There’s multiple ways to invest in real estate, you can do syndications. So if you know people that are buying a really big apartment building that has, you know, let’s call it 150 200 units, it costs you know, five 610 million bucks, you’re basically pulling your money together, you you own a portion of that multifamily building. But at the end of the day, there’s a there’s management in place, you’re not the one that’s getting the call or the headache of having to fix the parking lot or, you know, you know, this is wrong or my faucets leaking, for example. So, there’s a million different ways to invest in real estate and I think that for me right now being a limited partner, either in a syndication

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Or someone else is doing the heavy lifting is kind of the route that I want to go just because my time is valuable. And again, my highest and best use is teaching people on YouTube as opposed to, you know, fixing Clogged toilets, for example. Yeah, no, that makes sense. You know, when we talk about investments as well as on businesses, do you think investments are better than online businesses in terms of generating wealth? Or do you advocate like a mix of both? Yeah, definitely. me. My my whole motto in life is everything in moderation. I know that won’t kind of, it’s kind of like the tortoise and the hare, if you will. And there’s a thing to be said about being laser focused and like focusing on one thing and one thing only. However, I feel like as digital entrepreneurs, this space is still so relatively new and uncertain that it’s not like I’m working a W two job and I know I’m going to get I’m going to make two grand every two week and that’s going to my bank account. Our lifestyles a little bit different. So I like having just multiple streams. So to answer your question, I’m kind of a hybrid because I’ve already

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been an investor before I started YouTube, but now YouTube is my full time income source. I kind of respect both if that makes sense. Yeah, I think that everyone should. It just depends if you want to start a dividend portfolio that starts to pay you passively each month that’s a great strategy if you want to laser focus on your online you know, digital nomad quest business and that starts bringing you money. That’s great, but I think once you start diversifying your portfolio between the two that’s where you can start to feel more certain about either your online business or about your investments. Yeah, definitely I I’m kind of like you are I advocate like both and I advocate kind of just diversifying having a hybrid I’m actually like investing in a an out of state multifamily. It’s in contract right now. So I feel you like I’m all about you know, real estate as well stocks and then also the online business side. So you know, let’s get into the online business stuff. So now Yeah, we want to talk about like YouTube, right and we want to learn kind of your secrets or

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on YouTube and how to be successful on that. So what are your three biggest tips around being a big YouTuber? Yeah, so I’m on record saying this, you know, a bunch of times just because I genuinely believe that YouTube is the best business model in 2020. And the reason I see that is just because you reach so many people, all the eyeballs are on YouTube, and it’s free to do, okay, I’m not sitting in some production studio, you know, this is my living room, you know, I have some lights, you know, you make it look good. You can record with a cell phone and an internet connection. And you can start a business today if you really want to. So I mean, to answer your question, the three tips that I would give any aspiring YouTube entrepreneur or YouTube business owner, if you will be consistent, don’t do it for the money because you’re never going to succeed. And then third of all, it’s just be yourself. That’s why it’s called YouTube. It’s about you, you, yourself, everyone else has already taken kind of being your own lane. Yeah, I think that if you start a YouTube channel because you

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Want to make money you see all these YouTube tubers with these like corny like supercars and they’re in their garage with like a Lamborghini in the back. Like, if that’s what you want to be, you’re never gonna make it because you’re not starting a channel out of passion, you’re starting a channel trying to make money. And there’s a two, two big differences. When you start a channel out of passion, whether you hit highs or lows, or you get a million views or 10 views, you’re still going to make the videos because you love doing them. You truly have a passion for it. If you’re doing it for the money. After six months, I’m not seeing any results. You’re gonna say screw this, I’m done with YouTube and you’re going to be done. So I think that that’s my biggest tip is don’t do it for the money do it because you’re passionate about something. Yeah, no, those are great tips. And do you feel like that’s really what made you successful? And do you feel like you know, I think a lot of people try to hone in on you know, SEO and like technical stuff about YouTube. Do you think that ultimately it’s just more about kind of being yourself and delivering value or do you feel like you need a mix of both of like, you need a

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Learn these tactics or like, what do you think? Yeah, that’s a, that’s a great question. And again, somewhere in the middle, you know, you have to be how do I say your content has to be good, and you have to be yourself and that creative aspect of it, but no one’s gonna find you if you don’t understand the SEO aspect of YouTube. So what people need to realize is that YouTube is the world’s second biggest search engine. And it’s owned by Google. So Google and YouTube are like this, okay, you know, whatever you find on a Google search, they may take you to YouTube and vice versa. So I think that if you understand the SEO and for your audience that obviously stands for search engine optimization, I’m sure they know that. The way you title your videos, the way you do your thumbnails, the way you write your descriptions, the way you tag, the videos, the things you actually say in the videos, those all help with search engine optimization to get you discovered. And also I think shareability is one of the biggest metrics that YouTube looks for. If people are sharing your content. That means that it’s that good that they want someone else to see it. Mm hmm.

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Do you have any advice around you know the title and the thumbnails and stuff like that? So I think that you need to be somewhere again in the middle you can’t be you know, Mr. And Mrs. clickbait, but at the same time you can’t be like dry so it’s like I’m somewhere in the middle because my and again, it also depends on your content as well. So my content is more educational, informative. It’s not like watch Marco destroy or chug burger. Yeah, stuff like that. It’s more like you know how to open up a checking account. You know, that’s not what I talk about on my channel, but it’s just an example. So think more like you know, what your channel is, understand what your content is, and try and form your titles and your thumbnails around that type of content. If I tried doing like sensationalist titles and you know, having like explosions in the background, talking about how to open a checking account, that doesn’t really make sense right now if I have kind of like a informative you know, nice title, it’s not super click Beatty, and a nice thumbnail that

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That’s more in line with my brand and what I’m trying to teach. So you have to have a little bit of common sense with this stuff, too. Yeah, for sure. And do you feel like you learn that stuff before you even started? Or did you kind of learn along the way? Definitely along the way, because I look at my old videos, and they’re like, borderline embarrassing, you know? So hey, who is this idiot? But yeah, you definitely learned along the way. But you also have to create your own style because I feel like a lot of people they hire this stuff out. So all their thumbnails just end up looking like everyone else’s. I think that if you just take you know, 10 extra minutes of your day and create your own thumbnail, it’ll resonate and it’ll also create your own brand image. So when you see like Coca Cola, you know, right away, okay, this is Coca Cola when you see the Pepsi logo, okay, this is Pepsi. You know, when you see a generic thumbnail, we’re kind of like, Who is this guy? Again, I think once you start creating your own style, you’ll start to create that subconscious brand recognition in your audience’s mind. Yeah, that’s a great point. I think right now with my thumbnails. I’ve definitely started doing it a certain way, like doing certain colors and stuff like that.

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So definitely like brand colors and maybe like your fonts and stuff like when once you have that recognizable you have that yellow back right

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there. Yeah. The back the whiteboard is now pretty, but people are like, yeah. Oh, you know, I recognize your videos because of this. So yeah, it’s kind of just pounding it in their head, you know? No, that’s that’s a great point. I think everyone’s trying to like make it super click Beatty or like pretty or whatever. But then it’s more about the cohesiveness. Like if you can make that brand style people will always like think of you you know what I mean? So that’s a great point. And then when it comes to your growth, right with your YouTube channel, when you first started, was there like a certain point where it just started blowing up? Or like, was there like that hockey stick growth type of visuals, everything or like So real quick? So what allowed me to quit my job? Yes, definitely. hockey stick growth is crazy. I legitimately couldn’t believe it. But that’s not you can’t bank on going viral. You have to consistently put out good content for the algorithm algorithm to recognize and appreciate you guys started

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My channel in November of 17 I hit a couple of nice you know doubles or triples if you want to use a baseball analogy I had a video talking about like top three marijuana stocks for 2018 or cannabis stock and that kind of blew up because that’s when there’s becoming you know sexy like the whole cannabis you know sector for stocks that blew up got six figures fast forward like maybe 678 months later I was at like 15,000 subscribers I had a couple deaths in the family got married you know a lot of a lot of stuff all once was like a perfect storm of just like, hey, forget YouTube, I’m done with this wasn’t on YouTube for six months, started back up in October of 18 and have been distant ever since. And I will say that my videos after that October of 2018 start. It took about six months for the algorithm to start like respecting me again. Because my videos were not getting pushed out to people. It was one of those things where it’s like, Man, I’m taking all this time and effort. I’m getting like a few hundred views or a few thousand views or whatever.

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You know, it’s just like, Man, this sucks. Why am I doing all this hard work for. But after six months, something happened to where you start to see a little bit more comments a little bit more engagement, a little bit more views. And then finally in April of 19, earlier and 19, I actually printed out my goals. So I keep my goals in a Google Drive spreadsheet if you saw my video on that you already know the story. But basically, I print all my personal and business goals out. I didn’t have ink in my printer until April because I kept forgetting, you know, it’s like you go to Costco, you go to the store. It’s like, oh, man, I forgot the ink again. So I bought ink. When I went to Costco finally printed out my goals in April of 19. Put it on my wall and one of those goals was have a video that gets like 150,000 views. It was just kind of like my own version of going viral. I swear on everything. I don’t know if it’s like the matrix or God or Mother Nature. I don’t know. I don’t know if this is a simulation, who knows what the hell life is. But whatever it is, I put those goals up on the

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wall and my channel blew up. That’s when that car dealership video went viral literally the next day. And I started to see one comment two comments, 10 comments. I’m like, What the hell’s going on? his video came out in March, I’m like, what’s going on? This is like a month later. And next thing, you know, I go from, like, 10,000 views on that video to like, 100,000 to like 300,000 800,000. And that’s when the channel you know, blew up and I was able to, you know, live off that ad revenue. Wow, that’s crazy. So yeah, same. Yeah. I mean, what you said six months or you said one month because he said six months it takes to pick up or did you mean sorry, so I took a break for six months, got back in October of 18. started posting consistently again for six months. But think of that six months as like a like you’re in a sandbox, like you just start a new blog and Google doesn’t trust you yet. They’re like, do we really like Sharon? You know, do we really trust her? Yeah. Okay. After six months, Sharon has been putting out good content. Good.

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Content good content now I’ll put it on the first page of Google you know, gotta go after that six months of posting consistently and being off of it for six months. I think that’s when the algorithm started to think again like okay Mark was for real he didn’t quit on us for example. Okay, so it wasn’t that like during that down period you randomly saw stuff come up it was no way

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I wish then I would just bring some the beach

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and then yeah, you started consistently posting for six months he said and then one of your videos a month later actually started picking up so yes thing yeah, it absolutely blew up and that it’s kind of like a high tide raises all ships kind of a thing towards like, all my other videos started getting thousands of views as well just because that one had so many. So that’s another tip to your audience. If they do decide to start a YouTube channel, I could have had I could have been a one hit wonder you get a viral video but guess what, you’re not going to get any subscribers if you don’t have other content, you know? Like why would I subscribe to

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Another channel if it’s just like, they have one video and that’s it, like, Okay, I’m not going to commit to that once they get your channel off a viral video and see that all your other videos are really good information to then you’re going to get the subscribers then you’re going to start building an audience. So that’s my advice, you know, whether you think their stuff you know, Sox are is awesome, and it’s not getting the views you think it should. You need to just keep putting out content either way, because once you do hit it big on that one video, people will start to look at your old stuff and they’ll say, Oh, you know, Sharon’s, for real Mark was for real and then they’ll screw up the subscribe. Yeah, that makes sense. Do you feel like the content you put out after? Like, during that six months was even better than the stuff he did before? Like, was there any difference in how you posted? Good question and I was getting frustrated because I didn’t think it was any worse or any better but the views just weren’t there. You know, you go from getting like, you know, a bunch off like the marijuana or the cannabis stock video and your other videos. And then next thing you know, you’re getting like a fraction of that. Like I genuinely thought I was like

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Shadow banned or something? You know what I mean? Because like, I wasn’t getting that many views. But to answer your question, I didn’t think the content was better or worse, it was just still solid, good financial content. But for whatever reason, the algorithm wasn’t pushing it out as much as it did. Hmm. So it’s almost like, you know, you should just keep putting stuff out there. That’s like, good. And then one day, it’ll possibly, like find a random video that like ends up, you know, doing really well, huh? Yeah. And yeah, and also, that’s correct. And if you put out evergreen content, stuff that’s always going to be relevant, like how to tie your shoes or how to tie a tie, for example, you know, people are gonna be searching for that 10 years from now, you know, you have to realize that that’s the beauty of YouTube, you make it once and it’s always going to get searched for if it’s a relevant evergreen topic. Hmm. Okay. That’s, I mean, that’s great to hear kind of your journey and like, people will be like, Okay, I think I’m doing the right thing then, you know, because I think a lot of people question like, oh, maybe I’m doing something wrong. I need to like fix this, this or like, Can you guys evaluate my channel?

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Like, I don’t know what’s going on here. But ultimately, I think it is patience and like you keep, you know, pushing stuff out there that you think is good, right? For sure. And that goes back to my earlier point of if you’re starting from money. Like if you’re starting a channel for money, you’re never gonna push through that tough period. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So how do you monetize your YouTube channel? Now? Is it mainly ad revenue? Or do you do some affiliate marketing? Like, what do you? Yeah, good question. So I’d say that a majority of my income or a good portion of it is from ad revenue. However, affiliate marketing doing pretty well with that just based on things that I genuinely, like, know and trust. So say for example, like fundrise, I talked about it earlier. They don’t sponsor me they don’t pay me to say anything, but that is one of my affiliates, or one of the things I’m affiliated with just because I believe in the product. So I talked about it on my channel, hey, if you want to support the channel at no additional cost, you click on the link below and they click on the link and and if they sign up, I get compensated for that. So that’s affiliate marketing for your audience if they don’t understand how that works.

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affiliate marketing is a good portion of my income. I do want to create two courses this year one on actually how to start a YouTube channel and I believe in the business model that much. And then the second one, maybe something more related to investing so you can do digital products you can do affiliate marketing, ad revenue, subscriptions, Patreon, you know, there’s a million ways to monetize a YouTube channel. Yeah, no, I agree. I think like when you build up your own personal brand, even through a blog or something like that, you can do it with multiple ways. And that’s what I love about it. So that’s awesome. Yeah. So you know, what are your favorite resources when it comes to like learning Finance? Yeah, it’s a good question. So first and foremost, YouTube, just because it’s so natural. I don’t know something about something. I’ll go to YouTube first and foremost resources that I like Twitter. There’s a lot of brilliant minds in the finance space on Twitter, people that are day traders, long term value buyers of you know value stocks. It’s so crazy the world we live in because I can literally follow a hedge fund manager and follow

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him and see what his thoughts are, you know what I mean? You’re never able to do that, you know, 1020 years ago. So I think in the day and age of the internet, I think that there’s so many resources out there, but you also have to know how to select those resources because there’s a lot of noise out there. So I like I like following people on Twitter. I like reading the news. I like reading a little bit of mainstream stuff just because you see what like, people are talking about in like CNBC and journal. But then on the other end of that I like there’s a blog called Zero Hedge, they’re a little bit more like fear mongering, like the world’s gonna end tomorrow, you know, the stocks are crashing. So it’s nice to get both sides and come up with your own opinion somewhere in the middle. Okay. You mainly do digital sources, not like books and things like that. Correct? Yeah. So yeah, that’s a good question. I think that when I was younger, because I studied this stuff in college, and that’s when I read the books like the Intelligent Investor and the richest man in Babylon and the Millionaire Next Door, and all those kinds of books, but since I’ve already read those and listened to those on YouTube or on Audible

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For like current news, I’m more like the Twitter kind of thing digital, as you mentioned, but build a foundation. I do think that books still are relevant for sure. Yeah, got it. Okay, so the books are for like the beginners. And then when you’re trying to keep up with the news and stuff, you should kind of follow some sources and stuff like that. Right? Absolutely. Because then you know what they’re talking about, you know, if you, you don’t know what you don’t know. So if you don’t have the foundation, it doesn’t matter if you follow the experts, because you may not necessarily understand what they’re saying. Okay, cool. And real quick back to YouTube. So do you find it hard thinking of topics to talk about? Like, do you see yourself running out of stuff to say in the future and you feel like it’s like a never ending type of thing. So with finance in the way I’ve positioned my channel, I like it because if you think of like a pyramid, I do like evergreen stuff on the bottom. So stuff that’s always going to be relevant. So like how to tie your shoes, how to tie a tie, and then in the middle, it can be like trending, so something that’s going on the news like the corona virus at the time of this recording, for example, how is the corona bye

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It’s gonna affect the markets. And then at the top of that pyramid, like the fats, oils and sweets, you know, they eat sparingly and the very tip, you know, don’t make too many videos about this. Yeah, it’s kind of like the inflammatory, how Dave Ramsey’s wrong about credit cards and how dealers rip you off. So I don’t want to be that guy, but I’ll do it. I’ll throw it in maybe once every couple months, for example. So that’s really my content strategy. Huh? answer your question. I mean, no, just because finance is always evolving. There’s always something new to talk about. Okay. Yeah. And you said it’s a pyramid. So you’re saying like, the Evergreen is your main chunk? And then you like do less than the other one less than that, but like, how you mix it up kind of thing? Or? Or at least I try to? Yeah, yeah. Do you find that like this mix actually resonates well with your audience because they don’t get bored of like a certain type or, I mean, something I think about is like, I feel like before I was putting up kind of random videos like because my whole thing is online business and like passive income stuff, and that can be multiple

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Like things right? That can be building a brand it can be Etsy e Amazon FBA and stuff. So my worry is like, you know, sometimes I jump topics too much where they’re like, okay, like I can’t follow this because like this doesn’t relate to me. So like for you Do you find that you’ve developed a strategy where like when people follow along, everything can be in a series, you know, they don’t get lost, they don’t get bored type of thing. Yeah, that’s the smart way to do it. But I will say that I noticed that my audience definitely is there. I don’t want to say segmented, but I have about, you know, almost 290,000 subscribers, but I know for a fact some Subscribe for a car, video or car related content. The other ones Subscribe for stock market content, the other ones Subscribe for news, you know, like what’s going on in the financial news. So you’re 100% right, it’s definitely segmented. And I will see other types of videos perform better than others just because of the subject matter. But at the end of the day, I think that it all encompasses like finance. So how you said it’s all about you know,

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businesses and passive income, I still feel that everything I talk about is still within the financial realm. If you signed up, you know, or subscribed because of a car video, you’re still gonna get value out of, Hey, you know, how do I open up a 401k kind of a thing. So I do feel like it is segmented for sure. And like I said, other videos do better than others. But I think that you know, as long as it’s within your realm, your financial realm or making money online for your example, I think that the audience would still appreciate it for the most part, but I could be wrong, you know, everyone’s different. Yeah, I think I’m kind of like you in a sense of, you know, I love talking about this stuff. And it can be like a bunch of different interests. I have a thing like around the same topic, though. So I still want to talk about them all I like don’t know if I can just niche down to like, oh, Amazon FBA or like, only you know what I mean? And I do think it’s all kind of in the realm of maybe like financial freedom, like in the future, you know, I just want to make sure everyone understands how to like design their lives have a thing and like, creates that, you know, financial future for themselves. That might even

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In encompass finance in the future, who knows, but like, yeah, yeah, we’ll see where it goes kind of thing. Yeah, typically advocate newer YouTubers, I always say like the riches are in the niches, you know, like it’s better to like focus down. But I think that once you get to a point, as long as you have some some level of understanding or expertise or you can teach it, for example, I think it’s okay to talk about different things. But I wouldn’t start like a car channel and you’re just all over the place about cars. It’s a very broad niche, like, maybe you can take a different take on it. Like, I’ll drive around with people while they show me their custom car, like that’s kind of a niche, or you can talk about only new cars that are coming out and review that. So you don’t want to be the entire car gamut. But you can be little pieces within it. Yeah, no, that makes sense. niching down is definitely something I struggle with. And I am working on that. I hear you I hear Yeah, yeah. So now you know you’re doing YouTube full time. Do you have a specific monetization strategy? You’re focusing on more like so you said you know, multiple streams. Do you

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You find that maybe affiliate marketing is the one that you’re gonna focus on more or like, Yeah, what’s your plan? Yeah, I definitely want to level out the income between ad revenue and affiliate marketing. I think that we’re blogs were 10 years ago in terms of being able to rank for certain topics. I think that’s where YouTube is. Now today, it’s a lot easier. Okay. So if I came out with a review of 2020 m one finance review, so for your audience that may not know and when finance is just a broker, you can buy and sell stocks there. I can never rank in a million years with my blog, whiteboard, finance calm on the first page for an M one finance 2020 review, right? There’s 20 other sites that employ hundreds of people that write these articles all day long. I’m just one guy in Cleveland, Ohio, right now on YouTube, there’s a chance for me to get onto the first page, potentially even the first result of YouTube when you when someone types in m one finance 2020 review, right? So I definitely want to start getting more into review videos and giving an objective

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unbiased opinion. That’s what I want to do with my website. But I also want to parlay that with my YouTube strategy as well. So to answer your question, yeah, affiliate marketing, I hope that to even overtake my share of revenue other than ad revenue as well. Awesome. And you do have a coaching business, right? Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah, I forgot to I forgot to talk about that when you asked about my sources of revenue. So the worst thing that our audiences want to do is trade their time for money, which is what I do with my coaching business and really trading my time for money. But I genuinely because I like teaching, I genuinely get pleasure out of those phone calls, because I’m literally changing someone’s life. And I know that sounds corny, sounds overdramatic, but it really does. People get off those calls. And they’re like, dude, I never would have realized this. You saved me a bunch of money, blah, blah, blah. So that consulting business is on clarity. It’s just a platform where you know, Sharon can schedule a schedule a call with me. I can schedule a call with Sharon, my

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versa, you call into a number they take 15% of your whatever your rate is, as long as the call goes on that person is getting charged that hourly rate. Okay? So when the when the call ends, you know, I make money, clarity makes money, the person I just helped is happy and it’s like a win win win. It’s a super cool platform. That’s cool platform and your calls, do people just like ask you questions, and then you just answer them or do you have kind of a lesson or something like how does that work? Yeah, it’s a little bit of both. So the two primary types of calls on my channel are either how to grow a YouTube channel or personal financial advice. And I’d say I get a lot more talking about personal financial advice, like maybe it’s like 7030 but I’m talking to real business owners. I’m talking to real people with real you know, situations. So what I do is, I get to know them. It’s almost like talking to a financial advisor because everyone’s goals and their income and life situation is different. That’s my personal finances. So like debated because

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You know, my life may not be the same as your life and vice versa. So I get to know the person, I’ll give them a tailored plan after phone call. And then I’ll also coach them during the call and things they should be doing. And then same thing with the YouTube, I get to know them, their channel, their aspirations, you know, they asked me how they should monetize things like that. And we also talk about best practices for growing a YouTube channel. And also any specific questions that they may have. That’s really cool that you said you have a tailored plan for them. You send that after the call type of thing, or it’s almost like a summary. Yeah, so I probably oversold it and making it sound like you know, beautiful financial plan. It’s really just a it’s notes from the call summarizing what we talked about what their next steps should be, based on what we talked about them. Wait, if they’re not taking notes on the call, they’re gonna forget half the stuff I said anyway. So yeah, I feel like if I follow up with an email with the things that we talked about the key takeaways, what they’re doing well, what they’re not doing well and what they’re getting

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should be, it just helps reinforce what they need to do. I love that I feel like you’re Yeah, you’re like going the extra mile for them doing that, I think and do you find that you get like recurring clients maybe even from doing that or so I try that’s a good question. I try and set up maybe touch points. So if they say hey, I’m gonna pay off my car in seven months or I’m getting a promotion in seven months or blah, blah blah, I’ll say hey, let’s knock out x y&z call me back in seven months, that kind of a thing because there’s no point of them spending the money, you know if their situation is the same, but going that little extra mile. I’ve never gotten. I know this sounds like I’m beating my chest, but I really don’t care. I’m proud of it. I’ve never gotten less than a five star review. And I think he would give me like six out of five they could.

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That’s amazing. Yeah. So we talked about a lot of different things. You know, what are your future plans in terms of everything like are you focused on one more than the other like is coaching kind of on the side contents more important right now? What’s the plan coaching coaching is the income

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That allows me to eat out a lot.

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So that’s like the, that’s like the side hustle. My main focus is are definitely the blog. And I want to talk to you after this call, maybe as like an accountability partner. So, like, I know people have like, gym partners versus like, they’ll never work out. But when you get that call, like, dude, let’s go. Let’s go, you know, maybe like an accountability partner for a blog, you know, definitely want to find one of those. And then also affiliate marketing, so blog, affiliate marketing, and continue to do what I’m doing with the YouTube channel. Awesome. Let’s do it. Like I’ve been calling me like accountability partners have been great. So yeah, so we you know, we’ve talked a lot about all these things. I think everything’s gonna help my viewers and listeners out there. So this has been really great. Where can people find you? Yeah, so definitely number one, sources, whiteboard, finance, whiteboard, one word finance. The other word. If you type that into Google or YouTube, you’ll find me Instagram at whiteboard finance, all spelled out Twitter at whiteboards.

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fin fi n. And that’s pretty much it. You know, I’m on LinkedIn, you know, sometimes I post my stuff there, sometimes they don’t. But really those three platforms for sure. And then whiteboard finance, calm knock on wood, maybe by the end of q1 or something 2020. So, Awesome. Cool. I’ll link all that below. And any last advice for people trying to build an online business or build wealth through investments, things like that? Yeah, I think that you got to stay the course whether you’re investing for the long term, or whether you’re trying to create a brand or YouTube channel or a blog, such as yourself, you got to stay the course because I feel like in this day and age of instant gratification, people give up way too soon, and they’ll never realize their potential. So I think that if you just give it you know, one year, two years, five years, you know, there’s that famous phrase that says, Yeah, I became an overnight success after 20 years. You know what I mean? And that’s true. You know, most people that aren’t just you know, flash in the pan and get lucky most people are successful because they keep doing the right things day in and

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Do Awesome, cool, thanks for all the advice and tips. I think you know, it’s gonna be really informative for the viewers and listeners out there. So thanks again Marco for coming on the show. Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Sure. So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode, please make sure to rate review and subscribe. It really helps our podcast grow. And thanks again. I’ll see you guys in the next one.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai