Building and owning a “digital lifestyle business” is the key to financial freedom and a flexible lifestyle.
Ashe Oro: 00:00 What's up and welcome back to the Liberty Entrepreneurs Podcast. I'm your host, Ashe Oro, and we've got a return guest today, Kevin Geary. He's the founder of sixfiguregrind.com and most recently The 250,000 Society. I think he calls The 250k Society. Welcome back to Liberty Entrepreneurs, Kevin.
Kevin Geary: 00:20 Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.
Ashe Oro: 00:21 Yeah. Listeners will recognize Kevin from episode 70 where we talk about everything you know about food is wrong, but I had to get Kevin back on the show because there's this concept of a digital lifestyle business that he's been promoting on social media and on his podcasts and on his websites, and it really clicks with me, someone who's a digital entrepreneur and nomad and loves the idea of build a business that takes care of you and your family, and you don't have to build the next Microsoft or Apple.
Ashe Oro: 00:52 Kevin, can you give us a brief background of who you are and what is the Six Figure Grind?
Kevin Geary: 00:59 That is my current mission is to help anybody who's interested. If you're out there listening and you have some entrepreneurial blood inside you, and you want to take advantage of what I see as the biggest opportunity of the history of the human race really when you look at it. The ability to build an online lifestyle business like you just said takes care of yourself and your family yet you don't have to go to the length of building some massive thing that has a bunch of risks and that you need venture capital for and all of this other stuff. Right? It's just an online business with very low overhead that you can manage doing something that you love and it doesn't take a ton of your time. It gives you location independence. It gives you financial independence. It gives you schedule independence.
Kevin Geary: 01:47 When we talk about freedom, there isn't really a way to get more freedom than that especially if you compare it to conventional landscape of business right now where most people are married to a location and a schedule, and they have to ask permission if they want to travel the world or something for just a few days even. Right? There is no freedom in that model. This would be the ultimate freedom building on my lifestyle business. My mission is to help people take advantage of that.
Ashe Oro: 02:19 Did you previously come from the corporate world?
Kevin Geary: 02:23 Not the corporate world, but the brick and mortar world for sure. The very first real established business that I built, I've been an entrepreneur pretty much my entire life. I was a co-owner of a martial arts studio. I built myself a location and a schedule, and I basically built myself a job. I did not like the martial arts industry the way that it was headed as I got towards the end of that journey. A lot of selling outs. I was partnered with a guy that just wasn't a good fit for me, and I wanted out. Right?
Kevin Geary: 02:59 I saw the Internet as a way to do that. I started building online businesses. Since 2013, I would say August 2013, is the month where I got rid of that other business, that brick and mortar martial arts studio, went online full time and I've been supporting myself and my family of five online full time since then.
Ashe Oro: 03:25 I actually remember that. I was one of your clients back then. I kept up with you on the School Sucks Podcast. I think you were semi-frequent guest on there. You're right. Liberty Entrepreneurs is all about creating and building liberty in your own life and I completely agree with you as someone who has built a digital lifestyle business myself Liberty Virtual Assistants. I came from more of the corporate or brick and mortar world where I sat at a desk every single day doing almost the same thing every day with slight variations. I would have pinned up pictures of Thailand and Honduras and all these places that I told myself I would travel to, but the problem was I only got two weeks every year of vacation time. While I knew it was voluntary for me to be there I didn't feel that I was truly free until like you said I started building this online business.
Ashe Oro: 04:20 Let's get down in the nitty gritty here, Kevin. I know that you create a lot of content and high quality content. Let me give you props on that as someone who has created and struggled with content, you offer a lot of high quality content and the value of the content that you create is always actionable, which is something that I really appreciate. Let's just talk about some of this content that you've created and why you give away what seems like really valuable inside tips for free for people because doesn't that kind of just educate potential competition?
Kevin Geary: 04:55 You know it kind of does in a way. It depends on what your strategy is. Right? My strategy online primarily has been a content marketing strategy, so for those who aren't familiar with that term it's the production of content and that content shows up in a way that's very helpful for your target market. When people come across that content or they search for that content on Google for example and that comes up as a search result, they click on it, they consume that content, they like what they hear, they like what they see, they want more, they start following you. Right?
Kevin Geary: 05:26 You start to build an audience. You build a tribe, and then that is just basically attention at the end of the day. When you have somebody's attention or lots of people's attention you can monetize that attention. Now the way that I do it and the way that I teach it is not to just monetize attention. It's not like all right, well, we have all these people, let's just run ads and put ads in front of them and advertisers will pay us. Like to me that's a very cheap way of monetization. Whereas for me and the way the process that I teach it's all about building value. It's all about identifying pain points, a niche, or a market or desires and fulfilling those.
Kevin Geary: 06:07 When people pay you literally you are having a significant impact on their life. That's what they're trading their money for. It's not like when anybody hears, "Oh, yeah, make money online," they think like, "Sure." They think like ads, they think all this nonsense. Right? No. I'm talking about building legitimate online businesses where you are creating a significant impact on people's lives and hopefully that's aligned with something that you are passionate about doing. That's another part of this that I teach. It's not like, "Well, let's just come up with an idea and build a business around it."
Kevin Geary: 06:44 No, we need to find something that you love to do, you're passionate about, you're pretty good at. Let's build a business around that.
Ashe Oro: 06:51 I'm absolutely going to come back to that passion because it's something that is necessary. As far as like the foundational steps of creating content because you know I did this with Liberty Entrepreneurs. I never thought about cash flowing Liberty Entrepreneurs or making it the business. I know that you've done similar things. Does it seem counterintuitive to a new digital entrepreneur to create all this content and spend all this time and then just give it away for free? Is there like something that clicked for you that's like, "Okay, now I have this tribe. I have these people's attention. Now I can start selling them something." Or did you have the game plan coming in like, "Okay, this is what I'm going to write about. This is what I'm going to eventually offer them in services or products," and immediately upsell them. Was it more of an evolution of thought?
Kevin Geary: 07:37 Well, in the early days of building online businesses it was an evolution of thought mainly because I was also new. I was learning how to build online businesses. Now I've done it for so long, and I've helped so many other people do it, that I know a predictable repeatable process for this. Right? One thing that I just released that people can get for free is called the One Page Freedom Plan. It's basically a one page business plan for creating an online lifestyle business. It comes with a 90 minute online workshop that's completely free as well. So that workshop basically goes into detail on all the points of the One Page Freedom Plan and explains why each point is so important and how to create that plan in an effective manner for their lifestyle business.
Kevin Geary: 08:27 I'm helping people start through that model. To answer your question, with Six Figure Grinds for a lot of businesses there is a journey obviously that a customer might go through. With online business in Six Figure Grind there's going to be people at the very, very beginning, and then there's going to be people who have been doing this, and they want to take their business to the next level or they've gotten some success and they're stuck, and they want to get unstuck.
Kevin Geary: 08:54 I made the decision, all right, well which group am I really going to monetize here? Which group do I really want to serve with a product or a service? When I was looking at it it was the people who want to take their businesses to the next level or get unstuck in their business. I'm talking completely about online businesses. I can product ... Now, I also want to attract lots of people who want to start online businesses. Right? I don't necessarily want to make them buy into something to get started. I'm free because I know that if they use my content to get started, and they see traction and they see momentum, they're going to ask me for help to get to the next level. Right?
Kevin Geary: 09:41 If I can get them started for free and gain the trust and show them I know what I'm talking about, I'm going to be the person they come to when they're ready to pay and go to the next level.
Ashe Oro: 09:50 Right.
Kevin Geary: 09:51 That's how I can create tons and tons of really awesome content like the One Page Freedom Plan, like the Freedom Plan Master Class, like all my blog posts and not worry about the fact that it's free.
Ashe Oro: 10:01 Yeah, it's like the idea is Kevin's giving this type and this quality and this amount of information away for free, I can't imagine what he's giving away behind his pay wall.
Kevin Geary: 10:13 That, and then there's a second thing is doing work inside The 250k Society I'm working very closely with online business owners to grow their business. Every conversation I have I realize this could never be a blog post. This could never be a podcast episode. It literally takes that environment of working closely with people to change their business. It can't be a one size fits all thing that's just published in a blog.
Ashe Oro: 10:39 Right. It's a perspective building. I'd like to talk about that perspective building because this whole idea of a digital lifestyle business even though to you and I it seems obvious at this point, it's still very under the radar and obviously this isn't going to be taught in university classes. I just saw that Microsoft and a couple of big name, Apple, some of these businesses came out last week or maybe it was this past week and said that they no longer require a college degree to get hired as an engineer or as anyone. What does that say to you about where this economy is going?
Kevin Geary: 11:17 I think for a very long time various aspects of the economy relied on gatekeepers of various types. The Internet has brought a lot of that down. For example, what we're doing now was always protected by gatekeepers. You couldn't just have a radio show, you know? Now you can talk to anybody anywhere in the world as often as you want. There's no gatekeepers. The university has created gatekeepers out of degrees and so on and so forth. We went away from a model of apprenticeship where people actually learned under other people, gained those skills, and then became the top person.
Kevin Geary: 11:57 It was a perfectly fine model. For some reason we went to the university model where everybody needs a permission slip to go and do work.
Ashe Oro: 12:05 Right.
Kevin Geary: 12:05 I think the Internet has really helped tear that down and we're going to move back to a model where I think the Googles of the world and the Facebooks of the world are starting to realize, "Well, the people coming out of universities still need a lot of work. We have to mold them. We have to get them up to speed because a lot of the stuff they're learning is not even hyper relevant to the current time.
Ashe Oro: 12:28 Or relevant at all.
Kevin Geary: 12:29 Or relevant at all. So they've had all these people. They've realized I think they've had a bunch of developers who are amazing developers and up on current technology trying to get in, and there's just this rule that was like, "No, you don't have a degree so you can't get it." Right?
Kevin Geary: 12:46 They're like, "What are we doing here? We're turning away some of the best people in the world because of this rule." It goes back to something that I've recognized for a long time in that businesses are going to start getting ... Especially when everybody has a degree, businesses are going to get tired of looking at permission slips. I just put this on Instagram today. I just put a meme about this up today. I custom created it. It's on my Instagram channel.
Ashe Oro: 13:13 What's your Instagram channel?
Kevin Geary: 13:16 Kevin Michael Geary.
Ashe Oro: 13:17 Okay.
Kevin Geary: 13:18 You can link to it in the show notes.
Ashe Oro: 13:19 Sure.
Kevin Geary: 13:21 It's basically a graphic that talks about no longer creating resumes, create case studies. A business wants somebody to come in and drop a stack of case studies on their desk. They don't want somebody to come in and drop a resume on their desk. Everybody has a resume. Everybody's resume says the same shit. Drop a stack of case studies that says, "Look at what I did, this, this, this, and this." You're hired. You're done. You drop a resume, you might as well show yourself out.
Ashe Oro: 13:49 It's like what I love about GitHub is for programmers I don't need to see your resume. Show me your GitHub. Show me what you've built.
Kevin Geary: 13:56 Show me what you've done.
Ashe Oro: 13:58 I'm tired of talking the talk. Show me how you've built the build or whatever. Even with like Liberty Virtual Assistants. The virtual assistants aren't even close to the types of resumes that you'd get at Google, but I've thought about not even checking resumes anymore. Don't even send us a resume. Show us what you've built. Show us who you've managed, show us how you've managed them. Show us what tools. Give us a little lume video or something to show us what tools you know how to organize yourself in. Can you work a CRM? Can you work a calendar? Are you familiar with professional emails? What can you do because I don't care what somebody else says you can do on some piece of paper.
Ashe Oro: 14:34 It's really amazing how it's so simple in terms of like just digging in there and working hard and finding a niche. It's not simple to create a profitable business, that's for sure. What do you credit that mentality, that perspective, that hustle, that grind to just take the time and work hard? Maybe it's not going to be your first or second choice, not choice, but option. Maybe you're not going to have the success that you want in your first time, but what is it? What type of characteristics does someone have to be a grinder?
Kevin Geary: 15:08 Well, I think first of all you have to be willing to hustle. You have to be willing to grind. Now Six Figure Grinds, the name Six Figure Grind, I'm still not even like married to it that much or even ... I definitely see some downsides to it. I don't want people to think that it's going to be a grind forever for example. Right? At the same time I think the reason I chose that is because it's important that if people are going to do this that they're wiling to grind. Right? A lot of people again hear, "Oh, making money online, like, I just click a few buttons, and just ..." You know it's like an ATM machine or something. That's not how it works. You have to be willing to put in legit work.
Kevin Geary: 15:50 You do have to be able to manage yourself especially in the beginning. I don't think this is so much of a thing, but when people start getting success I notice they're like it's very easy to just "Oh, let me sit on my back porch for a few hours and chill," instead of like actually doing something for their business and moving things forward. That's something that people can deal with once they get started going. Just to get started, the main thing is to overcome the fear.
Kevin Geary: 16:18 I think there's a lot of fear. There's a lot of baggage around getting going with something like this, and I know that because I talk to so many people who they have an idea, we've validated it, they've done the One Page Freedom Plan, and yet they're still like just not pulling the trigger on it for various reasons. Getting over that first hurdle once people are implementing and they're going, then I've noticed their natural drive takes over.
Kevin Geary: 16:44 I think that most people, most human beings, have that drive inside them to like, "All right, if I've got a real vision that I'm passionate about, I'm going to execute on it." The big problems come in when people choose something that just is like a money making opportunity, and no passion, well good luck with that.
Ashe Oro: 17:02 Yeah. Do you think the passion comes from solving pains. We're not taught in school to look at pains in society and then build a business around solving that pain. Do you think that's it? It's just people aren't passionate or bought into the pains?
Kevin Geary: 17:17 I think that's a huge reason. The whole process of going to get a degree and then getting a job is kind of like pigeon holes people almost into doing something that they're not really that passionate about. Because when you're super young and you're like, "All right, what should I get a degree in?" You might choose something that sounds good at the time and you think you're passionate about, but then you get so far in.
Kevin Geary: 17:41 Let me use a lawyer as an example. I want to be a lawyer. We're going to go to law school and all this stuff, and you grind and you grind. Then you might determine at some point, "Well, I don't really like ... I'm not that passionate about this," except you're so pot committed at this point. You spent so much money. You spent so much time. Your parents are expecting you to finish this thing and go up. Now we're taking all these people, we're putting them in positions that they realized at some point down the line they're not super passionate about.
Kevin Geary: 18:11 Then we see drive problems, and then we see like the companies are complaining, "Oh my workers aren't productive, blah, blah, blah." Well, you have the wrong people in the wrong seats doing the wrong thing. If we fix that, you'll see a difference in productivity.
Ashe Oro: 18:23 Yeah, I felt that in engineering. Three years into engineering undergrad, and I was like, "I hate these Laplace transforms and finding the voltage and current around all of these nodes." I'm like, "Well, I have to do it now." It's like the sunk cost fallacy. I put three years into college and $150,000 of that,