At age 27 Rachel Richards quit her job and retired to focus on her dream of teaching others how to do the same thing. She now works when, where, and IF she wants and has the freedom and flexibility to follow her passions and travel the world.
Rachel talks to us about how she wrote her first book and created her first online course and gives insight on how others can do the same thing for themselves - creating your own stream of "wake-up money"!
Rachel is also offering you the opportunity to download her Passive Income Starter Kit for free! Just click here and download it now!
You can follow Rachel in the following places:
Web
TikTok
Instagram
Facebook
Did you miss the Content Creators Conference Virtual Summit? You can still get access to it by visiting here: https://contentcreatorsconference.com/
At age 27 Rachel Richards quit her job and retired to focus on her dream of teaching others how to do the same thing. She now works when, where, and IF she wants and has the freedom and flexibility to follow her passions and travel the world.
Rachel talks to us about how she wrote her first book and created her first online course and gives insight on how others can do the same thing for themselves - creating your own stream of "wake-up money"!
Rachel is also offering you the opportunity to download her Passive Income Starter Kit for free! Just click here and download it now!
You can follow Rachel in the following places:
Web
TikTok
Instagram
Facebook
Did you miss the Content Creators Conference Virtual Summit? You can still get access to it by visiting here: https://contentcreatorsconference.com/
Rob Ainbinder:
[inaudible] welcome to the content
Rob Ainbinder:
Chat episode nine, the show where we invite you to join us in a chat about content, ideation, creativity, and being an influencer I'm Robin binder
Kristen Daukas:
And I'm Kristin docus. We always do that. Let me introduce myself. I was just saying on the other mic. Okay.
Rob Ainbinder:
Today we welcome Rachel Richards, AK money, honey, Rachel to the content creators chat. Rachel is an Amazon bestseller course creator real estate investor, and professional speaker who retired at age 27. Rachel, welcome to the show.
Rachel Richards:
Hey Rob and Kristen, thank you for having me. Thanks for joining us. I'm so excited to get to know you. You too. Thank you.
Rob Ainbinder:
So we'll kick it off, uh, with this question. What's the moment in your past that you, that puts you on the road to success in your current line of business?
Rachel Richards:
Wow, there's, there's a lot of those moments, but one in particular is being in middle school and high school and growing up in a really wealthy County. I, for example, some of the kids in my high school got brand new BMWs when they turned 16 and my family was not so much operating that way. We weren't going on family trips, let alone even going out to eat at restaurants. So I remember feeling at a young age, like I didn't fit in and that's not the way you want to feel in middle school and in high school. So I thought to myself pretty early on, I don't want to end up like everyone else struggling with money. I don't want to have to borrow money from my family and friends to make it to my next paycheck or operate on a strict budget for the rest of my life.
Rachel Richards:
And I realized that what I did then would either set me up for wealth or for poverty. So that kind of sparked a fire in me. I started becoming even more of a finance nerd than I already was, and I learned everything I possibly could about achieving financial independence. That's awesome. Um, what, how long would you say, why don't you tell us exactly all the things that you do? Can you kind of just give us, uh, a little, a history of when you hit that moment, what did you do next? What did you say? I just had an epiphany. I'm going to do X for at first it was, I'm going to learn everything I can about real estate investing because to me at the time I had just read rich dad, poor dad. And that was my first glimpse at real estate investing. So that was my path to financial independence.
Rachel Richards:
So I started learning everything I could. I paid my way through, through college selling Cutco cutlery, Cutco knives. So I was able to graduate without debt. I became a financial advisor and then it took a few years for me to really start investing in real estate and creating passive income streams. And what was your process? So now, now, now what now what your, um, key components, what, what are you doing now? So I have several different passive income streams now that are bringing in $15,000 a month in passive income. So the biggest one is the rental income we have about four. We own about 40 units in Louisville, Kentucky, my husband and I, then I have my book royalties from my two books, which are bringing in about five grand a month in profit. And then my third biggest income stream is my online course.
Rachel Richards:
Um, and that brings in about five grand a month in profit as well. We do have several other smaller income streams, but those are the main three.
Kristen Daukas:
So let's talk about your online course. Let's say, and there are quite a few of them, but it is a great way. And actually you call it passive. I call it wake up money. And Rob always last one. I say this, but it's like, it's wake up money. You wake up and you got money in the bank. Yes. It's making money while you sleep, but there's, it's real. Oh, absolutely. So what are, do you see any, what do you think is, let's say there's a stay-at-home mom, right? She wants to stay home with her kids, but she also wants to start generating some income. What would you say is a, are you saying is a good, low entry?
Rachel Richards:
Not saying high profit, but yeah. Ideally high profit, but a low entry idea that the average person could easily do. I think both writing a book and creating a course are low entry. And typically when someone says low entry, they mean like a low capital investment, right? Because when you're creating passive income, it's either going to take time or money to create you ha you can't get around that. It's going to take one or the other or both. So the first question to ask yourself is which do you have more of time or money? So for the people that might have a lot of time and not a lot of money creating royalty based products is great things like writing a book or doing a print on demand business or creating an online course when it comes to both books and courses. The one thing I always tell people is you have to understand your unique value proposition, right?
Rachel Richards:
Because there are thousands, there's millions of books, there's millions of online courses. So why would someone buy yours? Oh, they're over the millions of others that are already out there. So I'll give you a concrete example with my first book money, honey, because it's a personal finance book. Guess what? There's a lot of those, but I approached it from a different perspective because I was a former financial advisor. Even in my early twenties, my family and friends would come to me for financial advice, which was great. I love to help people, but then I began to wonder, well, why aren't they learning about this on their own? Why aren't they reading books? And then I remembered, Oh yeah, personal finance is boring, right? It's, it's intimidating, it's complex. It's dry, no wonder people don't like to learn about it. So I thought to myself, how can I make this topic sassy and fun and simple.
Rachel Richards:
And that's where the idea for money honey came from. As far as I knew there, wasn't another book out there that did that. And so I wrote it about finance in such a unique, fun way that it really resonated with female millennials. And that's kind of the problem that I was solving. So that's really what you need to think of first and foremost, as you consider writing a book or creating an online course, that seems to be a recurring theme as far as you know, and I say this a lot with the clients that I work with and, you know, uh, creators that I work with is there is nothing out there that you are that's original. There's nothing. It has all been said, it's all been written, but what has, what it hasn't, it hasn't been done from your point of view and then from your voice, because you're very right.
Kristen Daukas:
It's like, I remember when I was pregnant, it's like the girlfriend guide, the girlfriend's guide had just started because you're talking 22 years ago. Right. Um, and so nobody wanted to hear the boring, you know, typical pregnancy books, but she did it in such a way. It was so relatable. And that sounds like, and I'm going to buy your book for my three girls. Cause they're all between the ages of 17 and 23 and they need this kind of stuff. That'll resonate with them because you know, you're closer to their age group than I am. Yep. Yeah. And that's something that kind of held me back to your point. You know, at first I was comparing myself to Dave Ramsey and I was like, well, I'm not Dave Ramsey. I'm not the number one expert. I'm not Susie Orman. So who am I to write this book? But then I realized, wait a second. I can relate to female millennials in a way that Dave Ramsey just can't. So I firmly do believe everyone has a unique gift, a unique voice that they can share with the world. It's exactly right. Yeah.
Kristen Daukas:
So true. How long would you say it took you to create your course and for it to become profitable for you?
Rachel Richards:
Okay. So books and courses are kind of the opposite in a couple of ways with a book it's a long lead time you're putting in a lot of money or a lot of time upfront, and then not necessarily sure how well it's going to sell with a course. It's best to approach it the opposite way. It's best to pre-sell it, sell it before you actually create it. And you put in, you know, terminology like, Hey, if this isn't a done deal, you know, you could be refunded if there's not enough signups and such, you know, things like that. But the way I did my courses that I put the landing page together, first I put the sales page together. My course is called get your financial bleep together. And it goes along with my first book money, honey. So I had all the marketing, I started putting it out there and started to get signups.
Rachel Richards:
And I just had a minimum figure in mind if I didn't get X number of signups based on this price, I wasn't going to go through with it because it wouldn't be worth my time. So I did get to that amount. Um, I offered my initial round of the course as a beta launch, meaning, Hey, this is the beta. It's not going to be perfect. I need your feedback on this as we go. And so I did a special, deeply discounted rate of $177 for the course. Um, it's an eight week course and I ended up having 50 beta members sign up, which is 30 more than my goal. So it worked out really well. Um, it was great having a beta group because not only did I have kind of that proof of upfront, I made the money before I even created the course, but their feedback was invaluable to me at the end of the beta round, I ended up doing redoing probably half of the course videos based on their feedback.
Rachel Richards:
And the final version of the course is super strong because interesting. So now is everything prerecorded? Yes. And it was all prerecorded. It's like a training videos, there's templates and work worksheets. There's a Facebook group. So my time investment now is minimal and I just really need to market it and get people into it. And then I don't have to do much about how long would you say it took you to build? Did you build it as you went or did once you hit your threshold, did you say, okay, now I'm here. Did you build the entire thing that I guess you kind of had to, you didn't re release them one-on-one did you? It was just like here's the eight week course. And I did, I did release it one, like I drifted out once a week because within the sales page I had at least planned out my curriculum.
Rachel Richards:
I had at least thought, okay, weeks one through eight, here's the topics I'm going to cover. Then once I got the signups, I started dripping them out once per week. So I, after the enrollment closed, I would spend each week scripting out the videos, recording and editing the videos and getting them uploaded. So I probably, I mean, it was a lot of time. This took a lot of time, but I probably spent overall between the marketing and the launch to finishing the course creation, I would say 160 to 200 hours. It was a lot. Yeah. But I mean, that's just, that's how you create a passive income stream. As you work really, really hard, then you create it in such a way that you can keep selling it forever and ever absolutely wake up money in your, since you are very involved with them. Are there certain kinds that you think work better than others?
Kristen Daukas:
Are there, have you, or, and on the flip side of that, are there courses or, um, groups or passive income things that just don't sell? Well, it just depends because anyone can go out and try to create any type of royalty based passive income stream. And if they haven't thought through their target audience and like the solution that they're, or the problem that they are solving, it's going to be really hard for them to sell no matter what they do. So you really need to think through that first and foremost, above anything in terms of different types of online courses, some people do prerecorded videos, some people run live courses. In my experience, I've found that obviously to be passive, it needs to be a prerecorded video, but normally that comes with a lower price point, right? So if I was going to ever do a live course, it would be something that was offered at a much higher price point to compensate for my ongoing time.
Rachel Richards:
And for the essentially it's turning into an active income stream if you do it that way. So I think it just depends on your preference and what the, however, if you did one that was live, I mean, you're recording it. So then, you know, you're, you know, the live version of it's a thousand dollars for an eight week course, for instance, but then you record it and then again, now you've got a different one to sell. How many do you have? Just one. I have two courses. They're both prerecorded and I'm planning on launching a new course this year about real estate investing.
Rob Ainbinder:
Very cool. Cool. So we're talking to money, honey, Rachel Richards, Amazon bestseller, finance guru, quash course creator real estate investor, and professionals speaker. So Rachel, um, how do you find inspiration to create,
Rachel Richards:
Um, at first it was this extreme passion about personal finance, because when you think about it, we are in a financial education crisis. At no point in our lives, are we taught how to manage our money and then we're left as young adults to try to figure it out all on our own. And I have seen a way too many of my friends and family members and people that I know struggle with feelings of shame and guilt and embarrassment when it comes to their money and for whatever, for whatever reason, that just, that just really speaks to me. It touches me in a way that I, and I know enough about personal finance that I'm like, I can make a difference here. This is what I want to do. So the beginning of my business with my books and my courses was really one of passion.
Rachel Richards:
It wasn't even necessarily, I want to make all this money teaching people. It was truly that I wanted to help people. And that's why I think it's done so well in the long-term in terms of ideas now, though, um, I just listened to my platform. So it's great once you, cause I started with no followers, nothing, zero platform and I, it was a little bit harder to figure things out. Now I have a platform that I can go ask for what they want. You know, what kind of content do you want? What kind of book do you want me to write next? What problems are you, are you facing that I can help with? So it's a lot easier for me to do idea about validation and, and do market research. And that's why I know my platform really wants real estate content. So that's the next obvious place for me to go.
Kristen Daukas:
It's so funny because, um, Rob and I are currently working on a mastermind group. Now we were chatting a little bit before you jumped in and you know, all the different offshoots, you know, ours is more obviously for content creators, right. But once you kind of have that's the top of it, right? And then you've got, like you just said real. So we actually were talking about real estate because it's such a set, you know, it's, there are a lot of people that are real estate agents. And so it's a very competitive market to be in and that's creating content, creating great social media. Um, as a real estate agent is one, one of the key ways to stand out and make a difference. So we have already determined that we're going to have, you know, underneath the, just the content creators, a mastermind group then have, that's definitely real estate agents are definitely going to be one of the segments, as you know, and then we're looking at just the different other, uh, pillars that come off of that because it's all, all the content, you know, the, the message needs to get out there, but it's just so uniquely different to individual, um, type.
Rachel Richards:
Yeah. Yes, I agree. I mean, there's so many opportunities of ways you can help people. And once you start paying attention online to problems that people are facing or things that, that people are complaining about, that's when you can jump in and try to solve their problems for them, and people will pay you to do that. Exactly. What's one of your favorite ways to create? I personally am a strong writer. I've always been a strong writer. And even when I was a little kid, I used to write little short stories like fiction, short stories. So it's been a dream of mine for a long time to write a book. In fact, I have read a statistic recently that something like 82 or 84% of Americans, dream of writing a book, they dream of becoming an author. So it's kind of this hidden dream that I think a lot of us have deep down, but that's what I prefer.
Rachel Richards:
So I've done professional speaking. I certainly speak on a lot of podcasts, but I do think that I can express my ideas in a stronger way when I'm able to write them down. So that's what I prefer to do, even when I'm creating my courses. I'm writing out my scripts first, before I go on camera, just because it's better that way for me. Do you do a lot of video or do you let me re I mean, do you not long form video, but are you using any, uh, to promote yourself? Are you using any of the other sites such as reels on Instagram or Tech-Talk or anything of that nature? I recently got on Tech-Talk, which is, and at first it was just this fun thing for me to do. And then, um, I truly accidentally went viral posting this makeup video that I, I created it to send to my sisters and then the whole world saw it like 3 million, 3 million people, literally how many views?
Rachel Richards:
Yeah. So that was crazy. So I got a ton of followers and I was like, okay, I need to transition this into a finance account now because I don't want to be makeup, honey. I want to be money, honey. So I have started doing finance videos and it actually is kind of fun. I think if you take the pressure off yourself on Tik TOK, which I think is easy to do, you can have fun with it and you're forced to stay under 60 seconds. It's not like you have to go say this long speech or whatever. So it's been a huge source of leads and sales for me so far. It's, that's awesome. I'm glad to hear that because I get absolute. That's why I was at that's where I was going with. The question is I can absolutely see with what you're doing and with your passion, with that millennial and now gen Z group, that you would resonate with them, that you can put some great tips on it's like, I remember sending a they're showing reading, and just showing my oldest, that whole concept of if you, if you invest $5,000 or a thousand dollars when you're 18 and you know, just within the, by the time that you retire, it's like that, that alone would be worth over a million dollars.
Rachel Richards:
I mean, something like that, you know, just little tidbits and breaking it down to their not level. That sounds awful, but you know what I mean, to, to how they absorb it, it would be a lot of fun and you could make fine. Yeah. And you make a good point about the people that I'm reaching on Tik TOK. It's, it's gen Z, it's some of the younger millennials, but I think content creators as a whole needs to pay attention to the demographics of each social media platform. Right? So there's so many social media platforms. It is better to do one or two really well than to try to do them all. So people don't try to do them all. There's too many, you know, when you think about take talk, it's the gen Z, Instagram is more millennials. Facebook is more older people and LinkedIn is business professionals. And Pinterest is like women who want to spend money. So there's all these different options figure out where your target audience is and go to that platform.
Rob Ainbinder:
And it's just, like you said, you know, know your target audience and who you're serving.
Rachel Richards:
Yeah. That's the key, I'll tell you something about Tik TOK. There's a huge gen X, my generation generation X on there. And I just, I bet something that would go over really well. If you decided you want to add it into your content calendar is finances for divorced women. Ooh. Yeah, yeah. Or even like newly married couples either way when you're combining or separating. Yeah. That's a tough transition point. Yup. So, you know, if you've got any like tidbits for, you know, that, you know, the, because 50% of us are myself included, um, and you know, I've always worked. Um, so that's, I'm not saying it's losing half my household income. Wasn't hard, but at the same time you've got there. There's so many that are just really struggling. It's like, you know, quick little tips and you know, and a lot of women, um, and I know this is no surprise to you just, um, ha they were, they had no dealings with the household finances. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of the opposite in my marriage. My husband doesn't know how to log into any of our accounts. That was mine. Uh, what were you going to say, Robin,
Rob Ainbinder:
If you want it to reach some older women, uh, demographically focus on the whole widow or widower hood events that happen too. Um, I know you've got your core, but I know that a lot of women that experienced loss, um, the husband did all of that.
Rachel Richards:
Yeah. Yeah. That's so true. There's so many different life events that people go through that changes the game financially. And then it's like, what do I do now? So you've definitely, you know, with your deliverance of being much more upbeat than the typical financial planner advisor demographic, that's all I'm going to say. I'm not going to say how I want to say it. So I'll just,
Rob Ainbinder:
Are there any, um, books, courses, magazines, or websites you recommend for other course creators book for property investors?
Rachel Richards:
Um, yes, there's, there's so many things. So Amy Porterfield, I haven't purchased any of her like courses or programs, but I follow her and she's huge with online courses and marketing. So I think she's a great person to just follow and absorb her information. Um, I get a lot of information in Facebook groups too. There are so many Facebook groups for authors for real estate investors. There's one, that's like 20 books to 50 K that's. That's a great Facebook group for authors. Also SPF community is another great Facebook group. And then for real estate investors, there are some really good podcasts out there. There's bigger pockets is the big one. They also have a great website with a ton of resources. And then I also love afford anything by Paula pants because she talks about a mixture of money management and real estate investing. Very cool.
Kristen Daukas:
Um, Rachel, we're coming in on the end of our time with you. I will, or we will be putting all of your information and links, et cetera, in the show notes, but is there a, if you want to kind of give everybody the quick rundown of where they can find you? Yes. Thank you so much. So both of my books, money, honey and passive income, aggressive retirement are available on Amazon and ebook, paperback and audiobook. And then what I'd love to do for your listeners is if anyone wants to download my passive income starter kit, I will give that for free so they can go to money, honey, rachel.com/bonus to download that. Awesome. Awesome. Rob, we got any more questions in the, in the hopper?
Rob Ainbinder:
No, I think that's everything that I wanted to cover. Rachel. I really appreciate you coming on to our podcast today and it was really great to kind of learn some of the process behind what you've developed for your audience.
Rachel Richards:
Thank you. Thank you both so much for having me. It was awesome. Thanks, Rachel. And uh, to everyone out there, keep on creating your great content and if you have any questions, please reach out to Robert. I please remember to subscribe. And however it is that you get your podcasts and we thank everybody for tuning in and listening everybody. It
Rob Ainbinder:
[inaudible].