Successfully Investing As An Entrepreneur

Successfully Investing As An Entrepreneur

Tim Fitzpatrick

What are you doing with all that money you are making as a business owner? Are you blowing it on stuff that really doesn't matter or are you putting it to work for you? Our special guest helps entrepreneurs in different industries, fix their finances, learn how to invest, and then buy assets to create passive income. And today I am going to pick his brain to extract as much value as I possibly can for you. Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe marketing shouldn't be difficult. All you need is the right plan. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in. I really appreciate you. I am super excited today to have Paul Hallmie with me from Combat Business Success and Peak Performance MMA. Paul, welcome and thanks for joining me.

Paul Halme
Thanks, Tim. I'm excited to be here.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I'm excited to dig into this, man. You have a really interesting past that we will get into. I know you're going to have a ton of value here and we are going to talk about successfully investing as an entrepreneur. We were talking before we jumped on air here that there are so many entrepreneurs that are just sinking all of their money right back into their business, which is not necessarily a bad thing. If your business is growing, you can't get returns like that anywhere else. But you have all your eggs in one basket, which is not necessarily a good thing, right?

Paul Halme
Oh, 100%.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So before we dig into it, I want to ask you some rapid fire questions, help us get to know you a little bit. You ready to jump in with both feet here, Paul?

Paul Halme
Yeah. Let's go.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay. When you're not working, how do you like to spend your time?

Paul Halme
Traveling.

Tim Fitzpatrick
And what's your hidden talent?

Paul Halme
Hidden talent is helping people get past limiting money beliefs and understanding that they can have as much as they want.

Tim Fitzpatrick
It's a good hidden talent to have. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

Paul Halme
Man. This is one I got from a super rich friend is like, never invest in anything speculative unless it's amount of money you want to set on fire in your backyard.

Tim Fitzpatrick
That's a fantastic piece of advice. What's one thing about you that surprises people?

Paul Halme
I played golf in College.

Tim Fitzpatrick
You don't look like the typical golfer.

Paul Halme
Yes, I look a lot different than I did back then.

Tim Fitzpatrick
What does success mean to you?

Paul Halme
Man. Quality of life all about quality of life to me anymore.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Isn't it interesting how things change? It wasn't always quality of life for you, was it?

Paul Halme
No, I was hustle and make as much money as I could and buy a bunch of cool stuff and travel. And then you get a little bit older and your kids start getting older and you're like, I just want to enjoy things.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, man. My path has been very similar, so it's kind of interesting how things change as you get older. Where's your happy place?

Paul Halme
On an airplane at about 38,000ft. It's like my escape place is beyond. Not now. I don't like pretty all the rules and everything, but it was like, my favorite place to go is just get on a plane, fly overseas, business class, and just disappear. It is the best feeling because there's no Internet, nobody can talk to you, and you just lose yourself in yourself. And I highly recommend it once the world opens back up.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, got you. Well, now the planes are starting to get WiFi, and you can start to access everything. But for a long time, it was forced unplugging, right?

Paul Halme
Oh, it's the best. Yeah. Because literally I never take my laptop out of my bag. I just enjoy them and just disappear. It's amazing. My favorite.

Tim Fitzpatrick
What qualities do you value in the people you spend time with?

Paul Halme
Man. Honesty, drive, and just fun to be around.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So I touched on your professional experience. Tell us a little bit more about just your history, what you're doing now, types of businesses you're working with and helping.

Paul Halme
It's been crazy. I got out of College playing golf, moved down to Texas with my best friend who was trying to get UFC at the time. UFC was just in infancy stage. I got to hang out with Dana White and Joe Rogan because it was such a backyard sport, no one really paid that much attention to it. So I was working as a stockbroker, and then my best friend got in the UFC, started winning when the Alpha fighter four started traveling a bunch. And then he's like, oh, you should open up a gym. And I'm like, I don't know. I got this corporate gig, I like. And then I was like, oh, it just kind of kept pulling at me, pulling at me, and then ended up opening up a gym, got good at running a gym. Then I had, like, four at one point, and I was like, okay, I can't do this anymore. And then people started asking me for advice. And then another of my friends like, let's start a consulting company. And we scaled that up until 2020 when things got a little hairy. So it's definitely been interesting being able to consult for different businesses and different industries and then helping gym owners grow their gyms. And then my main thing is really teach people the importance of investing and looking at a long term plan. I talked to a lot of people, and unfortunately, they're in their 40s, and they're like, man, I need to get started. And I'm like, oh, boy, it's going to be a tough conversation.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. So they don't have any money saved away?

Paul Halme
Not usually. In this industry, it's tough because most of them don't have a 401K. They never worked for a company, and if they did, they were in their 20s, and they have a little bit of money. So people in the gym world don't talk about investing. They don't talk about retirement plans, things like that. So I really try to educate the people on the importance of getting started. Start now. And people like, oh, I should have started 20 years ago. It's like that old saying goes, yeah, you should have started 20 years ago or now, Sebastian, just do it. Because the human body and all this stuff with science and then you follow different podcasts. They're talking like this generation is going to live to be like 110 to 120 years old, theoretically, the ones that are just being born now. So it's like you might not start investing to your 40, but you might live to be 100. So in 30 years, mathematically, in 30 years, at 75, anybody, you go from zero to a millionaire from age 45 to 75, although obviously you want to live longer than that.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, well, gosh. And the other thing, if you think about it, more people are going to be living to 100, the typical retirement age, as it sits now.

Paul Halme
It's going up.

Tim Fitzpatrick
That ain't going to work for a lot of people, is it? They're going to be working a lot longer. Otherwise they're going to have to be saving a hell of a lot more money than they are now.

Paul Halme
Oh, yeah, 100%.

The Biggest Issues Companies Run Into with Their Finance

Tim Fitzpatrick
So let's dig into this. What are some of the biggest issues that you see from a business finance standpoint with the companies that you're working with? What mistakes and problems are they running into?

Paul Halme
The biggest one is kind of two fold. It's cash flow because a lot of them, they got into the business because they're good at something. People are listening. They're probably good at maybe they're good at sales or they built a Widget, or they run a gym, or they come up with clothing line. They're good at that. But then they're like, well, I just won't think about my finances. And it'll be okay. And it's like, no, you can't do that. You have to embrace it. So the first thing I tell people is, like, you'd be surprised how many people don't have a consistent PNL, like a good bookkeeper, a PNL. All the basic things that are real publicly traded company has. So I tell them first thing is I tell them is to treat your business like a publicly traded company, although you're never going to get your gym on that Nasdaq. But treat the same way. You get a P and L. You go through your P and L, you look at it, you sit down with your wife or your business partner, you go through the P and L like, oh, this looks good. This is good. Okay, we did this. Okay? Then you start getting understanding of like, okay, there's a lot of money coming in. There's a lot of money going out. Like, what can I do to fix this problem? And so when they start getting an idea about cash flow, you see, like, a light kind of go on in their head. They're like, Whoa, wait, I can do more things. Like, yeah, you have a bunch of money coming in and it's all going out. So figuring out where it's going, things they can do, how they can increase their cash flow, and then what they can do with that. And that's like my big passion is teaching them. We talked earlier before. People want to dump all their money, and this is the biggest argument I get all the time. People like, well, I get the best returns, put all my money into my business. I'm like, that's great. But if something goes wrong, use the gym example in 2020 or 2020. Sorry. When things got shut down, it's like, okay, hey, granted, you can't run your business. So it's like, okay, this is bad. And I had friends that had no money put away, no lines of credit established. I was like, you guys are in a lot of pain. For me, it was like, okay, got my lines of credit. I can go to this phase, and then I don't want to touch my investments. So I'd really have to. But I'm okay. And I could make it X amount of time, but just teaching them about the core basic stuff, they can't put all their money into their business.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yup. Well, my guess is correct me if I'm wrong. How many of the people that you were working with had more than one or two months of operating capital in the bank?

Paul Halme
Hardly any. Like our higher level clients do, because I've been harping on them for years. So we started consulting about five years ago. The people that do this awhile, I'm pretty hard on them. I'm like, you did have a business emergency fund. You need personal emergency fund. You need a business line of credit. Because I tried to explain to these guys because I survived 2001 as a stockbroker, and then I survived 2008 as a new business owner. When things are bad, no one wants to give you credit. You will not get away.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, exactly.

Paul Halme
It's a nightmare.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. The time to get a credit line is when you don't need it.

Paul Halme
Yes. That's why I did. Like, I have a line of credit and I never use it. I take that back. I use it so they keep it open, but I'll use it and then pay it right back off. But when the shutdowns happened, I was like, okay, cool. I've got operating capital for X amount of months, and then you have to go into the business if I have to. But luckily it didn't get that bad. But the peace of mind that I had versus some of my friends and colleagues was like, it was terrifying. Someone who got jobs, they were like, I'm gonna lose everything.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. How much operating capital for those that don't know when we're talking about operating capital, if revenue completely stopped, how much money you need every month to cover all of your expenses. How many months of operating capital do you think people should have? And this obviously is going to depend on how conservative you are. But what are your thoughts on that?

Paul Halme
A lot of people don't have any or barely any. So I kind of go back to the old school emergency fund. Six months business expenses, six months personal expenses. It's a good round number. But then some people, if they're being more aggressive or like me when you're getting I'm a little bit older now, and I'm trying to create other cash flow opportunities. So I'm like, man, I don't really want to tie up six months worth of money. So what I do is I try to keep about three months, but then I have six to twelve months in a line of credit that I can access instantly online. So I keep around that number, but I'll mess around with it depending on what I need to do. But for the average person, man, if they get a month, you see this, like, this big weight off their shoulders. Like, oh, my God, I can breathe. Okay, now you got a month. Let's get the two. And then like, okay, then they start freaking out. Like, there's too much money in my account. And it's like, don't worry about it. You'll be fine. And then at that point that I teach them, hey, give a lot, establish lines of credit, go to your bank, get well known. We learned that the hard way, as I'd always used big banks. And when all the government stuff came out, all the big banks hosed us, the little guys. And luckily I had a friend who was super successful, and he was like, hey, I'm going to give you this person's name and number. She's the VP of this community credit Union. I'm like, okay, for what he goes because they're the first ones, they're going to give the money out. And I'm like, really? And literally I got rejected from I was with Wells Fargo since I was a kid. And they were like, finally like a month into the thing, they were like, oh, hey, you might qualify. I'm like, I already got money from the community credit Union, so it's like I have a relationship with the credit Union where I know the people by name, and that's a big thing, too. So that's another tip for people even the size of your business is get to know your local banks. Because, man, the big banks, when things went bad, they didn't care about us at all.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, well, gosh, I'm trying to remember. I think it was in 2008, some of the banks started pulling lines of credit.

Paul Halme
That was terrifying. Yeah, I'm glad you said that, because actually I listened to a podcast. I forget who it was, but he was talking about, like, he was in that industry in 2008. And he said, when COVID happen, he's like, he says, you do have a line of credit. He goes, take the money out and put in your checking right now. And I was like, what is he talking about? He said, yeah, I didn't realize I wouldn't look it up in 2008 if you had a line of credit, the banks just zapped it. They were like, okay, you can't use your line of credit, but if you already took it out and had it in your checking account, then it's like, well, it's already out.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, at least you have it. If you need it. And you can always pay it back, you're going to pay a little bit of interest. But yeah, that's really interesting. 

Tim Fitzpatrick

So one of the things you touched on when I first asked this question was just you got to look at your profit and loss and your balance sheet, at least on a monthly basis. Right. Are there particular things that you recommend your clients look at each month in those statements? Otherwise because I think for a lot of people, they may just look at it and they're like, well, it's just a bunch of numbers. What does it mean?

Paul Halme
It's a lot of numbers, too. What I always tell them, obviously, now we're in a really weird time. But before I always say, look at your P and L, look at what you did last month and then compare that to last year and you want to see that number going up. Although the last two years, everybody's PNL are just blown up. My banker was like, basically, we're starting over this year, okay? Whatever she says, because they don't want to see it was weird because they don't want to see income from 2019 because it doesn't make sense anymore because the numbers are so, you know, entrepreneurs felt the pinch the last two years. So I tell them, like, okay, look at your month. Did you beat last year? Okay, good. Look at your expenses. Did you spend more than last year? If you did, why did you spend more money? Okay, it was expansion. Oh, it was new maps, it was travel. Ok, cool. That's workable. And then profits. Like, how much profit did you make this month? Because what I'd like to teach people to do and it goes back to my days as a stock broker is the end of every quarter, you do a distribution. And obviously talk to your accountant. I'm not a CPA and all that stuff. No legal advice, but I always talk to my accountant. I'm like, hey, I've got my W Two wage is this much? And she's like, okay, this is W Two, your S Corp. So you can take an owner draw up to this much. And so I take that out of the profits. But I treated just like a Corporation. So like, my wife and I'll sit down, like, okay, for January, February, March, we did this in sales, this in expenses, this in profits. Okay. This much should be in our savings account for the business. Okay, cool. 50% of it is gone. It's out of the company. And I moved over to my investment accounts without doing anything. And if they're like, oh, what if I really need that money? You can go find more money. Or worst case scenario, if you had to, you can move money back, but you don't want to because you want to keep building momentum, because money, when it moves, compound interest, money doing things. If you just leave money in a savings account, you're going to have, like, nothing, because inflation is going to eat at alive.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, especially right now.

Paul Halme
Oh, it's unbelievable.

The Best Way for You to Start Investing

Tim Fitzpatrick
So this leads into the next thing I want to ask you about, which is the best way for people to start investing. And one of the things you just touched on is, hey, at the end of every quarter, look at you're paying yourself a salary, but take that draw to get money out that shouldn't be in there or doesn't need to still be sitting in there. And you said something really powerful. You move that right into your investing account. So this isn't going into your spending bank account. It's going into an account where you are using that money to invest. That's huge. But what else do you have to add on that?

Paul Halme
It's a game changer because we'll spend the money. Like, my wife has no problem spending the money. It's like, oh, we're going on that trip. I'm like, oh, my God. So that's why I tell people, you have to budget in all those things, budget in the trips, budget in the travel, budget in dinners, budget everything into your business and still run your business, be profitable. Then you have to take that money out. And I tell people, when I tell them, you have to have the investing account separate from your bank account. Like, I don't want to log into my business account and see my investing account. It's at a different firm. I have to go to a different app, to different login. And to me, once that money's left my company, it's gone. But it's also too, like, one thing I've really worked hard on and I go to people is I don't spend it. That money is earmarked for the future. So it's like, it goes in. First thing I do after talking to my CPA and getting our plan for the year is, okay, we're going to fund the IRAs, we're going to fund the health savings account. Okay? We got this. And this. Okay. Once I hit that, then what else can I do? Okay. Then I can do a little bit non retirement or one thing I started doing now is doing private equity deals and other businesses. After the Pandemic, I was like, Man, I'm going to get involved in a lot of different industries. But the best way to circle back, to get started investing is just do it literally. People joke around like, Robin Hood gets a bad rap because people are like, oh, they're doing this with their orders. Are doing that with orders. It's still a good app. I mean, I'm not going to say use Robin Hood, but it literally is the easiest app I've ever seen in my life. Like, when I work back in the day when I was a broker, people call up and they have to pay, like, $50 a trade and be like, oh, no, go online. It's only 1995 now. It's free. And the cool thing is you have Robin Hood, you have Schwab, you have TD Ameritrade. They're all free now. They don't charge anything for the trades. And then people are like, well, I don't know what to do. And I'm like, just start researching stuff. And one of the hacks I get people is like, just watch CNBC all the time. Turn off CNN, turn off Fox, just watch CNBC. You'll be so much smarter and you'll understand. You'll hear things like, good examples. My wife didn't go to College, never any interest in finance, things like that. wwwwBut over the years of just being around it all the time, literally, she'll text me like, oh, hey, Netflix is about to report earnings. And I was like, oh, my God, I create a monster. She understands more than most of my friends because we're always on. We're always trying to learn. And then the biggest thing is you could look at, like, study Warren Buffett. He talks about how most people can't beat the SAP 500. So just invest the SP 500. That's his recommendation, not mine. And he's way smarter than me.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. From an investing standpoint, you don't need to overcomplicate this. I mean, if you really do want to keep it simple, you can and go from there. I mean, at this point, the SP 500 is pretty diverse mix of companies.

Paul Halme
People are like, well, I don't want to invest in one thing. I'm like, you know, it's literally 500 companies, and they kick out the worst ones.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. And they're all huge. They're doing business across the entire world. So it's pretty diverse. But if you want to make it more complicated, you certainly can, right? I mean, you touched on private equity investing in other businesses. Obviously, you have people investing in cryptocurrencies now. People are starting to look at NFTs. One of the things you said, though, in my rapid fire questions is with speculative investments.

Paul Halme
Yeah.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Do you have any thoughts on I don't necessarily think having speculative investments is a bad thing, but I do think it should only be a certain percentage of your portfolio. What are your thoughts on that?

Paul Halme
100%. That's the best advice. When I go back to it is like, okay, when crypto is big, it's like, okay, how much do I put in here that if it goes to zero, that sucks. People are taking out lines of credit and refinancing their house. That's a whole other animal. It's like, that's not disposable income.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah.

Paul Halme
So I dabbled in crypto the first run up and down. And then I kept buying some and still dabbled a little bit, but not to amount where I'm like, oh my God, if we lose this, my wife is going to kill me. And then of course I got into NFTs because that was the next hot thing. And I was like, of course I got jinx. First NFT I bought like, went up five X. It was like, oh, I'm a genius. I got this all figured out and then the next ten on with a zero. And I was like, okay, I'm getting close to the number that I do not want to set on fire in the backyard. So I actually pulled off a little bit on NFT because I kept getting caught up in the hype. And then it was like, oh, and it was like physically kind of draining and mentally where I'm like, this is kind of frustrating because it's hard to figure out. We're in the early stages, like Gary V and B friends. And there's some huge projects which I believe in that have a lot of utility and things like that. And there's other ones. Even Gary, he's like the King of NFT education right now. He talks about how most products are going to go to zero. There's no utility behind them. So I studied now I'm kind of studying his stuff, watching his things and avoiding buying a bunch of cheaper NFTs, thinking you're going to hit a bunch of home runs. And then it's like.

Tim Fitzpatrick
You know, some of the stuff I see happening with NFTs right now, it just reminds me of a bubble. Like, people are spending insane amounts of money for artwork. And I'm like, who is the artist behind this? This person was totally unknown three months ago and now they're selling an NFT for whatever, ten grand, 5100 thousand dollars? Are you kidding me? So obviously a very speculative space. That doesn't mean that it's a bad thing. You could make a lot of money, but it could also go to zero.

Paul Halme
Yeah. And I dabble in the NFC just to learn the technology and everything because they talk about like, when you follow Gary Vee went from Web 1.0 2 .0 now it says Web 3.0. And even the NFT projects lava tank, there's going to be so much education that you're going to understand because when all this stuff gets adopted and the blockchain gets used for more and more things, it's like it's the future and it's coming. So it's like, you better learn it. I consider it like investing in education on the NFTs that have gone bust. I'm like, well, I learned something there.

Is Passive Income Attainable?

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. So it's hard to have a conversation about investing without talking about passive income. Is it really attainable? If so, what are your thoughts on it?

Paul Halme
Yeah, 100% believe it's attainable for people. The problem is it gets such a bad rap because everybody's like, oh, I'm near 20s, create some stuff on Instagram and then create passive income. You don't have the assets to do it. And then the people are trying to create and rush and do all this weird stuff. When it's like, really? It just comes down. Like, you and I are talking earlier before the call. It just comes down to fundamentals and basics. It's like, what is the basic investment strategy? Okay, you're doing your IRAs, you're doing your retirement accounts. Okay, cool. Literally, when you get to whatever age you want to retire at, then you go talk to your advisor, you talk to Schwaber Fidel, and you create an income plan, and they're like, okay, cool. You're going to get this much money every month for the rest of your life. And then when you die, you'll have X amount left over for your heirs, or if you want to leave anything behind so you can create an income plan. But to me, that's, like, way down the road. I don't want to wait that long. So I'm like, right in the middle. Now I'm in my mid 40s, so I'm like, I don't want to wait until my retirement stuff kicks in. So I've started dabbling in more and more things where it's like investing in other companies, investing in commercial real estate, where you start getting distributions every quarter, and it gets addicting because it's like, oh, this is kind of fun. This is really cool. I think it's attainable for anybody. But the problem is people want to skip a step. And I was telling them, you have to do all your regular investing first and then build that up.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Got it? Yeah. It's interesting. A lot of people one, when you think about passive income, a lot of people automatically default to real estate, which can be passive, but it just depends on how you do it, because if you go out and buy a bunch of rental properties, which is not necessarily a bad thing, depending on how you have it set up, it may not be all that passive.

Paul Halme
I had one rental property back in the day. My wife, if I ever buy another one, she's going to leave me because it was horrible. We had a perfect tenant in there, and when they moved out, we got the nightmare tenant, and it's just like, oh, my God. It's like, I never want to go through this again. So now I look for things where I can invest money into real estate where it's like, literally, I have no say in anything. I can't even vote on anything. I get no say, but I get my distribution check, and I'm like, okay, this is the greatest thing ever.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yes. So when you start to look at some of the commercial real estate syndications that are out there. Those can be totally passive because the general partner or whoever is putting it together is the one that's doing all the leg work. So I think it's important when you look at passive income, to just think about and make sure you understand all the aspects of that particular investment to really determine. Is it as passive as you think it might be?

Paul Halme
Exactly.

Tim Fitzpatrick
I want to ask you another thing about this, because I think a lot of people in the finance space get people to think about, how much money do you need saved? Which I've always thought is a little bit backwards, because if you think about passive income, if you have enough passive income to cover your expenses each and every month, I've always been of the opinion it doesn't really freaking matter how much money you have saved. What are your thoughts on that?

Paul Halme
Yeah, I agree that we kind of dealt this, and I was part of that system, too. You've got to put all your money away. You got to save it for the next 40 years. And my wife used to get frustrated because I had an addiction to saving and investing money. It was not a healthy addiction. I had friends. If we don't eat lunch, we can do this and do this and get an extra 1% in there. And then when I'm 70, I have this much, which is fine and everything, but then things happen in life. You see people start passing away and you're like, oh, my God, this person did nothing. They waited. They wanted to wait until they were 70 and they died at 68. It's like they never got to enjoy stuff. So I've been at the thing of like, okay, entrepreneurship, create a life. I want do the things I want to do. I still always tell people, it's like, you still have to cover the basics still be investing because I want to have that nest egg. But at the same time, I'm trying to build passive income right now between now and, like, me personally, between now and 50. So I want to have it when I'm 50 that I can live off of the passive income, not touch the investments, and then just do whatever I want to do. And when you see that it's attainable, it's really cool, because other doors are opening up. We can talk about this for hours and hours and days, but once you get to accredited investor level, the world opens up. It's absolutely insane. It's like you start seeing deals where you're like, what is this? Oh, my God, this is cool. How come nobody knows about this? Because they don't tell us. They don't teach us these things. And then when you get to that level, it's like you can get access to so many more deals that you start figuring it out. Like, this is how people with money make more money. They just invest in their friends that have really good businesses, and then they just get checks. I'm like, they should teach us this in high school.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yes, they should. Now for people that don't know. Accredited investor, what does that mean?

Paul Halme
Credit investor. And there's a big controversy right now because they actually want to raise it, which I think is the biggest load of all square on here. But it's unbelievable if they try to raise it. So accredited investor currently is you have to have a million dollar net worth, excluding your primary residence. Everybody wants to include their primary residence for some reason in the credit investor calculation. They take it out. But the good thing is talk to your accountant. It's easier. A lot of times, especially you have a business, because then you can factor in your investments, the value of your real estate, the value of your business, things like that. But once you get to that level, then it opens up. You can get into different angel investments. You can get into different other businesses that are looking to raise capital where it's like, yeah, you probably heard the things like, oh, so and so is in the seed round or so and so is in the Series B round. And it's like people, they're just raising money from anybody. It's insane. And you look back at a guy like Gary Vee. I know I bring him up a lot because I love following his history, because I've been following him for a decade. But he was like an original investor. He was actually a real angel investor. He was buying into Facebook and Twitter and all these things before they were public, when they were just regular companies. And that's where he made up a huge amount of money. And obviously, you're not probably going to find deals like that, but just being able to have access to things like, for me, one of the deals we did is I was like, man, I want to diversify out of martial arts, out of fitness or like that. So we did a deal this year with a syndicate that's going to open ten coffee and donut shops. And I was like, okay, get much more different than that. And we joked around about it. We were like, literally, this was an essential business during the pandemic. It was like, cool, yes, coffee and Donuts don't work out. This makes no sense. But I was like, man, if they're going to rig the game this way, that's one thing I've always learned from Jujitsu and MMA is know the rules, know the game and then play it. So it's like, okay, these are the new rules. Cool. I'm going to start investing in things that you guys don't shut down.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah.

Paul Halme
Hopefully it never happens again. But now I'm paranoid.

Tim Fitzpatrick
No, well, you know, it's things like the last few years that they change your perspective, and that's not necessarily a bad thing because it's one thing to talk about diversification. It's a totally different thing to actually do it and follow it. There's a gentleman that I follow, Scott Galloway. He's a professor at NYU, super smart guys, marketing person. And one of the things he talked about with diversification was, you know, look, I miss out on some of the home runs that are out there, right? Maybe my portfolio doesn't grow as large as it could be. But with diversification, if any one thing crashes, I'm not going to be sunk. I'm not going to be bankrupt. I'm okay. And that peace of mind that I can sleep at night, I'm good with.

Paul Halme
Oh yeah, 100%.

Conclusion: Successfully Investing As An Entrepreneur

Tim Fitzpatrick
So this has been a really interesting conversation. Paul, any last minute thoughts you want to leave our audience with?

Paul Halme
Man, just get started. The biggest thing and I talk to people and I'll show different charts and graphs and stuff is Einstein was a pretty smart guy, 8th one of the world's compound interest. So it's like when you look at a chart and that's why investing is so boring to some people. It's like the first ten years you're putting money away, it's not doing much. It's like 20 years and all of a sudden that 30 year mark, it just starts going like this and it just keeps going up and up because it's compounding so fast. The problem is a lot of us running out of time because we wait too long and you never get to experience the compounding or we panic and people are like, oh, the sky is falling. Sell everything and then they sell the bottom and buy at the top. We do it backwards. So man, just get started. Ignore the noise and just keep investing and just keep building your future. Educate yourself. But you got to start and just start and don't stop. Make it automatic. Set up automations to do it so you don't have to deal with it and then just let it go.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. When you work with business owners, what does that typically look like?

Paul Halme
Right now we work with them. It's usually a group coaching and then some individual stuff where we go through and look at their business and what they do. Because in our industry and like the gym industry, you can boil all the numbers down. Like, okay, we have this system, we're going to go and implement this. This is their marketing system, this is your appointment setting system, this is your sales system. And then when you start looking at their numbers, you can always figure out where their flaws and it's like, okay, if you fix this one of these four things, it's going to give you exponential return and then you're going to start making more money, be able to do more things. And they're like, oh, hey, I'm making more money. I'm like, cool, now let's start investing it start pulling your money out every quarter and building off of that.

Tim Fitzpatrick
How long do you typically work with them in a coaching program?

Paul Halme
Man, it's pretty crazy if they're not very motivated and they don't want to listen, it's a month or two and then they're out. Well, it doesn't work. Facebook ads don't work the typical excuses people give. But then we have some that have been with us since day. We got a couple of clients that have been with like five years Because I'm not going anywhere because I keep learning stuff and you guys keep helping me and then we started doing different products together. So yeah, we've had some as long as we've been in business, which is super cool. That's a good testament, I think.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Most definitely. So if people want to learn more, where should they be going?

Paul Halme
Paul, man, the best place is my Instagram. I give away a lot of free content on there and then a lot of motivational stuff too. Just go to Instagram com/paul.halme. Or my website is good to redoing that right now. But so Instagram is the best place. I like to put a lot of content out and then my stories. I'm always kind of goofing off behind the scenes and traveling and doing stuff, but yeah, that's the spot.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Awesome. So, guys, that is Paul. If you go to Instagram, you can always search at Paul.Halme, which is H-A-L-M-E or go to paulhalme.com. Obviously you got an interesting past me and you've learned from the ups and downs and you're practicing what you preach. So I appreciate you sharing your experience, your knowledge with our audience and definitely look forward to connecting again. For those that are watching, listening, I appreciate you doing so. My name is Tim Fitzpatrick, again with Riato Marketing. If you want to see consistent, repeatable results with your marketing, you have to have a plan. There is no perfect plan, but you've got to start somewhere. As Paul said, you got to just start doing it. If you want to get our 90 day marketing plan kit, Go to growthmarketingplan.com, that's growthmarketingplan.com and you can download our 90-day marketing plan kit. All the tools templates are there to help you get started because, man, in the absence of a plan, everything looks like an opportunity and you're just going to waste time and you're going to waste money, so head on over to growthmarketingplan.com to get that. Until next time, take care. See ya.