92. Max Rofagha Forms An Inclusive Finance Community

This week I speak to Max Rofagha, a man on a mission to build the world's largest and most engaged finance community at finimize.com.

Wanting to financially educate himself, Max was perplexed at the complexity and reliability of financial resources available. This gave him his next business idea: to explain to every day people in under 3 minutes, what is happening in the world of finance and why you should care.

You can check out more about Finimize and the resources they offer here.

Episode Transcript

Jason Butler 0:00
Hello. Coming up in this week's episode, came working from home really hurt your career and future earnings. A quick update on what I've been up to including working on my new book. And I have a great interview with a young entrepreneur who's trying to help a generation of young people become their own financial advisor. Hello, and welcome to the real money stories podcast. I'm Jason Butler. And I invite you to join me as I have intimate money conversations with people from all walks of life. Whether you're just starting out on your money journey, are well down the track, there's bound to be something you can learn from these stories about taking more control of your money, so you worry less and enjoy life more. Real Money stories is sponsored by Vanguard bringing value to 30 million investors worldwide. Visit Vanguard investor.co.uk for more details. And remember, the value of investments can go down as well as up and you may get back less than you invest in.

Unknown Speaker 1:08
Not sure if you've

Jason Butler 1:09
noticed, but over the last week or so led by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the UK, Richi Sunak, there's been this big rallying call by government ministers that we've all got to return to the office because if we don't return to the office, our career is going to suffer. And our future earnings are going to suffer. And we're somehow going to, you know, not do as well as we would have done if we turned up to the office. And my good friend Claire Barrett, who's the Consumer Affairs editor at the ft in the personal finance section, has done a piece recently about this whole, what she calls the anachronistic view that somehow we've all got to work in the office to get ahead. And so she has been sort of creating a rallying call for pushing back against this. And she actually has alluded to the fact that perhaps it's more to do with the fact that a large amount of property investors are donors to the Tory party, and they're obviously very worried about soft demand for commercial property could really affect yields and could affect their capital values, and therefore, you know, affect their businesses as property owners. Now, thought I'd just share with you my thoughts on this, because I don't think it's quite as cut and dried as we we think. Now, I think when you're very young, you're just starting out, I think there is a lot to be said for spending time with other people in a business, doing the socializing, seeing hands on having conversations, building those connections, and friendships, which I think is so important for, for a good career. And being seen is important, and also developing your social skills, because we don't come out of the box. Certainly, if you don't, didn't go to a great school, which I didn't, you have to learn your, your, your social skills as it were. And we do that best face to face as opposed to a resume. But I think there is also equally plenty of stories of young people who before the pandemic would have found it very difficult to get ahead in a career because they were suffering from various forms of mental health issues, whether it be anxiety, or other kinds of conditions, which would have made it very difficult for them to commute beyond tube trains, trains, buses, in going into a workplace with lots of people. Whereas by using zoom and being part of that virtual world, they've actually managed to make some success of their career at a early age, and manage their mental health challenges much more easier. So I think there's a lot to be said for that. And of course, there are a number of young people who who it's not feasible, it's not practical. And I don't even want to work from home. You know, if you're living in a room in a house of multiple occupation, and you're getting up and you're doing work in your bedroom, it's kind of a bit of soul destroying. But I do think, you know, even if it's not ideal at home, there's a lot to be said for going to work at the local coffee bar or health club or or a sports club or the local library, and there's loads of places don't even cost you any money. So there's lots of ways of actually working from home where you're not actually at home, but you're not at the office and you haven't got that big commute. So there's a lot to be said for this. So there's lots of ways of addressing this. But I certainly think for people who are who've already formed good connections, you've built the initial part of their career. I think employers are very misguided if they're not prepared to embrace, flexible working, working from home even working from anywhere. Now Tim Ferriss, brilliant author, he's the guy behind the four hour workweek, I mean, he just says work from anywhere is the key thing. If you can voice the location of your work with the doing of the work, then you've got a lot more freedom. Of course, there is the downside. If you're working from home, or rather, you're not in an office environment and we've set hours, then you could end up working just continually. And that is a danger. But I think you just have to put boundaries in place. Just because something's a risk doesn't mean that you can't manage that risk or be aware of it. Now, I certainly know this has worked for me 25 years ago. I first started working from home on a Friday, that's when we just have dial up modems and slow internet and dodgy dodgy slow computers. So that was difficult. I used to do all my dictation on Fridays do my research or my thinking, or my planning. And that worked really well. And then when we started our family in 1998, I was 29. And we lived, we moved to Suffolk, I started working for him on a Tuesday and a Friday. And then Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, would get the entire city into London into the city where I had my office. And what I found that did was that gave me an avid day of planning and have a bit more space a bit more time. We've also my young family so we could have tea together. And, you know, we you know, I could take like a go to school events and things that was really priceless for me go to the gym, didn't work any less hard. I just worked differently. I worked, you know, a rhythm that worked for me. And I was always happy for staff to be able to work from home if they wanted to. But you know, a lot of our staff they didn't want to work from home wasn't practical, they didn't have the right facilities, or it wasn't suitable for them.

But you know, I certainly found that that was pretty good. And since I sold my advice business in 2015, I've worked from home all the time, I remember when I first started working part time for salary financing 2018, I simply, you know, can't possibly work from the office all the time, it's not my gig, they said, That's no problem just come in when it suits you, or when you need to for key planning meetings. And that's what I did. In fact, the first time I went back to the salary finance offices was two weeks ago, and they got brand new offices by I think it's White City tube, beautiful offices, but only 40 people in an office that's designed for 250. And I wonder how long that's going to continue. But I certainly enjoyed it, it was good to meet up with lots of people and also meet some new people. So, you know, I think it's this hybrid approach, which is what most enlightened employers, and certainly employees of the future are going to have to embrace. So it's not one or the other, it's probably a mixture of the two but slightly different different working patterns, different teams will come in at different days. So you use your virtual when you need to you work from home, when it suits your work from the coffee bar or from your local library, whatever suits you. And then you have perhaps two or three days when you go to the office. So I think i think i think government ministers, I think there's they're probably stuck in the wrong century. And so are the property investors behind them. So I think if I was a betting person, I think there could be the first sign of anything in property being affected is in commercial property, particularly commercial property that's offices. So watch out for that, that could be the little straw that broke the camel's back, you could find eventually, especially when interest rates rise, or inflation's, you know, getting a bit too out of control and, and banks have to tighten things up, that could be the catalyst that sees property values, falling in value, so yields rise. So, you know, just watch out for that, quote, it's been a busy few weeks for me been working on lots of stuff, been creating new content for salary finance for a thing called crush your debt week. One of the reasons why I like working with them is because although they provide salary link loans, which are, you know, lower cost than you could normally get. What I like about them is they're helping people get out of debt, and build savings and build resilience. So I've been creating a new webinar all about getting out of debt, which is going to be for next month, crush your debt week, and they're gonna be paying off certain lucky people's debts throughout that week. So watch out for that. It's pretty good one. I'm really excited about that. And that's how we make a difference to people by showing them techniques, ideas, and giving them encouragement to improve their financial position. And I've also been interviewing someone salary, finances, customers, fantastic people who tell me their journey, about kind of how they found themselves in debt, how they got out of debt, how they're making progress. And it's wonderful to hear when you interview someone, and they say that, as they're making progress. Now they feel that they're taller, that is an amazing outcome. And I feel privileged to be able to interview those people. So that's good. Been doing quite a few new videos. So if you're not already subscribed, subscribe to my YouTube channel, do go there. It's Jason Butler financial wellbeing. We putting out new content all the time. I've got an interesting one coming out very soon. It's just in the end. It's all about what love Ireland can teach us about money. And it's my little take on things that we can draw from that. That quite popular show I understand.

That can make you better with money. So check that one out. So again, the YouTube channel subscribe and like there, and you'll always get the latest video material. But a new article coming out in the FT very shortly next week, or by the time a few days after you hear this pod. And that's all about addiction to debt. It's my bugbear and just trying to raise people's consciousness about the role of debt and you know there is good debt and bad debt but it's just that try to prick your conscience and get people to think differently or The role of debt. So that's an ft.com. check that one out. And I've been very busy working on my next book. Now it was originally going to be called the money miracle. But after I read working for a long time, I realized that was the wrong title, because a miracle is sort of infers that something happens from some supernatural being or some kind of, you know, outside of your control. And it's now been renamed as conscious money, because what I want to do is I'm trying to raise people's consciousness about the role of money about how money makes you happy or not about what you choose to do with your money, the rules of the road, and it's it's built around four key concepts of basically, meaning, mindset, mechanics, and measurement. And I, what I've done is I've weaved in the clients that I've dealt with over the years, you know, versions of their stories, some of the people I've interviewed on this podcast, I've interviewed over 100 people. So some of those stories are weaved in, but also some of my own personal experiences in my own life that we've seen. So it's very much a story based approach to money, where I'm trying to be, I suppose, share my greatest tips of everything I've learned from others, everything that I've learned through life, and that people have shared with me in their own money journey. So fingers crossed, we're hoping that's going to be out. By the end of the year, beginning of next year, I hired a brilliant developmental editor, who is absolutely brutal. And she basically made me rewrite the original book that I was originally doing, she said, bit like a deal with her album, 25. And the producer heard it and he said, you can do better. You there's good stuff here. But it needs to be really taken up a notch. And that's what you and my editor said to me, she said, you can do better than this, you need to dig deep. And that's what I've been doing. So I've been rewriting the book from first principles. And I think you're, you're appreciate the way it was meant to be out earlier this year. But I just think that's a very good lesson in life is that you want to do your very best work. Obviously, you don't want to be a pro, you know, procrastinating or perfectionist because you'll never finish anything. But try and do your very best work. And even if it takes a bit longer, it's always best to do your best work. And, you know, so hopeful, feeling confident making progress every week. But it just does obviously take a lot of my time to get that out. So conscious money, you can go to my website, and you can sign up for the alerts on that Jason hyphen butler.com. And I'll let you know as soon as it comes out. And for obviously listeners and followers of mine, there'll be some special offers. When that gets launched.

Right, we are in for a treat. This week, I've got a really interesting guy, which I can't believe in the two years I've been doing my podcast I haven't had this guy on. And I was just thinking to myself, hang on a minute. There's a really interesting guy who's doing really interesting work who's making a massive difference to particularly younger people's lives and their relationship with money. And I'm having him on the show. And here's the thing, this guy has got some of my children's inheritance because I invested in his business about five years ago, it seems like longer. And I'm talking about of course, Max row Fargo. Max, good to see you. Thanks for having me. Pleasure. Yeah, the hardest thing about my relationship with you is pronouncing your surname because you're Swift, right? Well, actually, I'm German. But I spent a lot of time in Switzerland. Yeah, that's an easy one. Yeah, nevermind. Good luck, do you want to? Do you want to just tell everyone kind of what you do for your day job and what you do to keep your nose clean these days?

Max Rofagha 13:42
Sure. So I'm the founder of Finimize. And we're building the modern financial information platform and community for today's retail investor. So what we do is we provide daily Davey insights into what's happening with financial markets in a really easy to understand and bite sized manner. And we are very, very community focused. So we have a very active community around the world, where pretty much every day now there's a meetup being organized by one of our community members, or on a topic that the local community finds interesting. So that can be anything from NF T's to vegan stocks to ESG, you name it, they will they will organize it. And we today have over a million users around the world are available on newsletter and mobile apps and are building some really, really cool things as we speak.

Jason Butler 14:39
Now, I should just point out to everyone I say I am an investor in Finimize. So you know there's a vested interest here but But seriously, why did I let me just tell the audience why I invested in Finomize because and there's two lessons here right? Okay. There's two lessons if you're thinking about building a business and if you're trying to build wealth and you're trying to get people to back you investing, minimize because the central message was helping people help themselves, have a good relationship with money, build wealth and make sense of the world? Because it is complicated. It can be right. The second thing was, Max was highly investable. When I met him, I met him in a coffee shop. He approached me after reading one of my ft articles, right. And he met me in a show, do you want to tell the story about how we met then? So tell everyone the story how we met, and then we'll do the takeaway from that?

Max Rofagha 15:24
Yeah, I think I read. So first of all, I've so I've, I have no background and finance. And previously built an e commerce business. And I as I was sort of thinking about building, minimize, I was looking for people who knew the finance space very well, the personal finance space. And I came when as I was doing my research, just also in general, to get to know the space. I came across an article that you wrote for the ft. And I thought, oh, that seems to be right up the alley that we're thinking about it. Let me reach out to this guy. And you responded. And we met in a coffee shop in Marylebone, and had a chat, I think then we also met in a hotel lounge in by Liverpool Street again. Yeah, I made another chat. And you were the first person to invest in Finimize? I don't know if you actually know that. But you were the very first one. Oh, really?

Jason Butler 16:21
Well, I co invested with passion capital, didn't I? I mean, I might have been technically the first shareholder. I'm very honored. But yeah, so the takeaway there was, what was it about Mac's that made me invest in him. And this is a good takeaway, if you're trying to raise money, right? Now, it could be just, I'm stupid. And he's a great salesman, or it could be there was something there. So why did I invest? And I thought back to this? Well, first of all, he'd had, he'd had an a previous successful business, right? ecommerce, he done something before. And, you know, if you're trying to raise money, it may be, you've done as long as you can point to something, you've had some adversity, you've had to overcome problems. And even if it wasn't a raving success, as long as you've, you've learned from that, that was good. Secondly, he was our age, he was a lot younger than me. So he was going to make this happen, right. And I'm always looking to invest in younger people, because I ain't getting any younger. And the third thing was that I believed in the central tenant of what he was trying to do reach out to these people, particularly under 35, under 40. And just reinvent how money and finance was dealt with now has has the means of that Maxie has changed, isn't it your businesses have pivoted? I mean, we had some idea about helping people create financial plans and all sorts and we went to sort of regulator and we went down lots of blind alleys. But here's the thing, Max and his team, and it's a brilliant team. They learned quickly, right? So they learn quickly, and we pivoted didn't mean that, but the central principle was he had this free newsletter, tell us about the free newsletter and how that then evolved into the other products and services?

Max Rofagha 17:46
Yeah, so basically, it all started with I had. So what I had done when I was like in my mid 20s, was I set up a standing order where I would take my salary, and I would take a cut of it, and I would put it onto a savings account. And once I stopped doing that, sort of a year in, I looked at my savings account, and I realized, wow, this works, I have some savings. Oh, that's amazing. And so then I thought, great. So what do I do with the savings because I was looking at the interest I was getting, I was looking at inflation. I had studied economics, I didn't take too much to think about to realize, Oh, I'm actually in real terms losing money here. So I need to be doing something smarter with it. And I found it really difficult to wrap my head around it, I went to go see a financial advisor, they were trying to sell me their services and products before we sort of got to know each other kind of rubbed me the wrong way. And I was like, probably not the right solution for me. And I tried to educate it for myself at all by myself on law, and found out really difficult to wrap my head around as well, because a was difficult to find the right resources then felt like if you went on Google, every Google page was just trying to send you to an affiliate site, because that's how they make money. So the big learning there was obviously you know, if it's if it's free, then you got to think about their incentives. What is free, but long story short, kind of figured, hey, you know what a good starting point is probably just wrapping my head around what's happening in the financial markets. And the story there was that I had that was the beginning of a year and I to New Year's resolutions. One was I wanted to read the Financial Times every day. And the other one was I wanted to run a marathon. And what happened was I ended up running two marathons and I stopped reading the Financial Times after I think, three months. And that was quite telling. Because what happened was that a really difficult to understand what's important and what's not because it's a very long publication as there's not just the Financial Times it's basically every every existing publication out there. And then if you if you did understand what was important Then second hurdle was Dwight, do you actually understand what they're talking about? There was a lot of sort of implicit and assumed connections between prices and yields and inflation also. And then the third piece was, even if you then understood what they were talking about, why would you care? if inflation goes up? Okay, maybe that's that's clear. But if sort of interest rates in the US go up as a European, why the hell do I care? And so that then gave me this idea of, Hey, why don't we just try to explain to people in no more than three minutes because that's kind of the attention span that people have these days? What's happening in the world of finance and why you should care. And we started off with a, the format has always been the same hasn't changed a single bit, it's always three questions. Well, your What does it mean? And why should I care? And it started off with a website. And I built the website myself. And I realized very quickly that it was absolute crickets. Nobody went to the website. And so I just started emailing everybody. Literally everybody that I had in my contact book, I just emailed them, hey, check out this website. It's an a project that I'm working on. And I and I tracked whether people were opening the email, and I saw people are actually opening the email. But the crickets on the website remained. And so I figured, you know, what, why don't I just take all the content from the web from the website, put it into the email, because that's what people seem to be opening. And that's then what gave life to the newsletter. And that was our starting point. And from there, we then managed to build a an audience managed to build a community manager then build more products, etc. But that really was the starting point. And I think the reason why it worked so well as because it was really, really, really low friction. Everybody has an email account, everybody checks her woman federal out of bed, and we got a spot in your inbox, and it's a very intimate space. And the final point there is, email is a very powerful channel. I remember back in the day when we were pitching to venture capitalists,

Unknown Speaker 22:11
oh, why don't you guys do this on Snapchat, that was the hot thing back in the day. And

Max Rofagha 22:16
the issue is that you don't own the relationship. Whereas with an email, you have the direct relationship with the end consumer. And so that was really, really important. And that's what I think makes email so powerful.

Jason Butler 22:30
And you you build that out? I mean, unbelievable. Is it? Is it about a million people? Now I get that yes, way, shape or form is unbelievable with very little marketing, because people told people people liked it, the open rates are very high. And I think when I invested I think you had what was it? 10,000 on that list? I can't remember what it was 30,000? I don't know. Yeah. But anyway, I just thought, well, hang on, you've gone from nowhere to a few 1000. That's, that's good. And I like the email myself. And you know, when I read loads, right, and I do read the books and do read for hours and stuff, but I just thought it was really good. So that was good. So here's the thing. You pivoted the business now, haven't you? You you've kind of you've incrementally grown it? What How did the community and how did the app come about?

Max Rofagha 23:16
So as you say, so we started off with, we always had this mission that we wanted, we said we want to empower people to become their own financial advisor. And the way that we thought about that was we wanted to give people access to the information and the tools that they needed, in order to be their own financial advisor. And our initial thesis was alright, so so one thing is you need to understand what's happening. It's important. So that's the newsletter. And then we thought, all right, well, the other thing is, obviously, we need to build, we need to help you understand how to structure your financial life. And the original thesis was, the best way to do this is to build a financial plan. And we did that. So we built a financial plan, that was completely automated, we built that we built an algorithm for it. And you could go on there, and you could enter a couple of details and it would spit out a financial plan. What we then realize were a couple of learnings number one, you know, nobody is sort of in the mindset of just sitting down and planning the whole life in one go, as a self serve platform, at least, can be very overwhelming. And I think also this generation finds it really difficult to really plan that forehead, right? If you ask me, when do you want to buy a house buy? I probably couldn't tell you the answer. But what we did find was that people were really excited about the investing part. And so the way that this financial, the financial plan works is obviously emergency fund and retirement and saving for a house or whatever you have. And then essentially, whatever's left over is sort of your discretionary investment funds. And that's what got people So excited. And so we realized that very quickly. And so long story short, we then said, Hey, this this platform, I'm sure somebody will do it. And I do see suit, I do constantly see people trying to do this. I don't think anybody's actually done it well. But we basically said, Hey, why don't we just take the learnings and listen to our users. And with all our users constantly, were asking for when we went through the Net Promoter Score surveys was, the number one request was, hey, I want more content. And so we figured out all right, why don't we just produce more content for them, if that's really what's helping them make better decisions. And then we said, okay, we need to also build a business model around this. And we need to make sure that our incentives are aligned with the end user. And so we built a subscription product. And so the subscription is obviously aligned. Because whether you take an action off the back of the content, whether you will, I don't know, change, change the way that you that you plan your money, or invest your money, or whatever, the day we don't care we care about is that the information is valuable, so that you stick around. And so that's what gave life to the subscription business. And has been has been really, really great success with Britt, we're, I think, sort of 18 months in, we're in the top 150. New subscriptions in the world, not just not just financial news. And people really love it. And it's a it's a, it's a product that doesn't exist, nobody else is doing what we're doing. And I think that's also what excites us.

Jason Butler 26:37
So that's really clever. So, so there was this, you learn from the email list, which is free gave people a chance to experience you and to build trust and build routine and you've got the you've got what I call part of their intellectual real estate, didn't you, you put a marker on the ground and you weren't reliant on other platforms, that was great. But then you listen to them, you pivoted and you gave your customers what they wanted, right, as opposed to what you thought they needed, which is so simple, but it's a lot of planning a lot of businesses and startups they've got this idea that you know, build it and they will come Well, that's fine. But you know, no one comes and you're stuffed. And then you what you did was said, Well, if you want more content, there's a little bit extra, and we're going to deliver it for an app. So that was brilliant. Okay, so tell me about the and I love the app is called is it called? premium? You call it premium? Does Is that how you? Yeah, so

Max Rofagha 27:26
so the app is pretty much most of the content is behind a paywall. And so in order to access it, you need to get the premium membership.

Jason Butler 27:35
Yeah, that's right. So So the point is, if you if you want to find out about the feel and look of it, what they do is really clever. And you get in the free newsletter, interspersed with the free stuff, like the two main stories, there's a bit in the middle, which is tantalizing, the interesting, but if you want to read more about that, that's in the premium. So they're always letting people know that giving them a chance to upgrade to premium, but they're still giving people that free stuff. So if you if you can't afford it, or you're not ready there, or you don't feel like it's for you at the moment, you can stay on free. But this is lovely pivot where you're giving people an off ramp. And this is really important in any business give people the chance and the time to buy extra stuff when they're ready to not when you want them to but just make it easy. So that was great. Tell me more about the community because that's I know, I've done some of your community events seem to be called back several times. I've even done a live one. And I think I still have the Bitcoin. We'll come back to that the Bitcoin question crypto. That's a good one. But tell us about the community and how that's now how that how it started, how it developed and what you've learned from that. Yeah, so the community.

Max Rofagha 28:40
So the big lesson, I think was minimize is that none of the stuff that we planned happened and all the stuff that work was not planned. Like I said, you know, it was never the idea to do a newsletter. Well, we ended up with a newsletter. With the community, again, there was not sort of the idea that we're going to build a community, but it happened very organically. And I think what we did well is we did the seeds to allow it to happen. And when it did happen, we very much leaned lean forward and leading leaned into it. So I think the seeds really started with with us treating our early users as VIPs. So I remember the first couple of people who signed up to the newsletter, I would just email them and say, Hey, what's your address? I just want to send you something and then we would just send them a free merchandise and just for nothing, they didn't do anything. Because we wanted to, to sort of delight and surprise. We in the early days, we said hey, every Friday, whoever refers a friend, we're going to come to your office and deliver you coffee and cake. And we did all of that all of these kind of things. And I think what that what happened then That people started to build an affinity towards fitness as a brand. And they they understood that we were going to treat people who were using our service very well. And one day, then we decided, Hey, I think it was around sort of, I don't know, 50,000, maybe, maybe less users. And we said, Hey, who are these people that are using us and reading us every day? Why don't we just meet them? And we said, Alright, let's meet in a pub in East London. And we showed up there after work. And we were really surprised by how many people actually showed up. So I think something like 50 people showed up to this pub, and the entire pub, all of a sudden was filled with people from wnyc. And we thought, alright, that's kind of cool. That's not what we expected. And then we said, Alright, well, why don't we do this again? And the next time, I don't know, 70 people showed up. And slowly, but surely, we kept doing it. And we had, like, 100 people show up. 200 people show up. And, and, and above. And then people started emailing us saying, it looks really cool. I'm based out of Sydney, hey, I'm based out of New York, hey, I'm based out of Venice, Iris, can you do this in our town as well. And we said, we would love to do that. I mean, that sounds like a fantastic life to just fly around the world. And until speedups. Fortunately, we don't have the resources and the time to do that. But and then we can, we kind of left it. And then we started getting so many requests for this that one day, we just sat down, we said, Hey, can we just take what we do, put it into a playbook. And then give this playbook to the people in Windows IRAs in Sydney, in New York, etc. And that then really gave life to the community. Because now what we have is we have community hosts, they apply to be a host. So like, every quarter, we have, like 1000s of applications of people wanting to become a host, we then vet them very, very closely. Because obviously we want to make sure that they are good extension and representation of our brand. And we we train them, and we tell them how it's done. And we sort of give them best practices, etc. And then we also monitor it very closely. So right after you also meet up, we immediately asked the people who attended, how did you like it. And if people liked it, then we invite you to also another one that people didn't like it, then that's that's where the journey stops. And that then basically took on its own momentum. So last year, so actually, in 2019, or even in 2018, I think we can like 3000 people connected at these meetups in 2019 10,000 people connected at meetups and 2020 30,000 people connected those units, which made us the largest financial gathering in the entire world, if you take the top five financial conferences, combined them by attendance, we're larger than all of them combined. This year, we're very much on track to connecting 60,000 people at our meetups. And it's all hosted through our so they are the ones who are really driving this. And that's what's makes it so special.

Jason Butler 33:18
And that sense of community is very much how many brands do grow very well. Because you're transmuting, the trust and the respect and the sense of connection. You're getting your your your your users, your customers, you're becoming disciples, they're becoming apostles, whatever you want to call it there. They are the wild Brando because that's the word. Yeah. And I can remember when I gave a talk, I think it was in the late 2017 at an actual physical meetup. We had about 250 people can't get any more in the door. wasn't as a speaker. Yeah, but the thing was this, you had all the swag at the back. And they were like they loved it. And they that there was baseball caps and little t shirts and all little things and, and I was a speaker and I didn't get anything, no idea kept me something. But the interesting thing, what I really observed there in that meeting was the energy, the the intelligence, the thoughtfulness, the dynamism, the slightly different value set of the different generations coming through because they've all grown up with smartphones and internet, etc. So I knew you're onto something there but thinking about the future and thinking what so if we if we look at where you are now, give me three things that you've learned about money, okay, over the last five or six years in your fitness journey, because you're very close to this all the time and I'm just interested to see or learnings or and learnings over those last five or six years about the role of money and what you've learned about it?

Max Rofagha 34:48
Yeah, I think it's interesting because they're there. There's, there seems to be especially over the last couple of months. There seems to be Be very hyped topics, whether that's crypto, whether that's Tesla, whether that's now space, I mean, there's always something that people are just pouring into. And when you when you then speak to the analysts who we've hired to produce the content, when you look when you ask them, Hey, you know, how would you look at Apple? Like, everybody seems to be talking about Apple? And then they look at the data. And then they say, Well, I mean, it's everybody thinks it's strong buy, it's, it's got a huge market cap. It's expensive, but it's also very profitable. Ah, probably nothing for me. And, and if you speak to some of the average person on the street, they say, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go for Apple. But I need to try to understand Alright, well, the difficulty with investing and with money is being an independent thinker. And the importance of being an independent thinker and not just following the herd. That's when you start making bad decisions. And when you can't justify it to yourself, why am I getting into this? And the independent thinking part, I think, for us is really important, because that's what we're trying to help people with. But we never example, in our content, we ever say, hey, you should buy this, or you should sell this or this is great, or whatever, we always try to say, Hey, here's one way to look at it, here's another way to look at it. At the end of the day, you're smart enough, and there is no certainty, this is the I think the number one thing that people need to understand, there is no certainty. And everything that you do is a trade off. And you just need to get that into your head. what i what i what i see with people who are, who are novices who try out our service, and we're not catering specifically to novices. But sometimes we do get novices. And the feedback is, alright, can you tell me what to buy. And that sort of thinking shows you that someone doesn't understand how investing works there, everything is a trade off. I think the second thing that I've learned also is define a process and then just stick to the process, which also tries to go counter the this herd thing, because that, again, if I speak to her, Alice, this era, you see the car with a framework being cut with a process. And then you decide All right, at this point, price point, for example, I'm going to share, I'm going to sell X percent of my shares. And, and and if it goes above it, I don't care. I've decided before I went in, at this price point, I'm gonna do it and I have to stick to it. So the importance of process and sticking to the process. And then I think that what's it's not really a lesson, but it's more of an observation is kind of this distinction between passive and active. I remember when we started, everybody was talking about passive investing, and you have all these roles or sort of talk of talent back in the day. And now you're really starting to see the rise of the active investor. And it seems to me that there's this pendulum that constantly swinging or people say, Alright, active or passive or whatever, probably, you need to have a I have a hybrid. And I think the reason why, and we're starting to see this now is, I think, when people and this tends to be more like the old school people, I think, is they don't appreciate the fact that there is a certain statement about investing. And if you completely take it out, that's just not how people these days think, I think rather than to think about it as, yes, there is a certain excitement, but here's how much of your overall portfolio you can put into excitement and how much perhaps you should you should put into less exciting but also interesting investing strategies or or assets. Those are probably be the three areas that that I can think of, I think what's maybe as a final point, but when we started, it was all about how do we get people to talk about investing or finance more generally, at the pub? How do we just get it to this top of mind for people to actually think about because, frankly, for a lot of people, it's it's a bland, slightly dry, boring topic. That now no longer is a problem. I'm sure we played a role in it. I'm not going to take full credit for it. But the the macrocystis environment has changed and people are talking about this become part of pop culture, and I'm sure it will go away again, but

right now it is. And so I think now it's all about helping people understand. Alright, so how does this actually work? Thinking about, again, trade offs, processes, etc. and helping people what over the last couple of months what I think there's been one key trend that we've observed is helping people understand the difference between speculating and investing. And a lot of people don't don't understand the difference there and the difficulty with finance And with financial information and education is there's always the cool person at the party who everybody's speaking to, who is handing out shots to everybody. And that's where everybody is naturally drawn to. And you don't want to be the person in the corner sort of waving your finger and saying, No, no, no, you shouldn't be doing this, because he's gonna listen to you. And so it's a constant balancing act of being part of the conversation, but also having a voice of reason. And I think that's what makes it so difficult.

Jason Butler 40:34
And I think you're right, that idea of compartmentalizing or quarantine, if I can use that term, or, or somehow accommodating our natural desire, speculation is actually part of a human trait. And I'm certainly not against speculation, when people understand the basics. Okay, I've got, you know, as as I got the understand where they're going to what matters to them, but also what they can afford to speculate with. And I would argue that we all have to speculate whether it's with our career, whether it's with sometimes relationships, we have to be speculate to keep, you know, in our voids, we have to take risks in life sometimes where the risk of failure is very high, but the risk of success is far, far higher. In other words, it makes sense. So as long as the speculative upside is, is adequate enough, if it comes good for you to cope with that, that very high chance of loss, or Bailey or whatever it is, you're doing, and we're talking here about money, then I think you're right, speculation has a part to play and you think you're speculating because you started a business didn't unit on beans and rice for some years? I think you probably still are. But I mean, you know, you never lose that. That being careful with money bit. What What would you say to anyone? Because I'm particularly wanting to share in entrepreneurial insights, what would you say to someone who's thinking about, they've got an idea, or they're in they're trapped in a corporate job, nothing wrong with being in a job or working for someone? Absolutely nothing wrong with that that's fine and dandy, but what would you say to somebody who's thinking, or I've got an idea, and I think this could go big? Or I could really make a difference in the world? Or what what would you say to them?

Max Rofagha 41:58
I think, I think there's a lot of advice that people give. And I think that can also be an abundance of advice these days. Something a little bit careful there. But I think overall, what I've seen with people who who work in corporate jobs, who then want to start something is that they try to sort of put one foot in the water, but to keep one foot on land. And unless you're really lucky. I'm not sure that works I've ever experienced that myself, I think either you go all in or you don't go in. And I figured order to do that you need to have the willing willingness, I guess, for it for it to fail. And, and, and that's, I think, number one, I think number two, which people talk a lot about is you need to, and this, I think, again, is a very personal thing. I, for example, I could not build a business where I sat down. And I've done a market analysis. And Alright, here's, I don't know a certain segment. In logistics, where I've identified this is a big market that's growing, and now I'm going to build the company around them. Because if you're if you're if you're not passionate about it, I think it's going to be really difficult to endure and to live on rice and beans. Because at the end of the day, it's a very mercenary experience. And what we've done, minimize I think that's really helped us get through. Also low points, you know, COVID, obviously was difficult for everybody was it we had a really clear mission, and people rallied around the mission, and that's what people come to work for. So I think having a mission and really a passion around what you're doing super, super important. And then I think the other thing that I that I always see is people, not people starting with too much. There's like, Oh, I need this and then I need this and then I need to I need money for for marketing and then any money for this. And the reality is you don't we started off with very little money. And another company, I don't know them, but I've read about them. Jim shark, obviously massively successful company, where the story goes, at least at the founder, which is now a billion dollar company. He was a pizza delivery driver. And he took the money. I believe it was like four pounds 50 an hour. And he put that into the business. That's how I started Jim shark and he built the business out of its own cash flow to 1 billion valuation. And at a billion valuation, he took on additional he took on external capital for the first time So he owes I mean 70% of the company, so I thought was crazy. But because he started off was very, very little means there's, I think people underestimate how much you can actually do with with little means. So I think that's, that's that's the key, really starting small and then just trying to grow it from there. And it's going to take patients and patients are to have, you need to have the passion.

Jason Butler 45:28
Absolutely. As I say, you don't need millions and millions and millions and all the mess connections in the world, you just have to start, as you say, and get better later, as you say, start small Max, you're super busy guy, thank you very much indeed for your time. So if people want to check you out, they can go to obviously www.venomized.com you can search on the App Store, the minimize app, and you can sign up obviously for the newsletter as well. Obviously, I've invested interest I love you guys. I love what you're all about. And if you want to join one of the minimize meetups, you can find them on the website or you'll get told them by the newsletter. Really, really interesting meetings really worth attending the boat, all virtual, I think at the moment that will hopefully be some physical ones happening that love you guys. Thanks for being on max. And good luck with what the future holds. Thank you very much. Thanks for listening to real money stories with me Jason Butler. If you like what you hear, please do tell your friends. And more importantly, please rate us on your preferred podcast app, because it really does help us get the message out there. So until next time, good luck with your money journey. Real Money stories is sponsored by Vanguard bringing value to 30 million investors worldwide. Visit Vanguard investor.co.uk for more details. The value of investments can go down as well as up and you may get back less than you invested

Transcribed by https://otter.ai